According to the thousands of Mayday Monopoly leaflets distributed around London, a protest against the "privatisation of life" should have started this morning. From 0800 to 1000 protestors would form a picket line outside Kingsway Hall in Great Queen Street. They would protest against the patenting of drugs by multinational pharmaceuticals: the capitalist preference for profit over life. At 0730 this morning Great Queen Street was swarming with police motorcyclists and Kingsway Hall was surrounded by menacing looking, trenchcoat wearing security guards. By 0800 one other protestor had arrived. At 0830 two of my friends I had coaxed down from Oxford arrived at last after a gruelling coach journey. By 1000 the police grew tired of waiting and left. So much for the evilly organised anarchist militia the press has so earnestly warned us about.