As one of the Stoke Newington Church Street middle class massive, I’ll have you know I am planning to conceal a cricket bat in my picnic hamper even as I type.

UKuncut and the anarchists both have actions planned….for after and away from the march. Neither propose violence so scare stories are just that – to keep people away and hype up the police and their in depth knowledge of left and anarchist politics. I doubt many people believe them any more.

daddy is taking girls aged 10 and 8 on the TUC anti-cuts march tomorrow

I hope they enjoy it but of course they won’t appreciate that when they reach adulthood they’ll have to pay for the handouts you and the marchers are demanding.

More seriously though, I am baffled by the media reaction to the march. If it’s not the Guardian getting flustered about totally speculative violence, it’s the Beeb showing how completely unprepared thet are for what’s about to happen, like Evan Davis just about conceding on Today this morning that it “could be big”.

I can’t work out whether it’s just dismissiveness of anything that looks connected to the unions – still too often regarded as a spent force in UK politics post-Thatcher – or panic that they might have to change their standard narrative about how most people accept the cuts as inevitable.

Did this just appear at the same time as the UKUncut planning action post?

Since UKUncut are seemingly planning something at best dubiously legal, I suspect that there is prima facia evidence that something is being planned. I’d be very surprised if the same wasn’t true for other, more stupid groups.

Pity really – it’s going to be difficult enough to get publicity for the march with Libya (and the rest of the Arab world coming to the boil) and whatever else (what’s the bet that the Japanese finally achieve something with the nuclear emergency on Saturday for example), without having most of the coverage dominated by pictures of violent thugs.

“Yet today’s papers are full of dire predictions that a ‘violent minority’ are hell-bent on ‘hijacking a peaceful protest’.”

That’s very likely Government Communications preparing the way for the policing of the march . . . and to discourage any who could be worried about joining by the prospect of kettling, such as those with long-term medical conditions.

See the video clip here of a police officer hitting Ian Tomlinson during the G20 demonstrations – he collapsed and died shortly after and he was just a bystander who got caught up:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/apr/07/g20-police-assault-video

@3 Because its well known all children grow up to be conservatives? If so, where do these nasty socialists (i.e. anyone not-Tory) come from? Answers on a postcard please…

I wouldn’t trust Andy Hayman as far as I could throw him (or, alternatively, get him to march with the TUC).

“Pity really – it’s going to be difficult enough to get publicity for the march…(snip)… without having most of the coverage dominated by pictures of violent thugs.”

Shockingly naive. Peacefull protest gets you next to no coverage. You have to get at least 50k before even the guardian copies your press release into page 9. Tabloids will only cover you if you get celebrities and a few photogenic students to do a publicity stunt.

Like it or not violence gets you coverage, a few windows smashed gets you front page of the Mail, and a churchil mohawk garantees you extensive tabloid coverage for weeks. As Worstall would say; its all about incentives.

@5 Watchman

There’s a difference between the actions of UKUncut (usually a crowd of people sitting down and singing/joking/handing out leaflets in a Vodafone store) and the actions of militant “anarchists” who are only interested in causing violence against property. Don’t confuse the issue by claiming they are one and the same.

~

Agree with OP.

“What’s so bad about Peace,Love & Understanding?…” Well, ask the poitical elite, who,in one night, killed 10,000 people ( Baghdad–Shock & Awe–2003 ) on the basis of ‘flawed intelligence’. What happened when 2,000,000 marched peacefully against that illegal war? Nothing. “They” ignore peaceful protests;laugh up their sleeves at us all ( see the banksters ) and will continue in their demoloition of socialism until they have a compliant slave class, Obey Conform Consume…..that’s all you need to know. My view? Fight fire with fire. The power of love is greater than the love of power….but sometimes you’ve just got to give “Them” a good slap. THEN, “They” will take you seriously. Peace,Love & Understanding to you all from a veteran of the struggle against Thatcher/Reagan.

I live in a country of the selfish.
Where the have tell the can’t have they can’t even try to have.
Needless to say a goverment that once suported the fox hunt lobby.
Who broke their way in to the house if commons to throw red stuff all over the Mps
Or the bullion club prime monster mashin up restaurants
.
But the you call me a yob.

Needless to say I am worth nothin compared to. You all.

Ellie – are we going to be playing cricket in Hyde park too? Excellent!

S.Pill,

There’s a difference between the actions of UKUncut (usually a crowd of people sitting down and singing/joking/handing out leaflets in a Vodafone store) and the actions of militant “anarchists” who are only interested in causing violence against property. Don’t confuse the issue by claiming they are one and the same.

I’m not – I’m saying that their plans (which are still of questionable legality) exist, and that the existence of this allows us to suggest that other groups (much less pleasant) will also have plans. And that the media will happily make this sort of assumption, as that’s practically evidence, isn’t it?

Planeshift,

Shockingly naive. Peacefull protest gets you next to no coverage. You have to get at least 50k before even the guardian copies your press release into page 9. Tabloids will only cover you if you get celebrities and a few photogenic students to do a publicity stunt.

Like it or not violence gets you coverage, a few windows smashed gets you front page of the Mail, and a churchil mohawk garantees you extensive tabloid coverage for weeks. As Worstall would say; its all about incentives.

I hope you are being faceoutious here. If not I refer you to the Countryside Alliance marches – where was the violence there?

Or indeed the early Stop the War marches were basically peaceful as I remember – the story was the crowds, not the idiots (who were well stewarded).

Both got major coverage in the media. The anti-cuts marches so far have been mainly covered through the violence and idiocy, not the valid (I disagree, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it should be expressed) message they want to put across.

@14 Absolutely. I’m also bringing some lovely fruit and herbal teas, since I’ve heard the police will be kindly supplying a massive kettle.

I’m not skipping the protests because I’m gullible enough to believe the media’s unsubstantiated scaremongering about anarchists and leftists, I’m just avoiding the South because of radiation flooding in from Japan.

“It’s tempting to argue that these are just scare stories, gotten up by the media for the sole purpose of discouraging law abiding citizens from joining the demo.”

It certainly is, isn’t it David? But you’re not ‘tempted’ are you?

Don’t take your children, David, their ‘opinions’ are of no consequence, what with them being children. If you half-believe the scare stories you don’t take children along.

Be consistent.

which contends that the Old Bill have ‘strong intelligence’ that ‘extremist groups are planning illegal acts of violence’ tomorrow.

Yeah but it’s the TUC I’m worried about.

I hope you are being faceoutious here. If not I refer you to the Countryside Alliance marches – where was the violence there?

From the police, as far as I remember.

Would that be the Countryside Alliance demo that tried to storm Parliament (& had to be beaten back by the police)?

It is not as simple to label violence as bad! To suscribe to this would be to say that countering the Nazis or apartheid is wrong! And yet those who did use violence to oppose the Nazis and apartheid were condemned at the time as terrorists. No decent person in their rigth mind would condone or use violence but to defend their families and communities and their decency they may certainly have to!

Civil Disobedience DOES make change happen. This is about refusing to obey unjust laws or refusing to be governmed by an illigitimate government. In 10 years of protests I have been involved in, including many involving civil disobedience, I have never once seen an act of violence against humans instigated by a protestor. What I have seen is non violent civil disobedience being violently broken up by police. This is what get shown on the news as a ‘violent protest’

Non Violent direct action is about getting in the way of injustice, or removing the instruments through which injustice could be perpetraded. This has on occasion involved damaging property – as in the case of the planes dismantled before heading to Iraq. This is not violent. However it sometimes GETS violent when the police get involved.

It would seem that in the eyes of the police however, both NVDA and Civil disobedience are violent. When the cops aren’t there, they;re not

@ 3 Barry:

“I hope they enjoy it but of course they won’t appreciate that when they reach adulthood they’ll have to pay for the handouts you and the marchers are demanding.”

God, this is such crap.

When I started paying taxes in the mid 90s, I was “paying for the handouts” demanded by my grandparents’ generation when they established the Welfare State. Did I resent that fact, having benefited from a free education to the age of 21, life-saving treatment on the NHS etc.? Of course I bloody well didn’t. Inheriting some of their debt was a small price to pay for inheriting the Welfare State.

The idea that the Coalition is cancelling school building programs, cutting child tax credits and child benefit, scrapping EMA and the Child Trust Fund, closing Sure Start centres and tripling tuition fees for the benefit of our children is such blatant hogwash I can’t believe anyone takes it seriously.

I have never once seen an act of violence against humans instigated by a protestor.

That’s right. What actually happens is that the protesters try to smash up a building, the police try to stop them, then the protesters fight the police complaining that the police threw the first punch.

Where were all these protesters ten years ago when the British government was spending like there was no tomorrow? Were they protesting that? Of course not. They have no problem at all with the government spending beyond its means, but whine when the inevitable correction needs to be made and cuts implemented. They have the fiscal nous and carefree attitude of children. Little surprise they sometimes throw tantrums.

Non Violent direct action is about getting in the way of injustice, or removing the instruments through which injustice could be perpetraded.

Non-violent direct action is only legitimate when change cannot be achieved through the ballot box. That was, for example, the case in the American South when gerrymandered white majorities and illegal practices prevented black Americans from exercising their civil rights and living without being terrorized. That is patently not the case in the UK in 2011 — and non-violent direct action is typically resorted to by insignificant campaign groups that have lost the argument and have no chance whatsoever of seeing their eccentric policies adopted by an elected government. Non-violent direct action is quite simply a “soft” form of terrorism and certainly not a “hard” form of democratic campaigning.

Have a look at this daft blog from Toby Young. His sub probably told him to write it.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100081416/the-tuc-is-about-to-unleash-a-tsunami-of-violence-and-destruction-in-london/

I’ve seen several tweeters I follow gearing up for a fight and even wearing goggles FFS.

IF there is any violence, then those responsible will simply derail any credability in the anti-cuts movement

From Political Scrapbook
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2011/03/asking-for-trouble-paving-slabs-left-outside-treasury-on-eve-of-protest/

Les agents provacateurs? Peut-etre

hahaha cheers for the Toby Young link that is hilarious

“Les agents provacateurs? Peut-etre”

Spot on – and recent press commentary has depicted Osborne, the chancellor, as the chief political strategist of the Conservatives. Try the wiki entry for: Agent provocateur:

“Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act. More generally, the term may refer to a person or group that seeks to discredit or harm another by provoking them to commit a wrong or rash action. . . ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur

@Scooby

“Where were all these protesters ten years ago when the British government was spending like there was no tomorrow?”

Erm… ten years ago public spending as a percentage of GDP was about as low as it’s been at any time since the war, and the British government was running a budget surplus. Spending later rose again to more typical levels, but certainly not to unusually high levels.

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?year=1985_2015&state=UK&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=2010&chart=F0-total&bar=1&stack=1&size=m&color=c&title=

What naive tripe.

How to do left-liberalism:

1) Accept the police/state presumption that occupation of space and/or damage to inanimate objects equals “violence.”
2) Accept the police/state presumption that police attacks upon living human beings do not equal violence and must only be tsked at when they can no longer be described as “proportionate.”
3) Promote illusions in parliamentary democracy and the idea of the ruling class giving a damn about the interests of the working class.
4) Look aghast as those who realise that society is not a debating chamber but a power struggle between competing class interests take direct action.
5) Wait for the state to throw concessions your way in order to stave off the rising class anger.
6) Claim that it was your passive protests and petitioning that won the day all along and continue to promote the illusions of capitalist social democracy.
7) Vote Labour and turn a blind eye when they help roll back the concessions.
Look smug. All the time.

@26:

On Total Managed (Public) Expenditure in real terms, 1948/9 through 2010/11, try the IFS on: A Survey of Public Spending in the UK – Fig. 2.1 (a)
http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn43.pdf

But none of these losers ever vote Tory so all they’re doing is circle jerking each other. At least they’ll be spending money on something other than weed or sex toys. Ha ha ha. They truly are pathetic sheep being led by Unionazis on 6 figure salaries

Oh dear

Guardian/ICM poll finds 57% support for current or deeper cuts, despite a fall in economic confidence

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/25/voters-cuts-coalition-poll

Flawed poll, I suspect. I’d love to see how the question were phrased. Furthermore, how many people understand the difference between the various forms of deficit and the national debt? Not many, I’d wager.

Well, of course they are determined to frighten people off joining the protest. Of course there ar rumours of violence. There will be agents provocateurs around too, Mark Kennedy style, ready to ensure it happens. The BBC was busy ensuring the non violent protests planned by UKUncut etc were bracketed with the headbangers this morning, allowing some authoritarian worthy to promise Boots etc shoppers would be allowed to go about their business unhampered by people with inconvenient principles.

@ Barry:

“I hope they enjoy it but of course they won’t appreciate that when they reach adulthood they’ll have to pay for the handouts you and the marchers are demanding.”

No need to ask where you stand on the political spectrum then, somewhere slightly to the left of Genghis Khan I imagine or is that position too socialist for you?

“Guardian/ICM poll finds 57% support for current or deeper cuts, despite a fall in economic confidence”

But then most are, frankly, clueless about economics.

What matters for future employment and economic growth is whether increased spending by consumers and private businesses for investment plus net exports will make up for the government’s cuts in public spending. If the gap isn’t made up then total demand for goods and services will decline, growth will stall and unemployment will increase.

@38

I suspect you are right – most people are financially illiterate. If they new the true scale of the national debt and the deficit they would be truly horrified.

Robrt anderson, THe difference between teh Nazis, those under apratied, and the current lot, is we have the power to democratically vote the Gov’t at the mnext election thise suffering under the Nazis’ apartied didn’t have the power to vote them out,

What gets me with the thugs who pitch up at protests like this is that some sections of the ultra-left (yes the bloody SWP!) argue passionatly that them smashing in a few windows is justified and violence against property is ok because it’s against the property of big corperations, many who won’t pay taxes.

But what the fail to realise is that these thugs, despite their protestations DO NOT represent the majority of working class people who will be affected by the cuts. These thugs are posh kids from posh areas who won’t be affected by the cuts but pitch and smash things up and then claim to be doing it for the “proletariate”.
But unlike the “proleteriate” they will get away with smashing things up because Daddy will get a crack lawyer to bail them after they’ve been thrown in jail by the police (or fascist pigs as Tarquin and co call them) then they will go screaming to one of the left-wing newspapers (like The Guardian or the Socialist Worker) about how teribly they were treated by the police.

And they don’t think that some poor street cleaner who’s wages are gonna be cut because of the scum Tories will have to clean up after them!

@44 I thought we were sacking street cleaners and then forcing the newly unemployed to clean the streets instead via workfare?

The author of this article must indeed be naive to predict no trouble – the price of entry to my council swimming pool is to rise 70 % to over £5.00. I’m furious.

What Phil said.

Hey Dave!
How’d that prediction work out?

@42: “most people are financially illiterate. If they new the true scale of the national debt and the deficit they would be truly horrified.”

More illiterate than horrified, it seems, or the mountain of consumer debt wouldn’t have risen to £1.4 trillion by the autumn of 2008.

Few worried about the house-proce bubble because home-owners loved the idea of the houses they owned being worth more and more – regardless of what that was doing for those who couldn’t afford to buy a home.

“Houses are less affordable than 50 years ago although the quality of homes has improved, according to the Halifax.
“The lender, now owned by Lloyds Banking Group, said that over the last five decades UK house prices have risen by 2.7% a year, allowing for inflation.
“This was above the 2% annual increase in real earnings over the same period.
“Prices increased the most in the last decade, and separately lenders warned that lending to first-time buyers would be constrained for ‘some time to come’.” [20 January 2010]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8468605.stm

So you were wrong.

The ararchist mob did turn up, and caused some pretty serious damage – none of which appears to have been caused by police provocation.

That these thugs have stolen the headlines from the real issue is a disgrace. We cannot simply blame the media for that – after all, it is exactly what the anarchists wanted. There’s no point smashing up a bank if no one is around to film it.

I am whole heartedly against every thing written, ever, on this site! Its annoys the hell out of me! Why aren’t there any stories about how great George Osborne is or stories supporting our boys. Its just full of Liberals, with there crazy Liberals ideas. I think I might keep coming back here and leaving a comment.

51
So, you know what to do.

I knew we would have one people are angry and get angrier and they are angry with labour as well as the Tories.

If we took your viewpoint to its logical conclusion we would still have a situation where it would be illegal for women and non landowners to vote, children would be used in our factories and the Houses of Parliament would be even more full of pompous aristocrats than it currently is.
Non violent protests never achieved anything – just look at the outcome of the march against the war in Iraq whereas protests that spill in to violence often do e.g. the Chartist Riots, The Rebbecca Riots, The Poll Tax Riots etc etc. Wake up and stop being an apologist for the Con=Dem government – they are using the excuse of a so called extreme financial crisis to make cuts to the services on which working class men and women rely- read Naomi Kleins book ‘Shock Doctrine’ and you will see that we have seen this kind of thing happening many times in the world.We haven’t got an insurmountable debt crisis in this country and there is another way – make the Bankers pay for their recklessness, ensure that all corporations pay their fair share of taxes, invest in job creation schemes so that more people will pay taxes and if we still need more put income tax up (especially to the wealthiest 1% in the country who earn over £100,000 a year).

@54

“We haven’t got an insurmountable debt crisis in this country and there is another way – make the Bankers pay for their recklessness, ensure that all corporations pay their fair share of taxes, invest in job creation schemes so that more people will pay taxes and if we still need more put income tax up (especially to the wealthiest 1% in the country who earn over £100,000 a year).”

The top 1% of income tax payers already pay 27% of all income tax collected. There is a limit as to how much you can tax people before they leave – there are alternative places to do business. Make taxes to high and it is counter productive – tax revenues fall.

Have you done the numbers to see how much you would need to increase taxes on those earning over £100k and Corporation tax to reduce the £140bn deficit?

Interesting that Ireland is insisting on keeping its 12.5% rate of corporation tax because it recognises the benefits of having such a low tax structure.

What exactly do you mean by job creation schemes? Using taxpayer funds to subsidise employers? Employing people to dig holes?

@45. And they will end up having to clear up the mess left by thugs.

@ 50 MC

“That these thugs have stolen the headlines from the real issue is a disgrace. We cannot simply blame the media for that – after all, it is exactly what the anarchists wanted. There’s no point smashing up a bank if no one is around to film it.”

The most sensible thing to do is ignore them as much as possible. It’s impossible to stop these idiots turning up, so the legitimate protesters should not be tarred with the same brush as the violent zealots.

I wish people would stop talking about the rioters as anarchists. They’re not. They are probably SWP henchmen out for a good time.

Simple question:

Given that 1,000,000 passive left-leaning marchers can be comfortably ignored by a Labour government.

What’s the chances of 500,000 passively marching trade union members will be listened to by a Tory government?

It’s not about smiley media coverage, it’s about making the cuts expensive and unworkable.

Do you want to feel good about a day out in London with friends, or do you want to stop the cuts?

55 Fungus

Yes and we can see how great their economic model was. Their economy is a train wreck. The low CT model didn’t work. Case proven. Lets move on.

Anyone who thinks a march alone will change government policy need their lumps felt. A march and rally such as Saturday’s is the start of a long process. It demonstrates mass support for an alternative to tory radicalism and to passive acceptance. The diversity of the marchers should be noted, the extent of participation from important public services and the common thread to their messages.

The process has to continue with people pressing their argument that there is an alternative, that growth is being ignored as a strategy by the Government, that they are cutting too hard and that taxation needs to be fairer.

None of the violent protests mentioned by others above made their changes alone. They were part of a wider process. To single out the poll tax riots as the cause of the change in policy ignores the breadth of unhappiness with the policy. To argue that suffragettes setting fire to letterboxes brought about electoral reform ignores the long commitment of a wider group of suffragists.

If you want to be heard you’ve got to talk like grown-ups. Nobody cares about the message of the black bloc on Saturday.

@60 James,
I suspect that that’s Fungus’ point: even if everything else about the Irish economy is a mess, it’s still worth keeping the low CT to keep growth going. It’s pretty poor logic to dismiss a low tax policy because something (possibly the low tax policy) has trashed an economy.

What really confused me about the march was why there were so many placards that appeared to say ‘ban no cuts’. I’d have thought that was against the basic principles of the march.