Nonviolent
Action And The Road
To Independence
By Greg Guma
02 July,
2008
Maverick Media
Each
year, as fireworks celebrate the Declaration of Independence and people
discuss how the United States began, the spotlight normally turns
to “revolutionary” leaders and the “armed struggle”
waged more than two centuries ago. But as usual, the real story is
a bit different. The movement toward independence in the “new
world” actually began a decade before the “shot heard
round the world” and involved thousands of people. By the time
things turned violent, substitute governments and firm alliances were
operating in nine colonies.
Early colonial campaigns weren’t mere passive pleading. They
were demands, backed by nonviolent actions that forced Britain to
change its laws. Through economic boycott and the development of new
government structures, John Dickinson wrote in 1767, colonists could
pressure parliament by “withholding from Britain all the advantages
they get from us.” One pamphlet circulating at the time urged
colonists to “bid defiance to tyranny by exposing its impotence.”
Many colonists were already following this advice, refusing to comply
with the new Stamp Act, a direct tax on all sorts of licenses, publications
and legal papers, by resisting use of the stamps. According to Britain,
the duty would be used to finance British troops “protecting”
colonists from Indian “hostility” and French expansionism.
Resistance began even before the Act was official. This grassroots
movement, which essentially nullified the law, involved a massive
refusal to import British goods and the beginning of economic self-sufficiency
in North America.
The forms of political defiance and direct action included civil disobedience
and, in some cases, threats aimed at stamp distributors. No one was
killed, but the threats and scattered attacked on property were effective
deterrents. By November all the stamp distributors resigned, while
ports and newspapers remained open despite the absence of stamps.
Debts to British merchants were left unpaid. The Rhode Island Assembly
resolved that only colonists could tax colonists. In order to avoid
mass prosecution of resisters, however, George Washington advised
that colonial courts be closed.
Despite the absence of violence, the threat to British rule was obvious.
Power was swiftly being diffused through many substitute governments.
Town meetings took to passing laws that were more widely obeyed than
British regulations. By early 1768 more than four million pounds was
owed to Britain’s merchants, who pressured the King and parliament
for action. The Stamp Act was repealed, but Britain simultaneously
proclaimed that the right to tax the colonies still and would always
exist. What couldn’t be defended on the ground was brandished
on paper.
The Townshend Acts, a 1768 attempt by new British Prime Minister Charles
Townshend to impose an external levy, met just as much resistance.
The new Acts placed a tax on imported goods such as lead, paint, paper,
glass, and tea. This time it wasn’t merchants who initiated
the campaign but mechanics, artisans and workers. The main method
was non-consumption, along with development of economic alternatives
along self-sufficient lines. When goods weren’t bought and those
on household shelves weren’t used, merchants were forced not
to import the boycotted items. Within a year the Massachusetts legislature
denounced the law, calling for united action, and Virginia voted for
strict non-importation, notifying other colonies of its decision.
Non-importation put a squeeze on British merchants until the Acts
died in 1770. But this time Britain was a bit more clever: All taxes
- except the duty on tea – were repealed. Falling short of total
victory the colonists became divided about the success of their campaign.
In the confusion resistance disintegrated as Britain doggedly held
onto its right to tax.
Despite the setback colonial fervor persisted in other resistance
efforts. The Committees of Correspondence, established years earlier
as underground governments, maintained a network for expressions of
solidarity, protests, mutual aid, and new ideas. In 1773, Britain
provided the catalyst to test these emerging organs of popular power.
The East India Company, an early international monopoly, was in financial
trouble. To help the influential business, Britain’s parliament
passed an Act controlling prices in order to give East India a colonial
monopoly. The law manipulated the market so that even smuggled tea
was more expensive. The Boston Tea Party was an early response; Bostonians
in Indian garb dumped 342 chests of tea overboard. Britain responded
by closing the Port of Boston and increasing repression.
The colonies mobilized, helped by their previous experiences with
united action and Paul Revere’s rides to “give you all
the news.” Many communities – New York, Philadelphia,
Charlestown, Wilmington and Baltimore among them – pledged moral
and economic support. Money, rice and sheep flooded into Massachusetts
as Britain tried to undermine self-government.
Defying Britain, a Massachusetts Town Meeting resolved to cut off
imports and exports, and called again for economic boycott. Revere
rode to New York and Philadelphia with news of the Suffolk Resolves,
soon adopted by the Continental Congress. All coercive laws were unconstitutional,
the Congress had ruled, and are not to be obeyed. People were urged
to form their own governments and deny taxes to the so-called “legal”
governments in their regions.
Although the Resolves raised the possibility of war, the thrust remained
nonviolent – boycott, tax resistance, non-importation (sometimes
including slaves), and development of substitute local governments.
The Continental Association, formed at the end of 1774, incorporated
these approaches and added legal enforcement of “non-intercourse”
along the lines used earlier in Virginia.
As this brief review suggests, the movement for US independence emerged
from the grassroots, from people in neighborhoods and communities,
colonists who made personal commitments and participated in hunger
strikes, non-consumption and other heroic acts of resistance. It was
an enormous and sustained struggle, one of many nonviolent campaigns
that have profoundly influenced world history, although “official”
accounts rarely give them recognition.
Civil resistance – also known as “nonviolent action”
or “people power” – has proven effective, though
not always successful on its own, in many colonial rebellions, struggles
for labor, civil and women’s rights, campaigns to resist genocide
and dictatorship, and other battles for independence and freedom.
Indian nationalists used it in their struggle against British domination,
various European countries used it to resist Nazi occupation, dissidents
in Communist-ruled countries used it to increase freedom – and
ultimately end dictatorships in Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany,
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
These movements weren’t passive or submissive, and most of the
people involved weren’t pacifists, saints or natural leaders.
They were ordinary people in extraordinary situations, using diverse
methods – from protests and vigils to the creation of parallel
or “de facto” governments – to challenge and ultimately
overturn illegitimate authority. In the American colonies two centuries
ago, people were well on their way to winning the War of Independence
before the shooting even started. There are clearly lessons here for
the domestic and global struggles we face today.
To learn more about recent nonviolent struggles and the potential
of civil resistance, consult the work of Gene Sharp, founder of the
Albert Einstein Institution, author of Waging Nonviolent Struggle
and other books, and known as “the Machiavelli of nonviolence.”
Greg
Guma is an author and journalist, and the former Executive
Director of Pacifica Radio. He writes about media and politics on
his website, Maverick Media
(http://muckraker-gg.blogspot.com/).