Sketch: The siege of Millbank
…And how the student protest shot itself in the foot.
By Peter Wozniak
My, how it all went horribly wrong. What had started as a huge (and surprisingly coherent) outpouring of rational ill-feeling towards the raising of tuition fees became something resembling nothing so much as a medieval siege.
Tonight the news is dominated by the standoff, which saw dozens of protestors set fires, break windows and storm Conservative headquarters.
Whatever Aaron Porter et al were hoping from this protest, this wasn’t it.
But it had all started rather promisingly. The day’s early stages were marked by jubilation, raucous chanting, and some genuine desire for a rational debate with the government.
Mr Porter cut a figure of righteous indignation in the morning press conference. He would come good, he told us, on his promise last week to ‘hunt down’ Lib Dem MPs who broke a well-publicised photo-op pledge to oppose any increase in tuition fees. How they must be regretting that now.
In a piece of exquisite irony, the NUS president said he would use the Lib Dems’ own ‘right of recall’ legislation (which has yet to pass through the House) to punish them for their wrongdoing.
The grassroots of the protest movement on the street seemed similarly upbeat. Anger there was in aplenty, but it was hardly as vicious as the afternoon’s events might suggest.
Take the story of Raza Chaudry, a sixth form student from Bracknell. Sure, he railed against Cameron and Clegg’s easy upbringing. One thought a socialist rant might be on the cards, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Rather Raza sympathised, he said, with those Lib Dem MPs who still opposed the Browne review. “I can understand cuts have got to be made,” he said. “I don’t mind them being harsh and hard as long as they are fair.”
Not that this was some manner of Labour cheerleading session, by any means. Punters were sceptical about Ed Miliband, wary of an about-turn in policy they say we have seen from Mr Clegg.
The Lib Dem leader was certainly not crème de month at this protest, but the ill-feeling came from all sides of the political spectrum, including some Conservatives, if placards are to be believed.
Unfortunately, for the unions organising the march, some bright spark had decided it would be a marvellous idea to have the demonstration pass right by Conservative campaign headquarters.
We were told the route was decided not by the organisers, but by the police. If so there were few enough of the latter around when the good-natured march turned ugly. “A small contingent” would be a generous way of describing the cordon holding back the surging mass of student anger.
Gone were the inventive chants of before. The sole thought of the thousand or so people swarming around the Millbank entrance was now “Tory scum! Tory scum,” apparently.
Ashamed to say, I also missed the planned end of the demonstration, a rally outside the Tate – as did all the rest of the assembled journos. Unfortunately for Mr Porter, in the eyes of the media, protestors conducting a concerted siege of a governing party’s headquarters trumps a bit of speech-making, however eloquent.
Speaking after the disastrous siege, as the crowds dwindled and only a hardcore of the rancorous and the violent remained, an NUS organiser, Lewis Cooper, assured politics.co.uk that the near-riot was the work of a few hundred malcontents, and that shouldn’t mar the message that 50,000 people had sent to Clegg, Cameron and company.
We are sorry to inform Mr Cooper, but it did. In a huge way. There is only one story dominating the news tonight, and it wasn’t the rally at the Tate. Us hacks had decided long before which event deserved top billing: the siege of Millbank.
