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After Nov 9: Where do we go from here?

ALARM | 11.11.2011 10:45 | Analysis | Education | Policing | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements

Were the Nov. 9th protests a game changer as we suggested they could be in a previous post? The answer is yes but certainly not in the way that we were hoping events would turn out! The hoped for meeting up of the sparks and students to unite as one protest was shafted by what can best be described as ‘total policing’ tactics from the Met aimed at intimidating and frustrating protesters every step of the way.

From the reports we’ve heard so far, the electrician’s action was pretty lively with roads being blocked for a while but the cops soon moved in with the result that the sparks ended up being kettled. You have to go back a long way to remember the last time plod took action against striking workers in this way. What is happening with the sparks action is having a resonance by word of mouth with other construction workers as doubtless they potentially face the shafting the electricians are confronting. We passed a few construction sites yesterday and the march was definitely getting the thumbs up from the builders watching us pass by. What is frustrating and quite scary is the almost total media blackout of the sparks dispute. The journalists are aware this dispute is going on but it’s hard to escape the suspicion that pressure is being applied from high up to keep this story under wraps.

Front of Student March - rikkiindymedia[at]gmail.com
Front of Student March - rikkiindymedia[at]gmail.com


As for the student protest, the turn out was less than the 10,000 that was being predicted in some quarters – it was closer to the 5,000 / 6,000 mark which from the feedback we were getting in the build up was pretty much what we were expecting. There were a variety of factors that contributed to this and there are probably some lessons that could be learnt from the mobilisation process. However, the draconian sentences being handed out to protesters from the wave of actions at the end of 2010 plus those involved in the summer riots is inevitably going to have a chilling effect on the desire to hit the streets and protest. When you add in blatant intimidation from the Met and their paymasters in the government with the authorisation of the use of baton rounds plus the promise of ‘robust’ policing, then in the face of that, the turnout was pretty reasonable.

The new commissioner for the Met, Bernard Hogan-Howe, was obviously keen to put on a good show yesterday to impress his paymasters in the government. How did the Met achieve this? They did this by turning much of the march into a moving kettle shuffling along at a pace dictated by the plod. Every street off the route was blocked by lines of cops and often metal barriers as well. As we went down Fleet Street, before being turned off up Fetter Lane, you could see lines of cops and a massive blue barrier erected across the street to prevent people from getting anywhere near the offices of Goldman Sachs. Going up Fetter Lane, every approach that could have led to Goldman Sachs was blocked by lines of plod and metal barriers. Anyone taking photos of this will have defining images of exactly whose interests the forces of the state are looking after… There’s plenty of propaganda value to be got out of these images!

It appeared that the cops had momentarily lost control when a group of more militant protesters broke surged past the front of the march and broke away to run down towards the Barbican and beyond. The Met hadn’t lost it at all…every exit off the route was blocked by barriers and lines of cops. Sure the militant protesters could run around but it was strictly on terms dictated by the plod who probably permitted this as a way to let off a bit of steam and to ensure the protest was broken up to allow for easier dispersal at the end.

We shouldn’t be surprised at the way yesterday’s protests were policed. Yesterday was the police doing what their paymasters wanted them to do – send out a message that protesting is going to become more frustrating and ultimately more dangerous for anyone taking part. The widespread use of undercover cops on the march was another clear indication of their attempts to intimidate. What we need to bear in mind when faced with the ‘total policing’ tactics we experienced yesterday, is that while the state has considerably more force at its disposal than we could ever dream of getting, they are exercising it from a position of abject fear. They were severely rattled by the student protests at the end of 2010 and totally panicked by the brief wave of riots that swept across England in the summer. The powers that be know the economy is going to nose-dive into a tailspin which has the potential to unleash widespread social unrest – they are desperate to keep the lid on the situation at all costs.

Okay, Nov. 9th proved that for the moment, the state can win a set piece by containing and frustrating a point A to point B march and turning it into a moving kettle. The answer to this little poser is that we don’t give them any more set pieces where they can contain us. The future has to be in dispersed, de-centralised, simultaneous actions taking a variety of forms which will make it much harder for the authorities to track and prioritise which ones they clamp down on. The next National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts action on November 23rd will take the form of walkouts and local actions amongst other things. That is an indication of the way we need to go. It could be all too easy to see Nov. 9th as a setback – let’s not give the powers that be the satisfaction… There are lessons to be learnt for sure but we have it in us to come back and give the state a few surprises!

ALARM
- Homepage: http://www.soundthealarm.org.uk/where-do-we-go-from-here/

Comments

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Hindsight is indeed a wonderful thing

11.11.2011 11:20

good thoughtful piece. And hindisght is a beautiful thing. One suspects if millbank hadn't kicked off then alarm would be trumpeting the first massive student demo as a boring lost cause. And this is the point.

It took a few sturdy and courageous people to take the initiative that ensured millbank happened. It wasn't alarm doing anything at millbank and it wasn't alalrm doing anything on nov 9.

A critical outisders voice is probably one of the easiest to get away with. I look forward to alarm organising this future dispersed de-centralised event. I look forward to their contribution above and beyond telling us what "we" should have done, always always AFTER the event.

I look forward to the day there's more people activiely involved in any politial action that moaning about it afterwards. Political voyeurs always have the right answers.

Dead End Kids


Not a setback

11.11.2011 18:59

The cops claim they used 4,000 officers to contain a demo which (by their figures) was 2,500 strong...

this poses the question of what they can do when the demo is twice, or five, or ten times as big. After all, although their 2,500 estimate is obviously a piss take, this was only a small (though from what I've seen, admirably militant) demo.

Keep fighting, it's hurting them.

squatticus


Moving Kettle scenario was largely avoidable

12.11.2011 13:49

The "moving kettle" hypothesis was true to an extent, but only because protestors allowed this to happen. It was easy as anything to stroll past the line of cops / police horses at the head of the march and join the photographers etc in front of them, and if enough protestors had done this then the police line would have been effectively kettled inside the march; BUT, despite people trying to encourage other marchers to do this, and despite the police being visibly uncomfortable with this but basically powerless to stop it, most protestors were happy to stay behind the police thereby allowing the "moving kettle" scenario to pan out.

The lesson of previous demos should be that the way to thwart the cops is to keep moving, constantly and quickly, to exploit every opportunity to move to places where the cops can't control you and don't want you to be, and to spend much less time looking towards where the obvious noise is coming from and spend much more time looking over your shoulder and monitoring and reacting to what the cops are doing.

By "quickly" btw I mean WALKING FAST, obviously there are times when you might have to run properly to avoid getting collared, but sometimes running can draw undue attention to yourself as well

Lucy


Should have gone back

12.11.2011 18:25

Some of us tried to turn the head around to no avail. We should have all gone back to Parliament Square when it became obvious that St Pauls was surrounded. 1000's of coppers scrambling to get back to Parliament Square would have been amusing. Keeping mobile is the key-many of those fat cops are very unfit.

gil


release the bats!

13.11.2011 23:35

the best thing about last years demos were the other non-london protests in other cities, Bristol and elsewhere looked pritty upbeat, that London demo was 5000 people, i'm sure a regional demo with school kids etc included in a city like Bristol or Nottingham could top 10,000 protesters.
Focus on the disenfrancaised kids, EMA etc.

the activists should work at making co-ordinated school and colledge wallouts/strikes work. its essental this sort of agitation happens before december cause in January thats when school gets a bit more serious.

captain chinstrap