Trafalgar Square: don’t write a cheque you can’t cash

Full disclosure: after organising Thursday’s one-day strike at my university, I was too wiped out to attend today’s anti-cuts protest in London. So I write as a mere spectator, despite the fact that I was present at every student protest late last year.

For several days before today’s massive anti-cuts protests in London, activists have been promising that they would turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square, in homage to the historic revolution in Egypt earlier this year. The comparison always struck me as, at best, fanciful. Protesters in Egypt, and Tunisia before that, and Bahrain, Libya and Yemen since, have been prepared to face bullets and rocks, and have been prepared to die and self-immolate, rather than back down against the governing regime. Something told me that any occupation of Trafalgar Square wouldn’t have quite the same mettle.

And so it has turned out. Now that the “occupation” of Trafalgar Square has drawn the attention of violent, baton-wielding riot cops, Twitter is flooded with squeals about a “peaceful party” being demolished by heavy-handed policing. Which is true, as far as I can make out, and those at the sharp end of the thugs of CO11 have my deepest sympathy.

But for fuck’s sake. Don’t use words like occupation, revolution, or Tahrir Square unless you mean it. Were we really in a pre-revolutionary phase, then people would be prepared to occupy the square in far greater numbers, and would be willing to face down police violence and lethal force.  But we’re not, and people aren’t. It’s the Saturday night circle jerk I always feared it was. It just makes us all look weak, stupid and vain.

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20 Notes

  1. terryblakey reblogged this from jhnbrssndn and added:
    British public are more concerned...who’s doing what on
  2. sillyentrails reblogged this from jhnbrssndn
  3. tsparks said: Don’t be too hard on the protesters, at least they are on the right side of history.
  4. kateoplis said: I’ve been feeling the same about the gatherings in Iran in the last few months although what they face in Iran’s prisons is life-threatening+horrific compared to England. But you cannot have a revolution if you’re not willing to sacrifice everything.
  5. jhnbrssndn posted this