Stiff letters to the Commissioner

The Paul Richards column

The demonstrations yesterday have radicalised a new section of society which no government can ignore with impunity. Not the students and school children: they’ve been ignored for decades. Their parents, on the other hand, are a formidable force, and this morning they are very angry. Some will be angry with their offspring for bunking off school, or appearing on Sky News with faux-estuary accents and dropped aitches. This is not what we spent all that money on drama lessons for. Most will be furious with the Metropolitan Police for holding their children, many in school uniform, against their will, without access to food, water or toilets, in sub-zero temperatures for over six hours. There will be a lot of stiff letters to the Commissioner this morning.

It was obvious that the Met were not going to caught on the hop again. Their performance a fortnight ago was more Keystone Cops than Tactical Support Group. This time, they were determined not to be humiliated. Instead the tactic of ‘kettling’ was authorised, designed to humiliate, debilitate and punish the demonstrators (or ‘rioters’ as Sky’s Kay Burley helpfully called them at one point).

Kettling is a disgraceful tactic when deployed against tanked-up footie fans or Class War. It is unforgivable when deployed against school children, some on their first day in London without their parents, never mind first taste of political action. The police tactic should be to keep the marchers marching. A bottle-neck creates a mob mentality, with the potential for spontaneous vandalism and violence. A flowing march gives the marchers a sense of momentum, and keeps their spirits high. And what was the police van doing there? Almost certainly it was a deliberate act of provocation, designed to be an ‘aunt sally’ for the masked anarchists. Three cheers for Zoe Williams, the lone sentinel standing guard over the van, seeking to prevent her fellow-demonstrators from falling into the obvious police trap. There goes a future president of NUS or possibly headteacher.

Thousands of middle-class parents, with Tory and Lib Dem MPs are waking up this morning angry at the police and the ministers who licensed them. Most will have never had any run in with the law. Their benign view of the forces of law and order has been fundamentally challenged. Their faith in the ‘state’ to act fairly and proportionately has been shaken. Columnists of a certain age will compare this to the summer of revolution 1968, or the poll tax riots of 1990. The fact is this: it’s much bigger than that. The Trots used to demand solidarity between workers and students. Yesterday created an even more potent coalition: students and their parents.