Like the rest of the country, I’ve been watching the London student demonstrations over the past month and been absolutely appalled at the behaviour of the police. Unlike the rest of the country, I grew up in a totalitarian state and have always been wary of the police. The Met have not exactly done anything to challenge my prejudice: Charging on horseback into a crowd of children, keeping said children in a confined space in the freezing cold for hours without access to food, water, toilets or medical care, pulling disabled people out of their wheelchairs and beating at least one protester to within an inch of his life – all of these incidents have only served to confirm my prejudice. So it was refreshing to see on Sunday that things can be different.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the Newcastle University Occupation. I’ve not been as involved with it as I would have liked to. I took some food to them, and I tried to get in to talk to them about electoral reform, but by the time I got my act together the university had stopped letting non-students into the building. I retweeted some of their tweets when I saw them, read their blog.
Throughout, I’ve been extremely impressed with the occupation. Their acts of protest have been incredibly imaginative, especially given the scarce resources they had. They were clearly committed to education and learning, putting on an alternative lecture programme when the university decided to move the lectures which were scheduled to take place in the occupied Fine Arts Building, even though both the students taking part in the occupation and the lecturers concerned were quite happy for them to take place there. When they finally suspended the occupation, one of the key reasons was to allow students who needed the Fine Arts Building for their learning to return and complete their degrees. During their action on the Tyne Bridge, the students made sure they only blocked the middle two lanes so as not to cause too much disruption. Leftover food at the end of the occupation was donated to an asylum seeker charity. The students I spoke to were all friendly, passionate and committed, and I was sorry to see the occupation suspended.
I was lucky enough to be in town on Sunday for the students’ post-occupation carnival and march. A crowd of between 50 and 100 people came down Northumberland Street and to Monument, flanked by police. They were dressed up and making noise. Once they got to Monument, the students (and a not-insignificant number of lecturers) lined up and between amusing and imaginative chants (“Cameron has a shiny face, it’s so shiny!”, “Nick Clegg is Tory, he wears a Tory hat, when he sees tuition fees he says ‘I’ll treble that!'”) members of the occupation, lecturers and union representatives addressed the crowd, thanking us for the support given.
By far the most impressive and inspiring moment was when a member of the occupation thanked the police who – by all accounts, including an incident when the occupation called the police in response to the university trying to remove one of their locks – have had a collaborative approach throughout the past month and have ensured the safety of everyone involved. One of the policemen came forward and shook hands with the student.

This shouldn’t be news. This should be how policing works. I am glad this is how it works in Newcastle.
And just because it was so much fun, here are a couple more pictures from the carnival.