As protests spread in France over the planned increase to the pension age, Tariq Ali asks "Why can't we protest against cuts like the French?"

Considering the lack of parliamentary opposition in Britain to cuts and the relative passivity of the British trade union response, Ali points out that we have a proud history of dissent and argues that now is the time to import the French spirit of resistance.

This is a country without an official opposition. An extra-parliamentary upheaval is not simply necessary to combat the cuts, but also to enhance democracy that at the moment is designed to further corporate interests and little more.

Bailouts for bankers and the rich, an obscene level of defence expenditure to fight Washington's wars, and cuts for the less well off and the poor. A topsy-turvy world produces its own priorities. They need to be contested. These islands have a radical past, after all, that is not being taught in the history modules on offer.

Ali ends eloquently, quoting Shelley, quoted in The Verso Book of Dissent:

"Given the inability of the official parliament to meet real needs why not the convocation of regional and national assemblies with a social charter that can be fought for and defended just as Shelley advised just under two centuries ago:

Ye who suffer woes untold
Or to feel or to behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold.
[. . .]
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you.
Ye are many, they are few."

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