The debate about the use of stop and search – be it protesters or young black and Asian men, be it in the case of stopping knife crime or deterring terrorism – is one that has (understandably, perhaps) been fixed on the police results rather than the times they get it wrong.

But it is in the cases where they get it wrong that attitudes towards police are sharpened and the rights we feel we have as citizens practically defined. So I offer this card for readers to download, print and carry. It warns police officers that if a stop and search is intrusive, unlawful or malicious, you will pursue the issue through the Independent Police Complaints Commission and, if necessary, to civil proceedings. You might want to offer this card to an officer before a search takes place. Enjoy.

Click here to download a pdf of the card. Then print, cut it out, fold it in half and carry it around with you.

GDSC info: Click here for information on your rights if you get stopped and search or arrested.

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Tuesday

(At 00.15” a riot police man is clearly seen hitting a protester with a fire extinguisher)

In response to the arrests, the entire demonstration headed to the police headquarters (GADA) demanding their immediate release.

More info, soon.

Pictures from the clashes:

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/12/02/430-2000-students-march-against-education-reform/

http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/12/02/athens-sends-its-solidarity-to-the-struggle-of-british-students/

We live in a society in which we are told there is no money and yet see it washing around the upper echelons

Students in Glasgow protest against forthcoming cuts to higher education.

Sometimes you move between worlds too quickly for comfort. I certainly did this week. I went from talking to students staging an occupation at University College London to a pre-Christmas do full of movers and shakers. One group of people were complacent, self-indulgent and had a huge sense of entitlement. And guess what, it wasn’t the students! I wondered just when my generation had got just so bloody complacent.

The unwritten law says protest is something you grow out of. We drift rightwards. Activism is simply a rite of passage that gives way to a life full of passive grumbling. This is the only way I can comprehend how a generation that had free education, access to jobs and housing feels at ease denying these things to the young. This is truly mystifying. Is the word “deficit” enough to make us lose all our political marbles?

No one should be surprised that after six months in limbo the students should be at the forefront of resistance to this government. The Labour party does not yet resemble an opposition, rather Ed et al seem to be on a collective gap year.

Some of the students involved in the occupations have worked for the Labour party; some for the Lib Dems. They are not naive about party politics but clearly feel let down by it. Demos, flashmobs, occupations and the spectacles of direct action are the only ways they can register their disgust. They really aren’t going to wait for the next election for the head of Nick Clegg. Caught up in the immediacy of protest, everything is happening in the present. This is the excitement of such a movement.

I felt this energy walking past the homemade shrine “RIP education” into the Jeremy Bentham room at UCL. I also felt the fatigue. It is knackering sleeping on the floor of a cold building, whatever the cause is. This was a room filled with people living on bad sandwiches and snatched sausage rolls, downed with Red Bull and a rush of hope.

Yes, it was exactly like every protest I have been on, and, yes, it was completely different. Some of what was happening was immediately recognisable to me and some new. What is most impressive is how far these students have come in a couple of weeks. They are the opposite of just about every stereotype that is used about them. Call me old-fashioned but I hardly see them as hardcore anarchists, as their main contention is wanting access to state institutions. They do not want to drop out of the system but rather to drop in. They are also way too efficient to be proper anarchists.

It is fantastic that these young people, who we have been told have been blinded by celebrity culture and are mainly Facebook narcissists, soon made contact with other causes. Students at UCL also campaigned for a living wage for their cleaning staff. When I was there union leaders were talking solidarity with them. These kids, unlike their elders, are not scared of the word “class”. Into this hub of activity come other, younger students wanting to see how its done: polite, well-spoken boys who want to stage occupations in their sixth forms about the removal of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA).

The media of course has banged on about tuition fees as the children of media people go to university. Little has been said about EMA, a means-tested benefit, possibly because those who live on less than £20,000 a year are not in the middle-class bubble. To remove this in effect prohibits a whole sector of society even getting the qualifications they need to get university.

The students at least know their figures – and how to widen out their protest. One girl told me her vice-chancellor was earning £280,000 a year and would be presiding over an 80% cut in an arts and humanities course. That same night people drinking good wine bandied about other figures that justify tuition fees. “£7 a week is easy to pay back.” “It doesn’t really make any difference whether fees are £3,000 or £6,000 or £9,000.” To accept the inevitability of this is one thing, but are we to embrace the complete marketisation of all we hold dear? Are we happy to live with the decimation of arts and social sciences? Do we not see this as straightforward ideological attack? Do we think it is acceptable to make one generation pay for the sins of another?

Some don’t like the word mandate. I don’t particularly, but it is clear we did not vote for this exactly. Even those who demonised the first wave of protest are having a hard time staying outraged. The sons and daughters of Middle England are indeed revolting. What is more, everything is documented and recorded. We have seen the police who hit people in the face, the “pre-emptive” kettling, the Benny Hill-style chases. The police are puzzled by these “leaderless” protests. These kids are able to quickly organise new kinds of creative chaos. They are wired. Always only one tweet away from the next happening.

Yet old-style meetings about meetings were going on while I was there, reminding me of that old quip about socialism taking up too many evenings. These people have discovered the politics of self-organisation quickly. Some of what was going on was the painfully slow but necessary business of process. How does such a diverse group make rules for itself? While people show their agreement with speakers by raising hands and wiggling fingers, jazz hands-style, all around are people tapping away on laptops. Some are more seasoned than others. Some are PhD students who mournfully say they would just a like a job. Others want to bring down capitalism. As any thinking 17-year-old does. Somehow this iPhone coalition is working.

It is providing a brilliant political education. It is a great thing to work with others for the public good, to feel your own power and know its limitations. Collective action is shot through with adrenalin. It is the province of the young. For what pray, is the province of the old? Limp lobbying and the absolute resignation that nothing can be done? That the public can go hang because privately we can all scrape through?

A young physicist asked me how to get through to his flatmates who didn’t care as they were not affected by the cuts. We agreed you to have ask the big questions about what kind of society you want to live in. And we live in one in which we are told there is no more money while we see it washing around the upper echelons.

A line is being drawn. Romantically, it may be a coalition of resistance. Even if it’s not, I do not understand why we don’t support young people. Have we all been psychically kettled? Something has gone very wrong when pragmatic realism produces the Cable compromise: not voting for a policy you are in charge of. If this is grown-up politics, then we all need to get down with the youth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/04/students-supporting-psychically-kettled

Saturday 4th December
UK Uncut: Latest wave of national protests this time targeting tax dodging Philip Green’s Arcadia Group (Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and British Home Stores) as well as good old Vodafone, Lloyds TSB, Boots and Barclays. Actions already planned in Birmingham, Edinburgh, London, Leeds, Liverpool, Reading, Oxford, Nottingham and Manchester
http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/
http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/targets

Saturday 4th December
Stop the Fees Demo at Lib Dem London Conference (facebook link)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=148974651817209

Saturday 4th December
March on Parliament for a Zero Carbon Britain
12 noon: Assemble at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park. Building a Zero Carbon Britain means Climate Jobs Now: we have a positive vision not only for addresing the global threat of climate catastrophe but also for the economic crisis.
http://www.campaigncc.org

Sunday 5th December
Student protests being planned in towns and cities (facebook link – requires logon)
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=172969552731286

Sunday 5th December
3rd London Student Assembly: No More Kettles
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=122031574526310

Wednesday 8th December
TOWER HAMLETS PROTEST OF FULL COUNCIL MEETING – £70M CUTS
Tower Hamlets HOOPS (Hands Off our Public Services) Lobby Tower Hamlets full Council meeting on Monday 8th December at 6pm, against £70m+ cuts to jobs and services. Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, London E14 2BG.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Hoops-Tower-Hamlets/100001509794712#!/event.php?eid=177519458940227

Thursday 9th December
NCAF National Day of Student Action
http://anticuts.org.uk

Saturday 11th December
NCAF National Day of Action
“Workers, students, pensioners: All To The Street!”
http://anticuts.org.uk

PLUS:

(depending which day the fees vote in parliament is… mid-December maybe 14th Dec)

NUS/UCU National Protests on the Day before Fees Vote
NUS/UCU National Mass Lobby of Parliament Day of Fees Vote, followed by rally + candle demo
http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=5141

A policeman hits a student protester on the student protest on the 30th of November at trafalgar square. Please can you send this to all your friends, the media, post it on fb, tweet it, people need to see this police brutality.

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Riot police officer U1202 punches student in head at london protest

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Police fail to kettle student protest

The Agenda on Press TV on Saturday night, hosted by Yvonne Ridley, discussed the student protesters and drew links between them and the Gaza protesters.

Sukant Chandan of Sons of Malcolm was on the program with an ex senior Met Police Officer David Michael and a right-wing LibDem Andy Marvin.

(Don’t worry about the title of the program on the site, Press TV made a mistake, it is the right show)

Link to program

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advocate

Scotland Yard is under pressure after video footage emerged of police officers on horseback charging a crowd of protesters during a demonstration against increases in university tuition fees, 24 hours after they denied that horses charged the crowd.

Footage posted on YouTube showed mounted police riding at speed into a crowd of around 1,000 protesters who had gathered south of Trafalgar Square on Wednesday night.

The footage of the horse charge came as Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, declined to rule out joining future demonstrations against fees increases. Asked on BBC radio if he would join future protests, Miliband said: “I was quite tempted to go out and talk to them [the protesters]. Peaceful demonstrations are part of our society. As Labour leader I am willing to talk to people who are part of them.”

The Tories accused him of “dithering” over the issue.

At a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority the day after the protests, the Met’s commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, was asked if there had been horse charges at the protests. He replied: “I was at the debrief last night, there was no reference to that whatsoever and I have no reference to it.”

The Met was also accused last night of provoking protesters into criminality. Another piece of footage from a Sky News cameraman 12 minutes before the police decision to contain the protesters showed demonstrators milling around by a police van, which the Met said they had abandoned because “officers felt vulnerable”. The video has now given rise to accusations that the van was left deliberately to “bait” protesters. It was later vandalised.

At Thursday’s MPA meeting, Joanne McCartney, a MPA member, pressed Stephenson to clarify the situation over the horseback charge by officers. He said: “Of course I will, but in doing that I don’t want to then create a headline saying I’m acknowledging something’s happened.”

Later that day, a Met spokesperson said: “Police horses were involved in the operation, but that didn’t involve charging the crowd.” The spokesperson said horses may have been used “to help control the crowd for everyone’s benefit”, but added “police officers charging the crowd – we would say: no, they did not charge the crowd.”

In a statement after the YouTube footage was posted, the Met said: “The use of police horses to disperse and distance the crowd was an appropriate and proportionate tactic at that time in the given circumstances.”

The force’s public order tactics have been under intense scrutiny following last year’s controversial handling of the G20 protests, which resulted in the death of newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson. The force was later investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission over allegations it “deliberately misled” the public over Tomlinson’s death. The IPCC concluded its inquiry last year, but the findings have yet to be published.

The video of the police charge was taken when students, some hurling missiles at police, congregated to call for the release of fellow protesters trapped inside a police cordon for six hours. The footage was shot by Fred Tscepp, a 22-year-old graduate, from Brunel University.

The charge – believed to be one of two horse charges in the space of an hour missed by TV cameras – sparked panic in the crowd, which included school pupils, at least two mothers who had come to collect children and a pregnant woman.

It is not uncommon for police to use horses in public order scenarios, but charges into crowds are rare.

The charges in London took place without warning around 7pm, after a line of officers holding back the crowd on Whitehall suddenly parted, allowing mounted officers waiting behind to surge through.

McCartney, a Labour representative, said she would seek further clarification from the commissioner. “[Sir Paul's] was a response I expected, however knowing what happened at the G20, a lot of evidence came out later from citizen journalists, and it was quite clear when I mentioned the charging that he wasn’t aware that there had been that activity with horses, that he hadn’t got all the information there, but we’ll have to wait and see I think.”

Eleven witnesses came forward to confirm they were charged by horses around 7pm, in an incident that was also witnessed by journalists.

Moments after the horse charge, the video shows a pregnant woman in considerable distress. The radio station LBC identified the woman, named Anastasia, who said she was pushed by the horse into a corner. “I thought: ‘That’s the end of me and the baby’ – that’s the idea that went through my head,” she said.

Sara Tomlinson, 45, and Margot Turner, 55, two mothers, also confirmed they were charged when they arrived to collect their children, who were being “kettled”.

“We were running and trying not to fall over,” said Tomlinson.

Jenny Love, 22, who graduated from Bath University in July, said: “When the horses charged I was fairly near the front of the demo, where we were very tightly packed in, and found myself very quickly on the floor where I assumed the foetal position and covered my head while people simply ran over me.”

Yesterday student occupations were continuing in at least nine universities – including sit-ins in Leeds, Cambridge, Manchester, Edinburgh, University College London, Brighton, Newcastle and the School of African and Oriental Studies in London. More than 16,000 people are signed up for the next day of action on Tuesday.

Sir Alan Langlands, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council For England (HEFCE), warned yesterday that the row risks hitting institutions financially by damaging their reputation in the lucrative overseas student market. “There are a lot of risks attached to this,” Langlands told the council’s annual meeting in London.

“One of the things to think about is a loss of reputation. People are watching this very carefully indeed.”

The government plans to raise the basic threshold for tuition fees at English universities to £6,000 a year, with institutions allowed to charge up to £9,000 in “exceptional circumstances”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/26/student-protests-police-under-fire

A short film about the student walkout on Wednesday 24th November. Over 100,000 thousand students took part in protests across Britain in response to the Government’s proposal to drastically cut education funding. This short film focuses on the London protests. Please spread far and wide!

The Gabber.org

Student Tuition Fees Protest from fil kaler on Vimeo.

Over 10,000 students demonstrated in central London against the ConDem governments proposed university fees hike.

They were part of a national mobilization that involved demonstrations, walk outs and occupations all over England.

As the protest moved towards Parliament Square , officers implemented the controversial crowd containment tactic know as “kettling”.

Protesters attempted to brake thought police lines, but were met with lines of riot police wielding batons.

Westminster, London, UK

24 / 11 / 10

© Fil Kaler 2010