John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, has argued for the importance to democracy of non-violent protest, in response to criticism of his previous calls for direct action.

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“In our democratic tradition in our country we have the ballot box to use, of course, to elect MPs to be our voice and determine our policies. We have the trade union rights to protect us at work,” he said. “In addition to that, if politicians aren’t listening, we’ve always retained the right, over centuries, to get out in the streets and demonstrate.”

McDonnell was responding to comments, reported in the Telegraph, in which he called for “insurrection”. “Don’t expect that change [to society] coming from parliament … we have an elected dictatorship, so I think we have a democratic right to use whatever means to bring this government down. The real fight now is in our communities, it’s on the picket lines, it’s in the streets,” he was reported as saying in 2012.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, McDonnell used the example of the campaign group UK Uncut, which he said forced politicians to confront the issue of corporate tax avoidance.



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“Years ago I was part of a tax justice campaign where we had meeting after meeting about how we make sure we tackle tax evasion, tax avoidance in this country,” he said. “Along come a group of young people called UK Uncut and they took some direct action – they protested in the street, they occupied a couple of offices that were not paying their taxes.



“Eventually that meant that we started addressing the issue and even George Osborne then had to start addressing the issue. So sometimes, in addition to parliamentary debates, we do need a bit of protest in this country. That is exactly what I have been advocating. But it is purely non-violent protest.”

The shadow chancellor was asked about his previous support for Ed Woollard, who was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for throwing a fire extinguisher from a roof at police during a tuition fee protests in November 2010. McDonnell said on Monday that Woollard’s action was wrong but he thought the sentence was too harsh.

Speaking ahead of his speech to the Labour party conference in Brighton, McDonnell announced plans to review the mandate of the Bank of England, but insisted the institution would remain independent under a Labour government. “We’re going to have a review of the Bank of England mandate. They’re not meeting their mandate at the moment on inflation,” he said.



In his speech, McDonnell is expected to set out plans to broaden the 15-year-old mandate of the Bank so that it has a wider brief to achieve economic growth, as opposed to keeping inflation at less than 2% a year.

The shadow chancellor will launch a review of the national institutions that manage the economy, including the role of the Treasury so that it focuses on fiscal policy and revenue collection. He will promise a drive to end corporate tax evasion and, like Jeremy Corbyn, will point to specific firms deemed to be involved in tax evasion.

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McDonnell told Today his speech was likely to be “pretty boring” and “like talking to your local bank manager”.

McDonnell has appointed a raft of high-profile economics advisers to guide him on macro-economic policy at quarterly meetings, including the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Thomas Piketty, the author of Capital in the 21st Century.

McDonnell has said he will vote for the new charter of budget responsibility set out by the chancellor and due to be endorsed by parliament shortly. His decision has caused confusion among some party moderates who find such a decision hard to square with McDonnell’s attacks on the economic policies of the former leader, Ed Miliband.