doolally wrote:UncleEbenezer wrote:Now it seems updating it to something more relevant for today gets you arrested.
I strongly suggest that the arrests were nothing to do with the burning of an effigy or whatever, but more to do with violence and disorder. Any sizeable crowd at such an event will contain a proportion of extremists and idiots
doolally
Or perhaps just people who don't react well to heavy-handed policing?
I recollect my first peace march. I overcame my instinctive revulsion at an event associated with the Left[1], and went with several friends.
Large numbers of mounted police were deployed, and were quite obviously not going to stand for any nonsense. I felt a bit claustrophobic in the somewhat-oppressively-confined space they allowed us, but was OK with that in the circumstances. But it was certainly a provocation! I particularly remember several times having to calm down my friend G., a PhD student[1] and normally entirely mild-mannered and friendly. He clearly wasn't as confident as I was that the police weren't about to initiate a violent event, and what I found claustrophobic he found really stressful.
I wonder how fine the line is between rising to that provocation in a stressful situation, and your extremists and idiots?
[1] Tony Benn was speaking that day, though I just did the march and didn't stay for that nonsense.
[2] In computer science. Not in some discipline like sociology one might naturally associate with being anti-establishment.