Police Violence against Kids marching for Education
Laurie Penny documents the brutal, savage treatment dealt to the London demonstrators who marched against cuts to education and found themselves "kettled" (detained without arrest, toilet, shelter, or charge) for eight hours in freezing weather; many of those kettled were children and young teens, as well as pregnant women.
The chant goes up: "what do we want? The right to protest!" At first, the cops give curt answers to the kids demanding to know why they can’t get through. Then they all seem to get some sort of signal, because suddenly the polite copper in front of me is screaming in my face, shoving me hard in the back of the head, raising his baton, and the protesters around me are yelling and running back. Some of them have started to shake down a set of iron railings to get out, and the cops storm forward, pushing us right through those railings, leaving twenty of us sprawling in the rubble of road works with cracked knees. When they realised that they are trapped, the young protesters panic. The crush of bodies is suddenly painful – my scarf is ripped away from me and I can hear my friend Clare calling for her son – and as I watch the second line of police advance, with horses following behind them, as I watch a surge of teenagers carrying a rack of iron railings towards the riot guard and howling to be released, I realise they’re not going to stop, and the monkey instinct kicks in. I scramble up a set of traffic lights, just in time to see a member of the Metropolitan police grab a young protester by the neck and hurl him back into the crowd…
As darkness falls and we realise we’re not going anywhere, the protesters start to light fires to keep warm. First, they burn their placards, the words ‘rich parents for all!’ going up in flames, with a speed and efficiency gleaned from recent CV-boosting outdoor camping activities. Then, as the temperature drops below freezing, they start looking for anything else to burn, notebooks and snack wrappers – although one young man in an anarchist scarf steps in to stop me tossing an awful historical novel onto the pyre. "You can’t burn books," he says, "we’re not Nazis." Read more…
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about 2 years ago
“OFF THE PIGS!!!” The great rally cry of the 60s redux.
about 2 years ago
wow all i can say is wow about this story…
about 2 years ago
And people say the police in my country mistreat people…. I’d like to think it’s more then just our right to bare arms that prevents “kettling” in the US.
Breaking up an unruly or riotous crowd is one thing, but penning them in outdoors with no necessities on a freezing day for 8 hours is just plain torture.
My advice to the citizens of the UK, learn Eskrima so you can defend yourself from those silly sticks they carry and can go home (or at least to a warm jail cell) when they try to pen you in…. and be glad your government doesn’t trust them enough to let them carry guns.
Also, the wonderful combination of cell phone videos and youTube to embarrass your country into stopping that practice….. I bet it only takes one pregnant women or a couple kids being beaten by a big cop broadcast to the world to make them take notice.
about 2 years ago
That kind of contradicts the whole concept of Civil Disobedience which is the foundation of our best form of protest. Gandhi used it to great effect, as did Martin Luther King.
People get hurt and humiliated but the result is the news gets out and the population sees what the government is doing. The violence backfires on them. Riots like those in Los Angeles in 1968 or Chicago result in injury and death, and the general opinion is, ‘Gosh, those protesters kind of deserved it.”
Action against the government is dangerous. People get hurt or killed, even innocent bystanders or pedestrians caught in the melee’. If the protesters sit or lie down and only resist passively, the likelihood for hurt is lessened but not guaranteed.
Still it is the most effective way for a group to get their message across. At least I think so.
about 2 years ago
Sorry dude, but if someone swings a weapon at me, I’m going to be doing my best to take it away from them and I don’t much care if it’s a street thug or a police officer. Whether or not I swing it back at them depends on the situation, how much I believe my life is in danger, and if it’s possible to get away.
I’ve never thrown the first punch in my life, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to be passive while being attacked.
about 2 years ago
This got punched through my normal desire to avoid conflict and to find a peaceful resolution last night.
Sixle is right. Fighting back is our only hope of carving out a niche in a hypocritical social structure. I had to face that fact I am a minority and as a target of the growing conservative norm, there is no peaceful green lawns unless we build communities as we used to and band together, or go underground and pretend as we also did, until outted and destroyed like a virus. My son, a hard working, educated conservative young man shakes his head at me because I am flamboyant… and does not understand that playing the ‘white man’s ‘ game is only a facade at best. I wasted my life trying to work a way into that square hole just to realize too late that I cant and I shouldn’t.
about 2 years ago
Please explain to me, what is the white man’s game? I would really like to know as I do not believe that white men have any game. We are just too damn nice and nieve to the world.
about 2 years ago
Sorry, I usually stay well clear of the whole gun issue because I know how proud you Americans are of your guns.
But this I just couldn’t ignore. The fact that you have the right to keep and bare arms does nothing to prevent kettling in the US, you don’t have the right to shoot police officers just because you have the right to have a gun.
And on the subject of “defending yourself from those silly sticks they carry”, if you attack a police officer you get arrested, that is the same in the USA as it is in 90% of civilized countries.
And just so you know, our police not carrying guns has nothing to do with the government trusting them, there are plenty of armed police units in nearly every city in the UK especially in London, and I’m not talking about swat-type units that only get called out for major incidents, I mean actual officers out on the streets that carry guns, and there is nearly always a few of them present at high-profile protests.
Our police may take harsh tactics against protests, but don’t even try to pretend for a second that the UK is the only country that does, after all, it’s the USA’s Pentagon who labels protests as low-level terrorism, which opens up protesters to the might of the USA’s counter-terrorism legislation, of which is no where near as harsh as any UK policing tactics against protesters.
All that being said, if this article linked to the extreme violence that happened at the last student protests in London, then what is happening this time wouldn’t seem so harsh. That doesn’t mean that I support the actions of the police, or the actions of the back stabbing politicians who said that would abolish tuition fees, and are now supporting a cap increase.
about 2 years ago
“of which is no where near as harsh as any UK policing tactics against protesters.”
Should be
of which is a lot harsher than any UK policing tactics against protesters.
Dunno what I was smoking when I wrote that part…
about 2 years ago
“The fact that you have the right to keep and bare arms does nothing to prevent kettling in the US, you don’t have the right to shoot police officers just because you have the right to have a gun.”
I never said you had the right to, but what do you think would have happened in the situation above if even 1% of that crowd had had some sort of fire arm?
My guess is SOMEONE would have used theirs and others would have quickly followed suit, esp if the description of the initial rush by the police was accurate.
When you’re in panic mode or in the frenzied state that tends to occur at protests, you do things that you wouldn’t normally do. Concepts of right and wrong or legal and illegal just don’t factor into the equation.
You act on your instincts and that’s it. No matter how much you might like to think you wouldn’t do such a thing, you CANNOT know until you’re in that sort of situation.
“And on the subject of “defending yourself from those silly sticks they carry”, if you attack a police officer you get arrested, that is the same in the USA as it is in 90% of civilized countries.”
Hence the word “defend”. In the article it said: “If anyone tries to leave, shout at them and hit them with sticks.”
I’ve got no problem defending myself from someone trying to swing anything at me. They want to arrest me for it, fine…. I’ll be more then happy to inform my lawyer about the police brutality and have him file a complaint.
“Our police may take harsh tactics against protests, but don’t even try to pretend for a second that the UK is the only country that does”
I have never had any illusions about the police-state that my country is becoming. I simply wasn’t talking about events that were happening in my country.
about 2 years ago
I’m sorry, remind me again why students have a right to free education for as long as they want to remain students? Why should I, a hard-working tax payer, pay for an adult (18+) person to receive a free university education that will increase their income capacity for life?
If every student granted a free education, took advantage of it with dilligent study, rather than treating Uni like 3 – 5 year vacation, I might have a bit more sympathy, but looking at the drop out rate, and the rate of students who never go on to use their free education in the work market, I think the whole system was long overdue for a rethink.
It’s things like this that give social security a bad name.
about 2 years ago
What doesnt seem to come into any of the reporting here is that anyone under the age of 16 protesting was truanting from school. The National Union of Students (aimed at college or university students) has been recruiting school kids as young as 13 to “strike” and protest. The previous protest led to buildings being trashed, and in one case a fire extinguisher being thrown off a roof building, which could have easily killed someone.
The police were then criticised for failing to protect by being too soft. This time they contained the protesters and released them gradually.
The right to peaceful protest is enshrined in the UK more than anywhere else, but there is a violent element creeping in at every turn and that is not peaceful protest.
about 2 years ago
Unfortunately, every protest event is infiltrated both by violent militants within their own ranks, and by agitators promoting the opposite agenda. The media war means that protests are never black and white any more.
As for truanting – well, I can’t imagine a less relevant comment to add to either side of the argument. If the kids believe that their futures are being jeapordised, I think an afternoon off school is a bloody insignificant price to pay to make their voices heard.
about 2 years ago
This sounds a wee bit dramatized. But good for them. Education is the most important thing in the world, and it’s unfair that governments cut its budget and/or make it obscenely expensive (as is the case in the States).
about 2 years ago
How far into one’s life should free or affordable education be provided by others who may not want to follow that route, or have the intellectual luxury?
I’d love to go to Uni – should taxpayers pay for me too?
I think that those who derive the benefit should be the ones who pay.
A bigger issue is the level of wasteful beaurocracy and expenditure that means a university is so damned expensive in the first place!
about 2 years ago
Cell phones . . . cell phones . . . cell phones!!! Use the technology! Stay non-violent. Let the police and the government do all the nasty stuff.
about 2 years ago
Throughout history, particularly the last 250 years, the British have shown that when authority speaks, you had better listen or suffer the consequences. This is true of any authoritarian government.
One only need read of the Boar War, the early concentration camps, the Salt Satyagraha in Dandi, India organizing the largest non-violent civil disobedience protest at the time against the British Raj Salt Laws to see the violence to unarmed civilians.
I don’t know many regimes or Nations that have not used violence against their own citizens to stop actions the government considered dangerous.
Yes this is extreme and terrible but due to ‘the war on terror’ governments now have the freedom and the right to squash any form of civil disobedience or any form of protest.
We are spending huge amounts of money we don’t have to fight a war on terror when terror is not an object but a result of actions taken to make the populace afraid. It worked. I cannot see any way to actually fight a war against (not really ‘on’) terror other than with resolve and steadfast determination not to buckle under pressure, as the British did to such great effect against the Luftwaffe in 1940.
Most people today are unwilling and unable to do that. At the time, honestly most British were unwilling to have destruction rain down on them but were forced into it by circumstance. Im not sure any people today could willingly and consciously accept the idea that bombers might kill them so the population can continue on as before.
Of course the government as a form of representative government is directly influenced by the times. Showing resolve rather than to show a strong military response would not go over well with today’s population.
* I fully admit I am thread bare on facts but I hope there is enough to show what my point is structured on. It is simply too hard and too tedious to prepare an ad hoc comment with proper documentation.
So in advance, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa… my bad.
about 2 years ago
Yes this is terrible… These budget cuts to education are made by the same politicians saying that the youth hold the future. Maybe that only counts for the youth of the upper class? The youth from priviliged backgrounds with parents capable of paying the extremely high course fees? I’m very glad I live in the Netherlands where state scholarships are still handed out. Keep up the activism, it worked here, it will work in the UK.
about 2 years ago
Mmmm this isnt so accurate id really say, i live in england and am a student (didnt take part in the protest but am all for it) but police didnt handle the situation badly. If anything they didnt do much for both of the protests. Most of the protesting was acutally done as ‘sit ins’ in college/sixth form common rooms rather than taking to the streets. Its more of a media thing hyping things up worse than they actually are.
about 2 years ago
I’ve had experience of direct-action protests in the 1980′s and 1990′s and I don’t think the reports of police batonning kids sounds far-fetched- having witnessed what depths the State will go to when they think they are not being closely monitored (and btw- if you were to film those policemen in action you’d have your equipment confiscated as filming Police is actually an offence.
If the Police think that they can frighten people away from legal and legitimate protest they are sorely mis-reading the mood of the general public. I am glad to see that finally this current generation of young people have woken up and been prepared to stand up and be counted. Political awareness and activism has long been dead amongst young people generally in this country.
Sixra, I am glad we don’t have the ‘right to bear arms’. Leaving aside the well-rehearsed moral arguments, I think that non-violent protest is a much more effective medium. Ghandi had the best ideas.
about 2 years ago
I think our governments are saving that bloody € and help the rich to get richer.
This is so stupid, you may actually think were criminals when we disagree or worry….
nala.
about 2 years ago
Hey, this story is a little one sided. There was far more violence by the students than the cops! Students were invading buildings and shizz… And I’m not on the side of the police either coz they were not good! Plus I am gunna be in the first year of students to put up with these cuts, all I’m saying is a little one sided!
about 2 years ago
I was in the Canterbury protests, the only violence was by the police, when they decided to try and punish us for being there and protesting. They started taking kids knees out and swinging their batons at random into us. They arrested four kids and held them for the rest of the protest by the side of the road, belly down, for 2hrs in the cold.
about 2 years ago
The UK police are cynical bastards with not an once of common sense between them.
Don’t ever trust one.
about 2 years ago
On that one, I totally agree.
about 2 years ago
Having no first hand information here, I can’t make a judgement about the accuracy of the report. Hey, even if I was there, my bias would colour the opinion I formed.
Still, it bothers me when journalists use time-worn cliches like “many of those kettled were children and young teens, as well as pregnant women.” You’re either an activist or you’re an innocent, found there clearly by accident. If you’re an activist, you know what to expect from authority figures. You don’t get a pass because you’re a child, a teen or a pregnant woman. If you’re an innocent, stay home.
I’m all for healthy protest, particularly peaceful (on all sides). Protest til the cows come home, but if you’re capable of making the decision to confront others, expect that confrontation may come back at you. You don’t have to put up with it, but you should know it’s a possibility.
about 2 years ago
I’m ashamed that this made it onto my favourite blog. I’m a student myself, and yes I was there, although for reasons different to what seemed to be the ignorant majority. Personally, I’m not against a rise in tuition fees – it was the cuts to education I was against – and I don’t think it was right that these two issues became merged under one catastrophic banner, in this case. This article reports largely on hearsay and an opportunity to promote scandal. The response of the police on the day was largely appropriate – in fact – at many points I saw the police (and let’s not forget these are innocent civilians doing a job) were pushed into a situation where they were physically assaulted. Why does it suddenly become acceptable for protesters to attack another group of humans just because they are in uniform?
Anyway, there were atrocious acts of violence on both sides. The people that resorted to riotous acts of vandalism on the Conservative HQ completely destroyed the validity of the protest. Students can’t be blamed for this, although unfortunately, and inevitably, the media decided to.
about 2 years ago
Well, I obviously was not there so I only have a couple reports I’ve read to go by for the specifics.
However, I have been in a LOT of crowds over the years (both political and nonpolitical) and have found myself in the middle of a riot situation that made national news here in the US. Speaking from my experiences in those I can say two things for certain:
1. The media rarely reports accurately what happens in riots or what happens to lead up to them. The only report of the one I found myself surrounded by that accurately reported what I witnessed was in Rolling Stone, of all places.
2. The absolute worst thing you can to to any crowd, riotous or peaceful, is to pen them in with no escape… esp in an uncomfortable environment like freezing weather. If they’re already rioting it’s just going to make it worse and if they’re peaceful it WILL lead to panic and/or rioting.
A crowd mentality can be very scary and is an unpredictable thing, once it develops (whether peaceful or otherwise) the only valid options any authority has is to break it up and arrest those they can or to let it run it’s course.
If this crowd was peaceful before the “kettling” began, whoever was in charge of the police is solely responsible for any violence or property damage that occurred.
If the crowd was violent before-hand, then all the police did was to exacerbate an already bad situation.
about 2 years ago
Aren’t there any radicals on this forum? Reading most of this sounds like a lecture from my Aunt Polly, and for a Christian fundamentalist she’s farther out than most here.
about 2 years ago
Yes, Naked, but some of us have simply gotten too old to realize we have been hypnotized by the goodies of society. We need to band together and fight back.
They do not give us any options other than to ‘fit in’ and be accepted. And generating the kind of self-revulsion and hopelessness that causes beautiful young people to kill themselves, burn out on drugs, alcohol or go slowly, quietly mad. Damn it people, we are not sheep to be herded about.
about 2 years ago
Agreed! I got a big kick out of an earlier poster who called the police “innocent people doing their job”. What a fucking laugh! It’s the same story around the world.
about 2 years ago
Our pigs are every bit as dodgy as everyone elses, it’s just a good job the bulk of the bastards are not armed.
I was arrested recently, the first time in years and I was amused at all the PC bullshit, I had to endure.
But they now have a whole new rulebook with which to beat you.
Kettling is not pleasant but it’s better than being attacked by a redneck militia.
about 2 years ago
“I was just doing my job, your Honor…. taking my orders from above like everyone else. Im innocent of murdering all those … people.” yeah. Ive heard that speech before.
about 2 years ago
Except that they’ve proven people will do things like that, things they normally wouldn’t do when an authority figure orders them to.
As much as it seems like a cop out or a bunch of crap, it is, in fact, true.
about 2 years ago
This story is so obviously one-sided and biased that I actually laughed. Rarely do I laugh at the computer screen.
Let’s call apples as apples, there was a lot of violence amongst juvenile youth who had no rational idea of how to protest peacefully.
about 2 years ago
i’m sure as an australian you know exactly what is going on on britain’s streets.
not.
about 2 years ago
What does my being Australian have anything to do with the nature of the story?
I have been to protests and such before, and I used to have the same distorted view as you did. This was until I found that the police actually created a much more safer environment, and that the people creating problems at protests are almost always the juvenile youth who believe they have some God-given right to raise hell. They embarrass themselves.
The story is quite obviously one-sided, it’s petty and ridiculous that people speak of police brutality when in fact we have the police to thank for our safety in many cases. I’m not saying police brutality doesn’t exist, but naive people such as yourself who are oh-so skeptical of the police will no doubt be the first people to scream “where are the police” when they need it the most.
The police are not violent criminals like this article would make you believe. People such as yourself obviously take for granted the duties and responsibilities that these men and women undertake to create a safer society for people such as yourself. This sort of mentality you carry is cowardly.
I’m not saying we should not be skeptical of the police and higher authority, hence why I believe anything and everything should be questioned and heavily scrutinised. However, it’s laughable that people have the police to thank for creating a safer society and yet do nothing but spit on the luxury of having people to keep you safe.
Next time a criminal breaks into your house, I assume the oh-so evil police won’t be called?
about 2 years ago
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut/
about 2 years ago
Your point is what exactly, Josh?
I could link you to articles of gay people committing crimes, but that doesn’t mean there is a correlation between being gay and committing crimes.
You have a somewhat dumbed-down logic of applying collective punishment or making a collective generalisation based on the actions of some police. We wouldn’t dare make such a baseless generalisation of gays should some gays commit crimes, or of Jews should some Jews commit crimes. Your logic is not only flawed but incredibly naive, with the absence of any common sense.
Josh, people such as yourself sitting in their nice comfortable armchair will no doubt find it effortless and amusing to blame the police. Should a criminal steal your chair, you’d be up-in-arms crying and carrying on that the police assist you.
The saddest thing of all is that you take for granted your security, your safety, your freedom. The society we have, the government we have and the police we have here in the West have worked better than those in other countries to protect, understand and safeguard personal freedoms. You spit on those things when you fail to use common sense with your thoughts and words.
about 2 years ago
Generalisations do nobody any favours: Anyone saying either “the police” or “the students” or even “both the police and the students” are responsible for the violence is wrong. What they mean to say is that a minority of either group is responsible – I know a few police officers and many students and I can’t really visualise any of them beating unarmed protestors or trashing a police vehicle respectively.
What does annoy me though are those who use the excuse “I was only doing my job.” It is the worst excuse it is possible to give in these situations, and in a way it’s almost better to do something you’d regret for a misguided cause you believe in than simply because someone else told you to.
about 2 years ago
I went to the Brighton ‘Stop the Cuts’ 2nd protest with an audio recorder. About 80 to 100 riot police were there, dogs, shields the whole shebang!
It wasn’t quite to the ’8 hour kettle’ of the London protest, however kettling wes used yesterday to prevent anymore disruptions to the road.
about 2 years ago
Lol’d at the sign
“I’m fucking a policeman.
He’s a Bottom!”
about 2 years ago
Too one-sided and emotive. There has since been more trouble at another ‘student’ demo, with the same results. Again, if the march had followed the route agreed with the organisers, to the site of a rally, there would have been no trouble. A bunch of agitators decided to deliberately go elsewhere, and the police reacted. Undoubtedly individual officers acted improperly, but many demonstators, in both marches, were actively aggressive , and attacked police and property. In the latest march, one son of a multi-millionaire tried to drag a flag from the Cenotaph in Whitehall, an outrageous and shameful act for anyone to try. There’s fault on both sides, but the news conference by loony-left marxist students and lecturers blaming the police for all the troule is just bollocks.
By the way, US citizens do not have the right to bear (not bare) arms, since local militias were abolished in favour of national armed forces. Read the amendment again.
about 2 years ago
So glad to see this being posted here.
For anyone blaming the students:
protesters were kettled into tiny spaces and were unable to leave for food and water, to go home, or even to go to the bathroom. If they tried to leave, they were beaten. The metropolitan police yet again were the cause of the violence. Ian tomlinson was killed by them, and another boy suffered severe brain damage due to them for just walking home. It is sick for anyone to defend them.
Of course, not all police were there being violent, but many protestors claimed it was about a 60/40 split of bad to good.
This wouldn’t happen outside London.