This an archived copy of an article that I originally wrote for the Bucks Student newspaper in December 2010. It is presented as originally written. The original copy can be found here on page 3.
Like most days, I woke up this morning and turned on the news whilst I was getting up. I can’t say that I’m all that interested in the Irish financial crisis first thing in the morning, but it is pretty handy having the clock in the corner so that I can see just how late I actually am… Anyway, enough about me.
The first thing I saw when I turned on the news this morning (Thursday 25th November) was predictably, a picture of a yob standing on top of a police van, with the headline “Student protest turns violent”, and the usual montage of hooded thugs with scarves over their heads and throwing an assortment of objects at the police, starting fires and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
Of course, you probably weren’t shown the image of schoolgirls protecting a police van, stranded in the middle of the protest and being attacked by protesters. One of the girls, Zoe Williams, has been quoted as saying: ‘I was just trying to get across to them that the cause that we’re here for today isn’t about “I hate the police, I want to burn the police and I want to destroy everything they represent”.’
The fact that the media tend to focus on the violent actions of a minority annoys me no end, mainly, because it makes students look bad.
A phrase I seem to have used far too often in the last couple of weeks is “a small minority were responsible” – but it’s true.
Yes, there was violence toward the police at Wednesdays protest, and yes, there were a number of mindless idiots climbing all over a police van, bus shelters, buildings and anything else that looked breakable. On the other hand though, it must be remembered that there were THOUSANDS of people at yesterday’s protest who WEREN’T violent, who were there to have fun, whilst supporting a cause that they feel passionately about.
Exactly the same can be said about the DEMO 2010 protest in London on the 10th November – there were a minority of people who wanted to cause trouble at Millbank tower, but their number was far dwarfed by the tens of thousands of students who attended for a peaceful protest, to make a serious political point – which is that they won’t settle for cuts to higher education.
Of course, the press to briefly mention buzz-phrases such as “the majority of the protest was peaceful” or “minority groups stirred up violence” – but they don’t report the story as though that’s the case, and with good reason. Imagine if a newspaper went to press with the headline “Protests pass without significant problem, everyone happy” – it wouldn’t sell! However, that’s not to say that peaceful protests are pointless – much the opposite! Peaceful protests show people that we can get messages across whilst being mature and civilized – and in the long run, are probably more likely to persuade politicians to engage with us, rather than condemn us.
It’s worth remembering that students have good reason to be angry, they’ve been let down. The Liberal Democrats promised students that they’d “campaign against any raising of the cap on tuition fees” – this being from the same Lib Dems that told us “it’s time for promises to be kept”. However, following the release of the Browne Report into higher education, it was announced that teaching budgets would be slashed, and that fees would rocket, to a maximum of 9000. However, students don’t need to get violent, they need to get constructive.
One thing is sure, students aren’t going to take this lying down, and I think we can expect many more protests to come before this story plays its way out.
I’ll end this with a simple plea, don’t blame students – blame the idiot minority who want to hijack student emotions and use it to spread fear and violence.
