Icelanders all but stormed their Parliament last night. It was the first
session of the chamber after what might appear to be an unusually long
Christmas break.
Ordinary islanders were determined to vent their fury at the way that the
political class had allowed the country to slip towards bankruptcy. The
building was splattered with paint and yoghurt, the crowd yelled and banged
pans, fired rockets at the windows and lit a bonfire in front of the main
door. Riot police moved in.
Now in the grand sweep of the current crisis, a riot on a piece of volcanic
rock in the north Atlantic may not seem to add up to much. But it is a sign
of things to come: a new age of rebellion.
The financial meltdown has become part of the real economy and is now
beginning to shape real politics. More and more citizens on the edge of the
global crisis are taking to the streets. Bulgaria has been gripped this
month by its worst riots since 1997 when street power helped to topple a
Socialist government. Now Socialists are at the helm again and are having to
fend off popular protests about government incompetence and corruption.
In Latvia – where growth has been in double-digit figures for years –
anger is bubbling over at official mismanagement. GDP is expected to
contract by 5 per cent this year; salaries will be cut; unemployment will
rise. Last week, in a country where demonstrators usually just sing and then
go home, 10,000 people besieged parliament.
Iceland, Bulgaria, Latvia: these are not natural protest cultures. Something
is going amiss.
The LSE economist Robert Wade – addressing a protest meeting in Reykjavik’s
cinema – recently warned that the world was approaching a new tipping point.
Starting from March-May 2009, we can expect large-scale civil unrest, he
said. “It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout
Europe, America and Asia that hundreds of millions of people in rich and
poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that
the crisis is getting worse not better; and that it has escaped the control
of public authorities, national and international.”
Ukraine could be the next to go. The gas pricing deal agreed with Moscow could
propel the country towards a serious financial crisis. Russia, too, is
looking wobbly. A riot in Vladivostok may have been an omen for things to
come. What will happen when the wider economic crisis translates into higher
food prices? Or if Gazprom has no choice but to increase domestic gas prices?
Governments have so far managed to deflect attention from their role in the
crash, their slipshod monitoring, by declaring themselves to be
indispensible to the solution. This may save the skins of politicians in
wealthier countries who can credibly and expensively try to prop up banks
and sickly industries. But it does not work in countries that are heavily
indebted, with bloated and exposed financial sectors. There, the irate
crowds are already beginning to demand: why hasn’t a single politician resigned?
What has happened to ministerial responsibility? Who will investigate
government failure?
Good questions, it seems to me, in these unquiet times.
