Saturday 27 November 2010

Peaceful protest and the Met





This is a quite incredible picture. Having seen footage of the van surrounded by young aggressive males rocking it and bashing the windscreen with a brick, it is testimony to the bottle, intelligence and persuasive powers of this group of girls. They appear to be from the same school. The body language is an odd mixture of defiance and humility allied to more than a bit of fear. 

Whenever people talk about what is or isn’t ‘cool’ think of this photo. These girls are cool in every sense of the word.

The picture is an antidote to the bile pouring forth from the Metropolitan Police. Having been embarrassed by their incapacity to protect Tory HQ a fortnight ago they reverted to their usual OTT tactics and alienating arrogance. Is Theresa May content to see young people ‘Kettled’ for over 6 hours in very cold conditions? Is Nick Clegg sanguine about the use of mounted police to charge into a trapped crowd of young people? What an indictment of our leaders and our government. 
“The schoolgirls who brought attacks on the police vehicle to an end by standing around it with linked hands in flower-power poses understood the power of images better than their elders.
For this picture tells a lot, very quickly. It tells us the menace of violence is real as anger grows among groups directly afflicted by the coalition's cuts. Yet it also reveals that most protesters are peaceful, idealistic, with a sense of history and of the gravity of their actions. Most of all it tells us how amazingly young many of them are.
Future historians may well write that the Conservative-Liberal coalition was doomed the day schoolchildren took to the streets to assert their right to a university education.”  Jonathon Jones, The Guardian
Controlling demonstrations is frequently uneventful and very peaceful because that is what the great majority of them are, peaceful and uneventful. Forces across the country handle them reasonably and calmly. Not the Met. The Met seem to regard themselves as above the law. The Met appear to regard any form of protest as an insult to their machismo. They are confrontational, aggressive and currently unfit for purpose. As the capital’s police force they are going to encounter more demonstrations and protests than any other force. They should train their officers and more particularly their commanders, to use minimum force, maximum civility and never ever forget that protest and demonstration are crucial planks in our democracy. And they should sack the many thugs masquerading as police officers who enjoy cracking skulls and intimidating people.
The reaction is gathering momentum. The following is a letter sent to The Guardian.
“As parents of sixth-form school students we are concerned at the tactics adopted by the police at the demonstration in London on Wednesday (School's out, 25 November). We support the right of our young people to protest peacefully about cuts to state support for higher education and, while recognising the challenges, have been dismayed to hear stories of police violence and the use of kettling to detain young people until well into the evening in freezing conditions. While the girls were eventually allowed to go home, many of the young men were detained until close to 10pm. No wonder fires were lit. Our sons and daughters have described individual protesters being floored by batons and beaten by police for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We are disappointed that the improvements in policing since Ian Tomlinson's death appear to have been abruptly reversed as a response to the misjudgment last time round. Our young people recognise that some police were friendly and helpful. That other members of our police force should be free to exercise what looks like random violence is shameful to us all. Students are debating among themselves about how they can best be heard. When the next demonstration comes around, we will be there protesting alongside our young people. We hope the police will have reconsidered their tactics by then.
Ginny Clee, Graeme Cookson, Ross Cooper, Ros Davies, Simon Edwards, Phil Grey, Janette Keller, Sarah Saunders
And so it grows!

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