WHENEVER DEMONSTRATIONS ON THE CONTINENT turn nasty, the police introduce water cannon, tear gas, rubber bullets, and, in extremis, stun grenades to break up the anarchy: the same police are also known for wielding their batons robustly and indiscriminately. They do so in order to defend themselves and their comrades from injury. The public on the continent understand this and even the demonstrators know what to expect from the authorities when their behaviour gets out of hand. They do not go running home to the suburbs to complain of the police’s ‘disproportionate response’ to their behaviour.
In this country it is different as we saw last Thursday when the sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie took to the streets of London to complain of university fees. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the issue, what will be remembered from the events that took place was the behaviour of the demonstrators.
The Metropolitan Police, by comparison with their colleagues on the continent, showed great restraint . The Met tried to accommodate the demonstrators by liaising with the NSU organisers in order to secure a safe route along which the march could take place. We now know that many of the marchers broke away hell bent upon provocation and violence.
How many actually took part in the violence that was to follow is an interesting feature of what occurred. Those reporting the events for the media insisted that the provocateurs were a ‘minority of anarchists’ hell bent on trouble.
But for those of us who were sitting at home watching the unfolding drama, such a comment was in direct contradiction to what we were seeing on our television screens.
It is true that those attacking the police had their faces covered, but there were many others taunting the police and even more applauding such behaviour. If they were a minority then they were a minority whose numbers reached the thousands.
It was not just a minority of ‘outsiders’ causing the violence, but many of the spawn of Middle England; which is no doubt why the Daily Mail in particular used the ‘minority of anarchists’ theme when reporting the violence.
MANY OF THOSE working in the media attended university and no doubt have children attending, or are about to attend university. It is from such a source that we were given our information regarding the events surrounding the demonstration.
The response to the students was commensurate with their pattern of behaviour. It was reported, for instance, that snooker and golf balls were thrown at the police. Such missiles cannot be picked up off the street – they have to be brought to the event with the sole purpose of causing injury to the police. Yet even when faced with such premeditated violence, the police acted with far greater restraint than their colleagues on the continent.
Instead of water cannon and tear gas, the Met used a tactic known as ‘ketteling’; which is mean to confine the protesters within a given area until they have calmed down sufficiently to be allowed to leave gradually in small numbers. This is what happened last Thursday when the police, to prevent students going on the rampage in other areas of the city, set about ketteling the protesters.
Of all the methods used for controlling out of control demonstrators, ketteling must be among the least violent forms of managing crowds used by any police force anywhere in the world.
For these ‘Little Emperors’ to pretend that they had been attacked by a ruthless Gestapo and brutally attended to, may fit in with those preconceived prejudices of the Left regarding the police, but the reality of last Thursday’s events were observed by millions of people who let their eyes inform them of the reality; and that reality did little for the reputation of our higher educated.
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