In the name of the future of Higher Education, I am carrying a 15-foot carrot made of papier maché. Actually, that’s not strictly accurate. I’m only holding up the middle section of this monstrous vegetable, between a hairy French art student called Nicholas and a short girl who keeps telling us we walk too fast. I feel like Joseph of Arimathea. Or possibly just like the biggest idiot in the rich and chequered history of idiocy.
In between fits of asthma, Nicholas explains the situation. The Artists’ Collective of Goldsmiths has chosen the carrot as a symbol of the tantalising future held out to entice students into further education. Like donkeys, he tells me, we trot off after the carrot only to feel the stick of higher education cuts come swingeing down on our hindquarters. This would account for the religious procession of arts students around me carrying carrots and wearing donkey masks, and looking like the cast of a low-budget production of Equus.
Silly. But what could possibly be sillier than a bunch of 350-odd middle class students out on a free day trip to the NUS demonstration? Skiving off lectures and protesting against the cuts – what larks! So here we all are, in our college hoodies and our college scarves, sporting home-made placards with slogans like ‘Political Moderate But Pissed Off’, or, my personal favourite, ‘THIS JUST ISN’T BRITISH – STOP BEING SO SILLY.’ I catch a very serious-looking man from the OUSU contingent munching a hummus and grated carrot granary sandwich from Taylors Deli. Somehow, Nicholas and his 15-foot carrot seem comparatively sane.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the protest, a phalanx of students with black hoodies and black scarves peels off from the march. Moving with noisy purpose, they approach the police cordon blocking Millbank Street. The police hold their line, but deep down they’re frightened by the determination in these protesters’ eyes. They can see the fires dancing under those black hoods. A punch. Somebody goes down – policeman or anarchist, you can’t tell who. A wave. It breaks. A second wave. It passes over the bright yellow jackets, and now the sea of black is surging towards the central office of the Conservative Party. Somebody’s set fire to a banner. Fire everywhere. The sound of plate glass shattering. The sound of revolt.
Of course, everybody who is anybody rushed to condemn the violence on Millbank St. Cue NUS President Aaron Porter: ‘this despicable violence was not part of our plan. This action was by others who have come out and used this opportunity to hijack a peaceful protest.’
But as a culture writer, let me share a confession with you. A big part of me admires what the black hoodies did. A bigger part of me feels that we Oxford students missed the point as much as they did. They made the front pages. We had a grand day out.
The problem Oxford student protesters face is not so much a matter of politics as a cultural issue. Every person on that 25,000-strong march (there is no way there were 50,000 there as the NUS claimed) objected to the same politics. But there is a substantial difference between holding up a placard that says, ‘Students of Jesus College Oxford OPPOSE many of the proposals of the BROWNE Review. We believe that 40% H.E. CUTS will have a negative impact ON TEACHING and increased tuition fees risk DENYING future students a secure and AFFORDABLE education’ and a sign that says ‘TORY FUCKING SCUM.’ It is the difference between the rational and the irrational.
As an intellectual, you want to take a reasoned, nuanced, and non-violent stance against the cuts. You want to maintain your basic dignity and fairness while making your opinions known to the world. But that’s not what protest culture is about. Protest is about stirring up savage emotions of solidarity and hatred, about holding your ground and refusing to back down. Sod ‘no ifs, no buts, no education cuts’ – protest culture comes down to the oldest battlecry in urban history: ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’
Listen to the music of protest. ‘I’m gonna give you a dose / but it can never come close / to the rage built up inside of me / fist in the air in the land of hypocrisy.’ Or, ‘This anger is focused so you’d better listen up / when there’s a scarf over my face and my hoodie’s up / I’m out to build the world with a brick in my hand / I’m just a little man but this is where I take my stand.’ How long? Not long. ‘Cos what you reap is what you sow.
Protest culture is unreasonable by nature. What did the NUS publicity ahead of the march say? ‘DEMO-LITION. We will march.’ Why were they so surprised when actual demolition broke out? And who is going to care that six St Anne’s students – six students from a supposedly left-wing college of more than 400! – took a stroll from Birkbeck to Westminster?
This is why we’re so bad at protest. Not because we don’t break windows, but because we could never break windows. We just don’t care enough. We’re catatonic. Four days before the NUS demo, I walked exactly the same route with the Unite Against Fascism/Love Music Hate Racism march. No fires were lit. No police officers were attacked. No windows were smashed. But the kind of commitment and solidarity that break walls and windowpanes coursed through the 5,000 protesters like music. They meant what they said. And they mean it every time they march. And they will keep on marching.
I don’t want to scorn the Oxford students whose commitment to protesting against the higher education cuts will extend beyond last Wednesday. For all I know, some of them were up on the roof at 30 Millbank St. But most of the 350 happy Oxonians bopping in the crowd on November 10 – including me – were tourists. And, as you all know, everybody hates a tourist – especially one who think it’s always such a laugh…
