My Saturday was unfolding much like any other in my sleepy Catford flat. I was vaguely aware of breakfast, vaguely aware of Football Focus, half-heartedly attempting some work when the phone rang. It was my girlfriend. Not unusual. She calls often. But that day she was suffering from guilt. Her work colleagues in the NHS were on the march and she felt like she should be making some kind of gesture.
"Ok. We can go and meet up with them." I said.
"No need to go that far." She replied. "But I think I would like to go."
"Ok," I Said. "Bring some felt tip pens and we'll make a banner."
"We don't need a banner you weirdo." She said.
"Of course we do." I said, getting into the spirit of things. "Come over as quick as you can or we'll miss it."
Half an hour of phone-based indecision relating to train times and strategy followed until at last, she gave our tentative plan her seal of approval.
I carefully selected my wardrobe, opting for my most politically dissident combo of jeans and jumper. I also began to make our banner out of an old curtain pole and a cardboard box which once contained my girlfriend's Christmas present of Carvella shoes. (Unsure what the Socialist Worker's Weekly would have made of that.)By the time my girlfriend arrived with the pens, I was watching the prattling, tedious News 24 coverage as the march, swollen with people, was making its way towards the centre of London. She had opted for reasons best known to her, to dress like Kate Middleton's black cousin.
"Well we are going into town." She said, indicating in her own way that this expression of our citizen's dissatisfaction might well involve some High Street shopping, whether Oxford Street was in flames or not.
"Fair enough." I said, and showed her the sterling construction work I'd done on our banner.
"Are you really going to carry that thing around?" She said.
"That's the idea." I said. "Now what do you think should be our slogan?"
A long discussion ensued. "Osborne you posh twat!" was vetoed on the grounds of my girlfriend's assertion that twat is a swear word. (She went to Catholic school. I'm from Scotland where 'dickhead' is a term of endearment) I wanted Cameron's famous "I met a Black man once" or "Tories are a bunch of Cuts". We settled on "We are NOT in this together George!!" which was informative if a little camp sounding to my ear. A further hour was enjoyed colouring in the banner. My girlfriend is quite artistic when the mood takes her and we delighted in colouring GEORGE in blue, putting sad and angry smiley faces in the O's, tracing round a pair of scissors (also blue, but a different shade) to symbolise the cuts along with artistically distressed lettering of THE NHS and THE ARTS. We debated whether the exclamation marks should be red or black, but after a brief squabble, settled on black for consistency.
By the time we'd finished the banner, Ed Milliband had taken to his feet in Hyde park, seemingly with the expressed purpose of making a complete fool of himself. The odd-looking school prefect of a man who has never had a job outside politics tried and failed to play the great orator.
My heart wanted to go out to him, but it didn't. His righteous indignation was off the shelf, his attempt to play 'man of the people' was laughable and his summoning of Dr King was nothing short of embarrassing. At that same moment, Anarchists were attacking shops on Oxford Street and Milliband's speech was played on News 24 in split screen with a vehement assault on Topshop which upset my girlfriend no end. (She would later purchase three items from their online store in a show of solidarity)Banner complete, we quickly had some tea and Battenberg cake for energy. (The breakfast of bourgeois champions) I filled my rucksack with water and energy bars in case we were kettled and we made our way to Catford station.
My girlfriend, new to protest, was at first, embarrassed to be seen with our work of art. To give her her due, the other denizens of Catford, South London did not seem to know there was a protest on and regarded us with the pitying looks that masked assumptions that we were 'Care in the Community'. My girlfriend actually works in mental health and gets quite a kick out of pretending to be my carer in public.
We chatted animatedly on the train. Our politics are broadly similar. We hate the Tories, mostly due to genetics. (She's black, I'm Scottish) We hate the Lib Dems for being Tories. (I was stupid enough to vote for them. She knew better and enjoys reminding me of the fact.) We broadly dislike Labour and think that Milliband is hopeless. (I hold a grudge over the Hutton Report. She still hasn't forgiven Ken Livingstone for, well, anything...)
As we arrived in Victoria, it was evident we'd perhaps devoted too much time to our preparations. As we wound or way towards Hyde Park on foot, it was clear that we were against the current and that at after 4pm, many protesters were on their way to the pub.
I called a friend of mine who was on the Equity (The Actor's Union) protest. She said that most of the actors had given up, (shock) but that the march had stalled in Piccadilly Circus where "things were getting ugly." With no other plan, we headed over to meet my friend in a Soho Starbucks. I held the banner aloft as we cut through St James' park, passing a young family entirely kitted out in Barbour jackets, blissfully unaware, feeding the ducks. In my forgotten socialist heart, something stirred.
As we made our way up, crossing the Mall into the centre, we could hear the roaring of a large crowd. We'd come out at the back of Fortnum and Mason. My girlfriend asked if we could go in and browse, seemingly unaware of the wall of riot police surrounding the building on three sides. We skipped round onto Piccadilly and found the March and the handful of anarchists who had climbed onto the fronting of F and M, the symbol of London poshness.
So these were the anarchists. Even in my longing to strike a blow for the common man against the system, I couldn't shake the feeling that these people were complete idiots. They were such a cliché. Skinny young men with questionable hair and combat trousers, women with piercings and tattoos they will regret in their 30s, jumping up and down in a rant so choreographed that it came across like an unhygienic, talentless Glee Club number. There were only a handful of them, and whilst they had got the crowd going and smoke bombs were being thrown, the majority of the marchers caught in the bottleneck looked on with bemusement and frustration. Even so, it was loud and unsettling. My girlfriend insisted we found a group of school children to march next to in case things kicked off.After sampling the atmosphere, we cut away from the march and went to join my actor friend. Clearly, the anarchists had been busy. We passed many smashed windows of banks and shops. I was surprised and confused to see that, for reasons best known to them, they had completely smashed in the window of Anne Summers but left the Starbucks opposite untouched. Why Anne Summers? I thought anarchy was supposed to be fun. The pedant in me couldn't help noticing that they had misspelled 'Tory' in their graffiti.
So far, our protest had consisted of a pleasant walk through the park, a brief rubberneck at some idiots on a roof and a very nice hot chocolate in the spiritual capital of corporate oppression. I couldn't help noticing that in spite of the apocalyptic images on television, the city, non withstanding one or two broken windows was not in the grip of revolution.
After our hot chocolate, we ambled through towards Covent Garden. At my girlfriend's request, I disassembled our banner so we could go inside vintage clothing shops without alarming the security guards. I pretended the metal curtain pole was a walking stick, a pretense we used to make motorists stop and let us cross the road. The fires of revolution had left us and after dinner in Marylebone, we made our way back to Charing Cross for the train home just as darkness fell, only to discover the closest thing we'd seen to a riot in Trafalgar Square.It was at this point that my girlfriend, previously keen to avoid trouble, decided she wanted to see things up close. Just as protesters began lobbing flaming debris at a line of police, we crossed into the square. The boys and girls in day glow were trying to protect the much maligned Olympic clock from people who seemed more militant than me about their belief in how pointless it is.
We had to move quickly as vans filled with riot police did their best to park on top of us and loitered on the edge of the square as more and more police began to arrive. It would be accurate to say that a lot of the 'hard line' people in the square were drunk and that the small fires they'd started looked much more dramatic on television. It would also be fair to say that a line of riot police coming towards you with shields and batons can make you glad you brought your curtain pole.
"Kettle!" The shouts went up from some of the black clad lookouts at the edge of the square. At that moment a mass of protesters broke out of the square before the police could encircle them. We were caught up in the rush as they escaped down the Strand and ducked into the station where we watched things unfold until our train back to mundane, unrevolutionary Catford arrived.As we sat in the flat, drinking tea and buzzing from the adventure, listening to the entirely unrelated and totally normal wail of passing sirens outside, watching the BBCs Trafalgar Square images that made it look like the opening scene of Gladiator, several things occurred to me.
1. British people are rubbish at protesting. The people who protest are not representative of the majority of people who are frustrated with the obvious shortcomings in how the country is run. It was markedly obvious that aside from those protesting the War in Libya, too many of the faces were white, left wing members of decaying unions or eccentric pressure groups. Though the march had been broadly larger than expected, the popular uprisings of the Middle East could teach us much about how to hold an effective demonstration.
2. As my girlfriend pointed out. Stupid and pointless as they are, the only people who actually 'did anything' were the anarchists. They alone seem to have the understanding of what it takes to make yourself heard, non-withstanding the weak, plaintive bleating about the 'vast majority of peaceful demonstrators' who marched peacefully and were completely ignored. They were just as politically impotent as me and my girlfriend and the most revolutionary thing we did that day was send back a Wagamama's curry because it was cold and still felt bad about not tipping. In France they turn over cars and set fire to them, whereas here, limp little bonfires made out of placards are what passes for 'anarchy'.
3. The media are idiots. Harsh when as a journalist, I'm basically insulting myself, but the coverage of the event was not realistic. The crushing predictability of the whole scenario was not disseminated by the media who went from one little flashpoint to the next as if this were the fall of the Berlin Wall.
4. The police are full of disdain. The police do nothing to help themselves, predictably insisting that the numbers involved are half what they are in the face of the wild exaggerations of the demonstrators. They regard the whole thing as a hassle and a waste of time and many do not believe in the politics they are defending in principle when they take up their batons. They completely failed to protect the banks and businesses that had their windows smashed by enemies of the state who are far from the brightest or deadliest in the world. They may be a 'small number of criminals' but when a handful of tanked idiots can smash up the centre with little more than a rock, a stick and and anorack, the police have to look again at their tactics. (As someone who used to work for the Police, I'm not usually quick to criticise)
5. Most importantly, the government is out of touch... and so, regrettably are the opposition, which is perhaps why we might have to get used to making ourselves heard in more direct ways. George Osborne appeared on television in the days before the protest. He actually had the nerve to say that 'He knew how difficult it is for people just now.' No George, you don't. You are part of the most elitist government in two generations and like David, Nick and depressingly, Ed, you have never held a real job within the society you purport to be enlarging. You don't take the Tube, you don't live in Catford, Brixton or Peckham. You are not reliant on any public initiative to give you better access to work or support. You and your friends are not and have never been reliant on anything that you are scrapping.
People actually do see through you all. We also see through the Big Society as a way of passing moral responsibility onto us, as if we should somehow feel guilty about not volunteering to run essential services in the country at ground level. Forgive me George, but that's what you're paid to do...
In one way at least, it seems the march had some effect. In spite of using the day as basically a date with unusual post dinner entertainment, I do feel more political. I think the greatest difficulty of modern politics is in its inability to penetrate real life, (a quandary not aided by the space aliens leading the various parties) but in talking even just to someone I know well, I was struck by what the cuts could mean. My girlfriend works in mental health. She is on a placement in a trust that is facing massive cuts. Unfortunately, and to be non PC, the crazy people are rather selfishly, not aware there's a recession on and will require just as much care and attention even if staff are cut. Blanket cuts will mean that there are less burly nurses to jump on potentially dangerous service users which puts both the service user and the mental healthworker, (mine included), at greater risk. No doubt there are many people, probably more than the half million or so who may or may not have marched on Saturday who could voice similar concerns.
So yes, there is a budget deficit, but we have a right to expect the people we misguidedly elected to come up with a better solution than blanket cuts to services that are more intricate and fragile than our well heeled politicians seem to understand. Because if and when the people we care about are put at risk by cuts, in whatever way, it will not be the anarchists or the unions that David and George have to worry about.
They'll have to worry about the people, because if we take to the streets for real, it will not be to vandalise Topshop.
Thanks to Reuters for images
http://www.nickbain.co.uk/
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