I listened to a BBC interview with Martin Luther King from 1961 last night. What a star.
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He spoke with compassion and humanity but, equally important, a clear mind. The clear mind part is important. Frequently in debates between the Right and the Left, the Hard and the Soft, the debate sounds like a contest between rationality and irrationality. The right wingers come across as sounding like they've thought their ideas through, whilst those facing them give the impression that they feel rather than think.
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And you don’t win people over to your way of thinking without reasoning with them.
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On holiday last year we drove through various alternative tourists attractions in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. We visited Philadelphia, near where the three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964 (still quite scary), Pulaski, birthplace of the KKK (still very scary) and Selma, the site of some of the most dramatic marches of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It was at Selma where the World was treated to the sight of peaceful and smartly dressed black marchers being clubbed to the ground by white policemen.
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Those marchers knew what they were doing and their leader, Martin Luther King, knew what they were doing. Like the Early Christians marching towards lions, they offered no resistance and kept on going regardless. Until the people committing the violence and the people watching the violence were shamed into submission. The power of those images surpassed anything that could have been achieved in 10, 20 or 30 years of armed struggle. I still wince when watching that footage, after having seen it for God knows how many times before. You don’t have to be Christian to pick up on the effectiveness of this idea. Gandhi, a self-confessed fan of true Christian tactics, and his followers did the same and shamed the British Empire into giving their country independence.
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There are times when violence may be the only way but there are many more occasions when non violence is a better way. MLK understood this, with his heart and his brain.
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Presumably that's why he was shot in the face.
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How badly do we need people like that in our World today? How few people like are there in the World today.
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After listening to the MLK interview I pondered for a few moments and tried to come up with the names of a few contemporary political figures worthy of an equal level of respect. OK, maybe Nelson Mandela would get on the list. Who else?
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Bono? Nope. I've seen him whoring his already obscenely rich arse on too many iPod adverts to take him seriously.
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I couldn't think of any. Maybe that's a reflection on me but I doubt it. Who is out there who combines compassion, a sharp intellect and the charisma to offer people a vision of a better World? Have they all been shot? Is the World so jaded and corrupt that those qualities have no hope of rising to the top any more? What a depressing thought.
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We've witnessed a pale imitation of MLK style tactics in the UK over recent months. To quell the rise of bullying in UK schools, a government-funded action group issued thousands of blue plastic bracelets to school children around the country. Backed by an expensive TV advert featuring people like David Beckham and Bono (him again) kids were encouraged to wear the blue bracelet as a sign of their solidarity and their united stand against bullies.
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Yes, encouraging kids who are afraid of bullies to wear highly visible bully targeting devices. This was kind of like asking people worried about sharks to smear themselves with blood before going skinny dipping. Or larking around with a novelty laser pointer when F-15s are flying by. Open season was declared on geek kids throughout the land. All over the UK, kids wearing stupid plastic bracelets were being bullied into a pulp.
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"It's totally sick that something designed to help fight bullying could be used in this way - it completely defeats the object."
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Even funnier, because celebrities were wearing the bracelet, the bracelets became a hot fashion item and kids were being attacked FOR their bracelets.
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"There has been a lot of interest in them because they are rare, and have become valuable. They are sought-after in the same way as new trainers."
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I could write a whole thesis on why this particularly pathetic non-violent initiative didn’t work and why it was never going to work. But, putting it briefly, Britain in 2005 is a sick, unwell country and, sadly, David Beckham, aside from a common interest in extra marital sex, is most definitely not Martin Luther King.
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