“The full force of the law must be brought against viol­ent pro­test­ers,” David Cameron repeats his man­tra, once again, on the even­ing of 9 Decem­ber, fol­low­ing the fourth instance of tar­geted prop­erty dam­age and clashes with the police com­ing from within the groundswell of stu­dent protests against edu­ca­tion cuts. The mantra’s com­bin­a­tion of “force” and “law” is not inten­ded solely as a call for ret­ro­spect­ive legal pro­ceed­ings, but also sum­mons law-​preserving viol­ence in the imme­di­ate future. In other words, each repe­ti­tion of the man­tra in the past month has served as found­a­tion and legit­im­isa­tion for increased mil­it­ar­isa­tion of poli­cing at each suc­cess­ive stu­dent demon­stra­tion. It has, of course, also served as a clear threat to those who will con­tinue protest­ing, even if with non-​violent methods.

We first heard it from Cameron in the wake of the occu­pa­tion of Tory headquar­ters on 10 Novem­ber, dur­ing the 52-​thousand-​strong, first stu­dent march on Parliament. Police pres­ence was min­imal that day, com­ple­men­ted by a civil­ity on the part of pro­test­ers that only a gen­er­ally shared belief in lib­eral demo­cratic prin­ciples could pro­duce: fel­low pro­test­ers in stew­ards’ vests poli­cing arbit­rary rail­ings in the middle of White­hall; thou­sands march­ing past gov­ern­ment build­ings whose doors were barely secured, even left ajar as their staff walked in and out. Later in the day, the occu­pa­tion and trash­ing of the headquar­ters of the Con­ser­vat­ive Party chan­nelled some of the more uncon­tain­able registers of out­rage within the march.

It is not clear whether the occu­pa­tion and prop­erty dam­age was some­what planned à la black bloc or entirely spon­tan­eous. As one first-​person account reas­ons, given the num­ber of occu­pi­ers without masks and the diversity of plac­ards they were car­ry­ing, it could be assumed that there was a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of spon­tan­eous par­ti­cip­a­tion. Nev­er­the­less, there seems to have been a col­lect­ive intel­li­gence at work for most of it, a method to the mad­ness, as it were: after all, the tar­get was quite appro­pri­ate and the dam­age accurate. The key rationale of dir­ect action is to put a wrench in the works: if you can’t stop them, make sure to cost them. It was not any old gov­ern­ment build­ing that was occu­pied, but the very headquar­ters of the polit­ical party who are hell-​bent on legis­lat­ing immeas­ur­able struc­tural viol­ence and sys­temic destruc­tion. It is for­tu­nate that the more mind­less moments, such as the fire-​extinguisher stunt, did not prove fatal (though, of course, this did not deter author­it­ies from spin­ning epic lament for the could-​have-​been martyr).

And so the whole she­bang was cast as a scan­dal for the Lon­don Met­ro­pol­itan Police, with Cameron effect­ively scold­ing the police pub­licly, and the lat­ter express­ing “embarrassment” — apparently they had no clue how massive the turnout would be. As goofy as they may like to come across some­times, the police obvi­ously had their own cal­cu­la­tions, pre­sum­ably attempt­ing to hijack the demon­stra­tion to make a point to the gov­ern­ment about cuts to their own budget: “It is a reminder that the Gov­ern­ment must main­tain the num­ber of fully war­ran­ted police officers to ensure that poli­cing these spon­tan­eous incid­ents, along with their every­day duties, can be sus­tained in the cap­ital,” Peter Smyth, chair­man of the Met­ro­pol­itan Police Fed­er­a­tion, con­cluded. Their ostens­ible incom­pet­ence has also served as a manœuvre to regain some of the ground they lost fol­low­ing the G20 demon­stra­tions of April 2009, where one man’s death had unleashed wide­spread pub­lic scru­tiny of police bru­tal­ity, includ­ing an offi­cial review of their meth­ods. Indeed, only days after Cameron’s first call on the force of law, an unnamed senior police officer told the Guard­ian that the stu­dents’ dir­ect action had helped police: “To be frank, this will have done the com­mis­sioner a favour. In the past we’ve been cri­ti­cised for being too pro­voc­at­ive. Dur­ing the next demo no one can say a word.”

Cameron summoned, the force of law delivered: dur­ing the second mass demon­stra­tion on 24 Novem­ber, 5000 pro­test­ers, mostly school­chil­dren, were kettled for seven hours in White­hall in sub­zero tem­per­at­ures, with moun­ted police char­ging into the trapped crowd at one point. Then dur­ing the third demon­stra­tionon 30 Novem­ber, by about 6pm, Tra­fal­gar Square was rendered a zone of emer­gency with three heli­copters hov­er­ing over what resembled a mass demon­stra­tion staged by the police: seem­ingly twice their size and cer­tainly thrice their num­ber, the officers had formed a double-​wall with their armoured bod­ies to trap a small group of scantily clad kids who had walked out of their schools earlier in the day. Out­side this kettle, a wall of moun­ted police looked on as other troops in riot gear marched in mil­it­ary form­a­tion from one point to another for no appar­ent reason, bel­low­ing “For­ward!”. What was clearly aimed to pro­voke and escal­ate ten­sion was countered by only a few scuffles, some Christ­mas car­ols, and a queue formed by those who wanted to get out.

This Thursday’s clashes with the police, the attack on the Royal Rolls Royce, and prop­erty dam­age in West­min­ster and on Oxford Street has shown us that there is a determ­ined con­stitu­ency within this new youth move­ment who do not rule out the use of phys­ical force in protest. The dam­age they incur is far from ran­dom van­dal­ism. The cour­age they dis­play in refus­ing to be intim­id­ated by the increas­ingly bru­tal tac­tics of the police has garnered some recog­ni­tion from those who’ve found them­selves help­lessly detained in a kettle for attempt­ing to exer­cise their demo­cratic right to protest. And yet, the issue remains con­tro­ver­sial and poten­tially divisive.

NUS Pres­id­ent Aaron Porter has recently declared that “viol­ent” pro­test­ers need to be excluded from future demon­stra­tions. Porter had pre­vi­ously con­demned the Tory HQ occu­pa­tion as “despic­able”, announ­cing that “a minor­ity have under­mined us” — the sup­posed stu­dent leader appar­ently unaware of the per­form­at­ive power of his utter­ances, thus threat­en­ing to under­mine all 52 thou­sand of “us” by his very state­ment. Though Porter has lost cred­ib­il­ity for many in the move­ment, he is not alone in his pos­i­tion on what he insists on call­ing, in chorus with the estab­lish­ment, “viol­ence”. Some share the belief that a rel­at­ive minority’s use of phys­ical force under­mines the clear united mes­sage of legit­im­ate con­cerns. Then there’s the argu­ment that such tac­tics are used as an excuse by the police for increased repres­sion. There is some truth in both of these pos­i­tions. But also some bad faith: Sev­eral win­ters ago, those many mil­lions of us who were peace­fully exer­cising our rights to protest against the inva­sion and occu­pa­tion of Iraq were left high and dry on the prom­ises of lib­eral rep­res­ent­at­ive demo­cracy, which then went on to murder and maim in our name. And those of us who have been on a demon­stra­tion or two know that no police force needs an excuse to escal­ate repression.

The cur­rent stu­dent move­ment is led by a gen­er­a­tion that was pre­ma­turely labelled “apathetic” by the vari­ous forces of hege­mony, the only pos­sib­il­ity for their polit­ical involve­ment engin­eered by the same forces as either a career oppor­tun­ity (be it non­gov­ern­mental, gov­ern­mental or transna­tional), or sen­tenced to incon­sequen­ti­al­ity by cyn­ical calls from the powers that be for the “right” to “peace­ful” protests. Even if we may per­son­ally choose to remain com­mit­ted to non-​violent prin­ciples, it is imper­at­ive that we recog­nize the crux of the inter­ven­tion of those who do not rule out the use of phys­ical force in this wave of protests: it is a chal­lenge to the appar­ently seam­less lib­eral con­sensus that con­tin­ues to beget untold injustice and struc­tural viol­ence on a global scale.

Basak Ertur is a research stu­dent at Birk­beck Law School.