Viva la Revolución

Every so often, the British public decides to demonstrate. We protest, we make a stand about something. Not too often of course; this isn’t France. Just once in a while to prove that we aren’t politically dead.

In the past couple of years, we’ve seen two major protests in London: the G-20 ‘Financial Fool’s Day’ of 2009 and, of course, the still very recent student demonstration a mere couple of weeks ago. On both occasions, I was present, and on both occasions, I managed to accidentally leave just as things got dangerous (or interesting, based on your point of view). At the G-20 protests, my friends and I found ourselves outside the Bank of England at about midday. Sensing danger, we quickly decided to move on to what was then the peaceful Climate Camp in Bishopsgate, where I demonstrated just how rebellious I could be by climbing a bus stop. At five in the afternoon, I decided that it was getting chilly, and cheerfully went home, barely noticing the police in riot gear who were advancing upon the protest area.

Similarly, on Wednesday 10th November, I arrived late (thank you Regent Street traffic), reached Millbank with my friends, then went straight to a nearby pub. As soon as we got there, we were immediately transfixed by the TV images of hundreds of students advancing upon the Conservative HQ, and successfully convinced one of our number that ‘going to watch the riots’ was a bad idea.

There is absolutely no difficulty in identifying the main public prevailing image of the G-20 riots: a fuzzy video depicting a man with his back to police and his hands in his pockets, suddenly being shoved hard to the ground. Initial accounts of the death of Ian Tomlinson alleged that he had simply had a heart attack in the wrong place at the wrong time, and police who had attempted to revive him found themselves pelted with missiles by the protestors; the London Evening Standard’s headline read ‘Police pelted with bricks as they help dying man’. The article went on to describe how officers were forced to move him to a safe location as bottles were thrown at them. It then cited City bosses who praised the way that the police handled the protests, and concluded with a warning statement that those committing acts of violence were filmed and ‘could expect “a knock on the door” in future’. How true.

However, if we remember beyond the memories of police brutality, of drunken anarchists throwing beer cans at officers and of course the tragic death of a man who was essentially an innocent bystander (difficult though it is), I’d like to remind us that the protests were originally an attempt to influence the results of the G-20 summit due to take place the following day. Top of the agenda was of course the impending financial crisis. Does anybody know what the outcome was? Just in case you’re interested, they agreed upon greater financial regulation, particularly with regard to hedge funds and bonuses and over $1000billion were pledged to help poorer economies borrow and trade. (Climate change was not mentioned, so technically, all the hippies were kettled in vain.) Ring any bells? Well Michelle Obama also defied accepted protocol by giving the Queen a hug. Memory now soundly refreshed?

Two years on and we are now officially living a recession.

Protests are clearly a fraught business. As we’ve seen, they can quickly get out of hand, burying the political message that we hoped would be conveyed. Dave barely bothered to conceal his glee as he announced how disgraceful it was that the protests had disintegrated into violence, and that his position on education would not change. Similarly, it’s hard to look back on the G-20 and remember much aside from the police brutality accusations that emerged. On the plus side, complaints against the police have gone down 43% since the G-20 protests. Therefore it may not be surprising that the police were overrun so quickly outside Millbank. Not to say that there weren’t incidences of violence, although to tell the truth, if you’re going to shove your way into the Conservative Party Headquarters, you have to anticipate getting your knees scraped.

Meanwhile, the media swings to and fro. After the G-20 demonstrations, it quickly swung from highlighting vandalism and violent acts committed by protestors to almost unanimously targeting the police. In the immediate aftermath of the riots, the media appears to have mainly turned against us (except our old reliable Guardian). The Daily Mail in particular ran a hugely offensive piece, ‘unmasking’ six ‘rich, rioting’ students at the demonstration. They have attended expensive schools, or their parents are landed. “What do they have to complain about?” the article seems to ask. Not even starting to imagine the possibility that some of us care for future generations.

Then there are the comment pieces that accuse us of not deserving an education, if we’re going to be such vandals. 50,000 of us at the march, of which about 200 of us found ourselves outside Millbank. Of them, only a few were actually involved in the violence. Whilst they may have been swept along by a fringe group, I’m going with the theory that most of them were probably quite reasonable, with the equivalent of a large university Rugby team leading the charge. When an as yet unknown idiot threw the fire extinguisher from the top of the building, it was greeted with boos and shouts of ‘Stop throwing shit!’. When another overly carried-away protestor prised a paving stone from the ground and tried to lob it at a police officer, he was told sharply by fellow protestors ‘not to be an idiot’. Nonetheless, non-students I’ve spoken to appear to be under the impression that London was almost laid siege by bloodthirsty rebels that day. So either we’re rich layabouts, or we’re mindless delinquents.
Is the government out of touch? For us, it is galling that the ones who are raising the cost of education got theirs for free (one of my favourite signs on Wednesday read “Who paid for your education Dave?”). Of course, as it is quite rightly pointed out, the times were different and fewer people were going to university then. On the other hand, the people who were going to university were very much of a certain cut, and today, this has only changed to a limited extent. More people from poorer backgrounds are going to university, but studies show that it is still essentially a pursuit of the middle class. Coupled with the scrapping of the EMA (the allowance provided to students in further education whose parents’ income falls below £30,810pa), higher fees are arguable disincentives to go to university.

The cuts are about to hit, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Nobody knows where to cut from, but it seems strange that a country with such a high reputation for universities would take such a chunk out of funding higher education. UK universities score highly on world league tables, traditionally due to our history, but also due to the quality of research. To remove 70-80% of funding from this seems nothing short of insane. On an unrelated note, Barclays bank has recently announced that its bonus pot has just reached £1.6million, which is roughly the amount that the coalition looks set to cut from higher education funding. This statement came six days after a government secretary praised the way that the wasteful bonus culture has been curbed.

Although the student protest has been depicted as an unexpectedly violent outburst by a combination of uninvited thugs and a large group of middle class undergraduates, could it instead be the first of many? All over the country, small rallies and demonstrations have emerged in protest at the upcoming cuts regarding the NHS, small businesses, and of course education. What shall we prioritise? Where shall we cut? God knows, but chances are that this is not the last demonstration we shall see. Or maybe it will be… After all, not everybody has Reading week.