Inside and opinions on kettles.
[an edited version is going to IC Felix]
Last Thursday was the vote on raising tuition fee cap to £9000 and making the standard £6000, unsurprisingly this caused protests to form on the day. I have been on some of the ones before and while so far I have only been kettled momentarily, I went prepared for being kettled. I took warm clothes, water and had pulled an all-nighter the night before to finish an essay so I was able to submit it before I went on the protest, how sad. Sad that I went to peacefully protest in Westminster Square and expected to have police surround the protest and keep it there for hours.
On my cycle in I passed major traffic delays on the South Bank with reams of police vans and a couple of fire engines forcing their way through. I met some friends and crossed Westminster Bridge to meet the first police line blocking the entrance into the square, we took a side street onto Whitehall. Being late, we looked left and right and thought there seemed to be more people in Westminster Square so walked there, as I entered the square I passed Jody McIntyre, he didn’t look very angry or aggressive and had he not been pulled from his wheelchair later on I wouldn’t have noted any significance to this. The metal barriers onto the square itself had been pulled down and we walked onto the square for the first time since the Democracy Village essentially made it a no-go area for other protests and subsequent repair works needed to be done. Westminster square has always been the obvious location for a protest against something occurring in Parliament, and as that was where the vote was being held I felt it the place to stay and make my voice heard. Previous protests had deviated from the official route so it seemed fine. At that time, the crowd was largely peaceful, some people were dancing to sound systems, a few fires had been lit, but mainly people were milling about, talking to each other, passing leaflets and occasionally a chant would rise up. As protests go, it was fairly tame. A little later something occurred on the North Western corner and a lot of people seemed to be clashing with police, we went over to chant and see what was going on. The metal barriers that had previously lined the square were hoisted above the crowd and pushed forward towards the police. Shortly after the line of the police ran to the sides and mounted police charged the crowd causing most people to run backwards, the only other times I’ve been as terrified was when I in a crowd in East Jerusalem which was rushed by Israeli police and landing in Colombo airport when people thought Tamil Tigers were bombing it. The horses were pushed back and a few protesters came out with blood on their face and one girl appeared unconscious. The violence calmed down and the crowd largely moved to another corner of the square. The next few hours passed largely with nothing much happening, we heard talk that on Whitehall protesters were taking a beating from police. We decided to leave the square around 4pm to go to the NUS vigil on embankment, because hearing speeches are good, we went to a police line were politely informed we weren’t being allowed out. I’m not sure when the containment officially began, but it would be another 5 hours until I left the square and 2 after that that I would be allowed out of the kettle.
At this time, nothing was going on, we stood by a fire to warm our feet and added the wood from our placard, occasionally the helicopters would shine the light on us, and we tried to explain to some of the younger protesters that putting a pile of jeans on the fire probably wasn’t the best idea to stay warm. At 6 we were largely bored, the vote had been passed, as it was predicted, but by only 20 votes and with the concessions made earlier in the week on part-time students and the threshold of starting repayments, so I’d argue that the student campaigning and protests had had an effect, a part of me thought that the Black Bloc components would be ignited by the announcement, but they weren’t, and the attitude on the ground was largely despondent. If the the police had let people out at that point, I’m fairly certain people would have filtered out reasonably quickly, with some polite encouragement people would have left and would have started plans on the next action. But no, the kettle remained intact. I’ve never understood the rationale behind kettling, I’ve guessed its to keep people in one place until they wear themselves out and then go away, and it also works well in turning groups amongst each other as they get more grumpy at being stuck together but at the time however, not much was going on that needed to be resolved and just smacked of lazy policing. To those who have postulated that the student riots have somehow been organised, I really didn’t think so, people knew the HMRC was on the corner for hours, and had sat in its windows and hung banners from it for much of the day. People who might be called ‘intent’ on causing damage were few in number and at any one time were only active in one corner of the square and largely nothing was going on.
Still there, around 7 someone through a bit of concrete at a window, it cracked. Soon after some more people through stuff, the treasury was not surrounded and had the police wanted, they could have easily moved in and formed a line in front of it and probably arrest the person as the helicopter was hovering above with its light down on the people. They remained unmoved. A group at some point tried to break some doors down into the building, it took a good 20 minutes before they broke in, at this time the police appeared to be doing nothing, some entered the HMRC rooms to photo those trying to break the windows. Eventually the crowd broke the door down and probably got a few feet inside before being beaten back by police inside, later a number of police charged through to break up the violence. At this time, the protesters were in 3 loose groups, one fighting the police, another watching, and another queueing to leave the square, I stood at the side and chanted with the others of the second group. Why didn’t I join in with the fighting? I was, and still am angry, and I think the students fighting are in some ways right to be taking their anger out in physical ways, the petitions, letter and lobbying amounted to nothing, and under this country’s unfair electoral system despite a party pledging to vote against a raise in fees and having a manifesto with paragraphs wanting to abolish them altogether and gaining 23% of the vote, it only received 8% of the Parliamentary seats. Students have tried a lot of indirect action including making their voices heard at the ballot box, but these voices have been ignored by the institution meant to the represent them, its is only now that people are starting to take note of what people think about fees and while it is a shame this appears to correlate with the amount of damage being done, I am glad it is getting coverage. I didn’t join because I’m still scared, scared of getting hurt or being arrested, much better placed in trying to convince people through other means, but I empathise with those at the front. Yes I think burning of memorial benches and swinging off the Cenotaph is tasteless, but I don’t care that someone kicked a royal care. A group of people who get per head much more from the public coffers than the students on the street, and to hear that “great restraint was shown in them not being shot” is frankly ridiculous. But I didn’t see these things, nor did I see the beating of Jody McIntyre or Alfie Meadows, but I did see police continue to charge and rain batons down of the protesters near the front. More than once it seemed like the hundreds of riot police on the sidelines were about to make a charge for us, but as they slowly manoeuvred from one side of the square things seemed to quiet down slowly. Again the boredom of being kettled set in, and when we saw a group being escorted out we joined them. This was at around 8pm, an hour later and with under 16s, the old and the infirm being prioritised, I had moved forward but a few metres, the crowd was largely whining, with the odd chant of “if you think this illegal clap your hands”. It appeared the kettle was being released one protester at a time, and that each as being searched and photographed, people in the crowd confirmed with each other what is and isn’t allowed to be done by the police in this situation (must remove things covering your face, but can cover it with your hand, and to say no comment to any question, ensure you get receipts for the search), but largely I grew increasingly cold and irritated with the crowd around me. At no point had what was going on been explained to us, or how long we’d be kept longer, at one time a policeman stood up and said things were going as fast as possible, and joked at one point we would be moved into another kettle. It seemed a genuine joke which while received badly wasn’t to be believed. How wrong we were, at 9, the police lined right up to Westminster Bridge we were allowed to advance, to what we thought would be just being let go. As we passed Big Ben, for the first time in hours the group showed solidarity and began chanting, but it soon became apparent that we were just becoming a moving kettle with hundreds of police in front and behind. While I am aware of kettlings legality, I’ve never heard of police forcing people to march in such a way, other than in recounts of war crimes. What resulted was the entire protest being forced onto the much more exposed Westminster bridge, which was very low barriers, soon we were crammed in together with barely much room to move. I passed a woman having a panic attack who was trying to be calmed down by her friends, an old man was in near tears about the treatment, it seemed he has been near to people who had ended up urinating themselves. The entire day there had been no access to water, and while many people had relieved themselves on various buildings or barriers, there had been no sanitation provided, despite the MET pledging to do so more. There were still children in the crowd. While we chanted more, there was relatively little pushing or shoving. At some point a friend saw the police beat their way to get into the crowd to find a child who had collapsed, protesters raised their hands to show they had no intention of violence and were beaten back. Had we not been kettled onto the bridge with no means of spreading out, it would have been much easier, and in all likelihood the girl would have been moved forward. The beating police then formed a mini-line half way across the bridge, further confusing us as to where we were meant to go. Many people pleaded with the police to explain what was going, others argued one way or the other. People nearby tried to find in vain where their friend who had been arrested had been taken to. Tempers flared in the group as people tried to push forward. As we got to the front at around 11:30, we saw that the protesters were being funnelled into a single line queue down a long line of police to a single police photographer before walking past 30 or so other police.
I cannot understand that with several hundred armoured policeman, that the MET didn’t think to bring along more than one camera or photographer, it would have been easy to have two or three lines coming from the bridge, and had we not been moved from Parliament they could have had one at each line (ie 5) if not more. So why were we kept for so long? Kettling causes people to lash out in frustration at being detained for so long, and garners support quickly in a crowd, while after a few hours of getting more and more annoyed at the situation, many people would have left the bridge more angry at the police than at their MPs. Being interned in such unpleasant conditions, in my opinion, was a deliberate attempt to grind down the protesters to stop them taking to the streets again. As only a minority were violent, this seems disproportionate and runs the risk of encouraging people to become more violent, I also feel that by highlighting the violent aspects of a protest without the context undermines the protest as a while. I fear a lot of young people, for whom it might have been the first protests will think that all protests are violent, or as worse many will foster an anti-police attitude, and currently the MET are encouraging a lot of students and supporters to have a great mistrust of them. The fact that Theresa May has said water cannons wont be used is of little consolation in a week when a wheelchair bound man is pulled from it, and another person is beaten into needing neurosurgery, and many others beaten with everyone detained without reason or explanation for over 7 hours: had we been arrested our treatment would have been many times more humane. There must be an open inquirey into this last months events, and a judicial review of the use of kettling. The abuse of police injury statistics and internal inquiries may allow aspects to be brushed under the carpet and persons not brought to justice, the fact that police tried to divert ambulances from the nearest hospitals is very frightening and people must be made accountable for such decisions. I’ve heard people say they don’t have time to get involved, remember a short e-mail to your MP is as useful as numbers on the street, but if you plan ahead, and get your work done, I’ll see you on the streets.
