May Day and the "Pigs"

[Barry the Sprout]

Wow... its only been a few days since I got to this and its already on the second page! IW is too speedy for me these days... :s

Anyway, thanks for your replies everyone!

Donut - I think you had a birthday party. Either that or my head was inexplicably invaded by pixies with hammers on the morning of 1st May. I remember the rendition of American Pie - I might very well have joined in. I love that song...

The 'Phant - 100% agreement from me with your post. Its a locker room mentality that spills over onto the streets. The job tends to attract a mix of people I find: some of them geniunely concerned with helping people, others who want the power and authority it brings, but most who just don't have the qualifications for anything else and go for it for the relatively good pay. However once people are in I have no doubt that the simple environment they are submerged in their entire working day is what causes the fall into brutality.

Charlie and Timber - the organising of the demo isn't to fault in my opinion. I know, I would say that... but to be perfectly fair the particular demo I was on would have been peaceful and (in all honestly) probably quite insignificant without the intervention of the police. As Spelca was saying - its the hemming people in that causes the problems. People go to a demo and begin the day standing around, or marching through London, and they finish it having been cooped up and abused by the police for hours on end. Its no wonder they lash out sometimes. To be honest I think even the more violent elements we all hear about so often on these demos reacts quite mildly to the treatment they get. Just anecdotally - on this march a city businessman got trapped in our march somehow. None of the policemen would let him out, so after half an hour of this he just started going berserk. He was screaming and pushing at police officers. If the demo had been made up of people like him, instead of lefty-hippy-sandle-wearing-lettice-munching-Guardian-reading pacifists then it would have turned ugly very, very, quickly.

Chewwy - never been teargassed or billy clubbed fortunately. I'll try and avoid the experience I think...