The name says it all: Youth Demand. This is an organisation that will brook no disagreement. The logical conclusion of “child-centred rearing” is a protest movement that will, on no account, consider the possibility that the grown-ups will ever say “no” to them.
Which is why Youth Demand felt entirely free to harass the Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s household when they laid out a number of “body bags” at the front door of his home and blocked a number of busy London roads.
After all, if young people want something – anything – then 20 years of being told by indulgent parents that every piece of art, however rubbish the effort, that they brought home from school was worthy of being displayed on the fridge door. This has shown them that they can always get what they want.
The protest this time was something to do with Gaza. Probably. Or maybe climate change. It was about something anyway. And they’re really, really angry with the grown-ups who are doing the offending thing, or who are allowing the offending thing to happen.
And they’ve had enough: they will no longer put up with anyone doing things or believing things that they disagree with.
For most people – adults, that is, and therefore too old to have opinions that Youth Demand take at all seriously – political demonstrations outside anyone’s private home is a step too far.
If you want to glue your hand to a glass door at the Department for Transport in protest at a third runway for Heathrow, be my guest. Just make sure you use the toilet first because, if it were up to me, I’d leave you there overnight after all the staff go home.
But politicians remain private citizens and their families deserve the same level of privacy and consideration as anyone else.
Perhaps these young zealots have managed, in between reading leaflets about critical race theory and the history of Palestine, to read the history of industrial action in Britain.
They may have cottoned on to the absurd behaviour of the trade union Unite, which pursued a policy of personal harassment of the families of company directors with whom they had a grievance.
In the 2010s, Unite frequently staged “pickets” (they were nothing of the sort) outside their opponents’ private homes in the hope that it might generate some concessions from the bosses.
Braver Labour MPs objected to this on principled grounds, but were never listened to.
And now we have these spoiled brats demanding something or another outside Lammy’s home, confident that even if they are arrested they are likely to be dealt with by an activist judge who sympathises with their aims and who lets them off with a slap on the wrist and a rustle of their hair: “You scamps!”
We know this is at least possible because earlier this month it was reported that Just Stop Oil protesters (there is a pretty Venn Diagram showing the overlap of all these different protest groups, and essentially it’s a single circle) who caused more than £100,000 of damage to the Treasury were set free.
This was because the judge decided their actions were “born out of concern and anxiety for climate change”.
It is fascinating that “concern and anxiety” for any political cause now excuses you from the consequences of your actions.
I wonder how people jailed for being mean on Twitter about asylum seekers would have been set free if they’d only emphasised to the judge that they were “concerned” and felt “anxiety” about illegal immigration?
Can we expect the Government finally to act, now that one of their own – a cabinet member, no less – has been targeted by these vile, self-regarding young people?
Will the Home Secretary tell the police to get tough on anyone who, for whatever reason, chooses to block traffic and cause distress and anxiety to people trying to get about their daily lives?
And will the Government finally bring activist judges to heal, and remind the activists themselves that the law is the law, and that it doesn’t care about how dreadfully upset you are that the grown-ups are not doing what you want them to do?
The name says it all: Youth Demand. This is an organisation that will brook no disagreement. The logical conclusion of “child-centred rearing” is a protest movement that will, on no account, consider the possibility that the grown-ups will ever say “no” to them.
Which is why Youth Demand felt entirely free to harass the Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s household when they laid out a number of “body bags” at the front door of his home and blocked a number of busy London roads.
After all, if young people want something – anything – then 20 years of being told by indulgent parents that every piece of art, however rubbish the effort, that they brought home from school was worthy of being displayed on the fridge door. This has shown them that they can always get what they want.
The protest this time was something to do with Gaza. Probably. Or maybe climate change. It was about something anyway. And they’re really, really angry with the grown-ups who are doing the offending thing, or who are allowing the offending thing to happen.
And they’ve had enough: they will no longer put up with anyone doing things or believing things that they disagree with.
For most people – adults, that is, and therefore too old to have opinions that Youth Demand take at all seriously – political demonstrations outside anyone’s private home is a step too far.
If you want to glue your hand to a glass door at the Department for Transport in protest at a third runway for Heathrow, be my guest. Just make sure you use the toilet first because, if it were up to me, I’d leave you there overnight after all the staff go home.
But politicians remain private citizens and their families deserve the same level of privacy and consideration as anyone else.
Perhaps these young zealots have managed, in between reading leaflets about critical race theory and the history of Palestine, to read the history of industrial action in Britain.
They may have cottoned on to the absurd behaviour of the trade union Unite, which pursued a policy of personal harassment of the families of company directors with whom they had a grievance.
In the 2010s, Unite frequently staged “pickets” (they were nothing of the sort) outside their opponents’ private homes in the hope that it might generate some concessions from the bosses.
Braver Labour MPs objected to this on principled grounds, but were never listened to.
And now we have these spoiled brats demanding something or another outside Lammy’s home, confident that even if they are arrested they are likely to be dealt with by an activist judge who sympathises with their aims and who lets them off with a slap on the wrist and a rustle of their hair: “You scamps!”
We know this is at least possible because earlier this month it was reported that Just Stop Oil protesters (there is a pretty Venn Diagram showing the overlap of all these different protest groups, and essentially it’s a single circle) who caused more than £100,000 of damage to the Treasury were set free.
This was because the judge decided their actions were “born out of concern and anxiety for climate change”.
It is fascinating that “concern and anxiety” for any political cause now excuses you from the consequences of your actions.
I wonder how people jailed for being mean on Twitter about asylum seekers would have been set free if they’d only emphasised to the judge that they were “concerned” and felt “anxiety” about illegal immigration?
Can we expect the Government finally to act, now that one of their own – a cabinet member, no less – has been targeted by these vile, self-regarding young people?
Will the Home Secretary tell the police to get tough on anyone who, for whatever reason, chooses to block traffic and cause distress and anxiety to people trying to get about their daily lives?
And will the Government finally bring activist judges to heal, and remind the activists themselves that the law is the law, and that it doesn’t care about how dreadfully upset you are that the grown-ups are not doing what you want them to do?