That is an excellent piece - thanks for the share 
MENU
saturday august 31 2019
august 30 2019, 5:00pm, the times
Our wimpish leaders are bullied by activists
trevor phillips
Decision-makers are so anxious to avoid offending noisy protesters that they fold even when they are in the right
Share
It seems like only yesterday that David Aaronovitch and I were laughing about the ease with which we could unleash mayhem across the land. It was the late 1970s and, as leaders of the National Union of Students, we had organised a wave of university demonstrations and sit-ins that, for a day at least, occupied the front pages of the newspapers. For one glowing moment we saw ourselves as the inheritors of the 1968 student rebellions that brought down de Gaulle and shook America.
We claimed that 100,000 students had participated in the “Day of Action”; we had no way of knowing whether this was true (in fact we issued the claim before lunchtime) but ignorance of the facts was then, as now, no obstacle to the determined radical. Our aim was to force the government to listen to our demands. In truth, the last thing we expected was that the middle-aged, middle-class, white men in charge (or the middle-aged, middle-class, white woman who took over in 1979) would give in. In those halcyon days, “authority” said what it meant and meant what it said.
How different now. The government faces street protests this weekend over its “coup” — suspending parliament for longer than usual to limit debate over Brexit. I would only point out that in 1953, the government suspended the colonial constitution of British Guiana, landed troops in the capital Georgetown and removed the democratically elected government. One of my relatives, who was imprisoned during the ensuing state of emergency, might raise a sceptical eyebrow at today’s extravagant use of the term “constitutional outrage”.
Nonetheless, modern protesters have cottoned on to a new reality: many of the people who run our affairs are, basically, a bunch of wimps who want to be loved. They will do anything to avoid the accusation of being sexist, racist, homophobic or transphobic, including giving in to demands by small but noisy groups, even if such surrender ends up harming the cause of women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ or transgender people.
I think this applies to most people, not just those with power.
Academics now call this “policy capture”: the ability to dictate policy not by argument but by denigration and verbal intimidation — preferably by silencing the opposition first
Well, that sounds familiar...