We are a police state

I've always thought there was something rather pretentious in the title of Paul Langford's A Polite and Commercial People. It seems to conjure that sepia-tinted image of the upstanding middle-class entrepreneur, gruff, apologetic, full of integrity, and always slightly embarassed. Polite commerciality...harumph, as my friend would say (expostulate? well, visualise in writing anyway). Is there such a thing?

This week will see another clash between the police and environmental activists: it's the second Camp for Climate Action. It's becoming, increasingly, a question of when not if something will happen: all sides holding their breath for the next clash, all media posed for the next martyr.

All of my sympathies are with Climate Action and the protestors. British police have been given permission to use 'terror laws' to "deal robustly" with any 'threat' to Heathrow. This includes indiscriminate use of 'stop and search', holding suspects without charge, searching people's homes... Why? And this I love: 'confrontations threaten to bring major delays to the already overstretched airport'. (Guardian, Saturday 11 August)

That. Is. Disgusting. An airport is not a cause.

(Also disgusting me right now is the rude little scally I'm having to deal with at the library. My mother-in-law wants us to have children - if I could bottle this one just to show anyone who asks me That Question again, I would. But I digress...)

We need, and I speak socially and politically, to redress this bifucation between protestors and protectors. I'm swayed by Curtis White's latest essay in Harper's Magazine: 'The Idols of Environmentalism'. Not entirely pursuaded, mind you, but convinced that he is right in essence. We need to replace the language of confrontation, of war, of terrorism with what he calls a 'language of care'. To do this is to begin to heal the rift not between multinational CEO and frontline activist - both of whom are little more than cartoon figures (Curis White) - but between protestor and protector. Not to do this - to fear the enemies and impossibilities we construct out of language, the monsters we create in order to have something to flee - is to risk falling irretrievably into the chasms of 'us' and 'them'.

And if this is a warning - I've no intention of turning prophet - then it is most clearly to the government that dares to separate itself from the people. Continuing to turn us into them -they will have something to fear. And this is not to invoke the WWII piece - moving though it is - I do not mean that 'we' (who? We who care.) should stand up now for fear that 'when they come for us, there will be no one left' but to turn that address around: one day, we will come calling for the government - we will demand accountability, responsibility, our rights - and there will be no one to stop us.