Chapter Five

The Stylish Kids in the Riot

During the 2010 anti-austerity protests and student protests (against cuts to education and rises in tuition fees), the media tended to focus on the small minority of protesters who engaged with violence, rather than the thousands of peaceful protesters. Publishing images of a seemingly terrified Charles and Camilla, broken glass, fires being set and Molotov cocktails being thrown, the news showed chaotic scenes of drama and violence, above scenes of peaceful marches and sit-ins. In so doing, the protests were misrepresented, and draconian punishments were presented as justified. Dissent was not only trivialised, in the representation of out-of-control students, but also condemned, and the movement was therefore damaged, being seen by many as illegitimate on account of this public image.

The Occupy movements in the US as well as the UK were given similar treatment by the press (as detailed further in the next chapter). Depicted as a sprawling mess of students, unemployed people and hippies, in a throwback to the 1960s, the group was dismissed and ridiculed by the press when it was not entirely ignored. The general impression seemed to be that the Occupy movement was chasing an impossible dream, that its days were numbered, and that it was a nuisance to those whose stroll to work was interrupted (in the case of Occupy Wall Street). That a lot of the occupations took place in universities (for example UCL, Cambridge, Oxford, LSE, Leeds and many others) only compounded an image of the protests as trivial and naïve. This was the idea communicated to the public – not the politics behind the action, and not the demands. Films of students sitting in occupied university buildings with sleeping bags and rucksacks give an impression of a festival, especially when the political discussions and organisation cannot be heard alongside. Photographs of protestors being detained and ‘caught’ meanwhile – even when no laws had been broken – give an image of lawlessness and chaos regardless.

Arguably these press portrayals (as well as dismissal in the form of withholding publicity) led to the police repression of these peaceful protests being seen as justified and sensible. When Occupy Wall Street was dismantled, and Zucotti Park /Liberty Plaza was raided by police, however, those involved remained positive:

Following the example of police in other cities, the NYPD entered the camp under cover of night and evicted all the residents, confiscating tents, sleeping bags, and books, and pepper-spraying and arresting protesters. In response to these attacks occupiers posted a message online. “You can’t evict an idea whose time has come,” it began. Rebecca Solnit put it more poetically: “You can pull up the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring.” (Taylor, Gessen, et al (eds.), 2011, vii)

This is a hopeful metaphor, and inspiring resilience, but it is of course possible to quash dissent in a way one can’t change the seasons. Success, after all, is not inevitable. While protest, especially that which is recorded well, as the Occupy movement has been, may never be forgotten, and stands at the very least as a record of political discontent and moral principle, it is all too possible for such movements to be politically ineffective in the long run on account of bad press, public disapproval and subsequent or connected repression.

While protests and occupations were being broken up, meanwhile, advertising and pop culture co-opted the idea of dissent – with the controversial Levi’s advert, for example, which saw people wearing their brand of jeans in a riot, the M.I.A. pop video depicting another violent riot (with red-heads rising up), not to mention the infamous Stephen Meisel shoot in Vogue Italia, showing a girl in handcuffs and implications of torture, in his feature ‘State of Emergency’. Dissent was presented as fashionable and dangerous, but not politically effective.

The protests were ultimately unsuccessful for various reasons, the most significant being that the protesters, whether peaceful or not, were portrayed negatively. In this context of advertising campaigns and pop videos that sensationalised the idea of protest, this had the ultimate effect of making the politics seem trivial to the spectacle. Individual protesters were focused on, and usually demonised, at the expense of the many other protesters who were ignored despite their presence (in their tens of thousands). There were only negative, worrying stories; there were no heart-warming counter-narratives, no inspirational figures, and certainly no serious discussion of politics (other than ‘how to contain dissent’, or ‘how to punish the wild students’). The kids were out of control; the protests were depicted, at their best, as a school trip gone wrong, or a student rave spilled out into the day-lit hours.

More anxiety-inducing stories gave an impression of a nightmarish rebellion by ne’er-do-wells, thankfully quashed by the ever-heroic police. The stories of police brutality – for instance Alfie Meadows, who had to receive emergency brain surgery after being battered by a police officer – received minimal coverage. A protester at the same march, however, received far more attention, for some reckless behaviour that led to no physical harm — no life-threatening injuries or abuse of police power. And yet Charlie Gilmour became something of a poster boy of the protests for some antics involving a Cenotaph. The subsequent public hysteria went some way to ensuring months in jail and a protracted media obsession with a young man whose only criminal conviction was ‘violent disorder’, or rather, some badly timed vandalism (he smashed a window in Topshop).

The police officer who injured Alfie Meadows never became known or vilified in the press; there was no massive outcry at the victim’s experience, no pursuit of the perpetrator. But Charlie became a hate figure overnight — his photographs in every national newspaper, his friends hounded by journalists vying for a scoop, his family sent hate mail. His demonisation in the press was worrying enough; that the entire movement was dismissed on account of that demonisation even more so. Charlie was disrespectful to a monument, but it was not damaged, and no lives were lost. And yet he was hounded and vilified in much the same way that a terrorist would be in the press; he was sent to prison for it.

Charlie may not have made the best PR move that day, but the press’ reaction to his actions exposed a ridiculous bias against protest, and specifically its tendency to conflate peaceful protest with ‘terrorism’. It also betrayed a dangerous hypocrisy, whereby police brutality was ignored, but entire front pages were dedicated to the misadventures of a rogue protester. If any good should come from that day it is to learn something about the way the media works, to understand that protest can be a limited tool for dissenting groups, when the mainstream media is skewed against them using that democratic right. The papers, as the next chapter will show, seem generally to be more interested in playing pantomime and destroying whoever happens to be cast as the villain, than in representing democratic protest fairly. Perhaps that should be an obvious point, but it is one often missed by peaceful dissenting groups especially. Although it varies from case to case, it may be that sometimes the best PR is no PR.

So what of the protesters who are shot down for being too hip? For being too idealistic and unprofessional? What of the stylish kids at the riot and the riotous kids at the protest — what are we to do with them? Should we disown them and distance ourselves? Should we be brutal in our insistence that we strategise in reaction to the state’s hold on PR? Each movement will make its own decisions, but I would think that generally we should hold back on being too prescriptive and self-censoring. This book has outlined what tends to work, but it has not said what to do when things nevertheless don’t work, when we get PR wrong. It shouldn’t matter as much as it does, but it does. So again, what of those romantics, ruffians and trouble-makers? Do we stand by them, or march on without them? I may betray my own Romantic sentiments, but I would have some solidarity in those occasions, some camaraderie. I would think that we would be losing something important simply to focus only on strategy and not on one another. Rather than criticise and scapegoat those who are demonised by the press, perhaps it makes more sense to organise protest and dissent more generally in such a way that the press cannot so easily bring down individuals and a movement with them.

This takes foresight and analysis as much as emotional commitment and camaraderie — each is as necessary as the other. It makes no sense either to abandon true solidarity for the sake of perfecting (or trying to perfect) a public image, just as it is better to avoid the excesses of a movement’s Romantic spirit at the expense of communicating ideas to the public with any clarity or persuasion.