Peaceful Climate Camp loses headlines
With all the hoo-ha over the G20 marches, the peaceful protests of the Climate Change Camp were ignored.

And yet they did so much more than wrap scarves around their faces and smash a few bank windows for the cameras.

They created an entire campsite, complete with tents, food stalls, ecotoilets, samba bands and - eek! - climate change workshops on a road in London in just minutes.

And, even more amazingly, they refused to react when balaclava-clad police, using their usual 'kettling' tactics, tried to squish them all into a corner.

I've been at protests where kettling was used. It's standard police procedure at what, in my day, were called 'demos'.

Police, in scary riot gear, start herding the more docile parts of the crowd, finally pushing everyone together in a small space and stopping them leaving.

Not for a wee, not for a drink, not to go and pick up the kids, not for anything. Then they just keep you there. For hours.

Some people react: but then wouldn't you, penned in like an animal? The admirable aspect to the G20 Climate Change Camp was that the protesters didn't lose their tempers when kettled.

Instead, these polite hippies, with a cause bigger than any war or economic crisis, just chanted at the police, "This is not a riot! Shame on you!"

What admirable restraint. Unfortunately, it cost them their headlines.

Miranda Sawyer 4/04/2009

Rory's Comment: Of course the MSM focus on the sensationalist headline and that usually means violence. The question, though, still remains unanswered: who were these so-called anarchists responsible for the limited amount of violence which occurred? Who controls them? Were they agents provocateurs, a question the MSM simply will not dare ask?

Strange that while all other windows in the City had been boarded-up those at the Royal Bank of Scotland were not. It was an invitation for a break-in.

It is good to read articles from the MSM which condemn kettling, a policy used by the police which is guaranteed to lead to confrontation, frayed tempers and violence. Maybe that's exactly what they want to happen ...