Wednesday, November 24, 2010

What should we do about kettling of protestors?

It seems that the police left an old van in the middle of the student demonstrators today in order to give themselves an excuse to kettle ("contain") the demonstrators.

Kettling is arguably unlawful detention, and a case is going to the European Court of Human Rights.
Hopefully, students who were kettled today will form a class action on legal aid (before it is withdrawn) to challenge the police action.

However, for the time being, if we are going to demonstrate, we had all better go prepared to be kettled for many hours.

So, here is a check list for demos:

  • Sleeping bag.
  • Bedroll
  • Tent
  • Food
  • Drink - in a bottle that can contain urine when empty
  • Shepee for the girls.
  • Plastic bag for shitting into (NB Resist the temptation to throw filled bags as police lines. It is vital to be friendly to the police, as the Government will have to back down when the police refuse to do the politicians' dirty work for them.)
  • Kettle, gas stove, tea bags, powdered milk, sugar (if taken) 
  • Hand cranked mobile phone charger. 
  • If kettled, organise. form groups of round about 8 people, get to know each other, talk about the situation, and elect a speaker. Get the speakers together to pass on ideas, and elect a main speaker for all the prisoners, who can seek to speak with the police commander. 
  • Be mindful that people can be crushed in crowds.
The beauty of this is that kettle or no kettle, suitably prepared demonstrators may decide not to go home at 5 pm, which makes the success of the demonstration that much more likely. That is how they brought down the Berlin Wall, remember?

2 comments:

First High Warlord of Didcot said...

I have a nasty feeling that there are going to be some serious problems brewing as the protests continue and the police continue to use questionable tactics.
It's almost as if somebody wants a full scale riot with police and public casualties in order close down all future protests...

DocRichard said...

FHWOD
I wouldn't go that far. The LibDems would never allow it... :`

...Would they?