"The Sheer Pleasure"

Duncan Campbell sees the Student Grant demonstrations* and relives his glorious youth at CiF :

"One of the most striking features about the wave of demonstrations rolling across the country at the moment is the sheer pleasure on the faces of many of the young marchers."

That's the same sheer pleasure you'll see on the faces of EDL demonstrators in Preston, a hundred-strong group of football supporters up for a weekend in Blackpool, on the streets of Paris in 1968, Genoa in 2008, or Nuremburg in 1936. Paris in 1789, Athens in 2010 or Rome in 1922.

It's the pleasure of being in a large group - the larger the better - with something to unite you and (preferably) an enemy to hate**. Anti-capitalist in Genoa, anti-Jew in Tsarist Russia, anti-Catholic in London.

It's the intoxicating power of the mob.

* Laban expounded on the Great Tuition Fee Disaster here.

** 35 years ago at West Brom's Birmingham Road end, there was a call-and response chant as follows :

"Who are the people ?"

"WE ARE THE PEOPLE !"

"Who are the ****bags ?"

"THEY ARE THE ****BAGS !"