#demo2010: a dispatch from your correspondent on Whitehall: “There’s a war going on…”
There is a moment in Sarah Kane’s Blasted where the violent, drunken newspaper man Iain tells Cait, his much younger girlfriend/victim that there is a war going on outside. They are inside a beautiful hotel room with no sign of the violence that is to come. By the end of the first act the room is blown apart. I was reminded of the scene multiple times yesterday as I was kettled on Whitehall, the sound of fireworks like mortars, the smell of burning plastic from an incinerated portable toilet in Parliament Square in the air. Above us the helicopters buzzed and on either end of the kettle the police lines were shouting, goaded by groups of young men with their faces covered and sticks in their hands.
As Whitehall was kettled, I spoke to American businessmen trapped after afternoon meetings and watched civil servants and government employees allowed through the police lines after showing their passes. I spoke to a policewoman who herself decried the kettling as counter-productive. I spoke to school children with their ties and blazers in rucksacks, driven by a desire to be involved in what they feel is a moment for their generation. I saw those same school children in tears, frightened and beaten down by police charges. I felt the fear on Whitehall as people who thought they’d moved away from violence were dragged in again.
In trees, protestors climbed to view the battlefield along Whitehall to the Helm’s Deep of Parliament Square. An idiot burbled into a megaphone and was shouted down by the crowd. Darker elements swirled near the police lines, bandanas over faces and weapons nestled in pockets. Moving to the back of the crowd I saw estate lads with fighting dogs striding into the crowd, one muttering that he: “Fucking hates students as much as he fucking hates the police.”
Escaping the kettle, I saw kids running for freedom, and was eyeballed by the police as I walked down a corridor of them, video cameras trained on us as we were ‘processed’. On Embankment I saw protestors who had made it out of Parliament Square clutching bandages to their heads. At a police staging point I saw coppers doing the same thing. At Charing Cross station, I stopped to speak to a delegation from Newcastle Students Union, they spat anger about Clare Solomon, leader of the London students: “She’s an anarchist, she breeds violence.” They had come to lobby Parliament but knew the vote was lost.
In a pub off Oxford Street my phone beeped with an email from my mum. She was concerned about my safety: “What pub are you in?” I called her and told: “They’ve got to Oxford Street too. It’s quite nasty.” I finished my drinks and wandered with my friend out into the cold night. On Westminster Bridge, the kettle was still boiling over. In Oxford Street, we inspected the damage to TopShop, the graffitied windows and the army of hi-vis clad men milling around inside. A few months ago, those kids were spending their pocket money in that store, now they’re charging it in anger.
Back home, I watched the television and listened to Sky News sounding positively orgasmic over the violence and shedding crocodile tears for poor dear Prince Charles, desperate to show the pictures of fires and fights, putting everything into a neat and simple narrative of nasty students and brave coppers. On Question Time, the panel pouted and pulled out platitudes. As they sat in a warm studio and I sat safely in a friends flat, kids were still kettled on Westminster Bridge. There is a war going on and it’s hard to know how to stay safe and whose side to be on.
