Never a rabid protester in the past, and never one to kick up much of a fuss in public…
I wanted to express my disgust at the mess the bankers and politicians have created for us yet again, and went along to lend a bit of support to the G20 protests in the City of London yesterday.

An ordinary, middle-aged, working-class white male, wanting to try and change things for the better in my own small way.  After all, it’s a democracy we live in, isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to be good citizens and participate in the decision-making process rather than sit at home in front of the telly, never voting and never taking part as full members of the society in which we live?

When it comes to the next General Election, they’ll be imploring us to vote and take part, maybe even collect us and give us a lift to the polling station to get our vote. They LIKE us to care about our country and get involved, don’t they? Or is that only when it suits them?

I arrived not long after midday, expecting a little bit of pushing and shoving and the odd police helmet knocked off,  and sensed there was a real mood of anticipation and just a little apprehension in the gathering crowd over what might happen if it all kicked off in the way suggested by the media over the past week or two.
Shades of Grosvenor Square in ’68,  Brixton in ’81 and all that – for those of you who remember.

But we’re now living in such a police state that you couldn’t get near the leading small core of marchers (for it was small – nowhere near the thousands I – and probably the cops – had expected).  Hordes of police and their vans, far too many for the numbers of people involved, had divided the crowd into manageable pockets, where they tamely looked on at a distance in each of the streets surrounding the Bank of England.

Some particularly nasty and aggressive constables got the nod from someone and immediately started shouting loudly and moving in a line towards us, forcing us back.  I had no idea why, as we were all just quiet onlookers trying to get a decent shot with our cameras and mobile phones.  No threat whatsoever.

In the few minutes of police shouting I got a bit of an adrenalin rush and quickly devised a plan of action if confronted with a snarling rozzer wielding a baton at my head:  keep to the edge, not the middle, don’t get hemmed in and caught up in the melee just in case the fuzz think you’re a middle-aged white terrorist and send in a snatch squad to take you out, Taser you and cart you off in a black maria or whatever they’re called these days (you probably can’t call them black any more and they’re a rather nice gunmetal grey, anyway).

But - as they said about Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ – nothing happened. Twice.
Fat chance of a bit of a rumble. I should have known.

No way through.
And no way out if you were in the core group.

Separated and segregated from the march and with no chance of any meaningful action, even if there were any brave souls to lead us out of the trenches and over the top.

And as if to rub salt in the wounds and make the frustration  worse, you could see those who were obviously bankers in their ‘dress-down’ gear (cashmere jumpers, Jermyn Street shirts, designer jeans and brown brogues or loafers), looking on with amusement in between deep conversations about the size of the bonuses you and I will be paying them this year.

It was tempting to find the nearest bucket of something brown and smelly to throw over them.

After two frustrating hours of trying to find a way into the middle and join my fellow citizens for a bit of concerted shouting and chanting, I gave up.

Every now and again some cheers rang out in the distance and you thought ‘this is it – it’s kicking off’… but it never did.

Apparently a couple of RBS windows got broken (which  belong to all of us anyway) but more importantly, several heads got bludgeoned by the government’s police thugs as we saw on the TV news later.

So that’s it. That’s the state… or should we say police state… of Britain today.

Screwed by politicians and bankers,  thousands of us made jobless, homeless and powerless,  and you can’t even do anything about it because the long and heavy-handed arm of the law will be brought in to keep you down under some trumped-up terrorism charge in the interests of national security.

Doesn’t feel like a democracy to me.