From all around the country, students and others involved in education, came to London for today, the guardian has posted an map that shows this impressively:
(from the guardian)The demo showed groups from different universities, students' unions and employees' unions. What I enjoyed was how many had made their own signs, some serious, others with an ironic twist. Some of my favourites of the latter category:
"What would Beethoven say? Nein!" - KCL, London Music Department
"Education Cuts Never Heal"
"Ancient Norse is not a luxury"
"A plague on both your houses" - Central School of Speech and Drama, London
"To the Winter Palace!"
"Maybe social sciences are a waste of time.
David Cameron: PPE, Oxford
Nick Clegg, Social Anthropology, Cambridge"
"Fuck this, I'm going to Hogwarts!"
(There were a few signs relating to Hogwarts. A debate has started between my friends about tuition fees at Hogwarts. There doesn't seem to be a watertight proof about it, anyone ideas, ideally with source?)
"I wish my boyfriend was as dirty as your policy"
"Over 9000"
(again borrowed from the guardian, I did not take my camera, carrying my own sign was enough)In the media, the coverage is dominated by a few hundred demonstrants storming the Tory's (the ruling party) headquarters at 30 Millbank, setting protest signs on fire, eventually smashing a front window and occupying the lobby. The security personell there seems rather overwhelmed, look out for the female receptionist. The guardian's leading article online is announced as "Student protest errupts into violence" and entitled: "Student fees protests: 'This is just the beginning'". While the second part of the article focuses on the predominantly peaceful protest, the video, in my opinion, is overdramatic, in line with the heading. A much better piece for the mainstream media is by CNN, maybe because of it's American audience it explains the arguments better.
Now there is a big debate, at home, via text mesages, various videos to be found online and over facebook. The questions could be reduced to:
- What does smashing windows, occupying a government building, laying fire in the building's courtyard, throwing things from the building on the police and others mean, what is its impact?
- Does peaceful protest (i.e. marching with signs) have a smaller impact than violent protest (which could be defined in this case as burning signs, smashing windows and occupying the government party's headquarters, and of course everything after that...)?
- Will violent protest change politicians' and the media's response at all or does it rather harden the positions and thus make a solution more difficult in the long run?
Here a bit of a conversation I happened to be present at:
A: "Name me a violent political movement that has brought positive change."
B: "The Bolcheshevists ... initially"
A: "And then lead to ... what ... Stalin?"
C: "Going to a protest doesn't make you a protester, just as standing in a garrage doesn't make you a car."
X: "I went to a peaceful protest and it didn't work for me. I didn't see anything happening. [Speaking aboout the Anti Iraq War Demonstrations] So I thought I'd try something else."
I've been thinking about them a lot and think I still need time to form my opinion, especially to see how Cameron and Clagg, as well as the national (and probably international?) media representative react. But my gut feeling tells me that burning signs is contradictory to spreading a message and that the voices of 50.000 shouldn't be overpowered by few hundreds. But somehow I feel the frustration while I was not part of that crowd and probably wouldn't join them in the future.
What do you think? I'd be interested to hear from you, email prefered but if I got some interesting ideas I might use them later, anonymously of course.
6 comments:
Hi Peter. Just wanted to say that I read your blog from the Guardian comment link. I'm an old fart from your parents' generation and am livid with this and the other cuts.
Bravo to you and all the other students and other marchers - many, many people of all ages are cheering you on; you and all the marchers are an inspiration. Please don't let the mainstream media's twisting of the facts get you down - this is fairly standard practice, as I'm sure you know, bread and circuses have worked for a couple of millenia, after all. Glad to see they didn't work today (well, yesterday) - let's hope that you woke more people up. Don't give up the fight - that's what the politicians are relying on.
The problem is that the left gave Tony Blair and Gordon Brown a free hand.
"I am going to hold my nose and vote Labour" said a long-time Labour activist of my acquaintance.
A year or two later he told me: "I wish I hadn't bothered. They have wrecked the economy."
Many of the problems we are facing were caused or created by 13 years of Labour.
Anyone who forgets that and tries to blame it all of six months of Tory and LibDem rule is a liar, a fraud and a cheat.
Matt: Some of us believe they're six and half a dozen - New Labour, Lib Dem, Tory, they vary only in degree. They're all professional politicians and worshippers at the shrine of neoliberal free market Thatcherite dogma. They are in power for power's sake and to serve their corporate paymasters, and are interested only in feathering their own nests.
If you rally believe there's any substantial difference between them, except in degree, you are extremely naive and very useful to them.
*If you really believe...
(I can't edit posts here either - aw nuts).
I think the answer to your question whether violent protest has more impact is quite easy and quite unsatisfactory at the same time. It all depends on how these protesters are judged by the public. If they are seen as violent aggressors and slobs the impact will be small or even hitting against the own opinion. So in terms of maximizing impact a protester should try to go as far as he can while still being judged as "someone who wants to get a message across" or "maybe the way they say it is not appropriate but its good that someone says it" or something like this.
Whether violent protest is morally right is probably a completely different question. Of course the sides are both understandable. On the one hand we do have had some terrible violent protests, which led to nothing but the death of a vast population, but on the other hand all the big "enlighted" values our western society has today were only introduced after very violent revolutions... Of course things usually got worse after a revolution, but one could argue - and i tend to agree - that this was necessary in order to enable the later changes.
And one thing I am absolutely sure about is that we are being arrogant and vain if we say that our system we have today is the end of development and evolution and that this is the right thing to keep till the end of time.
So: Keep on changing! In big scale and also in the small. Whether violently or not - I'm not able to suggest.
G'day Peter, I'm not sure [either] that such demonstrations achieve much but somebody has to pay for 'formal education'(just like everything else). Might it not be better to identify those more able to pay and more-deserving: those who already received their [free] education; the Nick Cleggs and David Camerons, their high-earning colleagues and supporters, the press reporters and technicians and the nation's professionals, businessmen and women?
These people should immediately reach for their own chequebooks and demonstrate that they believe in what they say! Assuming that they can afford it, having two or three children in their families might require that they contribute two or three times as much. The generation(s) that had 'the free ride', in the good times, surely owe it to today's young folks – who, incidentally, will also take over a world which is poorer and more-damaged, with fewer and more expensive resources...
Good luck.
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