THE BC NDP pointed out on Wednesday that BC Liberal Leader Andrew Wilkinson on Tuesday declined to fill in the gaps on his detail-free vague idea of stopping protests. But when Wilkinson was President of the BC Civil Liberties Association – in 1994, six years after he left medicine – he literally wrote the manual on civil disobedience. 

Wilkinson penned a set of rules for getting arrested in a way that is “truly within the frame of civil disobedience” in which he recommended that protestors stage arrests in high-profile places to maximize publicity.

Wilkinson wrote: “protestors must accept the penalties with equanimity, knowing it is the law, not them, that is wrong.” 

He continued: “Protestors must maximize publicity in influential and favorable places, so that their punishment brings embarrassment and disrepute onto the government.”

A 1994 Vancouver Sun editorial citing Wilkinson’s protest guide is available here.