An accidental kettling

By Conor Pope / @conorpope

My post for Labourlist after the last student protest got a bit of a mixed reception. I heartily condemned the occupation of Millbank Tower, the criminal damage that took place and any notion that these actions were representative of our movement. Some felt I was ignoring the anger of the masses and disenfranchising them further, whilst others agreed with my view that smashing stuff up is not a legitimate tool of political debate. This doesn’t mean I’m any less angry about the coalition’s plans, it’s just that as a naturally bookish type, I’ve always been inclined towards more reasoned argument than physical confrontation.

That’s why, as the protest on Wednesday approached, I’d made the decision not to do anything. From my understanding, the argument appeared to be that we were all going to skive off lessons, to show you just how much we value our education. In honesty, I still don’t understand what feasible argument there was behind the ‘mass walkout’. Besides, I have Wednesdays off.

As it happened though, I needed to travel from south of the river to Leicester Square on Wednesday afternoon. This involves going through or around Whitehall, where, I read on Twitter, protestors were already being kettled. It’s one thing not to join the protest, but if I agree with its aims and support this movement, then to actively seek an alternative route to avoid it would be reprehensible to my own morals.

So, off I pottered across Westminster Bridge, ominously littered with riot vans, seemingly lying in wait. Up further I saw the first of many police lines, this one preventing the march from moving off Whitehall and onto Parliament Square. From that position it certainly didn’t look out of hand – I didn’t find out about ‘the van incident’ until much later. I asked an officer, who was preventing people from joining the crowd, how far back the protest went. “Bit further than the pub,” she replied. A little disappointing, really. But I decide I should walk around. It’s too quiet here and I want to show some support to those contained.

Ten minutes later and Big Ben had struck 3 o’clock. I was on the other side of the crowd, beyond another police line by the Cenotaph, where there was another reasonable crowd, with a fire within it. For a while, nothing happens, other than chanting abuse at Nick Clegg, Then there’s a small explosion (an aerosol can?) and people start running, away from the kettle, the police line and the fire. It’s clear it wasn’t the bang that caused the running, it appeared more orchestrated, but it isn’t clear what did. As I turned to follow this crowd up Whitehall, I saw that another police line had closed in.

And that was that. I couldn’t leave.

From here, the police essentially (to stretch the kettle analogy slightly) poured us into the other kettle through a spout (honestly) they’d formed at one side to form a much larger, single kettle. There we would stay, like a school of angry salmon (students? Fish kettles? No…), for many, many hours.

As I’ve said, I wasn’t there from the beginning, so I can’t comment on the first round of kettling, which I believe began at around 1pm – if you want to read about that, I can’t recommend Laurie Penny’s New Statesman blog enough. What I can say is that it was inevitable that police tactics would be more heavy-handed this time. But that doesn’t make it acceptable to try and make amends for such suspicious complacency at the last event by overreacting in such a bullish manner at this one. In the end, I only wanted to spend around 15 minutes there before I went off to do my errands for the day; I was detained for seven hours. That’s longer than the average school day for most of the pupils there, and most of them were there well before me.

Once inside, it quickly became apparent that many of these school kids had adjusted triumphantly. I am now hugely embarrassed to have walked away from an attempted break-in and occupation of a building, which I later discovered to be the home of Arcane School (Charities & Voluntary Organisations), having now seen those inspiring photographs of schoolgirls trying to stop people from trashing the police van. If these are the women the Mail referred to on the front page yesterday, then I am happy for them to lead us. If only I was that brave.

Soon after, I was fortunate enough to find a couple of my friends and together we huddled in a roadworks trench around a small fire (one of many) some schoolchildren had lit, using homework diaries and discarded copies the Socialist Worker as fuel. Further along, dubstep blared from a huge pair of speakers someone had brought as I listened to them swap horror stories over the campfire of what the cuts and raising fees would mean to them in basic, personal terms. This maturity from some so young was wonderfully juxtaposed with older protestors across the road, who had managed to rip a bus ticket machine out of the ground and manage to inexplicably set it alight, the flames at times threatening to completely engulf the shattered remains of the bus stop it belonged to.

Unfortunately, there is only so long that crap left wing newspapers and the emblematic incineration of class timetables can keep fires going and eventually we were cold, with nothing to do except mill about and try and take turns at guessing what songs we were humming to take our minds off the cold and the hunger.

As the hours passed, we traipsed to all corners of the containment area under advice from officers that that was where the mythical exit lay. It was clear they were either consistently misinformed or lying. Rumours kept going that we’d be out soon, but the longer it went on, the further away our release seemed. The only respite from this came when we got to shout “Liar” at the reporters who stood there, doing their bits for the various news channels with the rest of us, claiming police were letting us go. As soon as they’d done their reports they left. We didn’t, because we couldn’t.

At this point, I have an admission to make. You have to understand, I hadn’t intended to be there. I hadn’t prepared for it. I was kettled by accident. I’d been there for hours already. In a kettle they don’t have toilets. I needed to go. I couldn’t hold it in. It wasn’t an act of rebellion or a metaphor for what the regressive coalition are doing to the young people of this country. It was just human necessity. I’m not proud.

I had a wee in the street.

At 7:29pm, after it had been dark for many hours, we were huddled on the cold, metallic barriers outside one of the government buildings, demoralised and shivering. Then the dubstep stopped, and through the sporadic, unfocussed chants we heard the unmistakable sound of ‘One Step Beyond’ by Madness pumping through the amps.

Now, I’ve never been a dancer, I’m too gangly, dyspraxic and joyless. But I danced my heart out. Dancing became so much more than I ever thought it could be. As we stood there, getting boogy with the kids (I spent so long with them, I’m even picking up the lingo) it served so many different purposes. It warmed us, far better than any paltry or toxic fires had done. It took our minds off the hunger. It lifted our spirit and unified us. We were protesting through the medium of dance. Madness, The Specials, Rage Against the Machine, The Clash, Hendrix, NWA, The Beatles, A Tribe Called Quest, The Strokes – I could write a whole blogpost twice as long as this about the music alone. We quickly regained the humour that we’d lost throughout the day (Is “Clegg & Cameron can suck my Ed Balls” the most disturbing protest sign ever?) with choices of song. ‘I Fought The Law’ was a personal favourite. The law had won this time, we knew that, but that didn’t mean they’d broken our spirit.

Every time a song finished, the police had closed in a little bit more. The bus stop was no longer in danger of being set alight, two portaloos had arrived and the police had moved 300ft nearer. It was like a surreal, menacing game of musical statues. They slowly, but surely, ushered us into a queue and, after seven hours of being trapped on Whitehall and two and a half hours of dancing like I’d never danced before, they let us out.

Just before we were set free, I asked a copper why they’d kept us for so long. He said they needed to examine the CCTV footage of who had been causing criminal damage, get good pictures of their faces and apprehend them as they let us out in groups of fives. Again, I wasn’t there at the beginning, but I know people are claiming the kettling tactics began before any violence had broken out and in the group I was part of, I’m not sure what damage had been done other than starting a fire on the tarmac before we were kettled.

Big Ben struck ten as we, who had railed against the corrupt capitalist system so hard, entered McDonald’s hungrily.