Students, Romans and the Not OK Corral.

You are never going to win a fight with the Police on the streets of Britain. They are trained in the ways of urban warfare, are a well equipped and disciplined fighting force, and they get up to date accurate intelligence. They also get to come tooled up and break the law.

One of the reasons why Rome did so well back in the day was that no barbarian got to fight with a Roman. Your basic barbarian faced a Roman unit. In the same way, protesters do not face a policeman, they face a coherent unit who recognises the danger of being singled out. So they make a wall with arms linked, shields raised, have proper working armour and a cavalry ready to charge the protesting infantry. It is against the law for protesters to behave in the same way, so already it’s looking like a pretty unfair match.

The police also have a wide range of tactics and strategies at their disposal, and perhaps the most talked about tactic in recent months is what is commonly called The Kettle. And really, that’s where the trouble starts. The Kettle is an abuse of your human rights. To deny people water, shelter, medical assistance; to force people to stand for hours in a confined space, not enough room to sit down; if it happened in a foreign country we would call that state-sponsored torture. They call it kettling, but I rather suspect someone misunderstood some toff in the corridors of power saying “cattling”. Generally though I prefer to use existing words we have for things rather than making up new ones, so I just call it corralling.

Why that is the start of the trouble is clear: if you remove a people’s right to peaceful protest then you leave them no option but for the other sort.

So to avoid a riot, how about we think of some other ways to protest. The old model of the protest made famous in the 1970s, namely get as many people with meaningful placards and strong tee-shirt slogans in the same place at the same time, does not work. If they did then we would not have gone to war with Iraq second time around. Something you have to understand about government is that expediency rules (but only when it’s convenient). To force a government to change its policies you have to make it easier for them to do so than to keep things the way they are.

I know London thinks it is the centre of the world, and that as long as Fleet Street, otherwise known as Canary Wharf, and the BBsoddingC like to perpetuate this myth by being too lazy and stupid to report on anything not immediately on their doorstep and in their collective face, but really a huge national movement like the NUS ought to be protesting nation-wide. So decentralise your protests, You can’t kettle three people with placards at every bus stop, every train station entrance, every coach station entrance, every party headquarters, every council office, in every town all over the country at the same time. Especially if you all dress up as Robin Hood and his Merry Men, or characters from The Muppet Show. People will see you at the start and end of their journeys, and frequently in the middle. Notice how we still haven’t won in Afghanistan. You cannot easily fight a decentralised force, it’s too much like punching smoke.

If you insist on the big demonstrations in London as being the only way to change anything, then when the riot police come (and they will) sit the fuck down. Hold hands.  Stationary protesters cannot be kettled. You can only be trampled by horses. Do not rise up, offer no resistance, but above all do not cooperate. Sit still. Let them trample you. Let them beat you with sticks. Make your own salt. Sing. Whatever. But do not try to fight the police as it will only be turned against you later. Do not let them take away your human rights and do not let them move you to be where they want you to be.

The police work for the government, but do not forget that the government works for you. They try to ignore that fact as much as possible, but really you are doing them no favours by letting them. Think of the state of their immortal souls as they are tempted into thinking they are the ruling class, the poor dears. If you voted for LibDem then tell your MP that you do not support the coalition. If you voted for the Tories then I have no sympathy; what did you expect? If you voted for Labour then bad luck and try harder next time.

If you are a student who has not yet, or has only recently, reached voting age then ask your parents who they voted for. Tell them why they were wrong to do so. Ask them why they would work so hard to bring you up into this world only to turn their backs on you just as you were starting to get somewhere. Ask them who they expect to clean up their shit when they are too old and feeble to do it themselves. Ask them if they prefer the soft cushioned multi-ply stuff  or the nasty greaseproof sandpaper.

Public support is crucial to your cause. The reason why the poll tax riots worked is because the poll tax was something that almost everyone was against, and because it became cheaper and easier to topple the government than to keep fighting the rioters. If it doesn’t affect you directly and personally, and also preferably financially, then you just won’t care enough. Remind people that an educated workforce is what’s going to pay for their pensions when the time comes. Remind people that unless we want to out-source the last of our commerce and industry to foreign countries, or bring university-educated Europeans and Asians in to do the jobs we are not qualified to do, then we need an educated workforce of our own. If we want to compete with Germany and France in the global marketplace and maintain our sovereign independence then we must educate all of our young people, and preferably not force them into a lifetime of debt-slavery.

When you ask someone what makes Great Britain great, what makes us stand tall with our neighbouring nations, they are likely to mention Big Ben and The Houses of Parliament, The Queen, and Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

You can only have the two finest universities in the world if they are the shiny golden top of a very large pyramid.