On violence
Article published: Monday, November 15th 2010
Don’t censor the violence coming from young people: it’s all that we have left.
Of the thousands of clips that have been posted online of last Wednesday’s protests, the best one by far is the response to one protestor throwing a fire extinguisher from the roof. In it, the crowd of hundreds of students chant “stop throwing shit!” in perfect unison at the roof of Millbank Tower, from the courtyard below.
This video sums up the feeling of Wednesday for two reasons: firstly, it shows that any destruction caused was not senseless, it was a considered expression of the anger and fear felt by young people in the UK, and that the students did not want their legitimate violence to be hijacked by people simply wanting to cause pain or destruction. Secondly, the chant “stop throwing shit” could just as easily be interpreted as a chant directed at those in power, because that is pretty much what the Browne review has done, which makes a “violent” response more than appropriate.
It would be easy to write off last Wednesday as a peaceful protest hijacked by a minority. Except that their so-called violence (if you can call some light criminal damage “violence”) was a legitimate outpouring of anger, an anger that has gone ignored for some time. This is the generation where for many, their first experience of political involvement was the march against the invasion of Iraq: an enormous public noise which was ignored by politicians. It is probably not such an exaggeration to assume that some of those that marched in 2003 used their first ever vote in a general election for the Liberal Democrats last May. It may have been somewhat idealistic (isn’t that what politics is supposed to be at that age?) to have invested such hope in mainstream politics given its track record of totally sidelining the needs of anyone under the age of thirty, but many people recognised the opportunity for change, one which also went totally ignored.
Even at the moment of the coalition formation – which hit those who had previously supported the Liberal Democrats like a punch in the stomach – there was the hope that at least they could act to prevent the worst Tory instincts to slash and cut at the foundations of UK society. The destruction didn’t start when a group of protestors entered the unlocked doors of Millbank Tower. It started when the Liberal Democrats decided to renege on every single promise that they’d made, and pretend it was for our own good.
Violence rules our society despite our wishes that it didn’t. We are fed on a diet of war footage and told that this is one of the vehicles by which justice and democracy are supposed to come. For entertainment, we play violent video games. Newspapers attempt to prick into our everyday with threats of violence from abroad, or even from those around us. Violence is the currency of communication in the 24 hour news cycle, the tool used to punctuate the rolling new bulletin. These students did not get the idea to smash things from anywhere except their immediate surroundings, and the press that condemns them has only themselves to blame.
To write off the 10th November as simply violence for the sake of it is a form of censorship, one which has gone on for far too long now. Dismissing the students’ actions is to censor their legitimate reasons for acting how they did – something which might only generate more violence. If those sitting in Westminster want there to be less violence directed at them then perhaps they should take some due advice and “stop throwing shit”.
Ruth Michaelson
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