Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
And of course, all the activists' blogs are about peace, love and understanding.......
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We don't pay the activist to protest though. The police are paid to do one thing, they should just do it and always remember that they are paid to serve the public. They shouldn't be posting about cracking open peoples skulls at the next demo, or begging for more (dangerous) weapons to use against demonstrators.
If people can't exercise their democratic right to protest, they will get angry and resort to other forms.
A million peacefully marched in Hyde park protesting the Iraq invasion, and what did it achieve? It made a statement, but unfortunately noone at the top was listening as they'd already made their minds up. This is supposed to be a democracy, but it doesn't seem like it sometimes.
Back in 1997, I attended two very large student demos protesting the introduction of tuition fees by the Labour governement. The first was in Edinburgh, the second in London. There were thousands of students at the London demo, the centre of London was at a standstill for most of the day. At the University union on Malet street we waited in anticipation for the 6 o'clock news. 4 second clip, and that was it. The boos could probably be hard as far away as regeant stree !
Everyone was shocked, how could this only get a 4 second clip? The whole thing was clearly being hushed up, but had their been any violence then the whole nation would've been talking about it.
I can't count the number of times someone on the "t'intanet" has said they were fully behind the students up until they were violent. Er...no - because you wouldn't have even known about it had it not been for the violence.
Sad, but mostly true. I've even come across a number of comments criticising students saying "Funny how they never bothered protesting when the Labour government introduced tuition fees in the first place
"
You couldn't make it up.
As for the recent protests, its well known that the protest was hijacked (as will the next) by a number of anarchist groups such as the Whitechapel Anarchist Group, Student Bloc, the Anarchist Federation and several others. It was recently reported that some anarchists travelled from as far away as Argentina, just for a ruck.