Hey everyone, Robert here. Before we get into it, I want to note my internet was terrible during this call. We tried to have the guest record locally, but there was kind of a technical glitch there, and Zoom glitched a little on the audio. In order to make it listenable. There are going to be like three or four points here where I pop in and just say what he was trying to say or what he said, and the Internet then garbled up so that you can understand what's
actually being said in the conversation. So when my voice pops in and I read a line, it's me reading something that he said that got kind of distorted. I do apologize. Ah, welcome to it could happen here. A podcast about things falling apart and occasionally about the quest to build a better world. Today, we've got an episode that is in the latter category about the struggle to make the United Kingdom less I don't know, in the thrall of a monarchy and an aristocratic class, and to
build a more equitable society. And our guest today is somebody who is attempting to further that cause, and did so last year by attempting to huck several eggs at the current King of England, Charles the I forget the number. Patrick, Well, how are you doing today?
Hi?
Yeah, I'm good. Thanks. Yeah, it was five eggs. Five eggs and he's the third king.
The third king, third king.
Far more than three unfortunately. Yeah, you guys have had a few. Was one of the ones you'all killed?
To Charles?
Yeah, yeah, that was the last one.
That was the last one. Well, yeah, I would say trouble. Yeah.
So let's start by talking about this is in a twenty about a year ago at a he was doing a they called it a walkabout, which I guess is when the king shows up in a city in the video.
I watched the video of this and like, there's.
A bunch of people dressed in all sorts of fun costumes, and some ladies got a massive sword.
Like a a sword of.
The size that I know for a fact that man cannot lift above his head.
Yeah, it's funny. He comes out of his little car and I know, all the little trumpets go and everyone starts, you know, waving their flags on queue and going like, look, there he is. There is some pretty unhinged to be honest, it's it's it's quite embarrassing.
But yeah, there's like the American chauvinist in me that like wants to wants to laugh more about the monarchy. But I'm just finished reading an article about Dianne Feinstein where the journalist interviewing her was like, so you've missed a bunch of votes over the last three months, and she's like, no.
I haven't. I've been working the whole time.
So I guess we're all kind of enthrall to the corpses of of our past.
It's hierarchy. Hierarchy everywhere is the problem.
So you decide to show up when you kind of find out that the king is going to be showing up here, and what kind of leads you to decide, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw some eggs in my pocket and take my shot.
So I actually only found out that he was coming to York about three days with a megaphone and you know, shout some cause obviously the queen had died about a month or so before, and during the funeral processions there was you know, several people were arrested for someone shouted at you know, Prince Andrew, you know, in Scotland's they were like, oh, you're a sick old man, and they did, and that was probably my my inspiration. But then on the morning when he came to York, my megaphone was
just like busted. So I was just like, oh, okay, I'm gonna gonna go get some eggs then.
And white eggs.
What kind of led to that decision?
Man? Everyone asked that. Yeah, I guess like I was into the assumption that we all just knew that you throw eggs at people you don't like maybe it's a British thing.
But I think it may just be that in the US because of the gun stuff, people are like a lot more hesitant to huck stuff just for fun, right, if you're throwing stuff and somebody it's serious.
Although someone someone threw a beer at Ted Cruz.
Yeah, they sure did. That was good. That was good.
Yeah. I think you know, I actually had a lot of time to think about before my trial about white eggs and stuff, and I think they're just funny, you know, like there's a lot of egg puns that came out of it that that, you know, not to get too philosophical about it, but they're kind of you know, they're they're really harmless, you know, but inherently humiliating as well.
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to argue attempted murder from an egg. But at the same time, yeah.
Well exactly. And I think there's there's something to be said for contrasting the violence of the state, yeah, with what's obviously like very low level violence. And yeah, I'm the one standing trial for it.
Yeah, I mean it is.
It is like the language that got used by the state kind of in the proceedings against you was was amusing. Like I know that it was a pain in the ash you had to go through, but like the kind of the framing that they they put with it to make it seem like this was this was such a like serious offense against public order was was was quite funny. And I think it's beyond me to know what was going on in the now king's head at the time,
but I you got quite close. You can see right after it hit there's there's goop on the ground directly in front of his foot, and his shoulders slump a little and he looks down, and I wonder if it made him feel bad. I hope it did. You know, I can't get inside the man's head. Maybe he's not capable of that, but I wonder.
So, yeah, I mean through five and I will say it for the record that one of them did bounce off his arm, but he does have a force field, so it's not my fault that it didn't didn't get the full impact. But yeah, I honestly think he didn't have a clue what's going on. He's pretty pretty sen how to be honest. Yeah, but you know, monarchists were like, so like, wow, look at how stoic he is. He
just doesn't even care. He just shrugged it off. He's such a badass, and it's like he's just been guided through this series of bizarre public opinions where he's got to pretend that he you know, smiles and waves at normal people and he doesn't think that we're all clubs.
But yeah, yeah, and it was the crowd reaction around you was pretty intense from what I understand. I mean, like people came after you when they realized what had happened.
Yeah, I think in some ways that spoke more more itself than like anything that I could have done. You know, the reaction to the video, you know, people immediately just start like pulling my hair, out in chunks and just like screaming, like you know, like just killing him, like stick his head on a spike, kick him to death, and you know, and it really I think maybe that kind of rhetoric is perhaps more like, you know that
the overt violence is more prevalent in American politics. But yeah, you know, it exposed that you know, these people are essentially fascists, you know, and that they yeah, they're very, very violent people.
And I think this is something people have are starting to recognize a little bit more about kind of politics in the UK. I mean, we're looking right now. The Public Order Act of twenty twenty three is kind of the most recent law that's gone through Parliament that effectively like expands the ability of the police to crack down
on protests. Some people will argue, and I think this seems, based on what I've read, pretty credible that it basically makes it possible for the police to arrest anyone for
almost any kind of activism. And that kind of was exhibited during the coronation when a group of kind of of anti monarchist protesters who are more on the liberal side of things, and you're kind of approaching this as an anarchist, but a fairly large group of protesters with signs that were saying stuff like not my king, attempted to rally doing so. I believe their goal, from what I can tell, was to comply with the law as they understood it, and that did not protect them from the police.
No. So you know, the context is in the wake of the police there was a police officer, you know, last year who murdered a woman, Sarah Everard. Yeah, and in the wake of that, they passed the Police, Courts, Sentencing and Crime Bill. And that that bill was really like,
you know, the most over crackdown on protest. It banned it allowed the police to arrest, the discretion of an officer, any protest that was deemed potentially annoying, like that's the specific language, is any any action that could be loud or annoying. So, you know, there was a there was
a lot of protests against that at the time. That obviously came to nothing, and they passed the bill anyway, and then and then so the Public Order Bill just goes that step further by allowing them to preemptively arrest anyone who might be about to do something that's loud or annoying and including this new thing called a serious Disruption Prevention Order, which is something that they can apply to someone who's considered an aggravated activist.
He's saying, which is someone who has been arrested more than twice for protest related offenses.
Essentially, it bans, you know, use of the internet to communicate about your ideas, basically stopped from attending protests in the first a rest at the train station. And yeah, we saw that in play with the Republic, with this organization that had been extensively liaising with the police, and you know, it just seemed quite like Pikachu face when suddenly they were all just rounded up and yeah, but
for literally, you know, no pretext. It was they had they had like twelve thousand pounds worth of signs in a van and they were they were all wrapped up in yeah, just like rope rope, and the pretext for the arrest was that the rope was a lock on device that could be used to you know, I don't know, like jump in front of the procession and tie yourself with rope.
To the road.
I really don't know, Like.
Yeah, from what I could tell just from the coverage, I've read. If their protest had gone the way they planned it, it would have been like a show, a visible show that there were people who didn't like the monarchy, but it would not have caused it. Like they would not have this. These people were not planning to like burn down any public buildings or you know, smash car
windows or stop a road. Not that I'm specifically condemning that behavior, but I'm just stating this was not the state cracking down on people because they were afraid of a riot. This was the state cracking down on people because they didn't want the display of any kind of descent to exist.
Yeah, and you know, that's where we're at in this country. And to be honest, the arrest of those organizers was the best thing that could have happened for the movement, because you know, what it really did was just shine a light that it was impossible to ignore and in some ways kind of over shadowed the coronation. Really was far more than any speech that Graham Smith you know, was planning to give, you know, just so overtly that
that there is no acceptable form of descent. Now, the very concept is so distasteful to yeah, our aristocracy that it's banned.
And I really appreciate your ability to kind of see the upside, the tactical upside in that, because I think it is true. I doubt I would have heard about that protest if it had gone as the organizers planned, right, because it would have just been Yeah, there's some people who don't like the monarchy in the UK. That doesn't surprise me at all, but seeing it was like everywhere
all over my social media. I got sent it by multiple friends, by a family member because the state decided to go after these people, And I do think I think it's also from just a standpoint when you're talking about a struggle with as long odds as kind of struggling against the monarchy in the United Kingdom, which is you are talking about like the most entrenched power structure outside of the Vatican, right Basically, when you're talking about that, it is so important to be able to look at
moments like this and see the upside in them rather than just rather than just kind of feel the boot all the time. Otherwise you're you're not going to have the endurance to keep fighting, you know.
For me with specifically with the eggs, I was I've been conscious the whole time that the backlash and the you know, disproportionate state reaction would speak more than my own actions. So so, for example, one of the reasons why I think, you know, it went pretty viral when I when I threw the eggs in the first place, I was a bit surprised by by how it went
kind of quite internationally. But but but you know, so the fact, so my bail conditions were between between my arrest and my trial were that I wasn't allowed to carry eggs in public. Yeah, I know. And so that is in itself like so absurd that it's like, right.
I gotta notice there like a provision for if you're going home from the store or are you just are.
You just so? So the copper who was literally just like making this up at the station says like, okay, so your bail condition is you're not allowed within five hundred meters of the king, you're not allowed to carry eggs in public. And then he goes like, oh, actually, like what was if he wants to buy some eggs And they're like okay, So they changed it so it's like you're allowed to carry eggs as long as you're going home from the shops and you've got the receipt.
And I think that was more viral than me actually doing it, you know what I mean, Like people were like, you know, that's that's that's Britain for you. Have you got a license for those eggs?
You know, I'm imagining you like sliding down an alleyway with like a like a like a nineteen forty style shoulder holster, but with just like eggs under each.
Yir yeah and so and so you know when I so, I had my trial, you know, which was for yeah, threatening behavior that made someone feel imminent violence. In the wake of that, like I was convicted, I narrowly avoided six months in prison, which is the sentence that I thought, yeah, yeah, and so, so you know, in my trial, you know, I had the option to either downplay what I did as being like, oh, it's not really violence, it's just
an egg. But then of course, you know, legally it was you know, that could just cancel as a soul. But then I chose instead to say, Okay, yeah, it was violence, but it was legitimate violence because it was necessary to resist the far greater violence of the British state, you know, citing the historic impact of colonialism.
He's saying current foreign policy, like the king personally negotiating weapons deals with Saudi Arabia.
And then also you know climate breakdown and the way in which by continuing to invest in fossil fuels global South like intentionally and so therefore, you know, I was basically defending the right of you know, acting in defense of others with violence. I'm glad I did it, and I'd have done much worse. So in the end, actually I got one hundred hour. I got one hundred hours of community service, which was extreme, you know, getting away with it essentially.
So, yeah, did you get us? I wondered, was it just a situation? Did you just get lucky with a judge or like, because that's that's surprising. I'm surprised that like that that worked as well as it did in a positive way.
I think, yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah. I mean I had a big bag with me with all my light undies in because I thought I was going down, you know, And I think there was partly, yes, getting lucky with
the judge. Partly I think they were in a really difficult position and this is what I wanted to put them in essentially, which is that following all of that the money, you know, in the lead up to the coronation, there was a lot of negative press around around the king and the monarchy, and they had a choice between either sending me to prison and looking extremely authoritarian and blowing out proportion, or letting him get away with it. And you know, I think they chose to minimize the
negative press. You know, I mean, obviously, supposedly there's an independent judiciary and there would have been no conversations with the palace and the police about the charging procedures. But that's a low rubbish but you know, yeah, and so but I think I wanted to put them in that difficult position because I knew that, like I said, their
backlash would look worse than what I did. And so when I chose to go to the coronation following following my conviction, you know, I had to tell my probation officer, look, I'm going to the coronation. I am going I'm going to peacefully protest. I'm just going to be there, deal with it, you know. And basically he told me that the counter Terrorism Department was seeking an injunction from the courts to stop me attending but then the court had
ruled that no I was allowed to attend. I'd already been given my punishment and he wasn't going to put any further conditions on me not be allowing allowed to go. So so but I knew that if I went to the coronation and they would arrest me anyway, and it would make them look bad, you know. And then they they did. You know, I was as well as well as all of the organizers. I was there, you know,
just not my king, blah blah blah. And then and then I and then I look up and there's a little watchtower that they had erected in the center of Trafalgar Square, and I just saw that there was about seven police officers just all like staring at me and filming me from you know, like two hundred meters away. And I was like, oh, okay, they're gonna arrest me now. So yeah, I gave my phone and my wallet to
my brother and then smile. And then within seconds, within seconds, they were just dragging me out, like you know, in handcuffs, from the center of a of a crowd of about you know, twenty thousand people. And and it honestly couldn't have looked like more like overtly fascist if they tried, and and that was kind of the point. Really is.
A man, I uh, such a wild story, but.
I'm I'm glad you did what you did.
I'm impressed by the amount of thought that kind of went into the optics of it, because it's really the only way to turn an egg into an effective weapon, right is by very careful planning. I'm kind of curious where do you see what do you see as the route forward for both not just kind of opposing the monarchy in your country, but sort of opposing the overreach
by the police. This is a problem in more places than the United Kingdom, but y'all are kind of on one of the cutting edges of sort of global attempts by law enforcement and its supporters in the state to effectively make dissent impossible. Ahead of what everyone knows is going to be kind of a heightening period of climate based activism.
Yeah, and so with the climate activist movement in the UK, you know, we've seen extinction rebellion active since like twenty eighteen, and I've been, you know, arrested multiple times with them at different actions. You know, the part of their strategy was that mass arrests, you know, blocking roads, nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience would force the government to take action. And I think really we're seeing that strategy like having
run its course. And I think for a while now that's been evident that it wasn't working because they've just
banned the types of protest that we were doing. And also it was essentially quite naive to believe that, yeah, oh, you know, if we cause enough desruption, they're just going to put aside all of the you know, lobbying interests and their literal role in upholding capitalism to just go, oh no, okay, fair enough that they're blocked and roads, we are going to like radically transform society to deal with climate breakdown. That was never going to work, you know, realistically.
And so so even though you know, we've seen every time they pass these these new legislation, there are there's a there's a backlash, there's some marches, there's some protests that fizzle out, and the state just keep consolidating more and more power, and people keep getting more and more disillusioned with.
He says, with what an effective strategy of resistance looks like and so for me personally, it's something I've been thinking about for a while now.
But recently have is that, you know, we have to stop asking politicians through direct democracy at the local level and essentially you know, using like democratic confederalism, you know, as they're doing Rajava, to to look at creating a national network of people's assemblies that builds dual power outside of the state. Because because because I think a lot of the problem with these direct action movements is that
they don't have the legitimacy of a democratic mandate. So that's even whilst the tactics might be like in some way effective, you know, Extinction Rebellion has always said our message is to say that climate change is a serious threat, but we cannot propose the solutions because we don't have
a democratic mandate. But the way to you know, work around that is to build a democratic mandate through holding people's assemblies, creating forums where people can create their own vision, and then direct action can then be used in service of those aims rather than putting the car before the horse, if that makes sense.
No, yeah, I think that that's certainly like one of the more pragmatic ways forward that I think I've seen, you know, we're we're always talking about an uphill battle here, and I think kind of the inherent difficulty of fixing any of these bigger problems, particularly fixing the and what we mean is dismantling the systems that are causing climate destruction, and like that is such a lopsided battle that I think whenever, whenever you have you present an option to people,
because it sounds hard, there's this tendency to just be like, well, you know, we have to go by the thing that we know, which is just kind of like trying to vote in better people. If we can take a lesson out of the last thirty years, it's that the standard electoral methods cannot provide the solution to climate change, Like
they simply aren't going to do it. And I think the police in a lot of kind I mean in the United States right here in one of my old hometown's, Austin, Texas, they just voted on a police accountability bill that the police have basically said we're not going to abide by like this is and you can find stories like that all over the United States and other parts of the world.
Like the kind of the hope that you can just sort of like put in your however long it takes you to do voting in your country or city or whatever, and that that's the method forward. It's it seems more realistic because it's more familiar. But I think the vision you're putting forward not to say that it's as simp
that's simple, but like it's effortful. And I think that whenever someone's positing something like that that requires that kind of like effort from a large enough segment of the population, I see that as inherently more realistic than hoping that we can just all kind of keep putting our twenty minutes of voting a year towards solving the problem and expect it to get better.
Yeah, And it's like one of those things with you know, like the idea that imagining prison abolition, you have to imagine a world where that's possible, and that requires changing everything, right, and I think that applies is to tackling climate change
and implementing direct democracy. So you know, if you're talking about a system where people can turn up to a forum in a local community center or you know, church or whatever once a week, then people say, well, that's not going to be accessible, you know, because so it's like, well, you're right, we'll probably have to set up a system of mutual aid that supports you know, working class people
to be able to attend those kind of events. And you know, yeah, it's like how you're going to pay for it, And it's like, well, you're right, We're probably going to have to, you know, set up a solidarity economy where, you know, we if we decide, for example, that we want free public transport then and and bus drivers to be paid paid a fair wage, you know, then you're going to have to look at a whole system whereby people are potentially getting free housing in return
for being a bus driver, free food that comes from the local food cooperative. And you're like, I say, building dual power rather than attacking the system head on, because in a battle, in a pitch street battle in this country, at least between us and the police, that we're going
to lose. And I think that, you know, we need to think smarter because at this point, they haven't yet made organizing public meetings illegal, but you know, they probably will at some point, and then it's the only way we'll be able to resist that is if we've had some public meetings to decide how we're going to do it, because at the moment, we haven't even had the meeting to decide what our collective strategy is because there is so much atomization between these different like you know, left
wing like social movements and civil society organizations and so much. Sometimes just depresses me to think about how many people are working for environmental charities or whatever, where all of their work and their research is going towards creating policy
proposals for politicians to ignore it. If you were putting that amount of energy and your enthusiasm in service of the vision that's been created democratically by the people, then we don't need to petition anyone to make the changes we need, because we'll have organized effectively enough to do the things that will really challenge state power, for example, like a mass rent strike and a general strike.
Or if those efforts that are currently going towards putting policy papers on desks where they'll be ignored or neutered, was going towards putting forth policy that is then being backed by a movement that is carrying out rent strikes, that is putting out together work stoppages, that is blocking roads that's able to actually throttle some of the life
support system of the state. Well, then suddenly you're not looking at a recommendation, a white paper that's going to wind up on some bloodless bureaucrats desk, or that's going to wind up getting cut to pieces in Parliament. You're you have something that that has teeth behind it, right, the kind of force that might be able to make change.
I don't know.
Again, when you talk about this kind of stuff, you have to contrast it with what we've been trying so far, which is nothing.
Yeah, and you know, diversity of tactics is huge, and so you know a lot of these direct action groups in the UK, like just Stop Oil that have been blocking motorways and stuff, have received, like you know, huge criticism, especially from people who you know really ought to be allies and at least recognize the the that this action is coming out of a place of desperation because people
cannot see a better way. Yeah, and you know, there was a there's someone from just Stop Oil who just got three years in prison for blocking a motorway and and that's that's insane, you know, And you know on some level that person is it is a martyr, and you've got to hold your your often say. What that has done is shine a spotlight again on state authority in a way that you know, if they have these laws on the books but they never have to use them,
then it's easy to forget that they exist. We have that power.
Do you want to talk a little bit about cooperation UK?
Yeah? Yeah, So so you know, for me, I'm a democratic confederalist, you know, I mean or like you know, the Rajavant project using direct democracy but also confederating that up to sort of replace the state with a form of governance that's democratic. And you know, I also I'm a big believer in cosmocracy, right, which is the proper name for global democracy.
He says, essentially, you know, I wrote about this while I was doing my masters.
And that is how potentially, if we were implementing this system world, we can use the internet to confederate to a global level, you know, and really start to ta call the issues that we collectively face as humanity, which is like the fact that our separation from nature and the rise of fascism is is threatening angus with extinction. And so yeah, I'm a citizen of Earth and you know, that that's what motivates a lot of my actions. But you know, in some ways I've been kind of stewing
on these ideas alone. And so recently I met a group called Cooperation UK. Who are you know, connecting. I can often get bogged down in abstract theory about like how you know, changing the whole world and never actually
doing anything practical. That's my downfall. But you know, you need to start a movement like that locally, and and so they're copying Cooperation Jackson, you know, who have been incredibly effective, you know, setting up people's assemblies, mutual aid economy in Jackson and also like a community land trust. You know, they own like fifty different buildings you know that are used collectively by the community. And this group are planning to set that up in Hull, which is
just a city in the Northeast that's incredibly deprived. It's got like the lowest voter turnout in the UK, but it also has a thriving network of food banks and
you know cooperatives and mutual aid groups. And I think the next step for me is when those those groups send delegates to meet together and decide on collective strategy, right like because there are so many people doing so much good work, but there's almost like no faith in our own vision, which is that if we're the people you know who are say a union for nurses, then you know, we should be deciding the conditions that exist in healthcare, you know, because who better besides patients and
like staff is that to decide the conditions that they that they operate in. And and so yeah, cooperation UK. There are there's a group of us that are moving to Whull. I'm moving. I'm moving next week. I'm really
excited about it. And yeah, we're planning to set up lots of local neighborhood assemblies with the intention of within a year holding a citywide people's assembly that can create a shared vision and then and then potentially you know, standing candidates for local council, but whose only policy is we will enact. We will give power to the people's assemblies and then they can use the you know, financial power of existing institutions to support the transition to a
new model. And whilst they're doing that in Hull, you know, the work that I hope to be doing is document in that process learning, you know, so people can learn from the mistakes and that, you know, and hopefully we can set them up in in every city well across the UK, because there are already people who's think very similarly and that we're at a time now where that's coalescing into the you know, people are recognizing the need for this new movement with a new strategy that's based
around democracy rather than just activism. And yeah, it's really exciting.
Yeah, I mean that's I think that's a worthwhile idea. I think it's a it's it's bold and something that I'm I'm glad to see being attempted. Well, it's been really great talking with you today. Did you have anywhere you wanted to direct listeners in order to help if they're interested in what Cooperation UK is doing.
Yeah, definitely. So there's there's a crowdfunder that I think there'll be. I believe there'll be a link that you guys can act.
He says, and we'll be using that money to set up the People's Assembly and mutual aid networks, but also to create resources that anyone anywhere can use in their local community.
And I hope is that, you know, as these groups proliferate, you know, going to start reaching out to each other, forming an international solidarity network that is capable of providing like the mutual aid that we that we need to support each other, you know, for example, you know, if we're talking about Palestine or Iran, to provide real meaningful solidarity, these you know, liberation groups will require more organization than just like thoughts and prayers.
Really and yeah, yeah, well, thank you so much, Patrick, It has been great talking with you. Good luck as you continue moving forward.
And yeah, yeah, thanks very much. Yeah, I guess I should also say I'm on I'm bizarrely, I'm on TikTok. That's the medium I'm using at the moment. I wish it wasn't. I'll probably want to start making more YouTube videos discussing these ideas, So maybe I'll send you a link that you can put in there, the Citizen of Earth Show. It's my YouTube channel.
Excellent, well, Patrick, tell well Citizen of Earth YouTube channel and we'll of your TikTok and the description.
Thanks again for coming on the show.
Everybody go out and uh, you know, acquire eggs.
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