A Picnic Disguised As a Protest

Last Saturday, when several hundred thousand protesters (the press was reporting anywhere from 200,000 to 500,000 people in attendance) took to the streets of London to fight the system, I went to a museum. I wasn't the only one either. The line in front of the Natural History Museum snaked its way down the marble steps and along a fence bordering Cromwell Road. As people slowly trickled out, others were let in. To avoid waiting in a line for hours, I scrapped my original plan and headed to the Science Museum instead.

While Labour leader Ed Miliband spoke to a crowd that's focusing its anger on the current leadership and ignoring the part Miliband's own party played in Britain's economic mess, I looked at wooden models of ships from the days when the British fleet was the most impressive in the world. Even in their scaled-down glory, they were huge, a poignant reminder of the immense wealth and influence Britain once wielded.

As I left South Kensington to make my way by bicycle through Hyde Park where the rally took place, I passed several placard carrying protesters. They looked, as they headed back to their lives, somewhat disenchanted. Cheers came from the crowd but not one of them looked back.

Seen from a distance, it was less inspiring than were the student protests of last fall. That might seem unfair, because I experienced that protest from a distance too. But the build-up was also pretty uninspiring, hence the trip to the museum. Last fall's student protests didn't just touch me because I'm a student -- the raised tuition doesn't actually effect me, given that I'm a foreigner already paying overseas fees, but I understand what it's like to worry about not being able to afford the college everyone tells you is a necessity. This Saturday's protest, on the other hand, was against "cuts". The TUC flyer I received a few days before didn't do anything to clarify what that meant exactly, and I had to go online to find out that TUC stands for Trade Union Congress. Maybe it's the foreigner thing, but the assumption that I should automatically know who TUC is or what it's fighting for seems a little naive. 

I understand that the cuts people are wide-spread and include teachers and libraries and other public services but there just hasn't been any specific mention that "X is being cut and you should be pissed off about it". 

Personally, I'm skeptical of a moment that doesn't have a coherent argument. When I was reporting on the Tea Party in the United States I found that lack of coherence to be the biggest obstacle to the Tea Party's potential to bring about real change. Most of the folks I talked to at those tax day rallies wanted lower or more effective use of taxes, but the whole thing seem less a movement than a collection of scattered rhetoric, vague enough that it could resonate with a range of worldviews, be they religious, anti-big government, etc. 

It’s not surprising that the follow-on media coverage of the protests has focused on the violence and vandalism done by a very small percentage of protesters. Leading up to Saturday the Guardian’s coverage offered people a forum for explaining why they were heading to the protests. Responses didn't suggest a a common baseline.  The student protests, at least, were more focused and therefore more powerful, even if that collective power was ultimately ineffectual.