THE CARBON WAR

Seven percent by 2035 107
have been banned, under the weird law rushed out by the coalition government
to ban protest on this space opposite parliament. Police confiscated tents that
protesting students wanted to erect on the square itself for the week-long period
of their protest. They arrested a member of the London Assembly, Jenny Jones,
for simply turning up to monitor police behaviour. Green MP Caroline Lucas
was threatened with arrest if she passed food to a protestor who had climbed
the statue of Winston Churchill. Students deprived of their tents, including my
friend’s daughter Daisy, sat on a tarpaulin instead. They were arrested, carted
off in vans to Brixton Jail, and incarcerated for ten hours.
How can a modern democracy suppress protest by its disenfranchised
youth in this way? What kind of future does that point to?
Daisy has a double first from Cambridge. Her friends are also Cambridge
graduates.
The police aren’t going to know what hit them, says my friend, when they
confront this coven of ferocious intelligence in court.
My friend was no student protestor herself, in her youth. But her daughter’s
treatment is plainly radicalising her. She is particularly outraged at how
the mainstream media is ignoring the demonstration.
We sneak the food in, and I am introduced to Daisy and half a dozen
young protestors. They tell me they will be sleeping rough here tonight, lying
on the grass. The police have told them that if they use so much as a pizza box
to rest their heads on, they will be arrested.
I notice the students are all wearing strips of blue tarpaulin, pinned to
their lapels.
The next day the square opposite the seat of democracy sits empty under
beautiful autumn light. I am scheduled to speak to the protestors about solutions:
the solar revolution and community power, people-power capital, all
that. I am going to find it difficult. The police have confiscated the PA system.
If I were more pragmatic – wiser, you might say – or had an eye on the
trappings of the Establishment, such as the New Year’s honours list, I probably
wouldn’t do this kind of speaking engagement. But I have far more empathy
for these young people than I do for the system I am a creature of.
I look around the hundred or so gathered close around me to listen,
hearing the din of the traffic, and the regular hooting. Expect a sore throat
tonight, I think.
The talk is being live streamed on the web, as they all are. Be frank, but
be careful, I tell myself.