Soul Bound

1           Soul Bound

1.1         Finding her Feet

1.1.4       An Intriguing City

1.1.4.12    Sharpe Lecture: what makes a struggle feel personal?

Why was she always the one they picked? She remembered the time they’d nearly gotten her arrested. It started off innocently enough with a lecture.

“You are all criminals!” Dr. Sharpe had thundered. “Right now, this very moment, you are breaking a law that could see you fined thousands of pounds or even thrown in jail.”

“And what is your crime? You are sitting down!” he spat out the word, making it sound like the vilest of perversions.

Many of the audience tittered, uncertainly. Some half stood. He was like that. They knew now that he liked pulling surprises, but they still could never quite anticipate what he’d do.

“It sounds absurd, doesn’t it?” he cocked his head. “Unfortunately, I’m not kidding.”

“After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain reduced the number of soldiers it employed in its armies and, as a result, the streets of London and other cities saw an influx of destitute veterans, many maimed and unable to find work. The government’s response was to try to hide away the symptoms. In 1824 they passed what became known as the Vagrancy Act. It is still on the statue books today, in modified form. Here’s part of the original.”

He brought up a slide:

An Act for the punishment of idle and disorderly persons, rogues and vagabonds.

every Person pretending or professing to tell Fortunes, or using any subtle Craft, Means, or Device, by Palmistry or otherwise, to deceive and impose on any of His Majesty's Subjects ;

every Person wandering abroad and lodging in any Barn or Outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied Building, or in the open Air, or under a Tent, or in any Cart or Waggon, not having any visible Means of Subsistence, and not giving a good Account of himself or herself;

every Person wandering abroad, and endeavouring by the Exposure of Wounds or Deformities to obtain or gather Alms ;

every Person going about as a Gatherer or Collector of Alms, or endeavouring to procure charitable Contributions of any Nature or Kind, under any false or fraudulent Pretence

“In effect, they banned sleeping in the streets and begging.”

“But ‘begging’ is poorly defined. Is it begging if you put out a hat and just sit there next to it, without actually asking anything or putting up a sign? What if you just sit down?”

Without warning, he switched topic.

“We have some pretty churches near here, don’t we? Have any of you been to the Church of Christ the King, off Gordon Square in Bloomsbury ? It’s a breath-taking example of Gothic Revival architecture, and it being a wealthy area with finely dressed parishioners, they’ve been able to keep it in good repair and offer a high salary to its new minister, Samuel Cringeley. Unfortunately from Sam’s point of view, there are homeless living among the trees of Gordon Square, and this offends part of his congregation, to the point where some members have threatened to take themselves and their donations elsewhere if ‘something isn’t done about that human trash’.” Sharpe’s mimicry of a posh accent during the last quote was vicious.

“And that’s where Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs) come into our story. Due to the good Sam Cringeley’s lobbying, the local council has passed a PSPO that makes it against the law to sit down in public in such a way that any police officer decides it is liable to encourage others to give you money. That’s made it easier for the police to clear the homeless away from Gordon Square, but it has had the side effect of making everybody vulnerable to being arrested at the whim of the police.”

“I am, of course, in no way encouraging you all to use what you’ve learned so far on this course to attempt to do something about this situation. I provide the above narrative only as an example of how to change a population’s perception of a situation from being about faceless forces to being about an individual person. It is that process of ‘personalisation’ which I’d like you to bear in mind as I now go on to talk about the main topic of today: asymmetric struggles.”

“The classic example of an asymmetric struggle is a military conflict where one side has more firepower, but the other side has better information and local support.”

“The militarily weaker side will aim to control where and when they engage with their enemy, picking opportunities where they can get surprise, better terrain, localised superiority of firepower or, ideally, all three in a well constructed ambush. The rest of the time, they want to retreat to hideouts or fade back into the general population, relying on their local support for protected lines of communication, supply and travel. They aim to narrow the disparity in military strength by attrition, losing a smaller fraction of their troops than the enemy does, and scavenging funds, equipment, weapons and ammo from fallen enemy and captured supply dumps.”

“The militarily stronger side will aim to identify and root out the insurgents, by using informants, patrols and surveillance to cut down the information gap, and by using propaganda that advertises donations such as food and medicine to cut down the gap in local support.”

“However the struggle for local support isn’t won through bribery, or intimidation. It is a question of identity. It’s a matter of which side the local population sees as being ‘one of us’ and which side they see as being external. Who do they turn to for justice? Who do they see as protecting them against whom?”

“A local boy can be forgiven much, even if he’s a wild one and sometimes a bandit, as long as he can be relied upon to share the daily problems that you suffer under and be nice to your children. He shares your culture, speaks your language, really listens and understands you when you talk.”

“But if he sneers at you, if he preaches asceticism but himself lives a life of luxury, if he crosses a line or breaks your local taboos, then he becomes ‘the other’. The threat you want to get rid of.”

“The war over perceptions has many tools. Lure the enemy into an over-reaction, then amplify that signal, lingering over details of every victim hurt, until it becomes a byword for the blackest of sins. Satirise their hypocrisy. Support grassroots movements sharing your values, so people in the community feel their neighbours would disapprove if they don’t support you. Make the enemy feel alienated, insecure and unwelcome, so they act fearful and suspicious around the population, rather than projecting a vibe of being at home.”

He’d gone on to talk about “A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. After the lecture, the usual gang had gathered together to discuss it.

Tomsk: “So he’s basically saying that what works in warfare can also apply to non-violent struggles? I agree. A lot of business people take Sun Tzu very seriously.”

Alderney: “I like the bit about ridicule. I’m not so keen on ‘Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.’. There’s already enough division in society, and what if the key person on the other side is well intentioned and doesn’t deserve to be demonised?”

Kafana: “So in the example he gave at the start the parishioners in the church would be the background population; the minister, local authorities and police would be the side with conventional superiority; the homeless and their allies would be the side with local knowledge and information?”

Wellington: “If we have superior information we could send a picture to the local paper of Samuel Cringeley sitting on a bench in the park.”

Bungo: “That wouldn’t be effective. To persuade his congregation that public opinion was against them, we’d need a picture of Cringeley pointing to a homeless woman and telling off a police officer. Then the police officer tries to arrest her, only she turns out to be the virgin Mary, complete with angels.”

Alderney: “I could make some awesome angel wings, with the right lighting and special effects they’d be ethereal.”

Tomsk: “I’ve got a sword I could set on fire, if you wanted someone to be the angel Gabriel. And I’m ok with suspension wires.”

Bungo: “I can be an officious parishioner, and get a policeman there to arrest Mary.”

Wellington: “I’ll set up surveillance and photography.”

Kafana, suspiciously: “So who is going to be Mary and risk being arrested?”

Everyone turned to look at her, a certain gleam lighting up their eyes.

Kafana: “Oh no.”

She’d ended up doing it anyway, and it had gone without a hitch. The PSPO had been quietly withdrawn by the council 3 weeks later, after the local newspaper’s editors had, with great enjoyment, published a scathing article that reported the incident at face value with no mention of students or pranks.

But, ever since then, she’d secretly suspected the existence of a “Let’s railroad Kafana society.”