2009, The Year of the Protest.

It's only February but I think the police's overtime budget must already be feeling the strain because no sooner had the Israeli war protests had drawn to a halt then a whole new wave of people took to the streets.

First up were the Tamils who on Saturday called out 10,000 to protest the Sri-Lankan governments latest bloody offensive against the Tamil Tigers. To my enternal discredit I know almost nothing about this long running conflict but the stories of atrocities by both sides and the figure 250,000 civilians trapped by the fighting certainly explain why people are angry. The demonstration itself passed off peacefully enough with no real arrests and the police's main concern seemed to be that some demonstrators would try and set themselves on fire in protest.

On Sunday the Free Tibet campaign set up a picket outside the Chinese Embassy to "welcome" the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, on his visit to London. This picket quickly took on a threatening tone when Embassy officials decided to set of fireworks and smoke bombs in an attempt to shield the protest from the Prime Ministers delicate eyes. As the explosions started some of the protesters attempted to break out of the pig pen and charge the Embassy. They were soon wrestled to the ground by the police and two were arrested. In spite of the snow that the Free Tibet protesters always seem to bring with them the protests continued throughout the Prime Minister's visit. These peaked with Cambridge university showing just how useless it is when a student decided to make the very original protest of throwing a shoe at Wen Jiabao. To make matters worse he missed and missed by miles.

I'm actually a bit surprised that the Free Tibet protests weren't much larger and much angrier but I suppose that's what happens when the supposedly free media are ordered no to report that the British Government has formally changed it's official position on Tibet. Prior to the 2008 Olympics Britain respected the territorial independence of Tibet and was working with China to ensure greater freedoms for the Tibetan people. In November 2008 the British Government did a dramatic U-Turn and now fully recognises China's sovereignty over Tibet and will no longer raise the issue of Tibetan rights with the Chinese government.

The most important bit of protest news however came on Monday when workers at the Sellafield nuclear power plant in Cumbria walked out in support of wildcat strikes across the energy industry. Although these walkouts are mainly 24 hour stoppages and mostly limited to construction workers they echo the large scale Trade Union disputes that brought the British government to it's knees in the 1970's. However unlike the bad old days of Scargill when workers walked out to secure nothing more then massive pay-rises this dispute is much more complicated.

During the 1990's, as part of the setting up of the European Union, a law was passed that allowed any, individual, EU citizen to travel to any other EU country in order to compete against local workers for any job. When Total decided that they needed to carry out construction at their Oil refinery in Lindsey, North Lincolnshire they decided to abuse this law by using it as an excuse not to offer any of the available jobs to British workers. Instead they decided to only advertise the positions in Italy where pay rates and Health & Safety regulations are much lower. Once all 90 of these jobs had been filled the company then shipped all the workers over to the UK in one go and housed them on company property for the duration of the construction project. How legal this employment practice is remains a matter for much dispute and even if it is found that a series of European Trade Commission rulings mean it follows the letter of the law it is most certainly not in the spirit in which the law was passed.

As if to prove just how badly the workers have got the government by the bollocks on this issue the government has already begun to pour scorn on them. First they accused the workers of being protectionist which is simply not true. Ending this practice would not in any way prevent non-UK firms from tendering for construction contracts in the UK nor would it prevent workers from any EU country from applying for UK jobs. Next the Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson, who was European Trade Commissioner when the European Trade Commission approved this practice attempted to label the workers as "Xenophobic" - political code for Racist. Again this is not true because nobody is trying to stop Italian or any other EU workers coming to the UK and competing for jobs that are advertised in the UK. In fact I've heard BNP activists have been attempting to join the pickets only for the police to advise them to leave for their own safety.