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. Yet this picture tells us that this is not merely a reactive protest. The 1968 allusion is not superficial: the images these girls are summoning, just as much as the van-smashers did, are pictures of revolution – the real thing, in its romantic and large-minded soixante-huitard form. But the students of 40 years ago were affluent; they lived in a confident time. How amazing for children and teenagers and 20-year-olds to show such courage now, when their elders are scared and cowed.
Well, I hardly know where to start. I could start when the helicopters started circling over the office where I work, two blocks from Parliament Square. For the rest of the day they’d be there, too loud to concentrate through, and so close that I was feeling the vibrations in my feet, through the floor. I could start at the moment when I saw on the Twitter stream that the police were kettling the kids. Or when news of the van started filtering through (a wag – or, possibly, a “twag”: “How many kids does it take to smash a police windscreen? Quite a lot, apparently”). Or with the pictures people were posting from their phones, of a sea of people – of policemen fighting with teenagers – of a van being written on. Or when I went down there myself, at lunchtime.
I went with my friend from work. We were joking about the emptiness of Parliament Square, the roads – even Victoria Street – all closed. (“It’s anarchy! We’re in the middle of the road!”) There were bemused tourists queueing for the Abbey, and people walking towards us, away from the disruption (but, little did they know, straight into a police cordon at the top of Victoria Street). My friend said, “Hmm, they’re all heading away from the trouble – and we’re heading into it! We just can’t help ourselves! It’s exactly like Doctor Zhivago.”
How we laughed! Then we turned the corner, and saw the ranks of mounted police on their horses.
“You know, I wish you hadn’t made that remark about Doctor Zhivago,” I said.
And little did I realise, at that stage, that Mlle B and her friends were inside the kettle. she had said she didn’t think she was going; it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to go down, and she wasn’t dressed for the weather.
So, the horses. First of all there were HUNDREDS of police vans. Everywhere. Up the other end of Tothill Street. Lining Westminster Bridge. Along the square. Up Whitehall. In the middle of Whitehall, keeping the protesters in. The mounted police sat in ranked formation along the perpendicular side of the square. There was another line of cops keeping us away from the line of vans and cops that was guarding the kids.
On Twitter they had been reporting kids aggressively “attempting to smash the barricades” – it looked suitably scary in the pictures, but later on the video footage you can hear what the kids are saying: “Let me out! Let me out!”
Having said which, the mood we experienced was great at lunchtime. Freezing cold, but happy. Tons of people milling about, adults and teenagers and photographers and office workers, and people were happy. Happy to see something being done. There were kids everywhere, very young kids. Many of them weren’t even 16 or 17, they were really 13 or 14. Of course, on Day X most of the real, uni-aged students were busy elsewhere, occupying their uni buildings or marching in Bristol. Unreported, because eclipsed by events in Westminster, there were huge police presences at Goldsmith and Birkbeck – and even, I heard, a kettling at Birkbeck. The Goldsmiths students are, some of them, very activist (“The anarchists!” scream the newspapers. It makes me laugh out loud. Such a quaint, Dada enemy, cartoon characters who throw fat round bombs at people in monocles). It has been remarked how much less defenceless the protesters in Westminster would have been had there been anyone among them who was experienced. But yes: we stood there going, “Awwwww, look at the kids in their school uniforms, up there on the wall…”
Graffiti in Whitehall, photographed the next day by Chrissy Williams
Now, these kids are angry. And they’re not just angry because they’re being told they have to pay their way in society just like everybody else, whcih is what you might think if you read the Guardian comments and the 30-somethings on Twitter. (By the way, so much for Mail readers being narrowminded?? I think we can put that one to bed! Nothing worse than the so-called liberal classes, faced with something they didn’t think of themselves.) No. These kids – and I know, because I’ve spoken to them – know that society is looking to them right now. They’ve seen the state their parents are in for the past two years, and they can see what it’s come to now, all of a sudden, after all that. They know their parents aren’t going to rock the boat, just at the moment when the boat seems to be sinking anyway, and all safety nets pulled away. Because of their youth, and innocence – none of them voted this government in, they have no vote – they know that they alone are not yet “in the system” and are the only people who really have the freedom to express their feelings and make the outrage felt.
Another tweet, I forget from whom, and I paraphrase: someone was listening to kids on their way home from the demo on the tube:
“My dad says I’ll never get a decent job, now the police have my picture on file as a troublemaker.”
“That’s okay, there won’t be any jobs.”
Many of the kids completely rely on EMA to keep going to school. Or they’re relying on student loans and part-time jobs as it is, to get to uni, and can’t believe that people who got free educations are about to saddle them with that kind of debt just at the age when THOSE people were saving for deposits on houses! They see the pride of postwar Britain, her social mobility and care for her citizens, being dismantled and turned into a gigantic shop – the Shop of Life – where “market forces” replace need. And even replace reward.
After Wednesday, many poeple on my Facebook offered Mlle B their sincere congratulations, praise and even thanks. One sample comment: “What’s right with the youth of today? Well some of them took being treated like cattle and threatened with violence with remarkably good grace. It makes a chap proud.” And another: “Nice to know that the old sus laws are still in force and that sixteen year olds are so feared.”
She laughed tiredly, offered a modest “thanks” in reply, and then asked why they were saying these things! I said, well, you know it is kind of a big deal to people, and they’re upset, and a lot of people are very proud of you kids. “Oh yeah,” she said. And delivered a little speech that ended, “I know they brought in benefits and stuff after World War Two, didn’t they call it the People’s War? It was all about what they fought for? So I know this is a lot bigger than just us… “
Nobody seems to know what this one means
The image of the moment for me is two two teenage boys who suddenly appeared, lying in the middle of the road, right there at the bottom of Whitehall (anarchy!) – I saw someone taking their picture but I didn’t feel my iphone was up to it; but has that picture appeared in the papers? Heh. They were just lying there together, kind of like Charles Rider and Sebastian Flyte in a punt, only in anoraks and school trousers; side by side in the road, laughing their heads off over and over with sheer delight and joy.
Now watch this video. As the disclaimer says, it does contain strong language, but really – so do the kids. And as for the van, and the bus stop – I’ve seen worse in the living room when the pizzas were late. No, seriously. Look at them, dancing! You just have to love the kids.
Click here to see a video I couldn't get to embed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/embed
More later.
Thanks for this post, Katy. There is only minimal coverage here in the States of what’s going on in the UK. And tell Mlle. “Brava!” from me.
Thanks Laura, dashing out but there will be more, probs tomorrow…
Yes, heartening to see the kids marching.
Rather less heartening to see the police – and presumably they were taking their orders from Whitehall – treating them like animals in a pen at an abattoir. Worse, actually.
And then lying about their actions and pretending there was no mounted police charge, when there clearly was and we have footage of it.
If this really amounted to anything – if police really had fought with teenagers – then we would have been treated to photographs of blood-streamed faces and of stretchers being put into ambulances. ‘A van being written on’? That should put the wind up the stinking cadaver which is capitalism.
We had the same recreational ’68fest up here in Leeds. All very low-key and wrapped up in time for tea. A bit of a pain though trying to get to jobs down Little London.
Jane, well, we’re fortunate that it wasn’t REALLY like Dr Zhivago. And we’re very fortunate it isn’t like Iran. But I do think it’s interesting how the government is now trying t prevail through vilifying a bunch of kids. Everyone knows teenagers are unruly and obnoxious, where’s the surprise? teenagers. What happened to that van the other day was no worse than if they’d been in To Sir, With Love. Where’s Sidney Poitier when you need him?
Edward, I can’t even tell if you’re agreeing with me or disagreeing. And yet you keep coming back and reading! My point was that the damage was not as great as what the police and government are trying to make out. ‘A van being written on’ is precisely the point. I agree, there were no dismembered youngsters carried out; but that doesn’t mean the rhetoric isn’t being manipulated, and liberties taken with the populace.
I think the mystery piece of graffiti is a pledge to return (for more protests in the future), signed by ‘your mum’, who is something of a mythical figure for the youth of today. Please add my name to the list of people congratulating Mlle. B – the protest in Durham was nowhere near as exciting, but it was a real joy to see so many people from the local schools and sixth-form colleges marching alongside the students: there is normally no love lost between the two groups. I’m sure all this kettling and tedious horse business is going to come back and bite the police.
I love that: “tedious horse business.” It’s just like that thing Chekhov said , that if you have a gun in the hallway in Act 1 it has to go off by Act 3. If the police want to be taken seriously then they need to look like they know what they’re doing. So presumably they want us to think they brought the horses in deliberately; and if they can accuse every kid with a scarf over his face of “intent,” well, they too arrived prepared for trouble.
Dear Katy
My sister and brother-in-law both voted Liberal Democrat at the last election and now bitterly regret it. I think that a lot of these kids are being egged on by their radical elders from the comfort of their armchairs – and quite right too!
Best wishes from Simon
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I think everyone’s exaggerating to try and score their own points, to be honest. Some graffiti becomes anarchy on the streets. Police containing a large, unruly crowd becomes kettling (go to any football away game – I’ve been “kettled” in Millwall, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Port Vale…). A great photo-op by some flaxen-haired schoolgirls becomes “angelic pacifists defend already battered police van”. Horses moving forward to create space to bring up a line of coppers becomes Marshall Ney’s heavy cavalry charge at Waterloo.
The generation of school and college kids has just been shafted by this pathetic government. And last week, they protested without incident. No burning cars, no lynched politicians, no massed attack on Whitehall. And the police managed it the same way they manage any large crowd. Keep you there until you’re bored, cold and willing to co-operate. No baton charges, no unlawful killings, no mass arrests.
Yet to read the papers, you’d think there were running battles between the police and tooled-up Trot anarchists.