Examining “violent” protest (and the Lib Dems)

by Mark

If you have a long memory, or your memory in this instance has been bolstered by the pleasant prospect of seeing me with egg on my face, you may recall my endorsement of the Liberal Democrats before the general election in May. As promised, I did vote for them, helping to preserve Cardiff Central incumbent Jenny Willott’s seat in parliament. There’s a reasonable chance that you did too1, and if you did, there’s a pretty good chance that you now regret it2.

So, am I sorry for endorsing them? And do I regret voting for them?

It’s true that things have not exactly turned out how I had (perhaps optimistically) foreseen. Actually the original essay spent considerably more time attacking the Conservatives than endorsing Liberal Democrat policies, and I was disappointed by the decision to form a partnership with them when I perceived any prospective coalition as much more likely to be formed with Labour. It’s also true that the resultant coalition’s policy positions have broadly not fallen into line with my opinions.

There have in fact been several areas in which I have felt let down by the Lib Dems. The biggest disappointment is that after all the promises of “new politics” and new openness and accountability, they have enthusiastically joined their Tory partners in the very old-fashioned practices of spin and partisan mudslinging. The already-tired cliché that any cuts are justified by an inherited debt problem, owing to Labour’s profligate spending on public services, is simply an outright lie3, and Liberal Democrat ministers are as guilty of expounding this falsehood as any Tory4. Watching people I helped into government on a promise to end this kind of thing acting in this way infuriates me, but it may have been naïve of me to expect any different.

However, if you have a realistic view that they are the junior partner in the coalition and the best they could really hope to do is mitigate the worst of the Tory policies, they do deserve a limited amount of credit.

Although diluted, commitments to increase the rate of capital gains tax (to 28%, they had wanted 40%) and the threshold for paying income tax (to £10,000, to be phased in over 5 years) are being implemented, and closing loopholes used to avoid paying tax is high on the agenda. The Conservatives, on the other hand, have had to drop their plans to cut inheritance tax and scrap the Human Rights Act, and the Lib Dem insistence that money for any renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system must be found in the already hamstrung Ministry of Defence budget means that it is very unlikely to be implemented in the foreseeable future.

I think these concessions remove some of the most dangerous and regressive Tory policies, so overall I would have to say that no, in spite of their best efforts to publicly shame me, on balance I do not (yet) regret endorsing them. Only time will reveal the full extent of their ability to hold back the blue tide, however, and there are already some signs of the levee beginning to break.

One area where I really think they have taken the wrong approach, for example, is on university funding, tuition fees, and the oft-overlooked cutting of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (surely one of the most effective ways of getting poorer kids into higher education5).

Was it “an error”, as they are now keen to point out, to make a pledge to vote against a rise in tuition fees under any circumstances? I have to say I don’t think it was. I believe that the abolition of tuition fees is absolutely feasible (and desirable6) even in our supposedly weakened economic state7. Clearly, the real error is breaking that promise, and 36 Liberal Democrat MPs are guilty of that.8

It is true, as ministers have bemoaned, that there has been considerable misinformation spread about the impact of the fees on a prospective student’s ability to afford university education. As there are no more up-front fees to pay, and the repayments are only made based on your ability to repay, in practice more people will be able to afford a university education than under the previous system. But this misinformation goes both ways. Universities will be financially penalised, and therefore discouraged, from accepting poorer students (who, without the EMA, might not even get to this stage), and the graduate debt is far from as benign as is being presented.

The repayment threshold of £21,000 due to begin in 2016 will, assuming a conservative rate of inflation9, be equivalent to around £18,000 today. This doesn’t sound that high to me, and it includes many more people than is immediately apparent10.

In spite of all the debate about whether or not multi-millionaires should have to pay 50% tax on their earnings above £150,000, under these proposals graduates will be effectively paying 49% tax on anything over £37,40011. While people claim that a 50% income tax rate runs the risk of very rich people emigrating rather than paying any tax at all, can the argument seriously be made that an effective 49% rate will not put anyone off a university education?12

What else is there? Oh yes, the argument that this is needed to cut the deficit? Well, despite an 80% cut to university funding, it turns out that this will actually cost more money than the current system. Even according to the government’s own Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, most graduates will never be able to fully repay their loans13.

If any of that was news to you, I wouldn’t be surprised. These issues, and most of the other salient points of the actual policy are being shrouded by a fog of media coverage focussing only on the “violent” protests by opponents of the plans. I use quotation marks because I think it’s actually quite hard to justify calling a predominantly very peaceful demonstration violent.

It’s an undesirable but perhaps inevitable consequence of the urgent immediacy of news reporting that coverage tends to focus on the most interesting thing happening right now, whether or not it is representative of the wider situation. Tens of thousands of people gathered in one place is quite interesting, but really they’re just standing there (they’re not allowed to move, after all). That can’t compete with the excitement of the handful of people vandalising the treasury building, so TV news shows the vandalism, not the overwhelmingly peaceful majority, and a misinformed viewer takes away the impression that the protests were all about smashing windows and causing trouble.14

It’s also undesirable, though understandable, that in breaking news situations, news agencies first seek perspective on events from authoritative sources like the police. This is normally quite a good idea, but when the police themselves are directly involved, it’s perhaps better to consider balance and not give their spokesperson quite so much airtime with which to give a speculative and one-sided account of events.

So if you watched the news that night or listened to the prime minister relaying an entirely fabricated story about “police officers being dragged off their horses and beaten”15, and got the impression that the protesters are all violent thugs bent on destruction and aggression towards innocent police officers, I wouldn’t be surprised about that either. But another side to the story is slowly emerging, pieced together by mobile phone footage and testimonies from people who were actually there.

People like Jody McIntyre, a sufferer of cerebral palsy, who was twice pulled out of his wheelchair and pinned to the ground by police officers, in spite of his obvious inability to cause them any harm16.

Or Laurie Penny, writing in the New Statesman with an emotive first-hand account from inside the police “kettle”, or this video from students of Birmingham University covering the development of events over the whole day. Or Alfie Meadows, a 20-year old student who suffered a brain injury after receiving a blow to the head from a police truncheon and then being denied access to prompt medical attention17, and is lucky to be alive. In spite of the emphasis put on violence toward police officers, there seems to have been considerably more (or, at least, more serious instances) going in the opposite direction.

But watching the live coverage of the protest on the BBC News channel, hearing the unedited reporting of one of their correspondents in the crowd, and reading various messages posted on Twitter as events were unfolding; all indicating that after detaining a peaceful crowd without any legal justification for doing so, police told demonstrators they could leave Parliament Square via Whitehall, only to then block the exit and charge into a crowd of schoolchildren with horses18. They then kept thousands “kettled”19 without food or toilet facilities, and unable to move until midnight in some cases (in sub-zero temperatures, is it really so shocking that some resorted to starting fires?). Considering all this, it’s difficult to shake the impression that there was an orchestrated effort by the police to incite anger and frustration amongst the crowd in order to justify the heavy-handed response20.

One thing’s for sure: whether or not you believe there is a concerted plan to undermine the the debate by provoking a violent response from demonstrators, it’s undeniably a political boon to the likes of Clegg and Cameron, who can ensure a favourable soundbite by condemning the protesters as “violent” instead of justifying their mess of a policy.

  1. The Lib Dems achieved 23% of the popular vote. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2010#Results ↩
  2. Recent polling showed their level of support had dropped to just 8% — a fall in support of almost two-thirds — although it has since recovered slightly. Source: http://today.yougov.co.uk/politics/voting-intention-analysis-14 ↩
  3. If you remove the bank bailout (which all three of the main parties supported) from the equation, the national debt in 2010 was in fact lower than that left by the outgoing Conservative government in 1997. Source here, though you’ll have to come with me the last few steps! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7733794.stm ↩
  4. The only one who gets any sympathy from me is Simon Hughes, not because he doesn’t partake in this kind of sophistry, but because he always gives the impression of having been physically bullied into it. ↩
  5. Economists at the Institute for Fiscal Studies seem to think so: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11998992 ↩
  6. I hear a lot of people saying things like “Why should I subsidise the education of, for example, doctors, when they earn so much more than me?”. This is a simplistic argument that ignores the fact that doctors and other graduates do work which is beneficial to everyone. ↩
  7. In fact we managed to find money to start the NHS and welfare state in far worse economic circumstances: http://econ.economicshelp.org/2009/03/historical-national-debt.html ↩
  8. It’s some crumb of consolation to me that the one I voted for, Jenny Willott, resigned from her position in the government in order to oppose the measure, though whether even that will save her skin, only time will tell. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-11963134 ↩
  9. 2.5% — inflation has been above this level every year since 2002, with the exception of the recession in 2009 (Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10612209). It is currently 3.3% (Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/14/inflation-rises-to-3-point-3-percent-november). I used this calculator if you want to try different figures yourself: http://www.whatsthecost.com/cpi.aspx ↩
  10. According to the Daily Mail, the national average salary is £25,540: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1293121/Average-annual-salary-drops-2-600-just-months.html ↩
  11. 40% higher rate tax band starts at £37,400, and the student loan repayments will be 9% on anything above the £21,000 threshold. ↩
  12. I won’t go into all the ups and downs of the new system because it is enormously complex and I could write another full-length essay purely on this subject (indeed this is one of its most significant drawbacks), but one of the most overlooked parts of the proposal is the increase in interest rates on the debt. “Money Saving Expert” Martin Lewis has written several times about this issue: http://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2010/11/04/stopping-graduates-repaying-student-loans-early-would-be-a-terrible-mistake/ ↩
  13. Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/only-a-quarter-of-all-graduates-will-pay-off-loans-2158168.html ↩
  14. Here is a photo from one of the protests where the police left a riot van in the middle of a “kettle” (presumably with the idea that it would be torn to pieces and subsequently used to portray demonstrators as savages). Do these kids, who formed a protective ring around it to stop people from vandalising it, look like thugs to you? ↩
  15. If he believed this to be true, he was misinformed. Watch what actually happened to the one officer injured by a horse that day: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/12/11/were-police-really-dragged-off-horses-and-beaten-by-students-no/ ↩
  16. I don’t mean to patronise him, far from it, he has since shown himself to be very capable, keeping his cool in the face of moronic questioning from the BBC’s Ben Brown in a way that few others could: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXNJ3MZ-AUo ↩
  17. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11978884 ↩
  18. See for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axWyu1t4rkE ↩
  19. How many arrests (for minor crimes which don’t even warrant custodial sentences) does it take to justify detaining thousands of innocent people? ↩
  20. I was amused to hear the police spokesperson initially, presumably mistakenly, report that there had been “provoked violence against the police”. ↩