Smashing of several windows and the starting of a fire have been reported and confirmed by multiple witnesses, along with rock-throwing, bringing down a ceiling and throwing more missiles (including a fire extinguisher!) from the now-occupied roof, as shown here:
The office staff have had to be escorted out "under protection" (to quote the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg), and they apparently are not all out yet, as I write this (around 4pm on Wednesday, though I am also adding snippets as news reaches me). In fact, it seems that some are defiantly staying in their offices, as Guido has tweeted:
"Source from inside CCHQ : "We are not evacuating and we will not bow to looney left."I was only young when such actions as these were actually planned in advance by lefty subversives, camouflaged by and within legitimate protests or rallies; but this looks to be very similar to what was not uncommon during the 1970s and 1980s. Even the wiser heads within Labour, such as Tom Harris MP, have sussed out what is really going on, at least to some extent. As he tweeted just half an hour or so ago:
"A shame that a handful of swivel-eyed Trots have been able to undermine what could have been an effective student demo."It was almost certainly engineered behind the scenes to be a purely political exercise, using the inexperience of this generation's students to allow them to become mere pawns in these others' game, which are being driven by a hard core who are probably not students themselves but effectively professional agitators and rabble-rousers. Some of the what have been termed as "yobs" have been spotted wearing masks, suggesting that it was infiltrators behind the violence.
This comment at Guido, posted at 5.37pm, seems to confirm that assertion, if it can be corroborated:
"There is more to this than is being reported. A campaigner I believe she was named as Amanda Parks said she was a worker for a campaign group NOT a student. Campaign group paying her salary which one? There will be more to come but this was orchestrated by a small and then is is the case it gets fueled and then grows."
The verbal and visual obscenities on the placards don't exactly help their case as being entirely innocent. Guido also has pictures from the scene, from which one can make one's own judgement about behaviour, and I have this evening posted (at right) an image showing some of the milder placards.
Also, a number of the students had brought paint spray cans with them, which hardly suggests a peaceful and non-destructive style of protest.
Liberal Democrat party HQ in Cowley Street has been protected by police, now acting a bit belatedly, in case the demonstrators move over to there. As this is effect an anti-Coalition demonstration, that might have been expected - at least if it was genuine (which is admittedly hard to judge).
It is because each new generation is so malleable and fails to learn the lessons of history in time that we get these cycles, which also include periods of Labour in national government - another failure of people to understand the reality. Then everyone learns, grows up, broadens out intellectually and experience-wise, and this kind of event ceases to be viable again for typically fifteen to twenty years. Then the next wave of suckers is ready to be conned.
Thus the next cycle begins, and the old Toxteth riots and other such scenarios from decades past become real again in today's Britain. This will surely turn out to be just the first of a wave of increasingly violent and harmful events of similar nature, all designed in pursuance of a corrupt agenda by those manipulators who are always active, such as Common Purpose and any, some or all of the other outfits associated with them who could well have been behind what happened today, though not necessarily.
As a country, we never seem to learn; but today's event will, in this fast media age, actually do some good, I think, in getting the people of Britain a bit more concerned about and alert to what is really going on here. They'll also realise that it is only the violent few with vested interests that oppose the Coalition Government's policies - and that will be useful to have embedded in people's minds ready for what are bound to be far worse events from next year when the so-called 'cuts' start to bite.
It isn't just the BBC (who are included in the Common Purpose mind-map to which I linked above, note!) steering public perception nowadays, so this is an ideal opportunity for the rest of us to make sure that as many people as possible realise a.s.a.p. the truth behind what happened today and what it really means.
Perhaps the sharper-minded students, at least, will in future keep away from any more events like today's, reducing the scope for manipulation of them by the subversives, who undoubtedly include some "swivel-eyed Trots" among their number but also far more dangerous individuals besides!
P.S. Benedict Brogan has a modest-length but very clear item on this; and Janet Daley has a very interesting, quite short, piece that's also worth a read.
UPDATES on 11 Nov: The letter Tory Bear has today posted shows how tenuous is NUS president Aaron Porter's position after yesterday's fiasco, and Guido has what looks like a whole batch of fairly compelling evidence showing that the riot and break-in to 30 Millbank were intentional and planned by the NUS chiefs, which would include their president - yes, it's that Aaron Porter again. This at Liberal Conspiracy also seems fairly conclusive that it wasn't just "outsiders" causing the trouble.
Simon Emmett has some more photos, this time of the march itself, clearly showing the nature of the placard messages and the fact that at least some of them were nothing to do with the tuition fees issue and were purely politically motivated, for example the message "Fight the cuts" and several Trade Union logos clearly showing.
Some really high quality photos start here (use the right arrow on the page to move to each of the others).
Now some statistics:
- 5,000 (approx) demonstrators were originally expected, uprated to 15,000 on Tuesday evening
- 24,000 (approx) had been estimated by visual assessment during the event
- The true number was possibly much higher than that, perhaps 40,000 or even 50,000 it has been suggested.
The debate in the Commons:
Policing Minister Nick Herbert played a very straight bat in the House earlier this afternoon, very factual and as non-political as he was able to make it, despite the efforts of a few Labour MPs to make political points and to defend the NUS. Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans chaired the debate in the way one has come to expect of the better Speakers, and in so doing has (inadvertently) shown up the relatively poor standard of John Bercow!
The extinguisher thrower:
Guido (yes, him again) has been trying to ascertain the identity of that individual, or those individuals (there seem to have been two of them), and now (as at 3.30pm on 11 Nov) thinks he has a name, and is passing that and the evidence to the police.
Okay, here's my take on this: personally, I have been wondering overnight if the purpose of the break-in was (a) to disrupt CCHQ's operation, not just at the time but by smashing up their offices (which might have been part of the plan) it could be for weeks; and (b) to steal valuable information from their computers and filing cabinets. It's a possibility, isn't it? Remember, this was almost certainly Labour/lefty inspired and planned with a "mission agenda" consistent with that. Students have always been easy fodder for this kind of activity, and especially for the political left; and it seems that little has changed over the years.
Evidence is now coming to light (Thursday evening) that all of this was planned by the event's organisers, and boasts by high-ranking NUS members also backs up the contention that NUS president Aaron Porter's claims are untrue, as mentioned by such as Mark Wallace. Friday 12 November brings further evidence of this, such as this spotted by Newmania. Also, there has been an arrest in connection with the fire extinguisher incident.
