THERE'S A REASON WE ALL ROOT FOR THE HARDHATS AND THE OHIO GUARD:

You'll never catch me going on a march (Howard Jacobson, 12/11/10, Independent)

Student protests are problematic to me. I might as well come clean – no secrets in this column, reader – and say that I am temperamentally averse to demonstrations. Mass movements and all that. The minute I see more than 10 people hugger-mugger in like-mindedness, or marching down the street in military formation, my knees knock. The spectacle is too exhilarating. And for those doing the marching the experience clearly reaches back into the turbulent memory of the primal horde.

Wasn't that the lesson of the 20th century? That any more than five human beings believing the same thing and congregating to say so are bound to be on a course that will lead to trouble. We are safe only when we act individually. I'd like to say we are right only when we act individually, but I know I can't get away with that. Sometimes the horde expresses a genuine grievance. It brought down Communism, after all. But then again, it also instituted it.

I marched myself once when the village of Boscastle was embroiled in a fight with that high-handed agency for making life comfortable for the landed gentry, the National Trust. It was I who designed the banners. "Don't trust the Trust!" But when they slapped an injunction on us we crept away ignominiously.

Maybe there weren't enough of us. Had there been more we might have held out longer. That's the way of it with numbers. The heat of the pack fills you with a thrilling sentimental consciousness of right, the sense of brotherhood justifying any act of violence. But violence disfigures the cause for me. The moment demonstrators start throwing billiard balls at police, their argument is invalidated. If these are demonstrations in the name of easy access to the arts of civilisation ... but you know what I am going to say next.

So what else to do? I can't say I know. But it's a mistake to assume one must always do something.