I attended the Mayday protests yesterday to register my dissent against a system that allows multinational corporations and unelected organisations such as the WTO and the IMF to subvert democracy. Like most others I am committed to non-violent protest, believing that to maintain the higher moral ground and win people over to your cause you have to demonstrate non-violently. I see violence as capitalism’s way, not ours. Along with roughly 1500 or so others I was detained under Section 60 at Oxford Circus for roughly 6 hours without food, water, a toilet or any idea of when (or if) we would be released.

I found this detainment oppressive and a violation of my right to peacefully protest. It is hardly surprising that violence flares when you are surrounded by a highly intimidatory police force that decides to make the area smaller every 10 minutes or so, squashing people and increasing the atmosphere of oppression. If you weren’t there, try to picture the centre of Oxford Circus surrounded on all sides by riot police fully equipped with shields, truncheons, horses, dogs, CS Gas and God knows what else. To do this and expect a totally non-violent response is asking too much, in my opinion. Although I remained non-violent myself I could fully appreciate the frustration of the few that charged the police and threw things at Nike Town. When your back’s to the wall, it’s easy to see this as the only option.

The problem with any show of violence is that this is what most people see on their TV and makes it very easy for the mainstream press to brand us as mindless thugs. Predictably, this morning's papers are full of headlines like ‘One-Nil To The Bill’ (The Mirror). What is the end result of this? The real issues such as capitalism’s environmental impact, the fact that most of our clothes are made in sweatshops, homelessness and all the other issues raised on the day are not discussed in great detail.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. When I finally got released at about 9:30 I made my way home, pleased to have avoided arrest and/or a kicking, and turned on ‘Newsnight’. Jeremy Paxman was chairing a debate including anticapitalists such as Global Resistance and members of all three major political parties, including Simon Hughes from the Lib Dems. While there were obviously massive differences in opinion, what I found encouraging was that these parties are now at least having to consider the roles of the WTO and the IMF – both Labour and Lib Dem expressed modest reservations at their far-reaching influence. My point is that after last years protest a year ago this debate was not even happening; we were all just branded as rent-a-mob thugs. Capitalism was seen as ‘The Way Things Are’ and dissent was ignored. The fact that we are now getting major airtime and our message is actually being discussed is a step forward. For our message to get across we have to be shown to be making a serious point non-violently and make it impossible for Tony Blair to describe our issues, the most important issues facing our planet, as ‘spurious’.

What happened yesterday was a beginning; if we can hold more large protests and not play into the media’s hands by reacting violently our message will be heard.

The following is partly in support of the original post above, but also in response to all the "Get a job" posts i have seen here lately. I have provided a link to a short essay by Bertrand Russell because i think he puts forward a much better argument than i ever could. Heres a snippet from the Intro, i hope you enjoy the rest.

"Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveller in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. This traveller was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the Y.M.C.A. will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain."

In Praise of Idleness

Prol

p.s. If you read it you may see that those at the top, and those on the Dole (bottom), are doing very similar things as regards work. The main difference being those on the Dole are poorer.
p.p.s. Be careful of Stereotyping people because of thier philisophical views. Not all those protestors are doleys.

You know you live longer if you laze around or so the newsworthy science report of the month says.

he's up at six thirty - he has his breakfast put's on his suit and eight o'clock he goes out of his front door to the car, to travel in the rush hour, as he does five days a week. When he get's home he has more work to do - he then takes off his suit - he just wants to sit infront of the television as he is exhausted from his stressful day, he just wants to switch off. No time for his family - no time to create community - he only has another 60 years to do as he is only 4 and a half years old.

if he had time to be idle - he might find out who he is and hold on to his individuality - support children to reclaim their lives - reclaim the right to play and discover their own individual educational paths - interested? - check out Home Education on the internet.

Perhaps a bit more confidence in mischeivousness would'nt go a miss in FuTuRe along with a few thousand split up and RuNnInG from the onset ov thee protest('going about their business;0 of course!;)...the filth hate the run around ... it tires them out and most protestors get away (or they used to!)on to their next JoB;)...remember the old anarchist effigy of guy fawkes with the bomb? see the mischevious look on his face?hahaha...!RuN!...even if they block thee crowds in eventually ...lottsa stuff will have got 'done' 'quickly';).

I disagree with the sentiment that 'those at the top' are doing little more than those on the dole.

The 'fat cats' work very hard.
Don't get me wrong, it's really bad that they
exploit people, or even that they just keep their
hard earned money to themselves when there are
people in desperate need of help. But on a point
of information, I would just like to set the facts straight
and point out that the people running the world's
multinationals are doing a hell of a lot of work -
they get kicked out by their shareholders if they don't.

The most frustrating aspect of the May Day media coverage wasn't the deranged tabloid stories about 'samourai-sword wielding anarchist monsters!'

It wasn't even the way John Vidal and George Monbiot again used The Guardian to cynically invent splits in the direct action movement. (We all need to keep reminding ourselves that the only difference between a liberal newspaper journalist and right-wing one is that a liberal journalist is more likely to get you to say things they can distort to further attack the movement.)

No, the most frustrating aspect of the coverage was the way the media were still able to portray 'anti-capitalism' as just about opposing Nike or GAP. They were still able to proclaim the 'hypocrisy' of protesters because they wore Nike T-shirts or because John Lewis's was damaged ( - using the bizarre argument that this shop is somehow less capitalist because its workers are shareholders!?).

Whatever happens in the future we need to be more clear about what capitalism is - (it's the whole money system) - and what the only alternative is - (it is for people to get together and run society collectively on the basis of our needs and desires, without money or the state).

Unfortunately even the Indymedia front page has a 'background articles on capitalism' section that just takes you to the Znet site. This site has some useful stuff, but Znet's 'alternative' to capitalism is just a self-managed form of capitalism, replete with money, government, alienated work etc..

Not only did Marx tear these sorts of reformist ideas to pieces many years ago but, whenever workers have taken power, as in Russia 1917 or Spain 1936, they've always refused to accept such limitations. The tragic result was that Leninist or anarchist vanguards then resorted to re-imposing discipline on the working class and smashing up the revolution. Of course the much better-off and more sophisticated working class of the 21st century would never let this happen again but that doesn't mean we should build up any more illusions.

The absurdity of the Socialist Workers Party campaigning for Ken Livingstone last year, only to have their 'Globalise Resistance' demo imprisoned by his police for 7 hours this year, will probably be lost on the party hacks. But the rest of us do need to learn from the mistakes of revolutionaries in the 20th century.

Rather better stuff than Znet on Globalisation and revolution can be found at:
www.freespeech.org/mayday2k/readings.htm
and at:
www.geocities.com/~johngray/

(Perhaps Indymedia could include these links via their 'Background' button?)

The Victorian Author R.L. Stevenson provides a simuler image to Burtren russal. In An Apology for Idlers he argues that there are people that are not respecting:

“the dogmatic certainties of the ruling class…”

“and that those who do not enter the handicap race for the sixpenny piece are an insult and a disenchantment for those that do… a fine fellow votes for the sixpence and goes for it… and while such aa one is ploughing distressfully up the road it is not hard to understand his resentment when he perceives cool persons in the meadows by the wayside lying with a handkerchief over their ears and a glass at their elbow…”

“It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and when it is all done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement… Hence physicists condemn the unphysical, financiers have only a superficial toleration for those who know little of stocks, literary persons despise the unlettered, and people of all pursuits combine to disparage those that have none”

Mr Worldly Wiseman in reading his daly paper may say.

“how now young what dost thou here... is this not the hour of the class...”

To which the ati-capitalist replies:

“as a time may soon come for me to go on pilgrimage, I am desirous to note what is commonly done by persons in my case, and where are the ugliest Sloughs and Thickets on the road. As also what manner of staff is of the best service. I lie here by this water to learn by root of heart a lesson which my master teaches me to call Peace or Contentment.”

At this Mr Worldly Wiseman was:

“much commoved by passion and shaking his cane with a very threatful countenance... Learning quotha.... I would have all such rogues scourged by the Hangman. He would go on his way ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of starch, as a turkey when it spreads its feathers.”

Stevenson’s an Apology for Idleness is a plea that:

“idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of identity... the sort of dead eyed hackneyed people are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation... those fellows in the country or aboard ship... they pine for their desk or their study... they have no curiosity...cannot give themselves to random provocation... when they do not need to go to the office ....the whole breathing world is a blank to them… As if a man’s soul is not small enough to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play.”

“A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill, their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.”.

Social change and idealness is a riddel we have made littel progress in addressing.

raise the profile of the debate more effectively. There are many people - the PM seems one of them - who see the protesters essentially as doleys with a grudge against high earners. When that is that perception the arguments about the effects of Capitalism just aren't heard.

So I suggest for next time -

more large banners with clear messages (displayed with an eye to the TV camera setup) - anyone carrying mini TV sets for live footage/news update monitoring?

smokes/red flares which create a very televisual spectacle. These can make a scene look very exciting and increase the likelyhood of a great news footage being assembled for screening.

more Wombles

maybe some teletubbies

more running around is an excellent idea becaus the police have no stamina for it atall. Run past Pastry shops and loose half of them at a time.

obviously illegal and certainly #not to be advised# but...maybe plant a newly purchased secondhand car around the street somewhere scenic - then torch it! It's your car so the person who torches it (if caught) can only be charged with 'setting fire to their own car in a public place melord'. I think that's a great way of creating quality news footage. A burnt out car WOULD detract from the message but it will also increase the news worthyness of the story so there is a balance to be had there? If it's outside a bank then the message is there to see! Park well clear of other cars + buildings (unless it's a MacDonalds outlet obviously)

more Wombles

Lawyers accompanying marches? Would it help? Impartial observers could not be detained? Don't pay them by the hour.

CAMERAS! All I saw on the TV was one unprovoked police battoning after another! Footage of this could be used in court??? And footage of the very few idiots who threw the empty cans. Why? Well because the riot police came forward at OC only after these few missiles had been thrown. So who threw them? Undercover cops??? It would be handy wouldn't it if the Met cops wanted a fight for them to plant a few guys to kick it all off? Am I overestimating thier inteligence here? Yes. I know - they not that smart! God they are scum.

Some good suggestions here - like the one above, and some bad ones - like the barely disguised 'socialist workers party' diatribes against personal choice. Fuckin' SWP, so unimaginative - read Mark Steele's book if you want an insider's view of them (effete intellectuals - all mouth and no trousers).

Okay, that's the slagging out the way then. The way I see it is that some of the less biased in the media are realising that they're being conned by government propaganda and that we're a rising movement. However, we need one thing more than anything else right now: numbers. The more people at the next Mayday, the better. Why not flex a little bit and get the greens in? And the feminists, and the farmers and rural workers? Once they meet us they'll realise that we're not wild-eyed idealogues, just people who want to see a better world. I can think of nothing better than getting home from next year's Mayday to hear that, say, "over 50,000 people attended this year's Mayday". Why not? The facist capitalists seem to do well out of networking, why shouldn't we.

I've been thinking about why some movements are succesful and others aren't, and I think that the ones who make it are the ones that raise public awareness and change how people perceive things. I don't condemn those who want to burn Niketown down - they make money out of misery, so it's payback time. I do hate those, however, that try to use a free movement to try and impose some outdated crypto-facist idea like Marxism onto us. To them I can only say - you're old. You're old, you're old!

An Armchair Subversive’s Post Mayday Mayhem Musings….

OK, I didn’t go to the Mayday demo. For the first time in a long old while, I watched it on the comfort of my own TV and read about it in me armchair. Pass me pipe and slippers!

So the government got their nice little pre-election law-and-order containment story. Aint they so big and hard and uncompromising when our great way of life is under siege?

I spent the week following the protest out of my dear, beloved B-Right-On over in South Wales. From the alleys to the valleys. My mission was to check out some of my fellow comrades involved in the great and noble struggle against capitalist oppression in all its forms, have a laugh and….(oooops, can’t tell you the main bit, it’s personal).

In other words, I was off to get wrecked with a bunch of fellow social deviants in some scenic surroundings and talk shop. Probably.

Stop one. I’m on the piss with my mate Clint Peppermint. By day, he is one of Her Majesty’s road traffic inspectors, (“I only inspect them, I don’t build them!” ), and he is heavily involved in his local UNISON branch. By night, he puts on bands and parties under the umbrage of the Peppermint Iguana Collective, which has its own website, (www.iguana-net.demon.co.uk), and produces a sporadic zine of the same name.

Clint is what New Labour types refer to as an “unreconstructed socialist.” Well I’m a dysfunctional anarchist, dear reader, what’s your excuse? If Clint and I had known each other years ago, we would have probably had long and boring arguments about lots of dead Russian people.

But we spare ourselves cos we’re both daft punks at heart and we’d both settle for any kind of grassroots revolution - NOW!!! “A lot of the issues surrounding the Mayday demo got over in the valleys, as elsewhere” he says, “what with articles in the NME and Paxman on the TV and what have you. But like anywhere else you’re up against lots of Sun readers.”

Are Mayday demos in newbritain becoming more London-o-centric than the street parties of the late 1990s? Clint and I while away many hours slugging Strongbow and talking about the need for non-corporate alternatives, and more grassroots activity and cohesion. We wax lyrical about the inspiration of punk, the free party scene, localised RTS parties….. “There’s still lots of work that needs doing on this level,” Clint says. “It’s why I still do the zine because in its own little way it’s getting information by stealth to local music fans. There’s a long way to go, but every million miles you’ve got to take a first step.”

This is what we’re like, me and Clint. Sorry about me, sorry about me mates…..

Stop two, (in no particular order and missing out loads of other bits): I’m in a valley in a remote corner of a town. There painted on a rock, almost out of view if you’re not sitting at the right angle, are the words “I hate England.”

I’m not particularly English myself, but I am a long term resident. And it’s impossible not to notice the cultural clamoring at the moment about ‘Englishness,’ ‘Britishness,’ what it’s all about and how it’s changing. This debate also has an ugly, race-hate alter-ego, currently brought to the fore and stirred up by the press, amongst others. I half-remember a programme on TV the previous evening. A yawnsome academic talking about “Britain’s imperial past “ and “the cruelty that built an Empire…..”

Zadie Smith, author of the rather excellent White Teeth, says that you should never let your country become a trading post. In so much of the media hubbub about Mayday, we forget that global trade and colonialism have always gone hand in hand. They’re flipsides of the same coin. It’s never been a free market, it always been a rigged market, and race has always been a factor in the rigging process. Like when American drugs companies get precious about their anti-AIDS drug patents in South Africa.

Maybe if those of us who live in England, and indeed the rest of newbritain, understood a little more about its past and it’s legacy then we’d try to stop ourselves hurtling towards this crazy future, albeit branded by logos rather than the red, white and blue. And maybe if I stopped hammering back this wine I’d be able to get out of this valley, climb back down the hill and get back into town….

Stop two. Sorry, stop three, (still recovering): Cardiff on a Friday night. It’s eve of the FA Cup final and the whole place is swelled with ranks of people milling about intent on having a time of it. I’m out at the Coal Exchange. Not a huge turnout, but plenty of smiling faces, excellent sounds, top local bands and quality D.I.Y entertainment.

A mother-of-two is having a break from dancing. We’re talking about England’s national sense of dis-ease and how it often manifests itself in the activities of a small group of tossers intent on causing trouble at football matches. “There will always be some idiots,” she says. “But you’ve got to take each person on their own merits. “

I talk to another woman. She says she’s happy to describe herself as “Taff Manc Asian.” I wonder if there’s a category for that on the census form?

I ask her what she thinks about what she thinks about the whole race issue being stirred up in the press. “Yeah, of course there are problems. But it’s also important not to go looking for them in places where there aren’t any. I think it’s cool around here. People look out for and respect each other.”

So much for racial tension. In this club, anyhow.

Finally, we all spill out onto the streets, wide-eyed and happy and looking for the next bit. The Cardiff Millennium Stadium, local monument to the global triumph of capitalism and corporate-sponsored entertainment, winks at us in the night. It’s a shame, I nearly got a ticket for tomorrow’s match. Oh well. Vive la revolution, mate. Now, who said something about afterhours mischief…?

CeeRapp

Special thanx to NS and Mr Peppermint