Having had a bit of time to reflect on the student protests, and the vote on higher education that led to these protests, there is only one possible conclusion to draw from this. Everyone is in the wrong and we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. Let’s analyse the main group of players in a reasonable chronological order.
Politicians:
They have a lot to answer for. It was obvious that the coalition government would make some pretty savage cuts across the board and the radical proposals to higher education funding has so far been the most controversial; whether it’s as controversial as the poll tax remains to be seen but for the time being it’s the biggest test this government has faced thus far. Personally, I think that it’s a piece of legislation that promises to make the system far more complicated and harder to understand, which, alongside the increase in costs, will put off people applying to university. There are two other key points though that makes it difficult to find sympathy within the politicians making the decision to put this through.
Several key Tory MPs and several key Liberal Democrat MPs such as Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, David Willetts and the Prime Minister have all had a chance to explain to people why this piece of legislation would be good for us as a country and to defend themselves with an argument based on some degree of sanity. This hasn’t happened – the three key phrases have been, roughly: ‘this is the best thing for the country at this present time,’ ‘this will leave students better off,’ and ‘this is a compromise we have to accept’ as well as constantly laying into the previous government for their introduction of tuition fees (which would be a fair political comment if it was made at the time of that vote – it’s over, get over it). The members of the public who are against this bill have been waiting for a proper explanation but they’ve been rebuked with a smug ‘deal with it’ attitude from those in charge.
Perhaps what is even more damning is the realisation that, despite a lot of support against this legislation, no one in the House of Commons seems to care. Let’s face it, the majority of them are only in there with the aim of planning the next move in their political career ladders and all the policies they make are with the intentions of legacy rather than serving their public. I guess you could argue this was fully confirmed in 2003 when a million people protesting against the Iraq War were ignored and you could wonder why I’m surprised they don’t listen regardless. My response is simple: they are not doing their job.
Protesters:
Despite the reported rufflings in the first student protest on the 10th November, it was a largely successful event because it proved that people were in uproar and it proved that points could be made in a mostly peaceful way. In the protests that have followed, it has become more of an opportunity for vandals with no care about the subject matter to join in ‘for a laugh’ and vandalise certain London landmarks. This kind of behaviour is utterly reprehensible to me.
I feel sorry for those who went to the protests hoping for a peaceful demonstration only to be caught up in the mayhem that has unfolded. They weren’t helped by other factors – which I’ll get onto in a minute – but we’re now at a point where the best thing anyone could do is to just stop protesting and marching in London and instead find alternative protest methods that are more damaging (the occupation protests, for example, have been largely peaceful and respectful) to the government’s cause without actually hurting anyone. It’s a hippy-ish thing to say but it’s coming to a point now where no one is being taken seriously and, as mentioned earlier, almost no one in the House of Commons is listening.
Police:
The police, admittedly, had a difficult job to try and handle the chaos of last night. However, there were several fundamental flaws that call into question their usefulness in dealing with situations like this.
Whilst it is important to take their word for it that dangerous things were being thrown at them by those carried away with rage – they are police officers after all, so their seniority is far greater than the average protester – some of their actions did nothing more than to provoke the crowd into being more anarchistic and more rebellious. They did this either by kettling, which from all the descriptions I’ve heard from eyewitnesses sounds horrifying, beating innocent people as young as eleven or twelve years old caught in the melee and generally being merciless in their actions. It is this kind of behaviour that sickens me and why this hasn’t been reported as much in the media – which I’ll come to in a bit – is completely mind-boggling. Their strategy to keep things in order needs to change or else things will worsen deeply.
If this was to be summed up by one incident, it’s the attack on the car of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. It strikes me as truly bizarre that the police didn’t advise the pair of them to change their route to avoid the protesters, especially when the technology is there to help them (incidentally, Google Maps was used constantly by protesters to find alternative marching routes to avoid the police, for example). As such, the price has been paid and, as such, Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has no other option but to think long and hard about how to handle things better. If he can’t think of a way, maybe he should let someone else figure out a plan.
Media:
Once again the media, although there are some exceptions, has focused on nothing but the protesters’ more violent actions and branded them all as thugs. If you needed any more proof of a shocking lack of perspective of the real story from this event, look no further than the BBC 6 O’ Clock News earlier on this evening when the decision to put the attack on Charles and Camilla’s car as the main story with the reports of young, harmless teenagers being beaten up demoted to five stories further down the pecking order. The lack of ability to put those kind of stories in the frontline of their bulletins is sickening and shows them up in terms of their ideologies. People shouldn’t be allowed to fall for some of the more extremely biased media’s propaganda.
Yet we do. And this, ladies and gentleman, is why everyone is to blame for this sorry mess of affairs that looks set to rumble on well into the new year. Politicians make a bad call without justification, students protest in the wrong manner, police use violence in a way that is disgusting and the media is trying to skew the story for their own political gains…maybe the “we’re all in this together” slogan does have some truth in it after all.
