Biggest student rebellion since '68 posted by Richard Seymour

Several fires burn on the tarmac, someone gives an impromptu speech from atop a concrete wall, and a chant goes up: "Let us out! Let us out! Let us out!". I am in the middle of Britain's student revolt, and I am amazed by the high spirits of thousands of kettled children and teenagers. For my part, I can only think how cold it is. Things keep "kicking off" on the frontlines between police and protesters. Further up Whitehall, a huge crowd of kids has gathered outside the kettle. I'm told the younger kids are walking around telling the police to go fuck themselves. They're so angry, more than I can explain, about being kettled in. When asked, the sheer righteous fury they express is impressive. The slogans that occasionally start up resonate throughout the wide avenue - "they say cutback, we say fightback!", "Tory Tory Tory, out out out!", and, yes, "one solution, revolution!". The police apparently claim they've made toilets available to us. They have not. There are two cubicles outside the kettle, which may be toilets but we can't access them. We have no water or food, and we are kept warm only by the fires. But still, people sing, dance, do the hokey kokey (yeah), and chant. This resilience is fuelled by white hot anger.

This scene and dozens like it have been repeated across the country. I hear that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has been on television, putting the 'blame' for these protests on the SWP. The SWP doesn't have this much of a following, but it's nice of Gove to do our advertising for us. In truth, tens of thousands of people who have never been political before are suddenly getting an education in how the system works, and they're deeply angry about what they're learning. Many of the young people I can see here won't have been born the last time there was a Tory government, and most certainly won't remember much about it. It's an incredible shock to the system to see what a Tory government is like, how brazen these upper class spivs and criminals are.

I know the media will go on about petty vandalism - inevitably dubbed 'violence' - but the odd window broken or cone burned doesn't even come close to expressing the palpable fury and sense of injustice that people feel. The government is flushing millions of young lives down the toilet, and next to that some shattered glass is small beer. This is the beginning, an opening shot. The Tories had no idea what they were doing when they started this. They might have expected unpopularity and protests. But what they're doing is raising a whole generation of militants.

Labels: education, militancy, protest, students, tories