The government is concerned that this upturn in class struggle does not gain momentum, as it has only just embarked on implementing its austerity offensive. The VAT rise and a programme of years of cuts are yet to unfold. The coming assault will attack the living standards of the majority of the population, not just students. Hence the determined effort by the Tories to de-legitimise and deter expressions of opposition to their policies, by demonising peaceful protestors and coercing the protest movement off the streets through tactics like prolonged kettling.
Following the November 10th NUS-UCU called demonstration, whose size and militancy took the government by surprise, Tory politicians, most notably Home Secretary Theresa May and London Mayor Boris Johnson, pushed for increasingly confrontational police tactics to be adopted against the mainly peaceful protests. Subsequent demonstrations saw extensive use of “kettling”, where protestors were confined behind police lines for hours (in falling temperatures), and an increasing use of violence to intimidate and provoke. Police horses have charged at crowds of people and protestors were assaulted with truncheons, resulting in injuries with one person requiring brain surgery. In a further shocking case, widely circulated on youtube, Jody McIntyre was attacked while in his wheel chair.
However, rather than retreat from the anger these tactics have provoked, the Tories are talking up the possibility of even more aggressive policing. The use of water canon against demonstrators has been openly discussed as reported on here and here. The police have admitted ordering two such water cannon from the police in the North of Ireland. At the same time it is reported that senior police officers are considering asking the home secretary to ban forthcoming marches.
The serious suggestion that water cannon might be used, given the very profound injuries such equipment can inflict, is an indication of the degree to which the Tories have been rattled by such strong resistance so early in their austerity programme.
Continued resistance is likely to be met with increasingly calls for a tougher crackdown on protests, limits on the right to strike, and further strengthening of police tactics against demonstrators. The Tories’ attachment to a ‘small state’ does not apply to its apparatuses of repression!
