2010) - Part 1

London Tuition Fees Demonstration (09/12/2010) Part 1: Before Parlaiment Square.

Here starts my coverage of events as I witnessed them yesterday. Because what happened at Parlaiment Square turned to be such a turning point in the demo, I have decided to divide this report into two sections, with this first section covering what happened before we reached Parlaiment Square.

A sea of Placards!

Succinct and to the point.

PCS and erm, Pinocchio..?

Lies, damned lies!

No objections here.

Post Floyd..?

Situationism is not dead!

Resistance is not futile.

Creative cutting cuts comments.

A bold union presence...

...Along with Women's Rights.

One of the portable sound systems.

Assaulting Bateria!

A very wordy placard, a very busy dancer.

TWO choppers buzzed above us all day, one of them possibly for Sky News.

Total Lock down at Charing Cross Station.

Riot helmets already in evidence at The Bank of England.

Passing through Trafalgar Square...

...With the police already starting to gather here.

Gaurding the old dear in Buck House.

As a visitor to London, I don't know the streets as well as those of you living in the city (you'll probably recognise the areas from the pictures), so I'm not going to try and plot the route, but just outline what I saw as it happened.

The start of the march in Russell Square was very upbeat, and almost like a Carnival in spirit, with plenty of cheering and placard waving at the end of each speakers' piece on the small stage area. The atmosphere remained very positive and peaceful for all of the afternoon en route to Parlaiment Square, with a Samba Band (Rythmns of Resistance), providing us with loud and energetic music, which I saw many people dancing to. There were also a couple of portable sound systems, one of them pedal powered, the other being pushed along on a Sack Barrow (see picture), both blasting out Grime, Dubstep, Jungle and much more, which again many people surrounding them were dancing to, adding to the overall Carnival vibe of the event during the early afternoon.

From the very start of the march, there were always at least two Helicopters buzzing around above us, although I found out later that one of them was most likely for Sky News, as there were aerial pictures being broadcast from it when I saw the news coverage after getting home.

Also in evidence along with the usual mass produced SWP placards were many very unique and creative banners and placards, which people had clearly put a lot of time and effort into making to get their messages across (see pictures).

There were quite a few masked up people in evidence, but at this stage they were definitely in the minority, with most people (numbering in the thousands) being there to peacefully protest.

Before Parlaiment Square, the police presence was visible mostly around key London landmarks, like The Bank of England (all of them here were deployed with riot helmets), The Mall, and Trafalgar Sqaure, with the most visible deployment of vans in front of Charing Cross Station (see picture), although they were still allowing passersby through at this point.

There was a very broad cross-section of attendees yesterday, from very young schoolkids through to pensioners. There was also a strong Union presence, with many banners showing their colours (see pictures).

I arrived at Parlaiment Square about 2:30pm, by which time many of the numerous barriers that had been used to blockade the area had been either pushed over or bent out of the way by other people, although there were still many more in evidence, making the place look like some kind of bizarre open prison compound.

To be honest, I don't blame people for reclaiming this area, as Parlaiment Square has been a contentious space in London since Blair decided to arbitrarily impose an exclusion zone over the area in response to Brian Haw's protest.

I shall end part 1 here.

Cameraboy

Comments

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part 2?

10.12.2010 19:16

this is good, thanks for posting. would really like to see the rest though - where is part two?

interested

nothing like a peaceful protest that the u.k. media don't like reporting

10.12.2010 19:49

Ha' nothing like a peaceful protest that the u.k. media don't like reporting on it's too peaceful, it's the kind the government likes to see and hear.

Does anyone know?

10.12.2010 21:40

A good article. Just one question. The author wrote he arrived at parliament sq at 2.30 so doesnt describe what happened when the march came to a halt at the junction onto whitehall. The march was as i understand, to turn left and along whitehall. I was there at that point, but not right at the front of the march, but coz we thought we would get kettled at that point, people started breaking out of the march and onto north side of parl sq. Had riot vans blocked the front of the march and stopped it moving?

Ken

Part 2 on its way...

11.12.2010 14:17

I'm working on part 2 at the moment, but have to do some image processing before it's ready to publish, so it should appear later on today.

Comment 3 response:

I arrived quite late at Parlaiment Square so didn't witness how people reclaimed the space - if anyone else did, please tell us what happened.

By the time I got there, the exit back to Embankment appeared to be well and truly blocked off by several rows of police. Hopefully when I publish the next set of photos this will make it clearer what was happening.

Perhaps I should also point out that when I got home on Thursday night, I was so mad about what I saw the police doing, I was incapable of writing anything coherent about it until the next day!