Kettled Youth: history of police kettling and protest

Dan sez, "From the editor of 'Fight Back! A reader on the winter of (UK) protest', a new piece of long-form journalism called 'Kettled Youth', about youth protests, activism, and the perverse UK police tactic of kettling (probably the most comprehensive exploration of kettling so far - looking at its history, packed with first-hand reportage, but also its symbolic impact in radicalising an entire generation of young people). This ebook is published (today) by Random House, who have commissioned a whole series of long-form journalistic essays on the UK and Arab Spring uprisings, under the banner The Summer of Unrest (also featured Mehdi Hasan, Peter Beaumont, and Tom Chatfield). Here's an interview I did this morning about Kettled Youth for Dazed Digital."

DD: Are protests like the ones in March 'useful', can they have a long standing impact?
Dan Hancox: They’re vital – vanguards are great for smashing through the lines of the kettle, but this has to turn into a mass anti-cuts movement, especially one with people who are older than 25 in it (I’m 30, cough cough). The impact and importance of 26 March for me was summed up perfectly in the front page of The Daily Mirror, lest we forget, the only tabloid in the country that dares to stick up for its mostly working-class readers, rather than turn them against one another. It depicted the incredible numbers of ordinary people who were angry enough to come out and protest against the government’s plans of austerity, cuts and privatisation – again, before the cuts have even hit. The headline ran Your Big Society has spoken, Mr Cameron. In contrast to a Tory government destroying the welfare state without a mandate, that is what democracy looks like.

DD: What are the main issues to march against now?
Dan Hancox: The same they were before – the perfect storm of a generation fucked over before they’ve even left school, an arrogant, brittle Tory government using a financial crisis caused by the rich to further benefit the rich while punishing the poor and the vulnerable, and the total public degradation of an entire elite – from the richest bankers still drawing multi-million pound bonuses, to the corrupt upper ranks of the police, to the Murdoch press, to the vast majority of Westminster. If 2011 was an Agatha Christie novel it would be called The Neoliberal Ecology Crack’d From Side To Side.

Kettled Youth (Thanks, Dan!)

• [Kevin F. Steinmetz]

  Any ideas on how/when non-Kindle owners can get a copy of this?

• [Mike Greco]

  Remember when all journalism was ‘long-form’? Those were good times.

• [mjsergey]

  The always incredible increpare(.com) made a flash puzzle game based on kettling http://ded.increpare.com/~locus/kettle/

• [SarahKH]

  Kettling:  Tactic used by the police so they know exactly where and roughly when the riot will start by intimidating the crowd until they respond.  

• [dan hancox]

  non-Kindle owners can download the free Kindle reader app for PC / Mac / iPhone / Android etc etc :) – thanks, Dan (aka the author)

• [Tzctboin]

  All is well and good. The miners and unions protested in the 80s and what did they win?
  Why?
  Because the public in general, including many of the protesters, can’t be arsed to vote.

  Yes, some of the police techniques are despicable, but these street scuffles do precious little to advance the plight of the masses, as the evidence around us clearly shows: the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few, social mobility entirely stalled, and now education been priced out of the hands of working and many middle class people.

  But you can go on protesting instead of getting involved in actual politics: those in your council and Parliament where at the end is where it all happens.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    But you can go on protesting instead of getting involved in actual politics: those in your council and Parliament where at the end is where it all happens.

    And that attitude is why the US won its independence.