Geographies of the Kettle: Containment, Spectacle & Counter-Strategy written by
Brutal Police Blog 1292497200
on the 16
th December 2010 at 11:00
- Posted in Police Blog
Source: Critical Legal Thinking The last few weeks of student-led protests against the ideologically blunt and financially reckless Tory-Liberal Democrat cuts and the massively short-sighted, brutal and regressive cuts to third level education in particular may well have marked something of a turning point in modern British history. They have won back the power of political protest that was seemingly lost after the defeat of the anti-war marches in 2003. Tony Blair’s smug platitudes about spreading democracy in Iraq saw it dissolve domestically in a sea of bitterness and apathy. The last few weeks have seen people learn once more, indeed seen school children and students teach us, that people do have power and that political protest can be effective. But if these protests have rinsed the smile from Cameron’s face and applied the defibrillator of dissensus to the heart of British democracy they also raise questions about the strategies of protest adequate to a police regime reared on football hooliganism and ‘event management’.
