Apparently some students learned how to kettle cops after comparing the riot cop behaviour to medieval samurai. Any insight?

The cops tactics have less to do with Samurai but are in fact largely based on Roman Legion techniques. The interlocking of the line, cavalry charges when the line is broken and even the way they are deployed as 'squads' so they know who they should be standing next to.

Turning the tables and kettling the pigs probably wont work as they have the weaponry to break out, however snatching a small group of a few and holding them will instantly put the old 'blakelock sandwich' that they fear so much in the forefront of their minds.

For the next demo someone needs to remember some marbles to take care of the mounted fuzz.

Ah yes. The Battle of Cable Street, 1936 . I understand that the glass balls from the old lemonade bottles aswell as traditional toy marbles were used there with great effect. I have seen a clip of film from then of one police horse all over the place during that upset. I believe that MP Willie Gallacher was handing them out to demonstrators at the time? As an historian I am so glad that someone is learning from history. Keep up the struggle. No Pasaran! Pasaremos!

The contrast between dissatisfied demonstrators outside Parliament and the self-satisfaction of the smug politicians inside, as they passed their contentious bill, could not have been starker. They really do believe they are untouchable, or did… until they got a short, sharp shock when Charles and Camilla’s limo came under attack from an angry mob! The Royals pretend they have the approval of the people; that mask slipped tonight.

This action was a genuine and spontaneous outpouring of defiance which went straight to the organs of the state. The Treasury and the Supreme Court, so prestigious to the elite and of such historic significance, was breached by protestors brandishing fencing and poles, like actual peasants with pitchforks from a long forgotten and repressed era…The tables were turned on police when they were forced to retreat and ‘kettled’ by students.

The demonstrators today were a much more diverse group than previously, with more mature students taking the initiative and the flack, they were not about to be intimidated and reclaimed the right to protest on Parliament Square, resisting all attempts by police and organizers to filter them safely past the Palace of Westminster to the Embankment, where they could be easily contained. This strategy failed miserably, until much later.

The press are going into overdrive defaming the students and making them look as bad as possible; giving air-time to King’s College girls who stressed they did not want their ‘good name’ tarnished by the element who were “lighting fires” and “playing music”(?!) I wonder what they hoped to achieve with a measured approach, because if the politicians don’t listen after today’s mayhem, they may find they have inadvertently declared war.

Yes, a good covering of flour and water (or something else like that) is both non-harmful and removes the offending officer from the scene.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRKcPZt61SQ&feature=channel

The comparison to samurai was on the basis of the style of body armour. Overtrained samurai were unable to improvise tactics without a lot of support. which seems to be why the Policing has reverted to the Peterloo Model.

1) Instead of using glass marbles, try rustling plastic bags in their faces! It's remarkably effective and no judge in the land is going to accuse you of 'going equipped' if you're nicked with a supermarket carrier which had your lunch in.

2) When a horse is near you, and you need to push it away, poke it with your finger(s) rather than pressing on it with your palms. If you press it with a flat surface, (such as your palm), the horse will instinctively push towards you, if you poke it with your finger the horse will push away from you.

3) Horses naturally jump obstacles, so if needs be get low and the horse will (probably) avoid trampling you.

4) Randomly scatter debris in areas where you expect Mounted Police to charge, (bits of debris about 12" high and a couple of feet wide are often enough), and the horses will panic. Any kind of barricades will disrupt horse charges.

5) Setup nets, ropes and other assorted traps at a similar height to volleyball nets. People should be able to move beneath them easily enough, but anyone on a horse will be physically blocked, (and if you do it well you could dismount a whole squad of scum).

We need more ropes on demos because they are useful for all sorts of things: climbing, attaching to things and pulling, lassoing small lines of cops to break a kettle, blocking streets from horse charges. If the police want to engage in this antiquated warfare than they should realise that, we, as a mobile and ever swelling and deswelling crowd will always outwit them with our historically perfected guerrilla tactics. *-)

I applaud anyone who physically assaults a police officer, but remember that police horses are sentient individuals who aren't there because they want to be - they are as much victims of the police as protesters are.

Things like marbles under horses' hooves might be great for unseating the scum on their backs but it could be lethal for the horses too. There are many ways to get the cops on the horses' backs without injuring the horses themselves.

And as an additional point, injuring police horses would be very bad PR, as lots of people hate the cops, but most people like animals.

shields with pictures of violent cops - oh the irony as the cops bludgeon themselves!

if you can get lion shit it freaks them out and they run away, so use it as they begin the charge not in the crowd - any zoology students out there?

Balloons/bags of it? If foot cops covered in it = mass confusion.

Should work with shit from any big cats.

There is normally a great deal of shit posted here but Lion Shit !

STFU

Photos from  http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/12/london_tuition_fee_protest.html

great photos, thanks for posting them.

But as for "3) Horses naturally jump obstacles...", NO. Horses have trampled people in the past, and they were metal horse shoes, which I wouldn't want to risk my head getting kicked with based on 'horses naturally'..!

check out earthfirst.org.uk/publicorderguide.htm for these and many more tactics, and send in comments to that project if you witnessed or were involved in stuff that worked or didn't

It is true that horses naturally jump obstacles and particularly avoid trampling on people, but police horses have been specifically trained to ignore this instinct, they will walk right through you and over you, they are trained to push and keep pushing and walk over obstacle where possible, including people. Police horses will similarly climb steps and are far harder to spook than typical horses. I used to know an ex-police horse and while he was a lovely horse he was also a bit fucked up in the head, and trampled a girl at the stables once very severely fracturing her skull and rupturing her eyeball.

You will note that the policeman trampled by his own horse was unseated because his saddle came loose, whether this was because he had failed to secure his saddle adequately himself or someone tampered with his strapping isn't clear.

I don't know if police saddles are attached with a standard girth and billets or if the strap is tamper proof in some way, Police saddles are secured like hunting saddles with a girth and a breast strap and sometimes cruppers too, If they are using typical standard girths it would be simple for anyone at the side of the horse for a moment to loosen it, by simply pulling up hard on the billet straps, there would probably be two secured with another two tucked over the top of the buckles and into the girth below, pulling the billet out of the girth and pulling it up hard would make the buckle spike disengage and the saddle become loose and could be accomplished in one or maybe two movements if you knew your way around a horse tack, that said though the officer would have to be a bit distracted not to clout you one bloody hard while you're doing this. I wonder if this is what happened here, or if he just hadn't tightened his girth adequately in the first place, maybe overestimating the thickness of the high viz blanket, or perhaps their high viz gear is a bit slippery.

On the issue of police horses, it's a tough one. Those animals are victims of the police and are being put in terrible danger by the police in bringing them to such a place, they do not deserve to be hurt or mistreated by protesters and the use of marbles will certainly result in broken legs and animals being destroyed, horses are majestic animals but once they lose their footing they're pretty damn clumsy and fall awkwardly. It is not uncommon for a falling horse to break its neck. Equally do not expect police horses to react in the way a typical horse does to a shove or a poke, it is not a typical horse it is a highly trained animal. If they're charging at you do your best to get out the way, because you will get run over and potentially seriously injured.