Protesting gets you out of college. Protesting is good exercise, which means potentially less self-loathing. Protesting is a fun way to learn that ‘buts’ and ‘cuts’ rhyme. Protesting is an enjoyable bonding experience. Protesting could possibly save you a fuckload of money.
I feel I appealed to most variations of people with my reasoning. If you need any more reasons I attended the NUS ‘Fund Our Future’ protest in London last week, you can leave me a comment and I will personally find you and break down exactly why my generation don’t deserve to have to shell out ridiculously huge amounts of money, have their futures shrouded by debt and possibly miss out on higher education all together. On Wednesday morning after 2nd period, I hopped on the train with some equally minded individuals (in other words, my friends who bothered going) and made it up to London. As Queen of all dumbasses, I thought the small amount of people I saw walking towards the meeting place were the only attendees of the march. After seeing about ten people with banners, I contemplated my support for the cause. It was only when we arrived to see the huge crowd, taking up so much space we couldn’t even see who was making the speeches, that I got into the spirit of things and made an embarrassingly shaggy placard out of the back of a notepad. It read ‘what’s the story, traitor and Tory?’ and on the back, to acknowledge how lacking my efforts were, ‘I’m so poor I couldn’t even afford a real banner’.
The protest itself was a bit of a laugh. At some points it was hard to distinguish between the protest atmosphere and a just-got-to-a-festival feeling, where everybody you meet is sober and overly-nice to you because they’re not expecting rain (or in this case, a riot). As a whole, 99% of the whole thing was spent walking really slowly and shouting ‘SHAME! SHAME! SHAME ON YOU! SHAME ON YOU FOR TURNING BLUE’, ‘NO IFS, NO BUTS, NO EDUCATION CUTS!’ or my personal favourite, ‘JUDAS CLEGG!’ , and as far as I can see everybody there was really into what we were doing; so shucks to everyone who said ‘no one there even knows what they’re protesting about..yaddah yaddah yaddah...’. I’m pretty sure people don’t bother to travel from as far as Ireland and Scotland, make huge banners and commit an entire day to a cause they haven’t bothered researching. Contrary to the bogus spiel Sky News and the BBC have fed the public, most of the protest consisted of shouting, walking and chatting with fellow protesters. There wasn’t a hint of revolt, a trace of violence or any other sort of suggestion things would turn sour, until we got to Millbank.
I feel I appealed to most variations of people with my reasoning. If you need any more reasons I attended the NUS ‘Fund Our Future’ protest in London last week, you can leave me a comment and I will personally find you and break down exactly why my generation don’t deserve to have to shell out ridiculously huge amounts of money, have their futures shrouded by debt and possibly miss out on higher education all together. On Wednesday morning after 2nd period, I hopped on the train with some equally minded individuals (in other words, my friends who bothered going) and made it up to London. As Queen of all dumbasses, I thought the small amount of people I saw walking towards the meeting place were the only attendees of the march. After seeing about ten people with banners, I contemplated my support for the cause. It was only when we arrived to see the huge crowd, taking up so much space we couldn’t even see who was making the speeches, that I got into the spirit of things and made an embarrassingly shaggy placard out of the back of a notepad. It read ‘what’s the story, traitor and Tory?’ and on the back, to acknowledge how lacking my efforts were, ‘I’m so poor I couldn’t even afford a real banner’.
The protest itself was a bit of a laugh. At some points it was hard to distinguish between the protest atmosphere and a just-got-to-a-festival feeling, where everybody you meet is sober and overly-nice to you because they’re not expecting rain (or in this case, a riot). As a whole, 99% of the whole thing was spent walking really slowly and shouting ‘SHAME! SHAME! SHAME ON YOU! SHAME ON YOU FOR TURNING BLUE’, ‘NO IFS, NO BUTS, NO EDUCATION CUTS!’ or my personal favourite, ‘JUDAS CLEGG!’ , and as far as I can see everybody there was really into what we were doing; so shucks to everyone who said ‘no one there even knows what they’re protesting about..yaddah yaddah yaddah...’. I’m pretty sure people don’t bother to travel from as far as Ireland and Scotland, make huge banners and commit an entire day to a cause they haven’t bothered researching. Contrary to the bogus spiel Sky News and the BBC have fed the public, most of the protest consisted of shouting, walking and chatting with fellow protesters. There wasn’t a hint of revolt, a trace of violence or any other sort of suggestion things would turn sour, until we got to Millbank.
You couldn’t miss it. Aside from the obvious huge crowd leaking out of the place, some enthusiastic young specimen was stood outside yelling ‘that’s where the Tories make all their decisions! Let’s get ‘em!’, so off we wandered into the abyss of shouty teenagers and ‘crusty anarchists’. The whole thing was crazy and pretty fun, unless you’re the world’s biggest pussy like me. I ran as far/fast as I could every time someone set off a flare, and I wasn’t exactly one to stick around when some fat emo chick set her deodorant can on fire. To be honest, the whole thing was a bit too ‘Sunday night at Reading’ for me. My cohorts and I completely missed the integral smashing of the window because our stomachs got the better of us and we decided a quick trip to Pizza Express wouldn’t hurt, which meant when we came out we didn’t understand how so many people were on the roof/why the building suddenly seemed considerably worse of the wear. I liked the part where loads of random people with drums and symbols and bells came out of nowhere and started playing an endless ‘no ifs! No buts! No education cuts!’ song, but other than that he whole thing was pretty fruitless for those too scared to get to the front. The height of my anarchy was kicking a bush and throwing a parker pen at a window, only to miss and hit some poor girl in the face.
All in all a day well spent? I don’t feel we are any closer to our goal. But after a day spent waving cardboard and shouting my throat sore, I don’t regret it. We were part of history – however events go from here will determine how much so – but I definitely feel like I was PART of something. And a note to everyone who’s been whining ‘the violence just belittled our cause, no one is going to listen now’: no one was going to listen to us anyway, so it’s just as well we inconvenienced some assholes by trashing a reception. Or in my case, kicking a bush.
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