Cops Off Campus Nationwide Pupil Protest – Ten years in the past at present on Wednesday eleventh December 2013 I used to be on the College of London for a big nationwide pupil protest over using police towards pupil protests on campus at a number of universities across the nation.
At Sussex College the administration had known as the police onto the campus or gone to the courts to stop or oppose pupil protests or harass college students. Plenty of college students had been arrested.
In London police had been known as to protests over the closing down by administration of the College of London Union and the three Cosas marketing campaign supported by college students for a dwelling wage and first rate circumstances of employment – sick pay, vacation pay and pensions – for the low paid staff on campus. The cleaners union, the IWGB, had come to assist the scholars at this protest.
The earlier week in London there had been a big police presence harassing and arresting college students at an emergency protest over police brutality of their eviction of scholars from the Senate Home that Wednesday, with a complete of over 40 arrests on that day and the next day.
Once I had arrived for that protest, there have been police vans parked in all of the facet streets round and later the police made a number of failed makes an attempt to kettle the massive group of scholars on the protest regardless of it being supposed as a wholly peaceable and orderly march round a few of the varied websites of the college within the space.
The police actions on that event appeared completely pointless and it was exhausting to not see them as a deliberate try to impress a violent response, however the college students saved their heads, moved quickly and outwitted them. My account of the protest at ‘Cops Off Campus’ Protest Police Brutality‘ ended with the sentence: “It did appear an unbelievable and pointless waste of public cash, and it resulted in additional inconvenience to the general public than if the occasion had not been policed in any respect.”
I don’t for a second think about the police had been influenced by my account, although I do know from occasional feedback made to me by officers at varied protests that a few of them no less than adopted me. I’m positive that that they had come to the identical apparent conclusion independently, and for the protest on eleventh December there was not an officer in sight in the entire space.
There have been speeched outdoors the College of London Union earlier than the march moved off, at its entrance a ‘Ebook Bloc’ carrying massive backed polystyrene foam shields with guide titles, together with George Orwell’s ‘1984’, significantly acceptable because the Senate Home is claimed to have impressed Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Fact’, and alongside it have been Mandela’s Lengthy Stroll to Freedom, Mary Woolstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Girls’, E P Thompson’s ‘The Making of the English Working Class’ and different classics.
When the march got here to the gates to Senate Home from Russell Sq. they discovered that these gates, usually open, had been locked and chained to stop them getting into, regardless of most of these current being members of the college. They’re stout steel gates however the chains couldn’t for lengthy resist the our bodies pushing towards them they usually gave manner and the gang surged into the automotive park.
After a couple of minutes the marchers made their manner again to Russell Sq. and continued to march across the space, ultimately coming to a halt outdoors SOAS, the place the samba band was taking part in they usually sat down, stood round or danced.
Later some went on to protest outdoors the regulation courts the place the inquest on Mark Duggan, shot by police in 2011, was ending after which to Whitehall, however I left as I used to be getting drained and wanted to file my photos.
Extra at Cops Off Campus Nationwide Pupil Protest.
Tags: 3 Cosas, ACAB, black bloc, black block, guide bloc, clown military, Cops Off Campus, IWGB, London, London College, London College Senate Home, march, Orwell, peter Marshall, police, police brutality, protest, russell sq., Senate Home, SOAS, college students, ULU, college administration, College of London Union
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