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[de5me7]

I enjoyed a good old fashioned riot yesterday at Millbank. In the aftermarth i have mixing feelings about its purpose and what it could lead to in the near future.

So i was wondering, what are you thoughts on rioting, bay 12?

Particullarly as a political tool, rather than football etc.

And, do you think there will be further rioting across europe? (and possibly the rest of the world? Do people in your neighbour hood wish to riot?)

[Jopax]

What was the reason for the riot?
Around these parts the only riots you will ever see are those related to football matches, and those are pretty retarded, a few years ago some people even died, shot by a stolen police gun.

[The Merchant Of Menace]

Heh, Clegg must have been ecstatic. People actually knew his name.
The rioting was for the uncapped uni fees and general assfuckery of the students.

[Tsarwash]

By rioting you are handing the argument to the Government and the Daily Mail.

A series of disruptive mass protests would have been a lot more effective. Now the police have a justified reason to break up peacful protests in a brutal way. The next protest should cause a mass standstill of the City of London. But with no violence.

[Leafsnail]

Well, the Conservative party is clearly going to be popular in the future.

[uttaku]

I enjoyed a good old fashioned riot yesterday at Millbank. In the aftermarth i have mixing feelings about its purpose and what it could lead to in the near future.

So i was wondering, what are you thoughts on rioting, bay 12?

Particullarly as a political tool, rather than football etc.

And, do you think there will be further rioting across europe? (and possibly the rest of the world? Do people in your neighbour hood wish to riot?)

I think your an utter twat, all the roit did was give people the wrong impression about students and our views, it started out as a perfectly acceptable and effective PEACEFUL protest and it was twats like you who ruined it for the majority. WELL FUCKING DONE!

[de5me7]

I think your an utter twat, all the roit did was give people the wrong impression about students and our views (your views), it started out as a perfectly acceptable and effective PEACEFUL protest and it was twats like you who ruined it for the majority. WELL FUCKING DONE!

name an effective peaceful protest in the UK, the largest protest in UK history was peaceful and a failure.


also if this is how its going to be, perhaps i should close this thread

"Do not pick a fight or insult another poster.  Do not continue a fight if you feel you have been insulted.  Report it to the moderator.  If you instead respond in kind, you run the risk of being considered part of the problem."

I actually agree to peaceful protest

but to be effective you need sustained peaceful disruption, apathy still rules in the UK student community, 50000 students is a fraction of our total. With out that support smaller groups, rightly or wrongly will find ways of making more disruption.

[Tsarwash]

I would say don't close the thread, just take the insult with a pinch of salt. You are going to attact criticism if you admit to such behaviour. Uttaku has a right to be angry about peaceful protests becoming violent. Of course insults are NOT to be tolerated here.

[Muz]

There's been a lot of peaceful protests, mainly the Commonwealth colonies rebelling against the UK's policies, most famously Gandhi's passive-aggressive protests. In the UK itself, I wouldn't know.


Now name an effective riot

I generally don't like rioting. It causes damage, it hurts people, and doesn't solve anything. If anything, it hurts your cause. Football riots obviously make the rioting clubs look bad. Terrorism actually hurts the middle east's political influence throughout the world. Same goes for any group that riots.

There's better ways, like boycotts and strikes. And your old fashioned propaganda wars, like what UNSW and their staff are doing right now.

[Leafsnail]

Now name an effective riot

Does France count?

[Tsarwash]

The pol tax protests turned into a riot. But in this day and age, rioting gives ammunition to the opposition. It becomes easy to dismiss the protesters as thugs and such, and therefore easy to ignore them.

[de5me7]

it does give governments an excuse to ignore us, but with peaceful protests, they just... ignore us with out excuses.

[scriver]

No.
It just takes time. You can't expect something to change just because some guys stood in the street for a couple of hours. Protesting are supposed to bring attention to and garner support for your cause. Rioting doesn't change anything, and it effectively makes people think less of your cause.

[Tsarwash]

You have to hit politicians where they are at the weakest. They are all elected in, and scared that they get elected out. If all willing students could somehow get registered to vote in David Cameron's constituancy, and threaten to en masse vote him out, then he would get incredibly worried and start listening. The willing student voter block is actually incredibly powerful. I wonder how many rogue votes it would take to vote him out as leader of his own party ? Of course you would have to spend the rest of your life under the shadow of once being it the Tory party. But even more, local protests and gathering local support from the general public can be very powerful. A good proportion of the public went to university and are just thankful that their loans are less then ten grand. Sympathy amongst these should be easy to build up.

[Nilocy]

I'm on the fence with this one; on one hand peaceful protesting is kinda boring and unless you have like a million people then no-one cares at all. You can get a lot more done with a destructive protest with a lot less people

On the subtopic of effective riots, there was plenty in France during the rebellions and that worked out pretty well for them. Also the mass protesting currently going on is really quite impressive. Its nice to see a country band against one thing in such an awesoem force.

@uttaku Don't insult people, you just look silly.