Monday 31 October 2011

Daily Mail does 'stream of consciousness'

I've cut and pasted all the descriptions of the people involved from their lengthy article about the St Paul's protest:

Mail undercover reporter at St Paul's finds a shambolic crew of pot-smoking part-time protesters who put partying before politics.

Looking around, my camp comrades are more student union common room than dreadlocked Swampies. Earnest-looking graduates and undergraduates for the most part, their numbers are bolstered by foreign activists, some of whom have come straight from Central Casting: the Spaniard with beard and beret, and the three young German students in army surplus boots and parkas.

A key activity is sitting around smoking joints and knocking back lager.

Among the professional protesters, those from the anarchist group Anonymous form a tight knot of tents and are distinguishable by the plastic Guy Fawkes masks they carry and sometimes wear to obscure their faces.

Just about everyone, when not inhaling marijuana, smokes cigarettes (roll-ups, of course). The mornings are a cacophony of hacking coughs.

What I encountered was a disparate group of freelance travelling protesters with little or no discernible philosophy and a penchant for petty squabbles.

This is a part-time camp with many part-time protesters. My tent is touching five others, three of which I never see anyone enter or leave.

Much of the business of the camp has the whiff of student politics. Twenty-something and predominantly female, the middle-class accents of the 'facilitators’ — yes, that’s what they call themselves — fill the piazza as they do 'shout-outs’ for people to join caucuses for women and ethnic minorities, and for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LBGT) support groups.

Alongside them in equal number are foreign activists living in London. Smaller in number but perhaps most vocal of all are the professional activists. Several tell me they have just returned from the Dale Farm traveller evictions. Others are veterans of protest camps dating back decades.

Seems very like a gathering of the usual suspects.

Another protester implores those who want to block a proposed ban on drink and drugs to remember why they are there. 'Recreational drinking isn’t something we should passionately support — this is a movement trying to overthrow capitalism,’ she says.

A man I saw drinking earlier in the day is taken to hospital by ambulance. The following morning, another protester is still so drunk he descends the steps of St Paul’s on his bottom as tourists watch in bemused horror.


Ho hum.

So are they part time or professional? Is drinking and smoking cannabis allowed or not (I've been there, it isn't)? Do more of them smoke than any group, i.e. people in a pub beer garden (I've been there, they don't)? Are they "more student union common room than dreadlocked Swampies" or are they indeed "veterans of protest camps dating back decades"? Do they put "partying before politics" or are they "earnest-looking graduates" led by "predominantly female middle-class facilitators"?

And so on.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another protester implores those who want to block a proposed ban on drink and drugs to remember why they are there. 'Recreational drinking isn’t something we should passionately support

Sounds a bit like Labour and a very dull group.