No doubt by the time you read this I and my colleagues will be manning the barricades, creating makeshift shelters from upturned desks and filing cabinets in order to repel the rampaging hordes at our doors, at least if the combined wisdom of the media and the City of London police is to believed. As someone working in a bank in the City I have been subject to various dire warnings about the possible events of the next 48 hours and the various precautions we should take to protect ourselves from the inevitable mayhem.

Bankers are told to avoid wearing business clothes in order to be less conspicuous, presumably on the basis that the standard garb for anarchistic anti-capitalist protesters is polo shirts, chinos and loafers. Now even jeans and trainers are allowed, next they will be telling us to sport dreadlocks and have a dog on a piece of string. We are told to cancel routine business meetings, not to leave the building unless it is absolutely essential, people due to visit local clinics for medical appointments have had them cancelled.

Of course it is true that there have been previous demonstrations which have ended in violence, notably the May Day protests in 2000. But I also remember most of that day being entirely peaceful and good natured – I remember going out at lunchtime and there was a big party going on in Lower Thames Street with sound systems and people on unfeasibly tall stilts. It was good fun and not in the slightest threatening or intimidating. OK a few idiots spoiled things later on, but then there were also certain City types fanning the flames by hanging out of their windows waving £20 notes at the protesters.

But what really gets me is that we are essentially being braved to weather a descending hoard of alien beings, as if somehow those protesting and those of us who work in the City are different species altogether. OK, there are probably some amongst both groups who think this – protesters who see us as evil capitalists and colleagues who look down on them as the great unwashed, but I never believed this was really true before and I think this is even less so now. I expect a lot of the protesters will not be of the kind on previous demonstrations in the city – they will be “ordinary” (no disrespect meant to them or the others) people angry at the damage which has been done by certain people within our industry, and quite rightly so. And we are angry as well, our jobs are at risk or have already been lost, we have families to support and bills to pay and most of us are not earning huge salaries and getting mega bonuses. We also have friends and families who are suffering. This is certainly not a plea for sympathy, maybe some will see me as a hypocrite, but I just want to point out the absurdity of the idea of us being penned in our offices for our own “safety” from people who are no different from us who just want to vent their entirely reasonable anger and frustration at a system that has failed.

So I hope that as many people as possible turn up tomorrow, and hope and expect that it will be a peaceful (ok, noisy but non-violent) occasion. I hope the police will not be as ridiculously heavy handed as I fear they may be. And assuming I am not manacled to my desk for my own safety I will certainly pop out for a while to give my (possibly unwelcome) support.

Update (8am on 1st April): Just walked into the office to find it had been taken over by anarchists. Then I realised that it was just my normal colleagues but they were wearing jeans. Phew!