To wonder why there has been no revolution?

[DoctorTwo]

Even the Torygraph is mystified. Why are we not kicking the shit out of the thieving wankers that make up our parliament? Or burning down corporate headquarters and lynching the bosses? These bastards are making us poorer and blaming us for it.

Impotent rage? I think you're being too generous there.

I do genuinely think it was.

Yes a lot of rioters were stealing/looting. But the others? The ones smashing, running the streets, burning their own communities? I think there was genuine anger at the loss of power/control/input they have in their own lives. Most of the riots took part in bloody deprived areas, by people who've been living with the crap end of the deal since birth.

Why are we all so complacent these days?

Are we known for being feisty and quick to protest?

We put up with so much crap, the main one being poor trains every single day poor commuters suffer cattle conditions on poor trains, often no loo, no air con working, trains late, cancelled and the highest train fares in europe, and they/we do nothing.

I mention trains because its an every day event and an unpleasant one and the brits do nothing.

so why do something that seems far away and not related, even though it might be

It will be UKIP, folks.

The elite have government sewn up now. There will be no more working class, or even lower middle class, politicians.

Even countries with high level of unemployment (I currently live in one) still have a minimum of social support, so people are not really starving, nor that desperate, or are moving elsewhere in Europe for jobs.
The vast majority is still fairly comfortable (as shown by the traffic levels I had to put up with this morning).

www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/23/ian-martin-labour-conference-thick-of-it

This article is interesting (sorry to repeat link) because he is advocating joining the Labour party to change it from within. The trouble is we (the disgruntled) vote alternative, for the Greens or UKIP and then we are divided and conquered. Perhaps we should be making the best of the bad job that Labour has become - by joining and changing it. Labour isn't just Milliband and Balls, their policies are shaped by its members and should adjust accordingly. If their membership dwindles to nothing we will end up with another coalition, not that that's a particularly bad thing. Oh I don't know.

The vast majority is still fairly comfortable - yes, until they get sick, disabled, unemployed, old, vulnerable. And as I mentioned earlier, the cuts are only just starting to have an effect because many government budget commitments run four years ahead.

By the time the cuts hit so hard that people will be emigrating (no need for UKIP), it will be too late. The fat cats will leave the sinking ship having eaten all the rats.

But UKIP is just as unimaginative as the main parties - really they are just blaming some non Brits, while Cameron and co blame a small section of Brits who have no real power.

No one is talking real social change and if UKIP is stocked by ex Tory MPs they'll all still have their hands in the till and support the white male upper class elite.

Oh, yes. Please, start a revolution! It worked for us, I guess. But we had the Terror and 60 years of shit in between...
But remember: This will mean: no more benefits, no more income support, no more financing for whatever project you have (or if their is, it will be sustainable all of 6 months). No more well stocked stores. No more easy travelling. Insular living, not only in the island, but between boroughs (well yes, do you think trains will circulate as usual?) No more security (no police, no ambulances). The rise of petty lords, with the louder voices and the biggest self-interest. Losing the high ground and righteousness by acting as savagely as people with a chip on their shoulder can (lynching, segregating, looting...)

Are you up to renounce for 5 to 10 years to all the conforts you have been living in? No matter how bad you think you have it, you will have to run though stinkier shit before maybe come to a result. And it is not even remotely garanteed...

If so, yes, start a revolution. If not, vote and speak up in the public matters, rather than sulk like overgrown children.

The vast majority is still fairly comfortable - yes, until they get sick, disabled, unemployed, old, vulnerable.

But the UK still has a much better social protection system compared to other countries where you still don't have revolutions going.
Other countries have been cutting too.

And it's the sick, disabled, old, vulnerable who will suffer the most during the revolution. And possibly after, depending on what happens.
Only the unemployed might not be worse off, but then there would probably be more unemployed.

I think that people who believe so strongly in changing things should put themselves forward for change from within. And that means putting themselves forward for election and working towards change within the political system.

Well said OfaFrenchMind.

There will be nowhere at peace in the world to live at the rate civil unrest and combat are happening.

I hope there isn't a UK revolution in my lifetime, or the lifetime of my children.

Yes to Meh and OfaFrench.

We talk about revolution because it's so long since anything of the kind happened here (just like 1968 with students on full grants and full-hours jobs going whenever they wanted).

However bad things get, an armed mob is absolutely not going to make things better. And gormless though the mainstream media is, a few glances at people making political speeches on YouTube make someone like Owen Paterson sound like a down to earth man of the people.

And Jesus Christ, 'officer class'? What? The best thing to do about Phones4U would be for the MPs whose constituents have lost their jobs to plan a bill making company directors liable for the costs of unemployment related to egregious corporate shitheadedness. You know, the democratic process and the rule of law. It's the best thing we have, and if we sit and think for a minute, we know it.

Neo said:
Every revolution has occurred where a significant proportion of the population is either in the military or has military experience.

Not so. Read up on the revolution in what is now Haiti where, after the middle class began to flex their muscles during the French Revolution, the slaves got the idea and rebelled.

MehsMum

I understand your point, but dispute your analysis. A slave uprising is not a revolution. A revolution takes place within society - slaves were separate from society. Haiti was more akin to a liberation of conquered native peoples, though in this case the 'native' peoples had been transported to their present territory.

Something has to change though. We don't live in a meritocracy, we live in an endogamy (see current government).

• endogamous society

Too busy wondering whether to buy a chiroback thing off the tv to pay attention to typing

In this revolution, will all rich people be punished regardless, or just those who have behaved shockingly such as bankers, and directors of Phones4U?
If the former, then how rich does someone have to be to be on the receiving end of the revolution?

because they see inequality on social media according to the head of the World Bank.

I personally don't want rich people persecuted. I do want those who brought us to this mess, the crooked bankers and the crooked politicians who enabled and continue to enable them prosecuted. They are bailed out at our expense again and again and still they refuse to change the way they operate. There have been only a handful of prosecutions, and those for either defrauding the banks, or, in the case of Bernie Madoff, defrauding the rich.

The system needs to change otherwise there will be trouble.

endogamous society

I'm confused (it's easy done) - why is the UK an endogamous society? I thought that meant that you married within your own group? What has that got to do with revolutions?

I suppose someone like Fred the Shred has been/will be punished for the foreseeable future as everywhere he goes he will be recognised and insulted or jeered at.
We live quite near the 'Cheating Major' who attempted (and nearly succeeded) to defraud Who Wants to be a Millionaire by answering questions via a coughing accomplice - I'm sure you all remember. He has also been punished by the public though less so now as he hasn't been in the media for some time.
I seem to have gone off topic, but what I mean is sometimes people aren't punished much officially but get their come-uppance without a revolution.

Neo.
Suspect we may not agree on this, then. Historians seem to view it as a 'revolution from below'. I could bore on, because I've just read a book about it, but I won't.
Agree to differ and no hard feelings?

This is a very interesting thread. Thank you, Doctor and all the posters!

About this: "However a revolution? Like Russia?"
Not necessarily. How about like Iceland's very peaceful & highly effective economic revolution? Or even like the Jarrow marches, the Vietnam protests (arguable whether they stopped the war, but they certainly altered the public mood), Soweto (very bloody but successful), various miners' & transport workers' strikes in the mid-20th century, both stages of suffrage, even the Magna Carta.

It seems to me there's a very big problem in the UK of binary thinking. We've been kind of brainwashed into thinking less greed = communism; more freedom = anarchy; less deprivation = complacency; and so on. In fact, our history is marked by extremely successful revolutions towards the middle way. We practically invented compassionate capitalism (having forced it into being) and it is still what the world respects for the most.

I'm your average British capitalist ordinary person. What I want is for everyone to be okay and the Gini coefficient to go down, so we can all be well enough off. I don't give a shit whether rich people own 1,000 times as much as me. I do care - almost violently care -that they want to own 100% of everything and are taking too much from the rest of us.

Clearly, very rich people/corporations will take as much as they can for as long as we let them. We need 'revolution' to limit their take & force a reasonable amount of compassion. We used to be able to trust our governors to do this. The evidence is that we can no longer trust them. We have to act.