this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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Far older social system, with power far more entrenched in the hands of a few families and passed from generation to generation (and I don't mean just Royals - it's like an onion with layer after layer, most of which pretty static as that country has the lowest social mobility in Europe)
Further, England's social order never really got upturned by any kind of revolution from the lower classes or occupation by other powers - the closest it got to it was the Barons revolting against the King centuries ago, leading to the Magna Carta, which was a "revolution" of the elites.
Also the mindset of "know your place" and "look up to your betters" is well entrenched in the UK - there was a period of far more social movement and freedom in the Post War years, which is when things like the Punk movement came to be, but the conditions for all of that have been rolled back by now. That doesn't mean the English lower classes are peaceful, it means they only fight amongst themselves, never against "their betters", as demonstrated just now by what's happening there and for years in the form of Hooliganism.
Politically the UK has First Past The Post like the US (so, politically a power duopoly), only with a King who inherited his post rather than get elected and who has some real power (he can refuse to pass certain Laws and it has been shown that the Royals have used that in the past to get or change laws), and in addition to Parliament a second chamber, which is not elected and contains members who inherited their position and, maybe the worst part, no actual Constitution, which means that whomever gets more that 50% of seats in Parliament (which with FPTP only requires about 35% of votes) can make, removed and change any laws they want without being constrained in any area by a Constitution and the higher vote requirements for changing a Constitution.
Last but not least, the way people are coerced in that society it's by using "rules & regulations" to justify legal force - coppers don't run around and shot people (most don't even carry firearms) but there are plenty of vague enough laws that something can always be found if they want to detain somebody and the system is such that anybody detained who can afford a Solicitor with a knighthood (i.e. Sir Something) who went to the same private school as Judges and highly placed members of State - or, even better, is him or herself such a person - will have it sorted out in no time and the coppers will probably get into trouble with the chief for having detained such a person, but that's not so when one of the "riff-raff" is detained.
Personally and as an European, having lived in various countries of Europe including over a decade in Britain, I think right now that country is THE most Right-wing and Authoritarian country in Western Europe but it's all done in a "posh" way rather than the "in your face" way done in many other countries.
I think maybe my comment wasn’t clear. I meant why do we hear so much more about organized civil disobedience from the UK compared to North America, despite all of what you said. The anglophone countries tend to be fairly right wing as you point out, but only the UK seems to have this major resistance campaign going on, despite the repression.
You're honestly asking why the country with the most gun owners also contains the highest number of selfish cowards? 😂
I see.
My point was about the difference in reaction by the police towards the "resistance" of the far right types attacking anything to do with immigrants whilst not actually impacting the money making of the upper classes, compared to their reaction towards the resistance of middle class young ecologists merelly planning to do something which would disturb the money making of the upper classes.
Present day Britain isn't actually prone to the kind of civil disobedience which isn't polite, unless we're talking about working class attacking each other or atacking immigrants based on the newspapers (almost all of which are owned by billionaires who pay no taxes in Britain) having manipulated them into thinking it's the immigrants that are to blame for all that's wrong in their country.
This phenomenon in Britain of true civil disobedience that actually damages the interestes of the upper classes (rather than peaceful, polite even, demonstrations that are invariably ignored) is a recent re-invention (last time around, involving the actual working class rather than the middle class, it was to do with mass loss of jobs during Thatcher's time and they were violently repressed) and miniscule in terms of numbers of individuals involved (respect to them as IMHO they're very much swimming against the current over there) and there's an overabundance of boot-licking Brits (even here) complaining about how those people shouldn't be doing demonstrations which are a hassle for others.
Compared to what, for example, the French do, both in term of their actions and how they're views by those around them this is nothing and even then yields the silence of the many and the loud criticism of a large minority of Brits who have a "people should know their place" boot-licking spirit.
If you look at things like Black Lives Matters, the US has a lot more true civil disobedience in terms of numbers (even relative) than the UK, though it tends to be done in ways which don't negativelly impact the interests of the American upper class (the last that did, Occupy Wall Street, was violently suppressed by none other than Obama, who might be a great Political Songbird but ideologically is as much a Hard Neoliberal on the side of the Financial Elites as the rest).