By Alan Marston, 3 February 2010

 

In the end there's only one sound that poligarches fear, the raw cry of mass protest from the street below.

 

I believe this is one rule people under 50 years old have not learned, thinking instead a mass outbreak of protest on the internet or at an election is sufficient to force change in a political-economy. Wrong, those protests are manageable, comfortably so, profitably so.

 

The thing is, and this I have learned from many tough experiences, all forms of protest are manageable, except the mass street protest. Neither the organisers, participants nor vilified objects of a protest are able to control or direct it once it reaches critical mass … and becomes a bomb … and does effect change.

 

But, and there is always a but, in the end it takes high explosives to shake loose long-standing, even if rotten, foundations - including a society's. Social, economic, personal change is needed, wanted and even pleaded for by many. It will be delivered to us one day, over the ruins of much we assumed was eternal.

 

 

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