Rebels without a cause?

12:27pm Tuesday 1st July 2008

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Brighton is living up to its reputation as a radical place to be, with regular protests outside Starbucks on St James's Street and EDO MBM, and the council set to strike next month but not everyone thinks their causes are so just. Sarah Lewis talks to the faces behind the placards.

When the usually peaceful, weekly Smash EDO protests turned violent on June 4, the story on The Argus website racked up a whopping 115 comments in just a few hours.

Smash EDO has campaigned for more than three years about the presence of arms parts manufacturer EDO MBM in Brighton, but while the campaign group feels it is protesting for the good of the planet, not everyone thinks their efforts are particularly laudable.

Argus website comments included: "Smash EDO! Have they nothing better to do. The waste of public money for the emergency services for just a handful of prats. They all looked like tramps. No doubt they don't work or contribute taxes.

Waste of space. Get a life, identity and job!!!", and, "The crusties with family trust funds, the terminally out of work, supported by government hand-outs. Scum of the earth, nothing by themselves, bullies when massed together. It's easy to have so much hate when you don't have to work for a living, isn't it?"

Bibi van de Zee lives in Sussex, is an environmental columnist for The Guardian and also a seasoned protestor. She says: "Letters like that are confusing a particular social group with activists. A lot of the most terrifying campaigners I know are middle class mums or 55-year-old gay men. And where do they fit Gandhi into that description?"

Bibi, who sports neither dreadlocks nor a dole cheque, went on her first protest when she was just 14. From her beginnings as a political teenager - "My mother was one of the first career mothers and I used to lecture her on feminism like I was the first person to hear of it" - she is now a career mother herself, and author of Rebel Rebel: The Protestor's Handbook, a guide to making your point heard without falling foul of the law.

It clearly contains very sage advice, since Bibi has never managed to get herself put in bracelets.

"There's no way I'd go that far," she says. "I've got three kids, I'm really sorry but I don't have that level of commitment. For me, writing is the most useful thing I can do, but I have enormous respect for people who do that and you really need it."

Dan Glass, on the other hand, has been arrested four times, all for breach of the peace, found not guilty three times, and is currently awaiting trial for the fourth.

Dan studied for his first degree at the University of Sussex, where he was president of the student union and instigated the international Eco-uni project.

He is now studying for a masters in human ecology at Strathclyde University, and is a member of Plane Stupid, a non-violent direct action campaign group demanding a tax on aviation fuel, the end to airport expansion and short haul flights.

He says: "Protesting is a very empowering method of democratic engagement. We have to continue opening the goal posts on what is deemed moral and immoral, justified and unjustified, right and wrong."

Caroline Lucas, green party MEP, commented on her arrest at Faslane naval base in Scotland by noting the profound irony of being told sitting quietly in the road in protest was breaching the peace, when behind her sat the most destructive weapons ever created.

Yet while nuclear proliferation picks up a new vigour so early in the new century, the FBI is insisting "eco-terrorism" - typically defined as violence committed against property for the sake of the planet - is one of the biggest security threats of the 21st century.

There are, however, only a handful of cases on their files: some students setting fire to SUVs, and a group called the Earth Liberation Front which allegedly set fire to an empty, multi-million-pound house in protest at the claim of it being eco-friendly Bibi says: "There is a really sad case with a group that was infiltrated by an agent. The transcript looks as though she was egging them on to commit a crime. The whole case is so suspect. They really just want to make an example of these people."

Dan thinks it is convenient for media and governments to call campaigners terrorists, as it serves as a distraction.

"It comes down to challenging what is legal and what is not," says Dan. "What the governments are doing - colluding with corporations in acts that destroy the environment - that is illegal. That is a crime. And then we are called terrorists, when what we do benefits everyone and is for the benefit of the planet."

However, despite the Criminal Justice Act and other new laws designed to make it easier to arrest people and harder to demonstrate, the right to protest - whether those involved are considered "dole-scum" or upholders of the democratic system - is still deeply enshrined in the British law.

Lord Hoffman in the House of Lords, when considering appeals against convictions of aggravated trespass for protestors against the Iraq war said: "Civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country. People who break the law to affirm their belief in the injustice of a law or government action are sometimes vindicated by history.

The suffragettes are an example which comes immediately to mind. It is the mark of a civilised community that it can accommodate protests and demonstrations of this kind."

• Rebel, Rebel is published by Guardian Books, and is available now for £14.99.

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