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View from the motorcade

Governance | Robert Ashton | 2 Aug 2012

In an abstract comparison, Robert Ashton questions the power we have over our own destiny, and what significance any local organisation really has to the eyes of the powerful few.

I encountered Michelle Obama’s motorcade the other evening. She was heading from London back to Mildenhall, the massive US Air Force base in Suffolk from where she was to jet home from her Olympic visit. I’d not seen a proper motorcade before. UK dignitaries might travel in a large car with a couple of police motor cyclists, but this was somewhat larger; a lot larger. A long line of large blacked out US people carriers and a horde of police motorcyclists. I suspect the fast moving array of blue flashing lights was visible from space!

Of course we all know that this heavily armoured, no doubt armed convoy is there to protect the US President’s wife from terrorist attack; but what about the rest of us? Had there been an attack, the traffic would have come to a sudden halt and everyone else, innocently driving along the A14 caught in the crossfire. The paradox is that the better protected the dignitary, the more vulnerable the rest of us become.

And so perhaps it has always been. When danger loomed in mediaeval times, the privileged pulled up the drawbridge leaving everyone else outside, defenceless. Right now, the residents of the Fred Wigg tower in Leytonstone are less than happy about the anti-aircraft missiles parked on their roof. According to the MoD’s David Forsdick placing them there was, ‘legitimate and proportionate’ and posed no danger to those living beneath.

Perhaps it’s because most of us in the UK have not witnessed warfare of any kind. The Second World War ended 67 years ago. Only those in their mid-eighties remember the bombs, conscription and the sacrifice of individual rights for the common good. My generation ponder on the fact that those who lost that war now have the strongest economy in Europe. What’s certain is that in any battle, the victory is short-lived. Things move on and power shifts.

Viewing the Suffolk countryside through the bullet proof windows of her car, Michelle Obama may well have felt uneasy. Surrounded by so much ‘protection,’ she was in fact a sitting target, or rather one moving along at a steady 70 miles per hour. She’d have felt, and perhaps been safer in a single car, moving with the traffic.

Looking at the world that evening through my car window, I realised the inequality of our situation. Some are put at risk to protect others considered at greater risk. What’s more the taxes paid by those living in the Fred Wigg tower in part paid for the missiles placed on its roof. And if we feel disempowered, what hope is there for those already vulnerable and disconnected? It’s a soberting thought.

Who's Who: Robert Ashton