Sowing Seeds for the Future: Exploring the power of constructive nonviolent action, by Andrew Rigby

Author: Andrew Rigby. Review by Dave Morris.

This is an important book and merits a place in every Meeting house. It is an exploration and evaluation of techniques and concepts by which nonviolent protest can become most productive – or, as Andrew puts it, ‘the intention to bridge the gap between what is and what ought to be’.

The first chapters cover familiar territory for Friends: the development of co-operative ideas and anarchist thinking, with a focus on Edward Carpenter’s anarcho-socialist challenge to capitalism. We are then led to Gandhi. This brings us to a key issue: mass mobilisation and civil disobedience are sporadic and short lived; a movement of protest cannot be held intact simply by marches and demonstrations. It also needs co-operative work and activity with precise aims, to give the movement cohesion and momentum; otherwise, energy can be dissipated and little or no progress made.

Later, Andrew gives accounts of the most disparate programmes of constructive protest: against the Nazi Quisling regime in Norway; against the Nazi occupation of Holland; against the Mafia in Sicily; the role of workers’ co-operatives during the Spanish civil war; and, likewise, in the Basque regions of northern Spain. The drive is to demonstrate how local, constructive measures can be successful, by investing the politics of protest with action that seeks to enhance community life. For instance, the account of the campaign against the Mafia in Sicily in 2004 shows how students adapted ‘Addiopizzo’ as the name for their campaign. ‘Pizzo’ was the slang for the ‘protection’ money payable by all businesses to the Mafia. The students embedded the term into a slogan and encouraged solidarity by persuading small businesses to display it in their shop windows. What weakened the Mafia’s grip was not so much the loss of income but the loss of face. As a result, its power began to wane.

Andrew describes his own role in the Aberdeen People’s Press. His experience there leads him to conclude that there are two main functions of constructive forms of resistance: ‘the support function – servicing the needs of those engaged in the more contentious or offensive modes of civil resistance [and] the deeper function of attempting to create the foundations of new ways of life, exemplifying ways in which different spheres of life might be carried out in the hoped for future.’

It is to this end that the book also examines the writings of thinkers such as Václav Havel, Adam Michnik, the Polish Solidarity dissident, and Rayah Shedah, the Palestinian activist who wrote ‘between mute submission and blind hate, I chose the third way – I am Sumud’ (‘sumud’ being steadfastness in one’s determination to resist, where one’s whole life is an act of resistance).

All this leads to the ‘intentional life’. This refers to how each individual can use everyday decisions and interactions to let their life speak. All of us have the opportunity to become activists. Andrew’s book gives us an invaluable guide as to how we can frame that.

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