What lies beneath a pro-Palestine protest in the shadow of Tonbridge castle
Those familiar with Tonbridge (not Tunbridge Wells, a confusion the Post Office sought to avoid by changing the ‘u’ in the former’s spelling. It hasn’t worked.) will know that its high street is bisected by the Medway and, above the bridge that spans it, is a castle.
It’s a proper one, too. High on its earthworks, solid, Norman and, though a bit knocked about by history, clearly the sort that was meant to remind Saxon England who held the power.
Down the centuries, it found itself at the centre of rebellions. Against Rufus, against John, against Henry III and, finally, against Charles I. Playing for a kingdom. The stuff of high stakes and beheadings. Worse if you were Simon de Montfort. Ooh nasty.
Imagine then how little the unarmed mini-mob gathered either side of The Big Bridge must have seemed from its ramparts last Saturday. Normally, the fortress looks benignly on people collecting for charity or, in summer months, waiting for a pleasure boat.
But no, in the bleak midwinter, here was politics. “Hoot if you support a ceasefire!” the placards urged. I glanced for a multitude trying to force the castle gates. But no. In Palestine of course and, where once the mighty standard of the de Clere’s might have flown, waved a thousand, perhaps a hundred, alright a few dozen Palestinian flags.
The traffic, unaware perhaps of Tonbridge’s pivotal role in Middle East peace negotiations, was unmoving and unmoved. More mute than hoot.
Stranded as I briefly was beside the revolution, I had a chance to view the unhappy few at close quarters. No surprises. The majority were, of course, the quilt-coated middle class, wielding nothing more ferocious than a strongly worded op-ed in The Guardian. Yes, and in Tonbridge too where the Tugendhat majority stands as unassailable as, I don’t know, a castle.
Harmless enough, I thought, eyeing that odd look they get. Something akin to the martyr. An ecstasy of righteousness even in the face of dungeon, fire and sword. The wan smile of the misunderstood destined for welcome by a heavenly choir.
But then I relented and thought of Kent’s long history of rambunctiousness, riot and rebellion. Tyler and Wyatt. Testonites, Tithe Wars and the Betteshanger Strike. Orwell, workhouse and a hop-pickers diary from the Elephant and Castle to Wateringbury. A county Brexit to its core. Except Tunbridge Wells, as you ask. And I looked closer for that defiant tradition.
It wasn’t there. Except in disguise.
It was more than a call for a ceasefire, a worthy enough camouflage in line with for which, as the body count mounts and the region wobbles, there may well be a case.
Because beneath the apparently benign call to “for God’s sake stop the killing” was a notable lack of even-handedness. No Israeli flag flew. No hostage pictured. There was no pretence at a hands-across-the-Jordan, blessed-are-the-peacemakers, unity of voice which added “for all our sakes, oh brotherhood of man.”
What there was, of course, among the banners raised less high was plenty of condemnation of Israel, most notably as “an apartheid state”, the cloak of Hain so lately borrowed, not least by South Africa.
Among the ragged crowd may well have been the well-intended, even the slightly uncomfortable, but as the traffic edged by either in silent disapproval or apathy, one knew what the mini-mob was essentially about. There are some instincts the old castle would still recognise.
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