photo credit: mini_mouse
written by my friend and compadre Eva Baker
So what happens when you put one day aside for everyone to vent their anger over a particular issue, or in this case, several interconnected issues? The March 26 demo saw thousands upon thousands of people take to the streets to march, chant, and experience a sense of solidarity with other citizens that is, unfortunately, extremely rare in our semi-detached society. So what did London look like in a rare moment when political grievances and discontent spilled out of people’s living rooms, became louder than the sporadic disgruntled muttering at the news on TV and the standard slurring rants in local pubs on a Friday night, and filled the streets of the capital in the from of a coordinated, organised event?
In a rare and vibrant moment in the capital’s history, the streets of central London were overrun with people marching, chanting, bearing placards and beating drums. The carnival-like atmosphere had to make you smile, and in the rally’s focal point in Hyde Park there was a widespread sense of good feeling, if a certain lack of dynamism and urgency. The fact that so many people from so many different walks of life and parts of the country felt the need to stand up and march for what they believe is not to be sniffed at, particularly in a society that seems to become more apathetic and cynical about politics by the minute. Apathy and cynicism dually considered, the current state of affairs in Tory Britain, and the widespread resistance to government actions, prove you can only push people so far before they start to fight back.
In Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, things were starting to get rowdy. It’s no surprise that the mainstream media have oh-so-predictably singled out the suitably scary-looking ‘black bloc’ of anarchists as their new favourite way of caricaturing and undermining young people’s anger at the state of their own society. The dichotomisation of the people around in central London on Saturday, (public/yobs) or the protesters (peaceful/mob) aggressively demonises and excludes so many groups of people and forms of protest, labelling those who wanted to assert their agency in any other way which was not the way sanctioned by official Trade Union leaders ‘the angry mob.’ But is it really fair for most of us to write off young people expressing their anger publicly as hooligans, criminals, a minority?
The fact that we’re currently being ruled by an extreme minority, an overwhelmingly white, male, privately-educated, hyper- privileged group of politicians from the upper echelons of society seems to have escaped the media’s attention. Sure, the black bloc caused some damage on Saturday by smashing up a few banks and businesses, but the white toffs are smashing up entire sectors of society with just as much testosterone-fuelled gusto: systematically ordering the splicing of public services, from community centres to disabled people’s living allowances.
The anger felt by young people towards those dictating laws that govern their present circumstance as well as their futures feels unprecedented, and I hope we continue to vent that anger in a coordinated, creative manner that forces people to take notice. The rise of social media, of course, means that this anger spreads like a particularly intoxicating disease, as do the creative symbols and acts of resistance that spring from this simmering pot of political discontent.
Unfortunately, it seems to be a natural pattern of human behaviour to single out a certain minority group, and to then blame that group for the problems and challenges society is experiencing. It seems the angry youth of today have overtaken the illegal immigrants of yesterday in the scapegoat stakes.
In this moment in history, we are living in a democracy where politicians are not representative of society’s views, nor are they personally representative members of the society we live in. A tiny, privileged sub sect of the population have been calling the shots for a long time now, and the severity and heartlessness of the cuts to public services, along with the trebling of university tuition fees, means that we’re left with a nation of young people whose discontent is more than justified. Though the media have uninspiringly swooped in on the angry young protesters, plastering their balaclava-obscured faces over the front pages in an attempt to strike terror into the hearts of middle-aged middle England, it’s important that we remember who the real violent minority in this scenario is.
