Sixty-eight was a year of student protests across the capitals of the world. They chanted ‘London Paris Rome Berlin – we shall fight and we shall win’. In March 1968, 25,000 students hit the streets to protest against the Vietnam War. Many hundreds broke away and headed for the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, where the police horses were sent in and heads were cracked. A 24-year-old Mick Jagger was there, with Tariq Ali, and wrote Street Fighting Man about the violence. The opening lines ‘Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy/Cause summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy’ served as an anthem for the year of marches and smoke bombs.
It wasn’t a revolutionary moment, of course, or anything close to it. The students were overwhelmingly middle class, affluent, and benefiting from a university system which was open to only one in 10 young people. They went on to become accountants, lawyers, advertising execs or corporate middle-managers. Today, they are the people harrumphing into their copies of the Daily Telegraph. In a radio interview this week Janet Daley said that in her day, students demonstrated for causes other than their own self-interest. That’s because they could afford to. In June 1968, a real revolution was taking place – down the Thames in Dagenham were the women workers at Ford were striking for equal pay for women. I don’t think Jagger turned up for that one.
Taking part in a big demonstration is a rite of passage. So many of the people on the demo this week were teenagers on their first ever demonstration. They will never forget it. For my generation, the 1980s created many opportunities for protest – apartheid, student loans, clause 28, NHS cuts. The big lobby of parliament in 1988 turned into a violent confrontation between students and police on the south side of Westminster Bridge. Perhaps naively, many turned up with appointments with their MPs to lobby against the Tories’ plans for funding higher education. They didn’t get to see their MPs. They were met by rows of police cavalry on the bridge, fresh from the miners’ strike and Wapping dispute. As thousands of students pushed forward, the police conducted a mounted baton charge. It was terrifying. The Sun the next morning had a picture of a single, distorted, angry face with the headline ‘The Face of Hate’. I wonder what he’s doing now. He’s probably a magistrate.
On Wednesday a new generation will have felt the thrill of being part of a crowd of 50,000. The early start, the train or coach ride down to London, the unfurling of the banners, the chants and songs, the rally and speeches at the end, and the long journey home, exhausted but proud. It is a formative experience. There’s a sense of solidarity, of common endeavour, of being part of something bigger than the individual. In the 1980s, with no mobile phones, wild rumours would sweep up and down the columns of marchers: the SWP are sitting down outside Number 10, Class War are storming parliament, the police are using tear gas on Whitehall. Marching and singing in unison is uplifting and exhilarating. You can guarantee that for most of the young marchers yesterday, it won’t be their last demonstration against the Tories and Lib Dems.
Those that broke away to storm Millbank have dominated the media coverage, but do not represent anyone or anything than themselves. To ascribe political motives to them is no more valid than saying the Inter-City Firm had something to say about football, or the English Defence League have something to contribute to the debate about patriotism. They were just a bunch of idiots who like smashing stuff up. It won’t be hard to identify them, and the one who threw the fire extinguisher off the roof should be charged with something serious like attempted murder.
Legitimate, peaceful protest will be an important part of politics over the next few years. London needs to get used to it, and the police need to develop better tactics than they displayed yesterday. I applaud the National Union of Students for organising the demo this week, and Aaron Porter’s articulate and intelligent media interviews. What they’ll learn soon enough is that none of it makes much difference. Only when MPs suspect their majorities are under threat, as with the poll tax or post office privatisation, do they pressure governments into changing course. Demos are fun, but impotent. Elections are dull, but powerful.
That is a very unfair account. These protests will go down in history as the response of a generation with nothing to lose, and will help change the narrative on cuts. I think Bright Green Scotland hits the nail on the head on this http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2010/11/you-can-tell-this-wasnt-the-usual-suspects/
no, I’m sorry baby boy, but the ‘narrative of history’ (bleugch!) will deal the same old hand unless youall listen to Paul,vote the greedy out of office (I was there too in ’68 – the hypocracy ! ohmygawd we cannot overemphasise ! harrumph harrumph…(but NOT into the Telegraph !)
I, too, attended student demos in the 1980s. I even organised a few. But a large number of those represented on Wednesday are the architects of their own misfortune. Students voted Liberal in huge numbers. They will, hopefully, have learned their lesson. Another lesson is that Labour governments are very, very difficult to elect. The last one took 18 years to build. Labour governments are also much more fragile than the Tory variety. They need support and sustainance. Largely thanks to Tony Blair’s skillful leadership, a protest vote in 2001 and 2005 was pretty cost free. But if you want the benefits of a Labour government you have to vote to keep it in power. It’s back to the drawing board for us now. I just hope that this time around the collective amnesia of the British people is not as engrained as it usually is.
Thanks Paul, we feel suitably patronised. I can’t wait until 2015 for Aaron Porter MP to save us.