Penny - Penny Red : notes from the new age of dissent

Penny Red

First published 2011 by Pluto Press

345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martins Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

Copyright Laurie Penny 2011

The right of Laurie Penny to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 3208 6 Paperback

ISBN 978 1 84964 605 5 Kindle eBook

ISBN 978 1 84964 603 1 eBook PDF

ISBN 978 1 84964 604 8 ePub

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd

Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England

Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America

Contents

Inside the Millbank Tower Riots; Talking About a Revolution; Inside the Whitehall Kettle; Protesting the Turner Prize; Inside the Parliament Square Kettle; A Right Royal Poke; No Sex, No Drugs and No Leaders; What Really Happened in Trafalgar Square; Lies in London

The Gulag of Desire; In Defence of Cunt; What Sun Readers Swallow with their Corn Flakes; The Sexy Way to Die; Vajazzled and Bemused; Burlesque Laid Bare; Me, the Patriarchy and my Big Red Pen; Gallianos Fashionable Beliefs; The Princess Craze is no Fairy Tale; Skinny Porn; Violence Against Women in Tahrir Square; Zionism, Chauvinism and the Nature of Rape; A Modesty Slip for Misogyny; Charlie Sheens Problem with Women; The Shame is all Theirs

Undercover With the Young Conservatives; Buns, Bunting and Retro-Imperialism; This is England; Poppy Day is the Opium of the People; Michael Gove and the Imperialists; The Power of the Intern; Strictly Come Scrounging?; Poverty Pimps: Selling Out the Disabled; A Tale of Three Parties; Simon Hughes and the Cartel of British Politics; The Social Mobility Scam

Facebook, Capitalism and Geek Entitlement; Girls, Tattoos and Men who Hate Women; Pickling Dissent; Julie Burchills Imperialist Rant over Israel; Baby Boomers; Bah, Humbug; Interview with China Miville; I Shall Wear Midnight; Its all Over for Sex-and-Shopping Feminism; Beyond Noughtie Girls

Insurrection on Oxford Street; This is no Conspiracy; The Revolution Will Be Civilised; Revolts Dont Have to be Tweeted; Is that a Truncheon in Your Pocket?; One Man and His Tent; How the Disabled were Dehumanised; Hey, Dave: Our Societys Bigger Than Yours; In Defence of Squatting; Inside the Gaddafi House

Acknowledgements

Thanks to everyone at the New Statesman magazine for having faith in this body of work giving me a platform to write. Most of the articles that follow were published in the New Statesman , either online or in the reactionary hard-copy remix that a few subscribers seem to favour. Thanks are also due to David, Alec and everyone at Pluto Press; to the enchanting and inhumanly patient Juliet Pickering at A P Watt; to my friends and mentors, Paul Mason, Warren Ellis, China Miville, Roz Kaveney, Tanya Gold, David Randall, Cath Howdle, Adrian Bott, Zoe Stavri and Jed Weightman.

Most of all, though, thanks and respect are due to the activists, anarchists, feminists, students, school pupils and pissed-off citizens around the world who have been part of what Ive called the new age of dissent. I have been privileged to meet some of them, and many more have contacted me, encouraging me to keep writing. Those letters and emails have made all the difference. As I write, many young activists and student protesters are serving lengthy jail sentences in Britain for taking part in peaceful demonstrations and for defending themselves against police violence. It is an outrage that they should have to be so brave. This book is dedicated to them, in solidarity, and to my father.

Foreword

Warren Ellis

One of the worst things in the world, for me, is switching on Twitter and seeing that Laurie Penny is loose on the streets of London. Because it inevitably means that theres some kind of protest action going on, and, equally inevitably, that Lauries out in the middle of it. An element of the inward wince I experience is certainly down to the immediate and quite vivid recollection of having to put people back together after the Poll Tax riots in the 1990s. A bigger element is that, frankly, Laurie has all the self-preservation instinct of a lemming dipped in vodka and balanced on top of a stepladder. And so I worry. Its not, I hope, some paternal chauvinism. Its more that, having somehow survived to the age of 43, I remember both feeling immortal at 24 and how many people Ive buried since then.

And its not like times have changed. Sure, the SPG (Special Patrol Group) arent operating any more. But now it turns out the Met are okay with beating the wheelchair-bound and killing passers-by live on video. And Im damned sure the stark idiocy of kettling is going to get a copper killed one day soon, and that makes me sad and angry too. So, yeah, when I see her running around out there, it drives me a little nuts. I mean, I know she needs to do it. And I have a little guilt because one of her formative influences was a book I wrote, so when she does finally get the piss beaten out of her its going to be a little bit my fault.

But this is what Laurie does. She drives you a little bit nuts. She makes you angry. Sometimes its about something youre angry about too, and she shares it with you, and finds new ways to see it with you. Sometimes she makes you angry in that way that makes you want to hold her head down the toilet until her leg stops twitching. There are things in this collection that, honestly, give me a sudden compulsion to press a nerve in Lauries neck, and Ive been her friend for years. Everybody will find something in this book to argue with. And thats good. Laurie Penny makes you shout, but she also makes you think. Laurie Penny makes you engage , which is vital in a society that in the last 20 years had wandered a fair way towards turning passive acceptance into an artform.

Someone once said that if you want objective journalism, get yourself a CCTV camera. Subjective journalism isnt a crime. Its a joy and a necessity. Reportage needs to be a living thing. And I love Laurie, and I love this book, because it illustrates that, yes, there is going to be a new generation of reporters capable of getting up on their hind legs and shouting when things go wrong.

This book is, I think, as vivid and electric a snapshot of this moment as youll find. I hope you enjoy it and shout at it, and with it as much as I did.

Warren Ellis

Southend-on-Sea

June 2011

Warren Ellis is the author of the graphic novels Transmetropolitan, Fell and Red (amongst 50 others), and of the novel Crooked Little Vein. He is the recipient of the NUIG Lit & Deb Societys Presidents Medal for his contributions to freedom of speech.

Introduction

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Hunter S. Thompson

The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.