TTIP, protests and the lessons of history

ON Sept 17, a reported 80,000 people gathered in Berlin to protest against the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the European Union and the US, and the Comprehensive Trade and Economic Agreement between Canada and the EU. There were similar demonstrations in other German cities. These protests were not spontaneous. Graphic pictures on banners and a huge blown-up snake swallowing US dollar bills - not to mention a couple on stilts dressed to represent Europe and the US - show that the demonstrations were well organised.

On the same day bombs exploded in New York and New Jersey, in rubbish bins, with injuries but no fatalities. Both developments reflect a level of organisation - in the German example, that of the masses, in the American example that of the few. Both show how protests, both peaceful and lethal, have become commonplace.

History is replete with large-scale popular protests. To take just three examples from American history, the Boston "Tea Party" of 1773, leading up to the American war of independence; the 17,000-strong "bonus army" of first world war unemployed veterans that gathered in Washington in 1932, only to be driven out by General MacArthur with cavalry and tanks; and the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s. British and European examples include the "Peterloo" massacre of 1819, when a popular protest for universal suffrage was murderously dispersed.