I have watched and read the text of Ed Miliband's speech to the thousands that gathered in Hyde Park on March 26th to protest against the coalition government's cuts. Early in the speech he likened the protest to other great popular campaigns, namely the suffragettes, the civil rights movement in the USA, and the anti-apartheid movement.
To draw comparisons with these historical protests has dangers for Miliband. To set himself up as a modern day Martin Luther King set to fight the Tory cuts will only create ridicule; not least because Ed Miliband is a very poor orator. In fact he tried at times to copy the Luther King style by (rather awkwardly) repeating the phrase: Let us say: we will. Obama also copied MLK (with 'yes we can') but had the style to carry it off, but Ed Miliband simply does not.
The real danger for Ed Miliband lies not so much in his poorly delivered speeches but rather the claim that he is offering an alternative approach to reducing the deficit. The historical examples set out above only serve to illustrate Ed Miliband's dilemma: the suffragettes campaigned for an entirely different view of society - one in which women had equal rights; MLK spoke for the fundamental rights of millions of black Americans; and the leaders of the apartheid movement wanted to sweep away the racist system that degraded millions of black South African lives. In each of these cases the leaders offered a radical 'word turned upside down' alternative to their supporters.
Ed Miliband said he offered an alternative, but he wisely did not spell it out. The alternative in reality is to carry out the same cuts but over a slightly longer period. Hardly an inspiring message to the thousands that marched.
Those who marched in such good faith had their hopes dashed by the violence of the anarchists on one side of central London, and by a disingenuous Labour leader attempting to invoke spurious historical parallels on the other.
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