The passing of wood through glass is a remarkable feat. There are those who believe that royalty can perform miracles – there is a well developed cult around the vain and vicious Charles I, for example. It now appears that the presence of the future Charles III also has the ability to suspend the laws of physics.
The police have now issued extensive CCTV footage of the attack on the vehicle of Charles and Camilla on the fringes of the anti-tuition fee demonstrations, and the media have been replete with more nonsense about Camilla being poked with a stick. Yet of all the CCTV footage and numerous photographs, there is no evidence at all of this attack and all the images show the car windows to be closed – as they would be. One gets cracked but not holed.
There is in fact no evidence at all of any intent to harm the persons of the expensive royal layabouts, as opposed to discomfiting them and damaging their vehicle. It is fascinating that the media continually repeats the “Camilla attacked with a stick” line when it is so blatantly untrue. There appears to be a closing of ranks by the whole Establishment to perpetuate the myth – both the Home Office and St James Palace have deliberately fostered the myth by refusing to confirm or deny.
Personally I would not touch Camilla with a bargepole. I dislike violence at demonstrations. Demonstrations, good, riots, bad is my basic mantra. Attacks on people in a civil demonstration are always wrong, including attacks on the police unless in self defence. I did not join in the outrage at the prosecutions of violent demonstrators after the big Lebanon demonstration in London, because I personally witnessed the group hurling dangerous missiles at police who were neither attacking, threatening nor kettling them. That is absolutely unacceptable.
But a policy as appalling as the withdrawal of state funding from university teaching, carried out by Nick Clegg by one of the most blatant political breaches of fatih with the public in history, , is bound to provoke huge anger. The government reaps what it sows. Demonstrators should not set out to hurt people. But all the evidence shows they had no intention of hurting Charles and Camilla.
I have personally worked closely with the royal family’s close protection officers in organising two state visits abroad, and plainly they too could see there was no intent to injure – that is why weapons were not drawn. They deserve commendation rather than the crap spouted out by Sky News, who seem to think they should have gunned down the odd student.
All of which serves to take the focus off vicious police attacks on students and the use of kettling to detain people who were seeking peacefully to express their views. Kettling people in extreme cold and with no access to toilet facilities raises questions on illegal detention which genuine liberals in government would wish to address. What is it? Is it a form of arrest? What is the status of the fenced pens into which people are herded? Should they not be formalised as places of police detention, and individuals booked in and given access to lawyers? If that is not possible, this detention – which can be for many hours – is not lawful.
bang on Ruth and Duncan.
At the demonstration some years back when I was still in the Green Party, I managed to get to Kings Cross some hourse before it was to start.
We watched the police prepare the area.
A police van, not the newest was left, with two scaffold poles on top, but there was no bin in sight, they wer all collected and stashed somewhere.
Come the demonstration a brand new bin was thrown at a police man, the picture, skillfully taken by god knows who, was gracing the papers all day next day, the protesters who were kettled and beaten did not figure much.
Also, journo’s were lining up to watch two protesters force the scaffold pole through the windscreen, proof of ‘violent protesters’….done!
bang on Ruth and Duncan.
At the demonstration some years back when I was still in the Green Party, I managed to get to Kings Cross some hourse before it was to start.
We watched the police prepare the area.
A police van, not the newest was left, with two scaffold poles on top, but there was no bin in sight, they wer all collected and stashed somewhere.
Come the demonstration a brand new bin was thrown at a police man, the picture, skillfully taken by god knows who, was gracing the papers all day next day, the protesters who were kettled and beaten did not figure much.
Also, journo’s were lining up to watch two protesters force the scaffold pole through the windscreen, proof of ‘violent protesters’….done!
Sorry folks, I’m coming down on the side of the police here. These men and women are ordinary people with families and lives out of uniform. I have seen the videos of these student riots and the police were just reacting to escalating levels of violence by so called students , faces in balaclavas and scarves, wielding scaffold poles, throwing bricks and attacking these officers with anything they could they could get thier hands on. Hundreds of innocent business people suffered having thier liveleyhoods wrecked by pissed up oiks. If a few of these pricks got thier heads busted, tough shit ! You want to demonstrate, do it peacefully, or expect to get hurt.
I’ve carried a few placards in my time, but always respected the boys and girls in blue. Nowadays it seems if you want to demonstrate, instead of a placard, you pack a baseball bat and attack the police.
In answer to people who plainly weren’t there and have no idea of what happened, I urge you to read these accounts: a collection of eyewitness reports from the kettle.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/12/470581.html
“Today was quite possibly the worst day of my life, and I felt ashamed to call myself a British citizen. I quite honestly have so many thoughts about the things that I saw and experienced today that I need to write them down in order to make any sense of them and to hopefully help people understand what it was really like there today.”
Frazer, interesting. But do you see any problems with the analyses that: (a) the police are, first and foremost, armed agents of the state, and that (b) the disadvantage of maintaining law and order is that justifiable public unrest is quelled along with genuine disorder?
Your perspective seems to imply that (a) democracy isn’t broken, and all we need to do is to increase our civic engagement to obtain a fairer society, and (b) the Lib Dem reversal on tuition fees is just realpolitik and the public should not be hugely angry at a political party demonstrably saying one thing and doing the opposite.
not my game ever Frazer, but I have been at the end of police violence and criminality for some time, without packing baseball bats and despite being somewhat older.
Despite my non violence, i sat schakelled to a bulldozer in Twyford down watching a security man grope a girls breasts to make us react to it, using sexual violence to coherce us into unlocking our arms.
teh girls shouted not to take notice of her and not to unlock ourselves, to make a point, she swallowed her key, which made the two bit criminal, hired by group 4, even worse.
The police man some three feet away turned around and saw nothing, desp[ite me shouting at him and calling hiom a coward fro n ot turning around. The same in Wymondham, three aggressive and violent workers threw me and a girl to the ground and kicked the shit out of me whilst the copper was watching.
That said, another girl managed to climb the auger and sat there for two days in the howling rain and gales holding up the proceedings, she was able to get through due to me taking the starin and holding on to those thugs.
I could go on for some time but I need a cuppa now.
And from the media Laurie Penny (New Statesman):
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2010/12/young-protesters-police
@technicolour, thanks – an adrenaline-fuelled read, and spot-on.
Frazer:
Were you there? I saw students brutalised by heavy handling not only by uniformed police but also undercover police dressed in baseball caps and/or hoodies . I saw NO heavy (and dangerous)scaffold poles only lightweight banner poles of wood or aluminium. I saw girls dragged along the road and here recorded on a mobile video we witness a disabled student pulled out of his wheel-chair.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/14/student-protests-video-protester-wheelchair
@Jon
a) Actually, most police officers I know do not carry guns as standard, and if they do, they have to be licenced for it. Most are not even legally licenced to carry a taser. I think it a bit harsh to call every cop in GB an “armed agent of the state’. Most are normal people doing a difficult job.
I challenge you to walk up to any police officer in the UK and ask the question’are you an armed agent of the state’
I await the responses here with interest.
b)Justibfiable public unrest..needs defining this one, and I am open to debate, though I disagree that a bunch of protestors smashing up shops and businesses of ordinary citizens is justifiable.
Maybe again you should have a chat to some shopkeepers in London, I am sure that they would completely justify and support the action of these students that wrecked thier shops and cost them thousands.
a1)Well actually, no, I voted for the present Govt because I thought they were going to crack down on crime, and stop some one from knifing me in the street because they were pissed off and because they were only 12 years old, they would get 1 month community service.
b1) Yup..look at the American system..want to go to College,take a loan and work hard, pay it back, seems to work in the USA. No realpolitik there.
Craig Murray and the Royal Layabouts:
http://canadianspectator.ca
this from outside:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/behind-a-student-kettle/
canspeccy – alfred again
Frazer, the police aren’t a “side”.
@Kieron.
Sorry mate..watched the video..not convinced.
Frazer, seriously, you’re a bomb disposal expert, but you worry about being stabbed by 12 year-olds?
@Bob: Heather Brooke’s book “Silent State” seems to have a lot to say about institutional corruption. I noticed in the review a comment pertinent to Craig’s excoriation at the hands of the establishment (not to mention the elevation of his more compliant peers):
“She argues that bureaucrats would actually benefit from an end to the British culture of secrecy: ‘It keeps the worst people in the most lucrative, high-end jobs while the best go unrewarded, often punished for speaking out.'”
Frazer:
The American system is a scam. Text books and learning materials are grossly over-priced.
The student loan industry in the U.S. has devolved into a corrupted and predatory system that extracts large and unjustified amounts of wealth from vulnerable borrowers, enabled by the Congressional removal of nearly all basic consumer protections from these loans, the sheer greed and lobbying influence of the nations largest student loan company, combined with an egregious lack of oversight by conflicted, and corrupted officials within the Department of Education.
As a result, millions of citizens have seen their lives and livelihoods marginalized. Many have been forced “off the grid”. Many have literally fled the country, or worse as a result of this uniquely predatory and inescapable debt instrument.
The system has also directly led to unprecedented tuition increases by the nation’s colleges and universities- significantly impacting all students and their families- not just the borrowers.
@Ingo..totally agree..G4 had and still has a terrible reputation these days..
@Kieron..no I was not there, but I did see lots of loonies with faces covered (admittedly on the media) smashing the crap out of everything in thier path..if this is your idea of peaceful protest as a student and to endorse this, then you need, as we say in jockanese “yer hied looikin at wee boy’
There does seem to be a big difference between the mainstream media coverage and eyewitness testimony. Maybe this picture (from Financial Fools Day) gives a clue to what’s going on:
http://www.killick1.plus.com/photo-op.jpg
@Clark…I can hit a bomb to jiggle the fuse and use a knife to ease it out..if I hit a 12 year old and take the knife off him, I get 25 years !
Frazer, ah, so it’s actually the state you’re afraid of. You’d lose your freedom for doing the right thing. Hmmm…
@Kieron ‘many have fled the country’ actually I thought that at least 2.4 million people were actually trying to get to the USA every year, legally..
@Clark..sorry mate, I have my freedom, and I do the right thing..bad call mate..pick on someone else..
‘all the images show the car windows to be closed’
You obviously haven’t looked at the footage very closely. One of the windows is clearly half down for most of the attack. God knows why. No sign of any big stick poking Camilla though, more’s the pity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNAxxBGMNHw&feature=related
Frazer:
I agree to the extent there were *some* loonies who I believe were NOT students or NUS affiliated memebers. Intelligent policing using undercover cops as described should have targeted those intent on extreme violence and ‘pulled’ them from the throng, instead we were subjected to horse charges and batoning. Those that fell to the ground(teenagers) were trampled on by horse hooves and/or beaten with a baton causing facial trauma. I saw many included two six form girls(16yrs) bleeding from the nose and mouth who retreated inside LU. An ITV journalist was harassed by police (Met forward Intelligence Team) while trying to take photos while we were ‘kettled’ in the freezing cold. Three girls could not even get to a toilet to change their pads!
We think Gove is an absolute a’hole and demand his resignation. He is a useless posh twit.
What KingofWelshNoir said. There was definitely at least one window half-rolled-down.
It was around the time Charles attempted a bit of a royal wave … before they both stopped looking monarchical and started looking nervous.
I have no doubt that this latest release of footage is designed to divert attention from the legitimate grievances of the protesters. And I have nowhere seen or heard a good reason for the royal car to have taken that route.
Hey, Frazer … you start talking about a demo you weren’t at, and when someone replies to you, you say “pick on someone else”?
Sheesh …
Frazer, sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’ve been saying much the same as you about police officers to Glenn. These kettling tactics are bad orders, that brutalise protesters AND police officers.
OK, so who were these violent, masked protestors?
“There were the cold-eyed white nationalists who’d turned up, jeering, and whose leader smashed a female student in the face in front of the police, and walked away in triumph.”
Behind a Student Kettle: Red Pepper
“Not much later another gang of youths appeared but this time there were about twenty of them. They were picking people out and beating them with sticks. When there victim fell to the ground they continued to kick them. They only stopped for three reasons. 1) Their victim escaped 2) their victim had stopped moving or 3) someone had tried to stop them and had then become their new target. These weren’t protesters. They were animals looking to hurt the weaker. If they were brave men they would have fought the police on the frontline. But no, they attack their peers instead, the people they’re meant to be united with. I witnessed them do this to five people, including two people that I know. It was distressful and one of the most shocking and upsetting things..”
Ayden (indymedia repost)
“When the kettle had gone into effect my friends and I wandered aimlessly. Suddenly a commotion erupted nearby. Youths wearing ski-masks and raised hoods were attacking a reporting crew. We watched as they threw a cameraman to the floor, where he received kicks and blows.
Believing the attackers simply to be angry protesters, I confronted one youth. He was not wearing a ski mask, but his mouth and nose were covered. He was about 15, and a lot smaller than me. He shot me a look that sent a shiver down by spine. But he weighed his options, and backed off.
I got lucky.
As other protestors confronted the remaining youths, there was a sudden palpable rush of fear. We all saw the hammer come out. Everybody took a step backward. For a few terrible seconds, I thought I was about to witness a murder. Mercifully, the situation defused as quickly as it began. Somebody with a leveller and braver head than mine calmly shouted to “put the hammer away, mate” ?” and away it went. The gang ran off, to another part of the kettle.
And that’s when the second wave of fear ?” the reflective wave ?” hit me. I couldn’t get out. I was trapped here, with the hammer-wielding gang; one of whom I’d just confronted and had clearly seen my face. The police? It wasn’t their problem anymore: “there’s nothing we can do pal ?” it’s your fault for being in the kettle”.
Paul Sagar – Reflections on a Kettle (indymedia repost)
From the previous protest:
“I was threatened while taking pictures like this one – http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2010/11/24/20101124-d0751.jpg
that I had better move away or they would smash my camera. I had my suspicions that at least one of this group might be an agent provocateur, one of a number of student and ex-student protesters in the pay of the police. There is at least one such young man who I regularly see at protests, but I couldn’t see him. Another who had deceived all his friends for years and encouraged vandalism and illegal acts at a number of protests was unmasked a couple of months ago, and there are almost certainly others still in most activist groups.” (see Mark Kennedy/Stone: exposed as having been undercover police operative for 10 years http://nottingham.indymedia.org.uk/articles/611)
Peter Marshall (indymedia repost)