Alan Finlayson on the philosophical significance of UK-Uncut

There was another UK-Uncut inspired protest in Leeds last Saturday - the third I've seen - about 30 people, mostly organised by Twitter and Facebook and other social media. There was something warmly human about its spontaneity. Here's a discussion of why these protestsd against the corporate tax-dodgers from OpenDemocracy.

The philosophical significance of UK-Uncut
Alan Finlayson, 17th December 2010

When activists under the banner of UK Uncut protest outside high-street shops on Saturday 18th December they will be doing something of great political importance. But they will also be demonstrating and articulating something of immense philosophical significance.

When activists under the banner of UK Uncut protest outside high-street shops tomorrow they will be doing something of great political importance. But they will also be demonstrating and articulating something of immense philosophical significance. The political mainstream - journalists, commentators and Parliamentarians - is trying to ignore this. Certainly they are confounded by it. For with UK Uncut what that mainstream thought impossible has come to pass: ethics and ideology are once more at the forefront of political contest in Britain.

The demand that corporations cease exploiting the tax loopholes government created for them is ethical in a precise way. It addresses itself to the quality of the actions of Philip Green and others like him. It finds those actions at odds with the principle that ‘we are all in this together’. It then publicly declares those actions unjust. The purity, simplicity and accuracy of all this confounds the political mainstream. Confronted by it they systematically mobilise the argument that since tax avoiders are doing nothing illegal, there is therefore nothing to be said against them. That was the line pursued by Tom Harris MP when he debated with Neal Lawson, Chair of Compass, on The Today Programme after the first Top Shop demonstration. It was repeated by Gavin Esler [10] on Newsnight as part of a challenge put to Daniel Garvin of UK Uncut and again by Sarah Montague [11], on Today, questioning Murray Williams, also of UK Uncut. The frequency with which this line appears suggests it is either an organised ‘talking point’ [12] or simply indicative of a shared outlook - an ideology.

Consider for a moment the real implications of the proposition that no act can justly be criticized unless it is against the law. The implication is that law is a full and total expression of moral values. Only totalitarians think that. Everybody else recognises that, while certainly informed by morality, the function of the law is to provide a framework within which civil society can function and can debate the rights and wrongs of actions. And it would be a cold and brittle society that relied on the law for the expression and support of all values, and that could not tolerate citizens sorting things out between themselves. Just as in sport we recognize that something can be within the rules yet still condemned as unsporting, so too most people recognize that behaviour can be wrong even when it isn’t actually illegal.

More here.