[Pink.]

At the end of 2010, VBS attended a series of violent student demonstrations in London. The first saw thousands of students storm the Conservative Party HQ and someone lob a fire extinguisher from the roof, nearly killing a police officer.

Two weeks later, when the second protest rolled around, we were locked inside a 200-meter area with thousands of young protesters for 10 hours. It was a fun place to be "kettled" midwinter, and we watched as kids burned bus stops, held impromptu grime raves, smashed the windows of the treasury and were beaten up by police. We also noticed that a small number of protesters seemed to be assaulting each other.

A week later, a journalist named Graham Johnson who specializes in gang crime confirmed what we'd suspected: that gangs had been using the protests as cover for while they made money.

Various gangs had been coming from around the capital to pickpocket, mug, loot and throw the occasional lump of concrete at riot cops.

We met up with a gang in South East London who, from behind facemasks, told us that they didn't care at all about politics but that they had walked away from the last protest with more than 2,000 pounds worth of goods and cash.
See the rest of Teenage Riots at VBS.TV

They also predicted that as the government cuts spread their way across society, more riots would spring up, not in relatively policeable central London locations but in the estates of the most impoverished parts of the city. The protesters would not be students, either; they would be armed gang members, willing to "wipe out a whole constabulary" of police.

Teenage Riot, which resulted from our time at the protests, is a five-part film looking at the riots, their significance and the strange combination of students, schoolkids, gangs, anarchists and police that made up the clashes that would define the most violent period of political upheaval in this country since the '80s.

[Faline]

These protests were horrible and they took it too far.

[Steve]

I understand that trebling tuition fees was outrageous, but allowing thugs to run riot is worse, that stupid little prick that threw the extinguisher cried like a bitch when sentenced, what annoys me even more is that a lot of these rioters are from well off families...so tuition fees doesn't affect them at all.