In reply to nickyrannoch:
> However, every knows its all a bit of a game, the riot police get pumped up for confrontation and the anarchists ( i was one) get pumped up too, confronting the police, daring them to kick off ( after all they are professionals, paid to be there, well trained so isn't a fun little game to see how far we can go until they snap).
Interesting and very different to my recollection of such events. Usually there was some coordinated task of the day like trying to shut down a conference, occupy a building, set up a soundsystem or whatever and the police's job was to try to stop it happening. It was usually here that tensions arose though quite often, at least in the UK, the cops took a more softly softly approach that things with little trouble. Of course the authorities had to accept that something like a road would be blocked for an afternoon.
> If those little twits in the black bloc and on the far Left ( i was one) would actually think to enage with the authorites who are working class men affected by austerity as much as anyone, instead of the posturing we might get somewhere one day.
Hmmm, nice idea though naively idealistic in my opinion. It would be very hard to engage with police firstly because where/when would you ever get the chance?
Secondly they're doing a job, they're paid to follow orders from higher up so they're not free to think and decide things for themselves anyway. Individual police can and do sometimes have sympathy with protestors but at the end of the day it's their job to stop them.
Thirdly I think the police have they're own culture so it would difficult/impossible to make any headway there. I think it really comes down to different class interests. The police might technically be working class as you say yet their whole raison'd'etre is carrying out Government policy which in this day an age largely amounts to protecting the interests of the business class. And besides it's not uncommon for working class people to have very conservative values hence the reason the Sun is so popular.