Lies!

The MET commissioner during a press release claimed there was “no record” of the cavalry charge on protestors.  A clever twist of words, the cavalry charge in question was on the parents, friends and family who had come to find out why there was a kettling of young children and not on the initial protest.  I wonder if there is any record of primary aged children and pensioners chanting “Shame on you” at the mounted officers.  Two people were trampled during this unprovoked attack.

The paltry excuses used for the kettle seem to warp the space-time continuum.  The police had lined up ready to kettle the students including mounted officers and vans placed across the road.  They had no intention of allowing the protestors to go past parliament.  The abandoned van was claimed to have been following the protestors, yet magically appeared unmanned at the front.  Knowing Bob Broadhurst was in charge, the seasoned activists saw this coming and left the march as soon as we saw the police mobilising, stopping for coffee.  This allowed us to watch from the outside as the frustration turned to a little bit of teenage rebel behaviour.  The fires were not lit while people were marching; they were lit when they had been falsely imprisoned wearing nothing but a school uniform in the freezing cold. The people trapped in the kettle included students, tourists and builders working on the road. Police baton charged the kettle indiscriminately on several occasions; the twitter reports from inside the kettle show just how many people were injured.  Outside the kettle, section 60 was abused, laws broken regularly through intimidation.  I myself needed to be quite forward with the fact I knew my rights when I was threatened with arrest for refusing to give my name on Horseguards Avenue, a blatant attempt at intimidation others less aware of the law would easily fall for.  Basically police oppression was rife as per usual.  Only two reported police injuries (which may or may not be a direct result of a protestors action) compared to the hundreds of protestors injured shows the direction of the violence.  Cameron should look closer to home when he claims, “People obviously have the right to peaceful demonstration but there is no place for violence and intimidation”.

Clegg continues with his lies, using the tired argument of an extremist hijack, outside agitators.  This was comical when Porter first used it.  The latest riot porn is of a teenage boy still in school uniform kicking an abandoned police van.  Far from hardcore violent extremists it is pretty standard teenage behaviour where I come from.  I would venture that given that situation in other parts of Britain, that van would have been alight in minutes.

Patrick Kielty summed it up in his twitter note to protestors a while ago; “No petrol bombs. No balaclavas. No plastic bullets. In Belfast that's a Rave not a Riot. See me after”

My favourite quote came from an officer explaining that the kettle was needed in order to arrest “the leaders of the anarchists”.   Despite the oxymoron here, the thinking is that as the students seem to be ignoring the socialists that so often try to hijack popular protest to inflate their paltry numbers, the students must be organised by anarchists.  The truth of the matter is that this is a grass roots movement with people making their own decisions.  Autonomy rules.  Centralised power is not a requirement.  A great example of this was that the police did not stop the van from being set alight, a group of young girls dressed in school uniform surrounded it and suddenly the consensus was that it was a bad idea. People did finally find a use for all the socialist paper boys, they were mugged for bonfire material.

In other news, I am at the UCL occupation and all is well.  Check the blog.

https://ucloccupation.wordpress.com/