Students attack Leinster house with Mars Bars

Having attended ICTU demonstrations previously it strikes me that the Socialist Workers Party are rent a mob who seem intent on disorder.

Even at the last demo on the day the Dail resumed after the summer recess, SWP were there with their usual rants/chants/slogans and disrupted the speeches from the platform by using megaphones.

To cap it all off, when that demo finished and everyone dispersed to return to work, they heckled everyone leaving branding us "part timers". I retorted, "no, I'm a full time worker, I'm going back to my job"

After seeing them in action today on Merrion Sq., I must confess, they'd put me off attending any further demos as the message gets lost in headlines like we're reading/seeing this evening.

Same applies to incidents like the Harney V Paint one. There was a lawful protest going on, but again the headlines were about the rights and wrongs of the attack, not the veneer of Harney's visit to the site.

ghostdancer wrote: »

it's also to protect the people working in the Dept of Finance from thugs protesting in the building.
it's also their job to disperse hostile crowds who ignore multiple warnings to move.
it's also their right to protect themselves.



if the "protesters" hadn't been throwing missiles, and getting physical with gardai, they wouldn't have gotten hurt.

fu_ck them.

I'm not exactly sure if 'thug' is the right word to use in this case. They had a sit-in in the Dept Finance lobby; not exactly a characteristic thuggery. Such sit-in are quite common, remember St. Patrick's cathedral a few years ago? At this point we must understand correctly the groups of students involved in this separate protest. Many were left or moderately left leaning - such as SWP and Labour Youth. Of course as the dept finance is private property the owner have right to through them out. I myself am affiliated with LY but I did not and do not support the lobby sit-in as it was just counter-productive and pointless, I have even more reason now to disapprove of them. I think that the cohort who did enter the department were naive in thinking that it wouldn't have been seen as a provocation - I don't think it was even planned that well. Nonetheless, it wasn't intentionally a hostile sit-in. The rest I am not totally clear on; having refused to take part in this separate protest and sit-in and only seeing the tale end of the riot. I have been filed in by friends who were in the sit in and understandably it may be quite biased. The Gardaí through the students out of the Dept. Finance lobby. Some students outside seeing this got angry, thinking that the students inside were being physically assaulted by Gardaí. At this point missile were thrown and a small skirmish broke out between Gardaí, riot police and students. Most of the students engaged in the sit-out outside the department remained on the ground, some of the students who were involved in the sit-in inside the lobby joined the sit-down outside (this is clearly visible in videos circulating the internet).

After a time however, things got ugly, missiles were thrown (prominently by more militant protesters not specifically associated with LY or SWP - many of my friends are calling them 'militant d*ckheads' who were just looking for trouble). The sit-down protesters were hit with batons and forced from their positions - note that these individuals were not engaged in violence. One or two people were dragged behind the riot police lines and beaten (videos of this are circulating this thread).

My conclusion is that it was totally irresponsible of LY, SWP and other political organisations to engage in this break away protest. Not only has it blackened their image but it has blackened the image of all of the other students who were engaged in the OFFICIAL USI protest. It was thoroughly unproductive. The riot is dominating the news instead of the real issues that the other 40,000 students came to voice their opinions on. A few die-hards wanted to make a name for themselves and their respective organisations. While their intentions were good (i.e., non-violent) I find that it was quite naive of them to assume that the undesirable militant socialists wouldn't follow the break away protest and start causing a lot of the violence - a further indication to the fact that the break away protest wasn't organised or thought out properly. Word of the plans would have spread fast as all of the other political left wing parties were in the same place at the same time - in other words the break away protest was doomed to failure. At the same time, I am concerned at the level of violence used against the sit-down protesters by riot police and Gardaí.

Given today's incident I am now reviewing my affiliation with Labour Youth. I support the Labour Party but I believe that the youth wing needs greater organisation and planning. It there was a greater structure to the LY and indeed other Youth leftist organisations, today's incidents could have been avoided. If LY goes back the militant stance it had in the 70's and 80's I certainly will be withdrawing my membership. I will be bringing this issue up at the National LY Conference on Friday in Maynooth.

Regards,

KP.

I was at the protest today. Great stuff all around, didn't spot any trouble at all to be frank. I just stuck with the main crowd and did the usual march. Got in town at 11:30am with the SU crowd and left at 3:30pm when the main protest officially finished.

I was surprised to find anything about rioting or anything similar when I checked the news online at home though.

As far as the actual "minority" protest/rioting goes if people want to have a sit-down outside a public building on a public road fair enough, I wouldn't expect them to the batoned. To the above poster about the accusations of a video of the sit-down being shopped I say this: "lol". However doing it inside a building is taking the piss a bit and I would expect some degree of action if the crowd hasn't moved on. To the so called protesters stirring **** and throwing things and I'm sure there was a few even if it was 0.1% of the crowd, feck off somewhere else.

As far as drinking and drunk protesters goes, can't say I spotted any, however I did spot two people with cans drinking and they didn't seem very pissed. They did happen to be culchies also, which is irrelevant tbh but since it was discussed earlier I might as well mention that.

This has been my first proper protest and I can say I will be going to any future ones that will be planned in relation to the education budget and fee's.I also thought the national and ITT SU did a brilliant job imo.

muffy wrote: »

Yes, and just to further this, many people, like myself, might like to distance themselves from USI for many reasons, one being the fact that there are strong Fianna Fail connections. Now the blame starts to fly about onto other political organisations ..."ooo its those pesky socialists/republicans/not centre right party again". The troublemakers were just the rent a crowd thugs until the gardai showed up and made a balls of things.

The "rent-a-mob" group, as you say were to prime cause of the violence, I agree. I do however believe that the other LY, SWP, etc.. should have expected the militant thugs to show up, given that there was a huge amount of people there and word spreads fast. They should have just remained in the main protest. You have to see though that given the scale of the events today, the Dof sit-in was bound to be fairly unproductive. They should have done that on another day.