1) The various Left groups that make up the bulk of Anti-Cuts decision making assembly fucked it up on 29th January 2010. Two possibilities: A) They baulked or got scared of furthering what in some sense they had conjured up and pushed last year at Millbank, the 24th Nov and 9th December. That momentum was not followed up upon. They chose to hold a traditional demo from A to B and stepped back from the more radical options that have been floated about everywhere. B) They couldn't rid themselves of their own fetish that by getting some unions to support the demo, they were creating a newer different momentum that sticks to the illusion that 'the workers' are the ones who create the real struggles. This is then to deny the very energy of the movement in the first place. Workers demos are traditionally dull and non-combative in the UK and unions don't support the kind of actions and tumult seen on the student demos late last year. It's probably true that Point A and Point B are the same point.
It's not unknown the Left groups seek tactical unity only until they can fuck everyone else over and take control of the movement. Is that what's happening here? Just like the SWP's Stop The War movement's final triumph over the big anti-war struggles of 2003. After one of the biggest demo's in UK history and the movement taking a turn towards stopping planes taking off from US bases, a practice that would have actually stopped Iraqi's being killied, the Stop The War campaign reduced the dynamic to endless year marches. Is that what's happening now with the student protests?
With this in mind, the tricky question is how do we organise ourselves to further these struggles? It's easy but pointless and endless to slag off the Left groups who seek to control the movement. For all the noise, for example, that Anarchists make about the Left, they don't seem in anyway able to organise their own big demos. So the harder part for any of us is to realise that we have to organise ourselves locally and use these bases for a national action if and when we want too.


2) The tactics of roaming marches, blocking the economy, vandalism and resisting the police are what made the previous demos incisive, practical and actually successful in making the student demos bigger. Why make a march to Parliament? It's a just a symbol of of a non-sensical 'democracy'. A house of shite with less and less legitimacy in most people's eyes. Why not keep the protests in heart of London - Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus and so where at least the disruption has some effect. Why not take back these streets and use them for our own ends (if somewhat temporarily). Blockades, barricades, treach-ins, kitchens, film shows, looting, taking back the streets. Inviting everyone into what we create. A demo from A-B is strictly for the demo heads and something for the tourists on Whitehall to take a snap or two of.
We are suddenly lacking an imagination of what we could actually do and what we could actually create. Let's continue, as we were, to take inspiration from the student protests in Greece, France and Italy. Let's hold some teach-ins on why those struggles were so dynamic and critical. Already, the practice of occupying an art gallery for a teach-in in London has become fairly stagnant and rote. Repetition is not a sign of the strength of the movement. What next after the Tate, National Gallery and British Museum occupation and teach-in? Blocking a few train stations? Taking a few of London's fine public squares for a festive and educational carnival? Occupying St Pauls? Barricading off Charing Cross Rd for a temporary free space? Why not? It was the militancy of last years demos and the trying out of new tactics that made us all so happy once again after a decade of Eye-Spy demonstrations.


3) Moving the main demo to a Saturday was a crucial mistake. Where were the school-kids who wanted to bunk off school for a day and where were the EMA kids? Both of these groups were the instigators and inspirers of much of what was great about Nov 24th and Dec 9th. They simply weren't there and they were sorely missed.
Yesterday the demo was the usual suspects again - the clowns, the black block, the student activists, the left and so on. They were a few nice blocks you don't normally see - the ESOL block springs to mind. Whereas the school kids and the younger EMA kids had no learned demo script to stick too, the demo yesterday was a very pretty and lively march but no more than that. There was a breakaway section that ran around the West End for a fair number of hours but this didn't succeed much in doing anything more than what any football supporters going to the match do each Saturday although it was definitely more fun to be on than the earlier march.


4) What made last years demos exciting were the surrounding school walk outs and college occupations. None of those seem to be happening now. What happened? At least with the occupations there was a sense of the battles and struggles happening everyday and not just on special days of actions. The main work of any anti-cuts campaigns are always local and always on-going. Great work is going on in Lewisham and Hackney, for example, with newsletters and local marches and gathering different strands of people who are affected by the cuts. The big demos have to feed this local work and not be the other way round.
Days of action create a sense of always waiting for the next date on the calendar to get ready for. What makes a movement is creating pressure and tensions. Now we are supposed to wait for the TUC demo on March 26th? No wonder we lose momentum. We end up pinning our hopes on 'the next big one' - so the 29th was shit but the 26th will be great! No! Make trouble, everyday!

5) In one sense, a whole load of activists formerly busy on other activities (climate change, 'anti-capitalism', squatting social centres etc) have joined in the anti-cuts movements. This is welcome as there is a lot of useful practical experience in there but it also brings with it some horrible traps such as bringing in a very coded and limited activist subculture to the struggles. This can be very off putting to other people new to being involved in things. There is also the activist mentality of 'taking action' which seeks to always be involved in 'action' no matter how unreflective this can be. It also seems that any 'action' can be seen as 'positive' and 'doing something' even if the base of it is a bit silly.
Shutting down Top Shop, Vodaphone and so on was great the first few times for the simplicity of the message but it is not a strategy against the cuts. It's become the equivalent of smashing up Starbucks on the demos of the 90's. Now every demo has to have a blockade of Top Shop to seem militant. Activism instead of fusing action with reflection and complication reduces every struggle to a series of tactics that can be put into place regardless of the context. Getting activists to do local day to day work and hang out with local anti-cuts and to enjoy some contamination and cross-pollination is more of a fight than the one against the cuts!
The same lack of imagination affects the black bloc that roamed the demo yesterday in search of proving to itself that it was radical and up for it when all it could bring was a look, a gang, an identity and an unfulfilled promise that here was the real militant deal. Left relatively unmolested by the police, it just roamed and roamed and seemed fairly dispirited unable to 'make total destroy' even in the heart of Mayfair.
Both the 'activists' and the black bloc folks play out very strong self-created and communal roles that prevent them from being able to free to act in a wider more open and dynamic movement. Activists are actually also returning everything to normal.

There ends some suggestions on why the student protests have returned to normal to be debated, scorned, corrected, reviled, laughed at, cried over, improved, perfected and finally put into practice.