Good to see some militancy getting going finally. Hopefully that will be a nice little bill for the Tory scumbags, though it’s more likely they’ll find a way to let the taxpaper foot the bill. But this is what you can expect if you fuck with people’s lives, some fightback. If you want to saddle entire generations with unpayable debts for the dubious pleasure of receiving any eduction that would give them a slim chance of getting a job, did you think these people would just meekly swallow this? Of course not.
Lots of tutting in the establishment press of course and outrage by people who seem to expect they should never suffer the consequences of their own actions, whether jacking up student fees or, to pluck just one random example out of the air, lying about your opponents in an election campaign. (Did you see all the Labour piggies standing up for Phil “racist thug” Woolas yesterday?) Lots of reflexive distancing from some of the organisers and spokespeople of the students protests as well, because of course it’s not done to actually like a bit of property damage when done to the right people. But Arthur Baker is right to say that this wasn’t a minority stirring up trouble, but widely supported amongst students and bystanders alike:
I made a point to talk to as many people as possible, and whilst nobody wanted to see people hurt, they were perfectly happy to cheer as Tory HQ was vandalised; I didn’t find a single person objected to the vandalism, not even a police officer and a BBC journalist who both told me (off the record of course) that if they had been students, they would be doing the same – and who can blame them, when they face cuts and job losses too.
[…]
All of them should face justice, but for the record, putting a placard or an effigy of David Cameron on a bonfire is not violence, writing on walls is not violence, smashing windows is not violence and dancing on roves is not violence. Even throwing bits of cardboard placard at police clad in bullet proof jackets and helmets, armed with sheilds and battons hardly seems “thugishâ€.
To which I would add that the “perpetrators” should only face justice after e.g. the people who brought us the War on Iraq, or who killed Jean Charles de Menezes and Ian Tomlinson have been brought to justice. Priorities people.
Arthur also examines the question of whether this spontaneous action helped or hindered the students’ cause:
Finally the question of whether the incident at Milbank furthered our cause or damaged it. One thing missing from the news coverage was footage of the building being stormed by protesters in the first place, why? Surely protesters forcing the doors and surging in would make incredible footage? The answer is that the press simply weren’t there. In fact, the cameras only arrived half an hour after the protesters. On a march of 50,000, until the vandalism started, the only cameras I saw were from LSTV (Leeds student television).
In October thousands of students and trade unionists marched peacefully on downing street, and they did not make the news. Peaceful protests make boring news, without causing a bit of trouble we wouldn’t have been as big news, never mind having almost uninterrupted coverage on every TV news channel and dominating every front page.
What’s more, what cause did protesters ‘damage?’ protesters don’t want public sympathy, they want to create a feeling of unrest, and show that the Coalition are unpopular with the eventual aim of taking their votes, and this protest can only have furthered this aim.
Peaceful protest doesn’t work, unless there is the threat of more aggressive action as well. Strikes, civil disobedience and even a bit of violence has always been necessary in the fight to win and defend our collective rights. The best example of this, the antiwar protests in 2002/2003, including the largest demonstration ever held in the UK and which ultimately failed to move the government.