catallus

London Student Protests - mostly peaceful, with a handful of idiots.

Thats the summary. The longer version is more complicated.

I was there from the start till about 1420 when I left to get home before the trains started to get too packed out of Charing Cross. The start was in Horse Guards Avenue, turned left onto Whitehall, and then further south down Abingdon Street past the houses of parliament, finishing in/on Millbank. No violent "clashes" as reported by the BBC (who I get increasingly pissed off with, day by day, for inaccurate reporting) then, and certainly not with the forty to fifty-odd thousand people who turned up and protested peacefully, just the cunts who came along looking for some violence.

Apologies for shitty quality, my cameraphone,etc.

Start of the march, just turning onto Whitehall:


My mate Ian in his costume from his work (works in an Ice cream cafe..). Probably the most popular protester there, the man was an absolute cam-whore for everyone wanting a picture with "the cow!"



A better shot:



Ian eating Kerry's head.



A bit difficult to read, but it says "Stop butt-fucking us back to 1984 you smug twat bastards!". I thought it was a good summary of the situation.



Phone held over my head, back down Whitehall. The girl in the front was adorable, and had a little placard of her own saying "I cant afford uni too "



Whilst we're here, may as well do some sight-seeing.



Looking on down past parliament towards the front of the march. Id just like to make a note here; there are reports of protestors "refusing to move on". Here, at least, in front of parliament we were held by the police and released in stages to prevent a massive bottleneck and crush into Abingdon St. as the road narrows. Shortly after this was taken, the barrier was moved back over to the side of the road to relieve the amount of people cooped up here.



And then, later, I recorded trying to walk from the southern end of the houses of parliament to parliament tube station...



And that is my experience of a peaceful, well executed and well intended protest.

Unfortunately, these fucktards are causing the media to shit the bed:

http://flic.kr/p/8Si98R
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11726822
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11728003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2010/nov/10/demo-2010-student-protests-live
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/846780-violent-clashes-at-student-fees-protest

These guys are almost certainly NOT students. Most of the protestors who came on their university student-union organised coaches had their own student union t-shirts, as evidenced by Ian and Kerry, carrying university banners (much comment was made when the Brookes students saw the very impressive fabric banners of Birmingham and Southhampton, and questions of "Why dont we have one of those?" met with sheepish grins and "We do. Somewhere. Uhhhhhhhh......") and other stuff.

If you look at that Flickr link, at 0.06 in you'll see a guy walking across with a red and black diagonal seperated flag, which my cursory research tells me is a known flag of anarcho-syndicalism, apparently (quite apart from the obvious thuggish cuntishness, and spraying painting anarchist symbols everywhere (as seen on those links and probably the papers tommorow)).

In a sense, I saw this coming. The Socialist Workers party and others were out in force, handing out banners and I even passed a stall where they were signing people up; and I really should have twigged seeing all the "fuck the fees" placards in white, red, and black (colours which, for some unknown reason, always seem to be coopted by extremists). But then, I guess you're always going to have a bunch of assholes somewhere.

The really disappointing thing is that the media is likely to concentrate on these fucktards instead of the very real causes for the peaceful, organised protest.

Thanks, assholes.