The Daily Blurb – 12th January 2002
(Circulation: at least 3+ watch out Murdoch…)

Moment of Sanity on Market Street

Today, a group of innocent bystanders were forced by police to reconsider the meaning of democracy. After ‘careful’ consideration of tactics the police stopped six people handing out leaflets and petitioning for support for the picket of the Israeli embassy on 26th January. As a police spokesperson explained “I have been concerned about the undermining of democracy in this country for some time. Luckily, we were able to threaten this group with arrest on the basis of one complaint from a member of the public despite the support they were receiving from numerous other shoppers. Even better, we deliberately refused to say why their behaviour was offensive or to be more specific about which particular public order offence they were committing. At one point, clearly not understanding the difficulties of our task in highlighting the failures of democratic procedures, the group refused to identify who was the organiser (pointing out, somewhat unhelpfully, that they were all organisers – Sarge, I told you this was the problem of trying to co-operate with socialists). Fortunately all was not lost. As a result of our carefully planned actions, a number of bystanders (who would otherwise have remained relatively unaware of how the ‘democracy’ they live in actually works) gathered around the police-van and asked the petitioners what was happening? What had these people done? Some passers-by then, clearly misunderstanding the intention of the boys in blue to highlight the failure of the democratic process, and believing this was police harassment, went to tell my colleagues exactly what they thought of us. One man, walking past (a backslider – clearly - didn’t feel the need to stop. We will obviously have to speak to him) shouted, “So, this is democracy is it?” Overall though, we in the GMP feel the day has been a success. It was heart-warming to see shoppers watching this incident signing petitions and offering support to the group. As a result of this success the GMP will be attending the next stall on Market Street by invitation of the group and there is some talk about inviting members of Manchester City Council who support the aims of the Stop the War Coalition. A good day for all, we were delighted to participate and more than happy to do so again.