Articulating Dissent: Protest and the Public Sphere
by Pollyanna Ruiz
(Pluto Press, £17.50)

THE struggle of millions of people against the coalition government returns to more traditional forms next month when trade unionists march demanding a pay rise for Britain.

The October 18 TUC demo in London will start at the usual time, follow the traditional route agreed with police — Embankment to Hyde Park via Trafalgar Square — and conclude with the expected speeches from the usual suspects.

Afterwards, almost everyone will go home.

If the TUC/police choreography plays out and the demo passes without incident, irrespective of its size, it will be largely ignored by the BBC, the government and employers.

Yet if the anarchist black bloc joins it at Trafalgar Square before heading to Oxford Circus to take direct action against consumer capitalism, the state media, police and politicians will swing into full condemnation mode.

In this book Pollyanna Ruiz, research fellow at the LSE’s media and communications department, examines these issues and other questions.

Hers is a PhD thesis, so expect dense academic comparisons between the chaotic “smooth” spaces of autonomous and anarchist action and the “striated” or regimented and hierarchical spaces journalists, police, the state, and even the trade unions occupy.

Yet for those of us engaged in these movements of struggle, the question is less about the “rhizomatic” versus the “aborescent.”

It is about how very different movements like the trade unions, representing a wider public, and for example, the black bloc can come together, maintain solidarity and move their ideas from the margins to the mainstream.

Whatever you may think, the black bloc — as well as Occupy, Anonymous and many others - articulate an anti-capitalism which, since the financial crash of 1987, is now heard in the mainstream.

Ruiz offers no quick-fixes. Instead she shows that new forms of participation in grass-roots campaigning and the creative ways of communicating them mean we have moved from a place where we wait in hope or despair for change, to a place where we are engaged in endless opportunities to fight back.

She argues that this isn’t a sign of increased hope for change, it is the change we actually want to see, and it is happening right in front of our eyes.

David Peel