Opinion: Protests made Brussels part-carnival, part-war zone

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It’s not my normal habit, but early September saw me take to the streets.

I’ve never been entirely convinced that demonstrating is an effective way to achieve goals, but on 7 September, along with a handful of other Brits, I joined 10,000 farmers from across the EU in central Brussels.

Over four hours they turned the Belgian capital into part-carnival, part-war zone in an attempt to get the attention of the ministers of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council, who were meeting there that day.

Had it been held in London, it would have been a PR disaster that could have demonised British farmers for a generation. But in the political heart of the EU, it seemed a sensible way to make a point.

I’ll give it to our continental cousins – they know how to do a demo. Admittedly the UK contingent were curtailed by the fact that everything they brought for the march had to pass through Eurostar security. So while the Poles emerged from the Gare du Nord unfurling enormous red-and-white flags that made them look like they were off on a crusade, we in contrast had rather modest placards that looked like large beer mats on sticks.

Guy Smith comes from a mixed family farm on the north-east Essex coast, which is officially recognised as the driest farm in the UK. He is also vice-president of the NFU.

While the Dutch had fire-cracking crow-scarers that left you dazed at 20 paces, we had a few whistles. A couple of us did wonder if we should have brought our bird-scarers along to make a noise, but we then realised the butane bottles and batteries would have been impractical to walk with.

The Germans arrived in their Fendts to turn the city’s main streets into a sprawling tractor park, but the pièce de résistance was brought by the Belgian locals. In an impressive demonstration of urban agricultural engineering, they turned up with bale shredders that were used to strategically spit straw. Then there were the fires. I haven’t seen a bonfire of old tractor tyres and silage sheets since the 1980s, so it was alarming to see one in the middle of the Rue de le Roi.

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Our chanting was pretty pathetic as well.

“What do we want?”

“The NFU’s 10-point plan to secure a better future for European agriculture!”

“When do we want it?”

“Sometime in the lifetime of the current European Parliament.”

It just didn’t have the necessary effect. Whereas the Bulgarians were getting up a proper head of steam bawling in unison about low farmgate prices, we did get a bit huffy when we saw the price of Belgian lager. And were we fired up enough to taunt the riot police that lined the route like the Italians did? Of course not, but we did politely ask them for directions to the parliament buildings.

We were told by some of the veteran Irish boys we bumped into that this demo was positively tame compared to some of the Brussels away-days they had been on in the past. The usual form in the 1990s had been to entice the Belgian police into a bit of baton-charging. This time around there wasn’t much tear-gas and the water cannon only got deployed a couple of times.

As I walked round the barricaded city route, I posted some pictures on Twitter and got a few responses from farming friends back home.

“These scenes are a disgrace and very bad for the image of farmers,” said one arable man.

Had I been in his shoes in England, I would have been just as disapproving, but for the continental farmers around me it wasn’t an issue.

In their defence, there was no threat of violence, but that wasn’t how it looked through the lenses of the journalists taking pictures.

As I pondered this on the Eurostar back home, I struggled with the conundrum. Maybe at the end of day the trouble is I’m just not French enough.