We resolve

Some time close to midnight on the last day of 2010 it occurred to me that this was the last way I'd have expected to see this year ending. A year ago, I was at a house party shooting silly string at people. This year, I was standing on Westminster bridge with my arms around an 8-metre roll of cloth that was the result of two days work, scanning the crowd for the friends I'd hatched this ridiculous scheme with, and counting all the ways this could go drastically wrong.

But then this had been a rather unpredictable year. At the close of 2009 not many people were comfortably saying "oh yes, 2010 will be the year that sees the start of an unprecedented assault on public services, riots in Westminster, the transformation of Britain's most progressive mainstream party into its most hated, a wave of sit-ins and the political awakening of an apathetic generation, and the poking of the Duchess of Cornwall with a stick."

Personally I'd never have imagined spending 8 hours sitting outside a police station awaiting the release of a friend arrested for aggravated tresspass, getting removed by security for trying to ask the Higher Education Minister a question, standing in the constituency office of the business secretary with gaffa tape over my mouth, accidentally occupying the tory party headquarters, living in a function room in my university, playing samba in the middle of a riot, taking part in the court case "SOAS versus 'persons unknown'", forcing entry to the British Museum with one of my lecturers, or kettled on a bridge for two freezing hours.

But this was what had happened and this was the only appropriate way to end the year. We'd fought, apologised and cajoled our way to the edge of the bridge, climbed the barrier, and were poised for the moment of midnight except - oh no. My friend was picking her way towards me, panicked. "Where's the third one? There's one missing!" "I don't have it! I don't have it!" I yelped, then looked down at the second bundle of cloth at my feet. "Or, um, i do." Further down the bridge, another friend was attempting unsuccessfully to hold an 8-metre stretch of cloth by both ends at once, while yet another was unable to do anything except crouch to avoid blocking the view of an angry group of Hungarian tourists. This was a farce. Then voices were chanting "ten! nine! eight! seven!..." It had all gone wrong - until a middle-aged woman in a sequinned hat climbed the barrier to join us and take one corner of the cloth. A group of Indian tourists who a few minutes ago had been shouting at me took hold of the edge, and a twentysomething British couple in hoodies grabbed yet another stretch of cloth. The same thing was happening to my friends further down the bridge - suddenly we had more than enough people. We raised and shook out the cloths and a 24-metre banner unfurled itself - finally- along the edge of the bridge, reflecting the fountains of fireworks off the words "WE RESOLVE TO DEFEAT THE CUTS."

Yes, so it was crumpled and probably unreadable from a distance, mostly ignored by photographers whose attention was distracted by the rather spectacular fireworks and for a minute or so actually read "WE RESOLVE THE CUTS", but considering the complete idiocy the operation had descended into over the past few hours, it felt a bit like a victory. Our new year's resolution - the new year's resolution of tens of thousands of students across the country - was spelt out in metre-high letters across the Thames.

So it seems a fair time now to begin chronicling our attempts to keep that resolution. My student journalism career may have died the night I was dragged out of a tent by security guards along with the people I was supposed to be neutrally reporting on, but it's still my natural instinct to turn up to demos with a samba drum in one hand and a notebook and dictaphone in the other. The plan is to turn this blog into a record of the actions, protests, sit-ins, meetings, flashmobs, strikes, gigs, disasters and successes of the anti-cuts movement. Hopefully blended with a little ill-thought out political commentary and the chance to give other activists and protestors the chance to tell their stories. Yes, it will be crumpled and probably unreadable from a distance, and you won't find any neutrality here, but I'd like to make this a chance to show a slightly different face of the student movement than a masked teenager smashing a window.

Considering how 2010 defied expectations, I'm not going to try and put forward any predictions for 2011 and the events I'll be writing about here except: total mayhem.