So You Fought The Law...

...And the law won.

I don't know if anyone's mentioned it yet but in Britain the government has been trying to increase university tuition fees by 300%. As the Liberal Democrat part of the governing coalition were elected on a specific mandate not to do this the plans have provoked four, separate days of large and sometimes violent protest. The most recent of these, on December 9th, was so ferocious that it saw 12 police officers and 45 protesters hospitalised including one 19 year old who needed emergency brain surgery after suffering a brain hemorrhage. There are even rumours that members of the British Army's SAS stationed a Wellington Barracks were given a days leave to make sure that the days events went off with that extra bit of oomph. Despite all this December 9th also saw Parliament vote through the government's plan. This creates the obvious question of where does the student protest movement go from here?

In the policing of the December 9th protest the state was trying to impose it's own answer by turning the demonstration into "the protesters last stand." The idea being that with the Parliamentary battle lost the level of violence used by the police would discourage protesters from taking part in any future demonstrations and the movement would die out. However it was also calculated that a smaller group, around 25%, would take the politician's disregard for their views and the police's violence as a provocation to fight on further and harder. To this end another protest has already been called for December 20th at Piccadilly Circus in central London. As the police have made over 300 arrests (1 charged) they have managed to gather a significant amount of intelligence on the student protesters and the hope is that this 25% will now go and join in with the growing campaign against wider spending cuts. The idea being that these inexperienced student protesters will provide the state with an entry point to gather intelligence on that wider campaign in the hope of being able to to destroy it before it gets off the ground. There is also a hope that the involvement of the student protesters who are being portrayed as violent extremists will discourage ordinary members of the public from getting involved in the spending cuts which would be a shame because if they don't get involved they're likely to end up as the innocent victims of the government's war.

If I had been involved in the student protests I'd be very tempted to take the winter break to rest and assess my situation before getting involved in more protests but I might just be saying that because after Cancun I'm really, really tired.