Off With Their Heads: British Students give the royal twits a wake up call

I spent hours watching all the English and German news channels yesterday, often open-mouthed, frequently cheering, occasionally shouting advice at the screen.

So we have come full circle, twenty five years since the miners' strike, twenty since the Poll Tax and 42 years since 68. Thousands upon thousands of new recruits for the left organisations if we know how to  approach them. But they are so much more courageous than the older workers or their parents. Amazing fun scenes juxtaposed to smashing windows and doors; tiny 16 year-olds fiercely remonstrating with huge 6ft 4 coppers, well-spoken gals from private schools hurling obscenities at the riot squad and then calmly telling BBC crew that they were disappointed with the police who should be "helping them".

I spent some time in Brussels during the height of the 68 events and watched with admiration as the students set up barricades, medical teams, stewards armed  with baseball bats and buckets of stones, runners and posters, loudhailers and continuous mass meetings.

The German SDS (Socialist German Students, active in the late 1960s) also knew how to run things. They distributed hard hats, armbands for stewards, waterproof capes. They had Briefing rooms where the aims were discussed and voted on. There were megaphones and medical equipment. They formed up as phalanxes with linked arms 10 abreast and jogged fast towards their objective, scattering the police. When the water cannon arrived, they donned their capes and turned their backs until the water ran out and then resumed their advance. It all went to their heads and after that general rage about Vietnam and the emergency Laws subsided, many turned to bomb-throwing. But it was all very impressive to watch.

The British events had none of this - apparently no plan whatsoever, little cohesion, no agreed slogans, no stewards, no battle plan. Inevitably, mad elements just vandalised objects and seemed to be rehearsing an insurrection. God help them if they do succeed in actually entering any of these state buildings.
Time and again in Parliament Square, they very nearly grasped the idea of the Barricade to protect themselves and then it always fizzled out and they used the builders fence element as ineffectual battering rams instead.

All this paramilitary stuff was down to the leadership of the National Union of Students, which tried to get them to sit around with lighted candles on a "vigil" on the Embankment. The mass of kids weren't buying it so it all erupted. It seems possible that groups will now start training in military fashion for the next big one and we may well see some serious weapons being brought in. I hope not. It won't be long before this wave will have exhausted itself unless the workers start their own events, in which case a mighty movement could seriously threaten the coalition inside parliament. But whatever happens, Labour will have a field day in the May elections for local councils in Britain spite of Ed Miliband's miserable cowardice.

Walter