The National Labor Relations Board was created in 1935
as part of the National Labor Relations Act
to oversee enforcement of the laws governing union drives,
strikes and labor-contract negotiations in the private sector.
The board’s official history described the purpose of the act
as to “serve the public purpose by reducing interruptions in commerce
caused by industrial strife. It seeks to do this by providing orderly processes
for implementing and protecting the rights of employees, employers and unions.’'
The N.L.R.B.’s two main functions are to oversee elections
to determine if a workplace will be unionized
and to respond to complaints of unfair labor practices.
as one of the nation’s most relied-upon labor peacemakers
he helped resolve thousands of labor disputes,
getting both the Rockettes and New York City cab drivers to end strikes in the
1960s
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/nyregion/22schmertz.html
Occupy protests mapped around the world
October 2011
Where are the Occupy protests taking place in the world
after the camps in Wall Street and Madrid?
See the full list of places we have found so far - and help us collect more
protest > Occupy Wall Street USA
September-December 2011
Occupy Wall Street
is a diffuse group of
activists who say they stand
against corporate greed, social inequality and other disparities between rich
and poor.
On Sept. 17, 2011, the group began a loosely organized protest in New York's
financial district,
encamping in Zuccotti Park, a privately owned park open to the public, in Lower
Manhattan.
Public Opinion and the Occupy Movement
November 2011
The Occupy Wall Street protests continue to
spread around the country,
highlighting grievances some Americans have about banks,
income inequality and a sense that the poor and middle class have been
disenfranchised.
A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that almost half of the public
thinks the sentiments at the root of the movement generally reflect the views of
most Americans.
The Guardian has compiled a unique database
of more than 2.5m tweets related to the riots,
showing that the majority of surging social media traffic
occurred after the first verified reports of incidents in an area
The shooting of Mark Duggan on August 4th sparked a series of riots
first in Tottenham then across England. Follow their spread on this interactive
timeline.
On 11 April 1981,
tension between police and youths led to Brixton being set aflame.
Observer photographer Neil Libbert,
who was on the scene as the violence
erupted,
describes the urgent images he captured
October 11, 2011
The New York Times
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
When you see spontaneous social protests erupting from Tunisia to Tel Aviv to
Wall Street, it’s clear that something is happening globally that needs
defining. There are two unified theories out there that intrigue me. One says
this is the start of “The Great Disruption.” The other says that this is all
part of “The Big Shift.” You decide.
Paul Gilding, the Australian environmentalist and author of the book “The Great
Disruption,” argues that these demonstrations are a sign that the current
growth-obsessed capitalist system is reaching its financial and ecological
limits. “I look at the world as an integrated system, so I don’t see these
protests, or the debt crisis, or inequality, or the economy, or the climate
going weird, in isolation — I see our system in the painful process of breaking
down,” which is what he means by the Great Disruption, said Gilding. “Our system
of economic growth, of ineffective democracy, of overloading planet earth — our
system — is eating itself alive. Occupy Wall Street is like the kid in the fairy
story saying what everyone knows but is afraid to say: the emperor has no
clothes. The system is broken. Think about the promise of global market
capitalism. If we let the system work, if we let the rich get richer, if we let
corporations focus on profit, if we let pollution go unpriced and unchecked,
then we will all be better off. It may not be equally distributed, but the poor
will get less poor, those who work hard will get jobs, those who study hard will
get better jobs and we’ll have enough wealth to fix the environment.
“What we now have — most extremely in the U.S. but pretty much everywhere — is
the mother of all broken promises,” Gilding adds. “Yes, the rich are getting
richer and the corporations are making profits — with their executives richly
rewarded. But, meanwhile, the people are getting worse off — drowning in housing
debt and/or tuition debt — many who worked hard are unemployed; many who studied
hard are unable to get good work; the environment is getting more and more
damaged; and people are realizing their kids will be even worse off than they
are. This particular round of protests may build or may not, but what will not
go away is the broad coalition of those to whom the system lied and who have now
woken up. It’s not just the environmentalists, or the poor, or the unemployed.
It’s most people, including the highly educated middle class, who are feeling
the results of a system that saw all the growth of the last three decades go to
the top 1 percent.”
Not so fast, says John Hagel III, who is the co-chairman of the Center for the
Edge at Deloitte, along with John Seely Brown. In their recent book, “The Power
of Pull,” they suggest that we’re in the early stages of a “Big Shift,”
precipitated by the merging of globalization and the Information Technology
Revolution. In the early stages, we experience this Big Shift as mounting
pressure, deteriorating performance and growing stress because we continue to
operate with institutions and practices that are increasingly dysfunctional — so
the eruption of protest movements is no surprise.
Yet, the Big Shift also unleashes a huge global flow of ideas, innovations, new
collaborative possibilities and new market opportunities. This flow is
constantly getting richer and faster. Today, they argue, tapping the global flow
becomes the key to productivity, growth and prosperity. But to tap this flow
effectively, every country, company and individual needs to be constantly
growing their talents.
“We are living in a world where flow will prevail and topple any obstacles in
its way,” says Hagel. “As flow gains momentum, it undermines the precious
knowledge stocks that in the past gave us security and wealth. It calls on us to
learn faster by working together and to pull out of ourselves more of our true
potential, both individually and collectively. It excites us with the
possibilities that can only be realized by participating in a broader range of
flows. That is the essence of the Big Shift.”
Yes, corporations now have access to more cheap software, robots, automation,
labor and genius than ever. So holding a job takes more talent. But the flip
side is that individuals — individuals — anywhere can now access the flow to
take online courses at Stanford from a village in Africa, to start a new company
with customers everywhere or to collaborate with people anywhere. We have more
big problems than ever and more problem-solvers than ever.
So there you have it: Two master narratives — one threat-based, one
opportunity-based, but both involving seismic changes. Gilding is actually an
optimist at heart. He believes that while the Great Disruption is inevitable,
humanity is best in a crisis, and, once it all hits, we will rise to the
occasion and produce transformational economic and social change (using tools of
the Big Shift). Hagel is also an optimist. He knows the Great Disruption may be
barreling down on us, but he believes that the Big Shift has also created a
world where more people than ever have the tools, talents and potential to head
it off. My heart is with Hagel, but my head says that you ignore Gilding at your
peril.
As the
Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other
cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear
message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions —
should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went
into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have
recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been
listening.
At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that
middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a
permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the
protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost
opportunity.
The jobless rate for college graduates under age 25 has averaged 9.6 percent
over the past year; for young high school graduates, the average is 21.6
percent. Those figures do not reflect graduates who are working but in
low-paying jobs that do not even require diplomas. Such poor prospects in the
early years of a career portend a lifetime of diminished prospects and lower
earnings — the very definition of downward mobility.
The protests, though, are more than a youth uprising. The protesters’ own
problems are only one illustration of the ways in which the economy is not
working for most Americans. They are exactly right when they say that the
financial sector, with regulators and elected officials in collusion, inflated
and profited from a credit bubble that burst, costing millions of Americans
their jobs, incomes, savings and home equity. As the bad times have endured,
Americans have also lost their belief in redress and recovery.
The initial outrage has been compounded by bailouts and by elected officials’
hunger for campaign cash from Wall Street, a toxic combination that has
reaffirmed the economic and political power of banks and bankers, while ordinary
Americans suffer.
Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a
financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government
backing as by productive investment.
When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are
referring to the concentration of income in today’s deeply unequal society.
Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of
households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10
percent level of the late 1970s.
That share declined slightly as financial markets tanked in 2008, and updated
data is not yet available, but inequality has almost certainly resurged. In the
last few years, for instance, corporate profits (which flow largely to the
wealthy) have reached their highest level as a share of the economy since 1950,
while worker pay as a share of the economy is at its lowest point since the
mid-1950s.
Income gains at the top would not be as worrisome as they are if the middle
class and the poor were also gaining. But working-age households saw their real
income decline in the first decade of this century. The recession and its
aftermath have only accelerated the decline.
Research shows that such extreme inequality correlates to a host of ills,
including lower levels of educational attainment, poorer health and less public
investment. It also skews political power, because policy almost invariably
reflects the views of upper-income Americans versus those of lower-income
Americans.
No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There
are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters —
including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater
legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country
needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to
fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and
development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.
It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the
nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a
need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of
grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first
line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation
into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.
Mark
Duggan's funeral cortege joined by 1,000 mourners
Community
leaders call for unity and peace
at the funeral service of man
whose fatal shooting by police sparked August's
riots
Friday 9
September 2011
Guardian.co.uk
Hugh Muir and Diane Taylor
18.20 BST
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 18.20 BST on Friday 9 September
2011. A version appeared on p14 of the Main section section of the Guardian on
Saturday 10 September 2011. It was last modified at 00.10 BST on Saturday 10
September 2011.
Up to 1,000
mourners joined a cortege through the streets of Tottenham on Friday for the
funeral of Mark Duggan, the man whose shooting by police sparked rioting and
copycat disturbances in towns and cities across England.
They travelled by car and on foot from the home of Duggan's parents to the
Broadwater Farm estate in north London, where he grew up, stopping there for a
short vigil and emotional church service. Then the extraordinary procession
walked through the back streets for a graveside ceremony. A single voice sang
I'll Fly Away, and white balloons were released into the air.
Police mounted a "low-visibility" operation. There were uniformed officers
helping with the traffic but thousands of others were held in contingency
nearby.
After weeks of speculation about Duggan and his character, and questions about
the exact circumstances of his shooting, senior community figures joined the
victim's friends and relatives for what was portrayed by most as a rebuttal of
the portrait drawn of him and of the community around Broadwater Farm.
"We reject the stigma that has been placed on this family and this community,"
Rev Nims Obunge told the congregation.
"Let mothers not come and bury their children any more. Let fathers not come and
weep over their children's graves. We have been scarred, marginalised,
stigmatised, but today we stand together.
"We say, not any more. We shall stop this. We take the death of Mark to show
that there is something wrong. We pray that his death will not be in vain, that
we learn what we need to learn and that we have a future that is ours to hold on
to."
Stafford Scott, a community leader, said the circumstances surrounding Duggan's
death had forced the community to unify. "We believe there is no justice, there
is just us," he said. "This is a community that is battle-weary. I have known
four people in my life who have died in these circumstances. We will draw a
sense of togetherness. If there is to be a memorial to Mark let it be that our
young people come together and stick together."
The church service was held at the Pentecostal New Testament Church of God in
Wood Green, a district also scarred by last month's disturbances. Mourners heard
a tribute from Duggan's fiancee, Semone Brown. He was, she said: "My first real
love, we laughed together and cried together. We faced trials and tribulations
together. We had our ups and our downs but I always loved him. He gave me four
beautiful children."
There were emotional scenes as Duggan's cousin Donna Martin began a eulogy. "I'm
going to find this difficult," she said. Mark would have said 'Balance,
balance,' which means 'Settle yourself'."
At that point she was overcome and seemed unable to continue. Sections of the
congregation urged her on with Duggan's own phrase, "balance, balance". She said
Duggan had a job at Stansted airport and recently submitted an application to
become a fireman, "obviously thinking about how he could help others".
She said he had a strong, positive bond with local children. "He encouraged them
to take part in lots of activities and would tell them were they went wrong and
how to put it right next time. He was just a big kid himself."
Duggan, she said, "was always seen as a peacemaker".
Her cousin had many enthusiasms, she said. "He enjoyed partying, dressed up to
the nines. He loved his bling and ting. What a smile he had. It used to take
over the whole of his face."
Martin said Duggan was en route in a cab to see his children and spoke to his
fiancee at 4.30pm. He died less than two hours later.
He was "asking if his dinner was ready. That was the last time he spoke to her."
The day began with friends and relatives assembling at the family home. They
were met by Bishop Kwaku Frimpong-Manson, who performed the internment service.
Among the relatives was his aunt Karen Hall. "I was the first person to see him
come into this world. Mark would have known that he isn't Al Capone. He is just
an average guy. He wouldn't have tried to fire on police," she said.
Bishop Frimpong-Manson said he knew Mark from childhood. "He was like my son and
I was angry when I read what was being said about him, because it was just
wrong. I know some youths get in trouble. No one is perfect. But he was just a
normal guy. I came to see the family and they said: 'No one is talking to us
about what happened to Mark.' Who would be happy to lose a child and find that
no one is talking to you?" he said.
As mourners prepared to set off from the house, the bishop called them to stand
on the pavement beside the wooden carriage, which was drawn by four white horses
with plumes. Around 60 did so.
"We come to stretch our hands towards the casket and thank God for Mark's life
as he begins his heavenly journey."
He urged the mourners to stretch their arms towards the carriage as he prayed.
Duggan's mother, Pam, wept, supported by a relative.
The cortege swelled at Broadwater Farm as people emerged from homes and offices.
The horse-drawn carriage stopped near the block Duggan lived in as a child.
Again mourners were implored to stretch their hands towards it. A few stepped
forward to tap on the carriage.
One hit the hardest. "He was a loveable rogue but we loved him," he said.
Among the mourners were the relatives of Cynthia Jarrett, whose death sparked
the Broadwater Farm disturbances in 1985; of Colin Roach, who died in Stoke
Newington police station, north London; and of Sean Rigg, who died while in the
custody of police in Brixton, south London.
Another there to "show solidarity" was Winston Silcott, who was wrongly
imprisoned for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the 1985 riots.
The IPCC is still investigating the 12 August shooting. It has said a
non-police-issue firearm was recovered from the scene.
Reports
suggest that Duggan was carrying the converted replica in a sock. But the family
say there is no proof of that, and say they've been told that no fingerprints
were found on the firearm.
At least eight people arrested in connection with attack
– while disturbances flare up in Liverpool, Leicester, Bristol and Leeds
The
Guardian,
Wednesday 10 August 2011
Martin Wainwright, Helen Clifton, James Beal and Jessica Shepherd
This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday 10 August 2011. It was
published on guardian.co.uk at 01.57 BST on Wednesday 10 August 2011. It was
last modified at 01.59 BST on Wednesday 10 August 2011.
A police
station in Nottingham was firebombed on Tuesday night as violence also hit
Liverpool, Leicester, Bristol and Leeds.
Canning Circus police station in Nottingham was attacked by a gang of 30 to 40
men but no injuries were reported, according to Nottinghamshire police. The
force said at least eight people were arrested in connection with the attack.
Around the same time, a number of cars were firebombed at a car lot in Carlton
Road in the city.
The violence followed the arrest of 10 youths earlier in the evening after a
small group of people got on to the roof of one of the buildings at Nottingham
High School. In another incident two men, aged 17 and 18, were arrested after
rocks were thrown at Bulwell Police Station in the city.
Between 6pm on Monday and 1am on Wednesday, police said they dealt with "well
over 1,000" reports of incidents taking place throughout the city and elsewhere,
and more than 70 arrests were made. Fires were set in various different
locations and police said they had investigated reports that children had been
setting trees alight.
Smithdown Road in Toxteth in Liverpool was closed by police after 200 rioters
started hurling missiles at officers at about 11.30pm. A Merseyside police
spokesman said the youths were "causing disorder and damage" and asked local
people to avoid the area. She was unable to confirm reports that firebombs were
being thrown.
Police and firefighters were called to reports of vehicles on fire in
Birkenhead, while the town centre also saw damage to shops and pubs, with at
least one pub set on fire. No-one was inside at the time.
Some 35 arrests were made on Merseyside in connection with the disorder.
A number of blazes were started by people rioting at a young offenders'
institution in Bristol, the local fire service said. Up to 10 teenagers at
Ashfield set fire to rubbish in one of the wings at about 7.50pm.
It took members of staff about 50 minutes to extinguish the flames, according to
Avon Fire and Rescue Service, who were put on standby in case they worsened.
"About seven to 10 people were involved in a riot," a spokesman said. "The
prison staff are now dealing with the perpetrators." The fires were said to be
small, with the level of damage done unclear.
Some 400 young males aged between 15 and 18 are held at Ashfield after being
sentenced in courts across the South West, Wales, the Midlands and the London
area.
Meanwhile a gang passing through Chapeltown in Leeds threw stones at cars parked
outside the Central Jamia Mosque. A senior member of staff at the mosque, who
gave his name as Ali, described the culprits as a large group of rioters.
Leicestershire police said on their Twitter account that their officers were
dealing with a group of youths in Leicester city centre.
The violence has been spreading outside of London since Monday night. Police in
Liverpool were pelted with missiles and cars were torched on Monday, while
looters in Bristol targeted jewellery shops and set a gas main on fire. There
has been sporadic trouble in Leeds
In Liverpool, disturbances began shortly after midnight on Monday as pub and
restaurant windows were shattered with stones, showering late-night drinkers and
diners with glass . Several hundred people, some as young as 10, roamed High
Park Street attacking buildings and cars at random before looting a Tesco
Express, smashing police station windows and setting a police van on fire.
Cars and wheelie bins were set alight on a trail of destruction that stretched
from the city centre to the Toxteth, Dingle and Wavertree areas.
Tottenham riot: Sustained looting follows night of violence
Looters use cars and shopping trolleys
to carry away stolen goods as disturbances spread to other areas of Haringey
Sunday 7
August 2011
09.05 BST
Guardian.co.uk
Paul Lewis
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 09.05 BST on Sunday 7 August
2011. It was last modified at 10.40 BST on Sunday 7 August 2011.
There were
scenes of chaos in the early hours of Sunday morning as sustained looting spread
from Tottenham to other nearby areas of Haringey.
By midnight police managed to secure a 200-metre stretch of the Tottenham High
Road, scene of some of the worst rioting on Saturday night.
But as fire engines entered the street, and began putting out blazing cars and
buildings, the rioters spread north and west through back-streets. To the north,
at Tottenham Hale, Aldi supermarket was ransacked and set on fire. So too was a
nearby carpet shop, causing a huge blaze.
Looters turned up with cars and shopping trolleys to carry away stolen goods.
Nearby, large groups of youths congregated in the surrounding streets with
sticks, bottles and hammers.
Some wore balaclava masks, preventing cars from accessing streets as buildings
were broken into. Others used large rubbish bins to form burning barricades
across the road.
However some of most dramatic looting took place further west, in Wood Green,
and continued into the early hours of the morning.
Earlier on Saturday night two police cars, a bus and several shops had been
attacked and set ablaze as violence and looting erupted following a protest
demanding "justice" over a fatal police shooting.
Officers on horseback and others in riot gear clashed with hundreds of rioters
armed with makeshift missiles in the centre of Tottenham after Mark Duggan, 29,
a father of four, was killed on Thursday.
On Sunday morning police said there remained isolated incidents in the Tottenham
area involving "a small number of people" and officers were still dealing with
those situations. Eight officers were being treated in hospital, one with head
injuries, following the violence.
But there was still no police presence at Wood Green high street at 4am, even
after dozens of stores had been smashed and raided, setting of multiple alarms.
Around 100 youths sprinted around the highstreet, targeting game shops,
electrical stores and high-street clothe chains such as H & M.
Glass windows were smashed and the looters, mostly young men masking their
faces, swarmed in.
They emerged with handfuls of stolen goods. "I've got loads of G-Star," said one
teenager, emerging from a clothes shop. Others came out clasping shopping bags
stuffed with goods.
Three teenagers ran down the street with suitcases filled with stolen clothes.
Around ten young men stood outside a smouldering Carphone Warehouse, the windows
smashed. The theft was casual and brazen, with looters peering into broken shop
windows to see if items of value remained.
There were shocking scenes in the suburban back-streets, where residential
front-gardens were used to frantically sort and swap stolen goods.
A teenage boy, who looked aged around 14, drove an stolen minicab erratically
down a side-street. On the adjacent street, a man who emerged from his home to
find his car burnt-out remonstrated with other young men, who ran past carrying
clothes.
Passersby, including people returning home in the early hours from nights out,
were stunned to discover the lawless mayhem on the streets.
With no sign of any police, buses refused to take passengers through Wood Green
high street, and traffic was brought to a standstill.
Student fees protest: 'This is just the beginning'
• Tory HQ attacked as demonstration spirals out of control
• 35 arrested and 14 injured in violent clashes at Millbank
• Police admit being caught out by scale of student action
Wednesday 10 November 2010
21.38 GMT
Guardian.co.uk
Jeevan Vasagar, Paul Lewis and Nicholas Watt
This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 21.38 GMT on Wednesday 10
November 2010.
A version appeared on p1 of the Main section section of the Guardian on Thursday
11 November 2010.
It was last modified at 23.15 GMT on Wednesday 10 November 2010.
Tens of thousands of students took to the streets of London today in a
demonstration that spiralled out of control when a fringe group of protesters
hurled missiles at police and occupied the building housing Conservative party
headquarters.
Tonight both ministers and protesters acknowledged that the demonstration – by
far the largest and most dramatic yet in response to the government's austerity
measures – was "just the beginning" of public anger over cuts. Police,
meanwhile, were criticised for failing to anticipate the scale of the disorder.
An estimated 52,000 people, according to the National Union of Students, marched
through central London to display their anger over government plans to increase
tuition fees while cutting state funding for university teaching. A wing of the
protest turned violent as around 200 people stormed 30 Millbank, the central
London building that is home to Tory HQ, where police wielding batons clashed
with a crowd hurling placard sticks, eggs and some bottles. Demonstrators
shattered windows and waved anarchist flags from the roof of the building, while
masked activists traded punches with police to chants of "Tory scum".
Police conceded that they had failed to anticipate the level of violence from
protesters who trashed the lobby of the Millbank building. Missiles including a
fire extinguisher were thrown from the roof and clashes saw 14 people – a mix of
officers and protesters – taken to hospital and 35 arrests. Sir Paul Stephenson,
Met police commissioner, said the force should have anticipated the level
ofviolence better. He said: "It's not acceptable. It's an embarrassment for
London and for us."
While Tory headquarters suffered the brunt of the violence, Liberal Democrat
headquarters in nearby Cowley Street were not targeted. "This is not what we pay
the Met commissioner to do," one senior Conservative told the Guardian. "It
looks like they put heavy security around Lib Dem HQ but completely forgot about
our party HQ."
Lady Warsi, the Tory party chair, was in her office when protesters broke in.
She initially had no police protection as the protesters made their way up the
fire stairs to the roof. Police who eventually made it to Tory HQ decided not to
evacuate staff from the building but to concentrate on removing the
demonstrators.
The NUS president, Aaron Porter, condemned the actions of "a minority of idiots"
but hailed the turnout as the biggest student demonstration in generations. The
largely good-natured protest was organised by the NUS and the lecturers' union
the UCU, who have attacked coalition plans to raise tuition fees as high as
£9,000 while making 40% cuts to university teaching budgets. The higher fees
will be introduced for undergraduates starting in 2012, if the proposals are
sanctioned by the Commons in a vote due before Christmas. The NUS president told
protesters: "We're in the fight of our lives. We face an unprecedented attack on
our future before it has even begun. They're proposing barbaric cuts that would
brutalise our colleges and universities."
Inside parliament the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg – the focus of much
anger among protesters for his now abandoned pledge to scrap all tuition fees –
came under sustained attack, facing 10 questions on tuition fees during his
stand-in performance during prime minister's questions. He said there was
consensus across the parties about the need to reform the system.
Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, said the rise in fees was not part of
the effort to tackle the deficit but about Clegg "going along with Tory plans to
shove the cost of higher education on to students and their families". She said:
"We all know what it's like: you are at freshers' week, you meet up with a dodgy
bloke and you do things that you regret. Isn't it true he has been led astray by
the Tories, isn't that the truth of it?"
Meanwhile one student won an unexpected concession from the coalition yesterday.
In answer to a question from a Chinese student during his trip to China, David
Cameron said: "Raising tuition fees will do two things. It will make sure our
universities are well funded and we won't go on increasing so fast the fees for
overseas students … We have done the difficult thing. We have put up
contributions for British students. Yes, foreign students will still pay a
significant amount of money, but we should now be able to keep that growth under
control."
Additional reporting by Rachel Williams and Matthew Taylor
There were already signs of the violence to come as tens of
thousands gathered in south London's brilliant sunshine for the country's
biggest anti-poll tax demonstration.
A group of about 1,000 tried to form separately, black flags fluttering in the
breeze. A police inspector said to his officers: "Anyone with black flags,
they've all been warned that they're going to get arrested."
The head of the apparently good-natured march started passing Downing Street,
but by the time it reached Trafalgar Square scuffles were breaking out in
Whitehall. The objective of some demonstrators was undoubtedly the double line
of police behind the gates of Downing Street.
In Trafalgar Square the majority listened to speakers. Some headed south down
Whitehall, hurling anything they could lay their hands on at police. As the
platform appealed for people to go home peacefully, rioting spread into the
south-east corner of Trafalgar Square.
Riot police battling to push the crowd away from the area of the South African
embassy were repulsed by a barrage of bottles, sticks and plac ards. Cries of
"Kill them" and "Fascist scum" filled the air.
Many at the forefront appeared intoxicated, either by alcohol or by the
atmosphere of insurrection. Young men with blood pouring from head wounds
continued to hurl missiles.
A fire engine was attacked, as others shouted for it to be left alone. Mounted
police cantered past the embassy in a futile attempt to push demonstrators away.
They became targets for a hail of missiles.
Ten yards back from the hard core, police and the public watched the ferocity
with disbelieving faces.
Mounted, combat and ordinary uniformed police gradually forced demonstrators
northwards out of Trafalgar Square. But if calm had returned there, it was at
the expense of London's premier shopping streets. Hundreds of demonstrators ran
amok, smashing windows, looting and attacking cars, leaving banks wrecked.
The junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street was typical of the chaos
facing police officers intent on rounding up scattered, determined groups. It
was becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between rioters and
spectators.
A police officer told a middle-aged couple: "We cannot guarantee your safety if
you move out of this area."
A boy of about 15 was in a telephone box yards from police: "They done Oxford
Street. I got a three hundred quid jacket and two left boots."
A schoolteacher died early today after receiving severe head
injuries in a violent demonstration against a National Front election meeting in
Southall, Middlesex. He was Mr Blair Peach, a New Zealander in his late twenties
who lived in East London.
The dead man, an Anti-Nazi League supporter, was one of 40 taken to hospital
after the demonstration, in which 300 people were arrested.
The violence came to a head when rocks, smoke bombs, bottles and cans were
hurled at the massive cordon of police protecting the Front meeting at Southall
Town Hall.
Of the injured, 35 were policemen. One was stabbed in the stomach and another
suffered a serious leg wound. Twenty police needed hospital treatment and six
were detained.
The battle before the meeting was quelled only when police horsemen and police
armed with riot shields charged the crowd.
Ealing Council, which had previously banned National Front meetings, allowed the
Front to book the hall under the Representation of the People Act.
Mr Paul Holborrow, the League's national secretary said, "We believe that this
tragedy occurred solely because of the determination of the police to enable the
Nazis to hold their racist and provocative meeting in the centre of the Asian
community in Southall.
"The ANL has warned of the dangers of allowing Nazis to practise in our midst;
now that the ultimate price has been paid, it now asks how much longer this
violence is to be tolerated in British politics."
Mr Merlyn Rees, the Home Secretary, speaking before the man's death, last night
defended the right to hold meetings.
He said matters of public order had to be left to the professionals — the police
— and it was not up to a Home Secretary to make judgements. But if Labour were
returned to power he would want more powers to control marches.
Interviewed by ITN, Mr Rees was asked what plans he had to deal with unpleasant
aspects of extremism.
Mr Rees said: "The request for dealing with a march must come from the police.
It was a police judgement that was made in Leicester. There was no such
judgement to make today simply because it was not a march. It was a meeting this
evening."
Those arrested last night were held on charges ranging from assault on police to
possessing offensive weapons.
Some 500 men, women and children were spreading out sleeping
bags and thankfully washing their feet in various church halls in Hounslow last
night after marching the 11 miles from Trafalgar Square on the first lap of
their descent upon Aldermaston.
About 1,000 more had returned to their homes in London, perhaps to march again
today. A lamplight meeting had evoked the first really lusty cheers of the day
as Mr Michael Foot denounced the recent Defence white paper as "the most
shameful statement ever made by a British government".
It was Mr Foot who had cried from the plinth on Nelson's Column in the morning,
as a cold sun played on some 4,000 faces: "This can be the greatest march in
English history."
Whatever the march may turn out to be, it had already called out a splendid
array of English faces, most intent on making clear their conviction that
nuclear weapons are evil and should be controlled or done away with.
It was a happy London holiday crowd as benign as the weather that favoured it
until the afternoon grey chill came down, no more combative than the empty
London streets through which the long procession made its way, across Trafalgar
Square to the Albert Memorial and then to Chiswick and Hounslow, the first stop
in the four-day march to the Atomic Energy Authority's weapons establishment at
Aldermaston.
The nearest thing to an incident was the cheerful booing as a policeman stopped
a troop of folk-dancers from entertaining the lunchtime picnickers with an
eightsome reel in front of Albert's statue.
Behind came 50 cars and coaches, one of them bearing that essential
morale-builder, the tea urn. "We've got 500 mattresses behind there," said Miss
Pat Arrowsmith, a pretty, large-eyed girl in a white pea-jacket, the organiser
of the whole well-mannered outing.
In the morning, though, the march was supposed to be silent, so as not to break
in on religious thoughts. Somewhere in Knightsbridge this proved too much for a
gay band of young people from Bermondsey, the boys in bowlers and camouflaged
jackets and jeans, the girls in ponytails and high heels and men's bright shirts
hanging over their skirts. They struck up Tannenbaum on a handy trumpet and
banjo.
Miss Arrowsmith dropped back and explained about the silence. "We should be
delighted to have any sort of music after lunch, but meanwhile we should be
obliged if you would conform with us."
"Never mind," cried one of the elegant ones in bowler hats. "The music's in our
hearts."
