The Croppy in the ‘Kettle’

The Rusty Wire Service was in Parliament Square this evening when the news broke that across the road in the Palace of Westminster, a morally bankrupt House of Commons had voted through the proposed fee increases for students.



Pic: Courtesy of Andy Rain

It would be disingenuous to say that there was no trouble. There was and plenty of it; no sensationalism intended. Damage running to hundreds of thousands of pounds at least was caused and protesters were within a whisker of storming the Treasury, having made pretty short work of the supposedly bomb-proof windows with steel poles and broken paving. But that’s not the whole story.

It was a surreal start to proceedings for the Croppy; strolling through the riot-police lines with a breezy smile, waving a press card that hadn’t really seen action since Afghanistan two years ago.

Police numbers at the protest were substantial and the Deptford Croppy spoke to one friendly riot squadron leader who said that pretty much the whole of the Metropolitan and British Transport Police in London had been drafted in for the day.

Lines upon lines of men and women in dark blue uniforms, their faces covered by ski masks and helmets, truncheons drawn and Saxon shield wall at the ready. The blue army’s cavalry of mounted officers sat astride tall beautiful horses champing at the bit behind the shield wall.

Pic: Courtesy of Andy Rain

There were probably almost as many police as there were protesters at today’s demonstration. About 15,000 students spent most of the day sealed up in Parliament Square between Whitehall and Westminster Abbey, from about 3pm until late evening.

By and large, the stand-off was good-natured enough but as 5.30pm and the parliamentary vote drew near, the crowd began to grow restless. Up to that point for the majority of students, it had been drummers and sound systems, some minor vandalism and wary eyeing of the coppers. It was pretty clear however that some kind of trouble would be along just as soon as the inevitable happened and the vote went through.

The Deptford Croppy took up a position on the corner of Whitehall and Westminster Bridge Road where there were good views of both Parliament and Whitehall, with Downing Street beyond. This was the corner where good-natured finally turned ugly. At one point I looked behind me and in open view, was a group of masked youths breaking up the concrete supports for temporary steel fencing.

Once confrontation reached open hostility, steel fencing was used to great effect by the protesters, creating a mesh barrier which negated the police shield wall and behind which protestors could push back the peelers.

While they pushed behind these fencing sections, other unwieldy sections were being sent over the top to further harass the police as the scrum ebbed and flowed under Big Ben’s clock tower.

Meanwhile, small groups of more robust protesters then used this flash point as a diversion for an action that ran along the length of Her Majesty’s Treasury and saw most of the buildings supposedly bomb-proof ground floor windows succumbing to nothing more than steel fencing poles and lumps of broken concrete. Amongst the scarf-obscured faces, a number were proudly carrying trophies of liberated riot police shields.

Pic: Courtesy of Andy Rain

The further the police moved along in an effort to protect the Treasury, the more in danger they were of being kettled themselves and they could only look on as first a door and then a window were breached. I saw fear in the eyes of a number of policemen and if you watched them closely enough, they’re hands were shaking. (You couldn't pay me enough to do their job.)

As the crowd surged to watch the sharp end of the protest come up against the sharp end of the blue line at the open door, there were a couple of short charges by the police. The first charge caused a little panic but very quickly, people had figured out that the police would not – even in their fancy Bondage gear – run into a crowd that was standing to face them.

It’s important however to note and note well, that this was not the action of a lawless intoxicated mob, nor was it just a homogenous group of bourgeois students working out their rebellion before joining the establishment. Among the crowds, the Deptford Croppy spoke to community college plumbing students; trainee nurses and apprentice bricklayers as well as the usual well-spoken and well-meaning suspects that always get chosen as vox pops by the established media.


The same media will also tell you that the majority of the 'criminal behaviour' is carried out by small numbers but that's only partly true.


Once you corral a bunch of free-thinking people and respond to their legitimate protest with a paramilitary show of force, then crowd dynamics, being what they are; a smaller more pro-active group will always emerge from within the larger polity to strike out and their action isn't likely to meet much internal censure. Frankly, it's more likely to be openly applauded as an expression of the group's will...

One thing is certain however, English students are getting a taste for protest and may even have an aptitude for it. The Deptford Croppy suspects that this new radicalism won’t stop at fees protests.