Britain’s streets are filled with perma-protesting, old and young alike: Adrian Wooldridge

Key topics:Older Britons increasingly join street protests and face arrests.Aging radicals draw on youth activism, wealth, and spare time.Britain’s political overreach fuels cross-generational protests..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Adrian Wooldridge.The poets have suggested very different approaches to old age. Virgil urged the elderly to enjoy calm contemplation once the unruly passions of youth had died down. By contrast, Dylan Thomas encouraged them to “rage against the dying of the light.” But none, to the best of my knowledge, has urged them to go on demonstrations and shout noisy slogans about social and political issues.One of the most striking sights of this British summer has been that of OAPs waving banners and being dragged off by the police. Half of the 545 people arrested during a recent demonstration in Parliament Square in favor of Palestine Action were over sixty years old. Many were in their seventies and eighties (“she’s got a stick!” protestors shouted as a frail 81-year-old was escorted away by three policewomen). One of the people arrested, the 75-year-old Jonathon Porritt, is not only a knight of the realm but also an intimate of King Charles, also 75.To some extent, this is the latest manifestation of Lenin’s “useful idiot” strategy. Organisations such as Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil have alienated much of the public with their extreme tactics: The first is now banned as a terrorist organisation after causing thousands of pounds worth of damage to military equipment, and the second has blocked traffic (including emergency vehicles) by sitting in the road. What better way to reclaim public sympathy than replacing their usual army of crusty youths with cuddly grannies?Middle Class Britain is bulking with aging radicals who are desperate to relive the heady days of their youths protesting the Vietnam War or patriarchy or capitalism. They possess an abundance of the resources necessary for the life of demonstrating — spare time, spare cash and, having left the job market, a willingness to acquire a criminal record. It's easy to mock the collision of the Beatles “When I’m 64” (1967) with the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” (1968). But it’s only fair to note that many protestors are also motivated by more commendable emotions than a refusal to grow up, such as idealism and guilt. The government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was foolish — and part of a worrying pattern of authoritarian overreach. Many old people are painfully aware that they have spent their lives gorging on the fruits of the affluent society — free universities, cheap houses, diesel cars and trips abroad — leaving their children nothing but debt and environmental degradation..Read more:.BRICs man Jim O’Neill on BizNews: Hidden signs of economic hope for Britain.Not all of today’s aging protestors are lefties. Many of the demonstrators who have gathered outside hotels to protest asylum-seekers are OAPs, including Jeremy Corbyn’s elder brother, the 78-year-old Piers who is campaigning against asylum-seekers as part of his wider campaign against digital currency. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is quintessentially a party of grumpy old malcontents (GOMs, let’s say) who think that the status quo needs a good kicking. (Farage himself is now in his sixties, though the great hero of his youth was Enoch Powell rather than Che Guevara.) It was the radical old who dragged Britain out of the European Union against the wishes of the more conservative young and middle aged.And not all protesters are old by any means. Wherever you look in Britain, people of all sorts seem to be protesting — including lots of sorts such as doctors or farmers. Groups that used to pursue their aims via parliament are now taking to the streets; techniques that used to be marginal, such as blocking traffic, or suspiciously French, such as driving tractors through the centre of the capital city, are becoming routine.This is all to be regretted. One of the greatest achievements of parliamentary democracy was to tame street protests. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, Britain was a land of people on the march. Mobs rioted against papists and gin taxes. Protesters marched in favour of repealing the Corn Laws and extending the voting franchise. The arrival of full democracy in 1928 ended all that and turned protesters into figures of fun rather than tribunes of the people.Yet this changed in 2000 thanks to the Labour government’s combination of overreach in banning fox-hunting and poor judgment in supporting America’s invasion of Iraq. In 2002, more than 400,000 people, many of them country squires, protested a ban on fox hunting. A year later, 750,000 marched against the Iraq War. The Conservative government’s decision to put Britain’s membership of the EU to a single vote then completed Britain’s transition into a protesting society. A close vote on such a contentious issue set up a cycle of protests and counter-protests as Remainers marched under the EU flag and Leavers unfurled their union jacks.Many of us had hoped that a new Labour government backed by a huge majority and led by a man who lacked Tony Blair’s charisma and his evangelising might have restored Britain’s faith in parliamentary deliberation as the sensible way to restore divisions of opinion in a democracy. But, alas, Keir Starmer seems to have taken every possible opportunity to revive the protesting spirit. Thanks to such political incompetence, the British, old, young and in-between, have all too much to speak up against..© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

Britain’s streets are filled with perma-protesting, old and young alike: Adrian Wooldridge

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