Wednesday's Student Protests

As advertised on November 24th British students again took to the streets to protest against an increase in university tuition fees and other changes to the education system. There were at least four large demonstrations in cities across the UK and a dozen smaller protests in towns and university campuses across the country. Obviously it's going to take me ages to report on exactly what happened on every single one of them so for now I'll concentrate on the protest that received the most media attention. The London protest.

The day began at around 11:00 when students walked out of universities, higher education colleges and schools across the capital. In groups of 50-100 they then made their way to Trafalgar Square to join up for a single, large march at around 12:00. The plan was for this group of around 5000 to march down Whitehall to Parliament Square and on to LibDem headquarters in Cowley Street before returning to Trafalgar Square. The problem was that as the group made it's way down Whitehall the Metropolitan police had left one of the old pattern Mercedes Sprinter vans that they're in the process of phasing out locked but totally unattended in the middle of the street. Something which is a major breach of the police's standard operating procedure.

As the group surrounded this van as they were walking past it the police decided that this was such a sign of impending violence that they deployed officers in riot gear to instigate crowd containment procedures. This led to two kettles being formed, one between Parliament Square and Horse Guards Parade and one between Horse Guards Parade and Trafalgar Square. Once kettled the protesters who were prepared for property damage turned their attention to the police van, street furniture and the surrounding buildings. Bored and frustrated at being unable to continue their protest march or leave the area protesters who would otherwise have been peaceful began fighting with the police in attempts to escape the kettle. As a result there was a bit of pushing and shoving and a few windows got smashed. However as no-one tried to use the abandoned police van as a battering ram to break through police lines I don't think anyone was that seriously intent on violence.

The police's decision to contain the protest in Whitehall was simply ridiculous. At one end of Whitehall you have Parliament Square. As the name suggest this is just a square where a large crowd can be contained on a patch of grass in such a way as they pose a threat to nothing but the grass. At the other end of Whitehall you have Trafalgar Square, scene of the famous 1990 Poll Tax riot. After that riot the layout of Trafalgar Square was extensively redesigned with the specific purpose of turning it into a space where a violent crowd of up 50,000 people could be contained in order to prevent widespread disorder. This is why most protests in London end with a rally in Trafalgar Square.

Instead of using these two purpose built containment areas the police decided to hold the demonstration in Whitehall itself. In terms of politics Whitehall is probably the most important street in the UK. Not only does it contain the entrance to Downing Street, home to the Prime Minister and Chancellor, it also contains the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Health. So if you wanted to go and smash up the buildings, politicians and civil servants that make up the British state Whitehall is exactly where you would want to be. Therefore while there are always people who turn up to public events looking for a fight I would say that the reason why there was violence in London yesterday was because the Metropolitan police wanted there to be violence.

The reason for this is that on November 10th the Metropolitan police were completely humiliated when protesters caused £1million worth of damage to Millbank Tower, caused members of MI5 and GCHQ to lock themselves in their offices and prevented members of the House of Lords turning up to claim their expenses. This meant that senior police officers came in for serious criticism from the sort of the powerful people who could seriously affect their careers. Also there has been an unfounded rumour circulating that the police allowed the events of November 10th to take place as a way of making their own protest about government cuts to police budgets. Therefore the police needed another student riot to show that they could contain a student riot and prove their loyalty to the Crown by showing they were prepared to give protesters a damn good thrashing.

This fits is with a wider policy across the British state of trying to provoke protest and disorder. Despite the 24 hour rolling news coverage of how absolutely brilliantly Britain is doing in reality the country is facing at least ten years of serious economic misery. For at least five of those years Britain is also going to have to endure a Conservative government intent on waging a class war against it's population. This means that there are going to be plenty of riots and protests still to come. Driven by the ghost of Marget Thatcher the state's strategy to deal with this is to provoke these battles early so the opposition burns itself out before the really nasty stuff is introduced.