Protesting and Tony Benn's five Questions

From time to time I have been bemused by a tendency by many groups to protest in what seem to me to be irrelevant quarters.  We have seen this in Brent with some of the protest groups against academisation, Israeli policies and climate change.

In terms of academisation, we have seen protest brought to the Town Hall _ which has no power whether a school becomes an academy or not.  In terms of Israeli policy on the Gaza Strip the protest went to Theresa May rather than the Israeli Embassy, and on climate change the protests just seemed to cause maximum possible disruption rather than any particular outcome. 

Perhaps it might be useful for people to ask themselves in terms of Tony Benn's famous five questions to the powerful.

“What power have you got?”

 

“Where did you get it from?”

 

“In whose interests do you use it?”

 

“To whom are you accountable?”

 

“How do we get rid of you?”

These are by no means perfect.  In particular they seen not to address directly the "issues" that he claimed to want to focus on.  We might, for instance also ask:

"Why did you decide this?"

"What alternatives did you consider?"

"What impact do you expect your decisions to have?"

"Are you sure you have the legal power to do this?"

"How are you going to act to sort out this problem in future?"

However, the ideological leanings of the people who are routinely seen at these sort of protests seem to pay automatic obeisance to figures like Tony Benn, so thinking of it in the terms laid down for them by Benn might be helpful for them.  Since Benn was arguing against people being allowing to automatically be granted authority, that is perhaps an irony.