By Isa Hemphrey
We could take this opportunity to talk about what we think about pensions, if that really was the underlying issue...
The River has covered three protests since the beginning of the academic year. First we went to the Occupy London protests at St Paul’s cathedral with its makeshift tent town. Then there was the NCAFC march last month, where the Met Police received more publicity for their ‘kettling’ technique than the students that marched. Finally, we went to the public sector protest against pension cuts in London, which was attended by an estimated 50,000 people. We walked alongside the students, lecturers, public sector workers and union members as they marched through London. We listened to the passionate rants through crackling megaphones. We took photo after photo of every witty makeshift sign and every quirky costume we could find.
Now this journalist has one thing to ask: what has any of this achieved other than disrupting traffic?
As the N30 protesters walked down from Lincoln's Inn Fields to the Victoria Embankment, you could not help but feel like a hamster being guided through a maze as police officers closed off any possible alternative route. Shops on the Strand were either deserted or closed and Greggs looked as though it was getting more customers than in had in years. What was even more hilarious was a group walking around giving out leaflets on how the unions were conspiring against the working class therefore we should not support them. The protest itself was made up of at least 30 different unions.
The embankment played host to a number of speakers who all basically said ‘I don’t want to work for longer and get paid less’ and then everyone went on their merry way and London carried on as usual. Buses ran on time, taxis meandered around the road closures and the London Eye kept spinning in the background. The protesters gained nothing from their march; they just lost a day’s pay.
At the expense of said pay, their tireless efforts to create an organised protest with lots of colourful banners backfired. It was motivating to see so many people that care enough about their future to march for their pension, but Mr Osborne does not look as though he is going to buckle under the pressure anytime soon.
All the N30 protests highlighted was the demise of the effectiveness of a traditional protest march. In no way should this be taken as an encouragement to resort to violence, simply a warning that what worked for the civil rights movement in the 60s, might not do the trick in the new millennium. The signs carried by people marching through the cold and rain said ‘fair pensions for all’. From an outsider’s perspective, it was just a gathering of unions still bitter about the division of the working class from the upper class, coupled with a myriad of irrelevant pressure groups using the rally to amplify their woes, which diluted the main issues suffered by those who have now lost a day’s wages.