Small Victories

Shortly after the December election, I started to reflect on the idea of ‘small victories’. I don’t think I’d heard the concept before, and if I had, I didn’t pay enough attention. But in the aftermath of Boris’s victory, I read Hope in the Dark, by Rebecca Solnit, desperate for a balm.

Baghdad not being bombed during the Iraq War is an example of small victories. The popular narrative tells that public pressure didn’t work, that all our protests weren’t effective. We didn’t stop the conflict; we failed. But we can also tell a different story. Because of us going out to the streets – Solnit in the US, myself in Spain or people who weren’t yet my friends in the UK – the war wasn’t as initially planned. ‘We will likely never know,’ Solnit says, ‘but it seems that the Bush administration decided against the “Shock and Awe” saturation bombing of Baghdad because we made it clear that the cost in world opinion and civil unrest would be too high. We millions may have saved a few thousand or a few hundred thousand lives.’

Small victories are almost invisible and, nevertheless, they’re triumphs. Without fanfare or fireworks. Which are the ‘small victories’ happening just now? What are we missing? What are we unable to perceive because of the noise around us? From those fighting Trump? From the EU remainers, recently rebaptized rejoiners? From the children skipping school to educate us about the climate crisis? Which one of our actions will make some sense and bring us comfort in three, five, ten years’ time? 

 Buy 'Hope in the Dark' here.