As you may have heard on November 10th 2010 British students held a protest against a 300% increase in university tuition fees. The day ended with a riot at Millbank Tower, the HQ of the governing Conservative Party.
Tomorrow, November 24th the students will be trying to build on that, I suppose, success by holding a second day of protests. However this time rather then gathering 50,000 people from around the country to converge on London and the Metropolitan Police's 20 strong Forward Intelligence Team (FIT) they plan to hold 36 separate demonstrations and walkouts across the country that will be covered by FIT teams from 12 police forces. No serious violence or disorder is expected but at least 24 young men are predicted to be caught on camera trying to impress a much smaller number of young women.
In preparation for the protest a group called FITWatch began by getting their website shut down by the police on an unsupported allegation of attempting to pervert the course of justice. They then moved to another web server and posted some very long and complicated advice on what the students should do if arrested and how to deal with the FIT teams. This advice included wearing masks, carrying large placards to block the police cameras, photographing the police photographers and following the FIT officers around aggressively demanding their names and shoulder numbers.
As tomorrow is expected to be one of the coldest days of the year I would have thought the best advice would have been to simply wear a scarf. Better yet would to not go in the first place because let me guess. The person who suggested these regional demos was a little bit older then everyone else in the group, had a bit more money and seems able to get on with almost everyone by telling stories about how radical they were during the Iraq war protests.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment