It's a shame they aren't around any more. I think the guerrilla gardening was their last big thing in the UK. I once saw them at a stall at some gig and jokingly asked them if they can any car stickers - the guy looked at me as if he wanted to reclaim my skull. Some of their meetings could be a bit tedious, with such an overwhelming emphasis on democratic unanimity that it took forever to decide anything. Perhaps they just started to take themselves too seriously.

Whatever you want to see happen create.

See you the 1st of May!

Mayfair was where the original May fayre was always held (hence the name!) and this is themed partly as a celebration of people's resistance from the past and today.

Plus Mayfair's a big area which should hopefully be difficult for the cops to completely shut down (and if they did it would piss of a *lot* of rich folks), there are lots of embassies there too... but mainly the tradition of the May festival/fair thing.

Sad to say, but RTS no longer exist. RTS was one of many tactics no longer required as of Mayday 2000.
Maybe it is time for the return of RTS due to popular demand and the state of the planet.
No group has came along since with the same appreciation of the spactacle and social ecology. The movement has not moved on since then, except for that seemingly defunct pink/silver tactic...
One does have to wonder what happened to those (r)evolutionaries, the Che's and Debord's of our time...
Long live RTS!!

Times have changed and something different is needed. Why always London? Why always Mayday? It gets predictable.

Why not put that effort into several smaller events spaced out in different parts of the UK, through the summer? We could cover different issues, like GMOs, asylum seekers camps, media bias, animal rights or development issues.

This said its a shame that RTS seems to have faded because they were one of the brightest bits of the last few years.

So theres no more RTS action in UK anymore. What a shame. I remember reading about their parties and different actions (like the demo/party with the Liverpool dockers) in different magazines (like Mixmag!) and they were a great inspiration.
Here in Malmoe (southern Sweden) the local RTS-group GatuAktionen ("StreetAction") is alive and kickin' and we'll have a large Gatufest ("streetparty") this saturday.....

The London RTS is still going and is active

Not as big and active as before but still doing many actions with other groups and organising small local events.

Yes times change and people cange and energy change, which is a good thing - did you really expect a small bunch of people to organise everything for you - time for others to get out there on the front line like the wobbles and this years mayday lot, they are putting loads of energy into organising events and need more people to get involved. It shows our movement has the abilty to move and change.

The London RTS group will be doing things around teh Festival of Alternatives and has been involved in many Tube actions this year, and DESI last year and many smaller actions. It was time for them to get out of teh headlines and allow other groups space to grow and experiment.

On a global level the RTS tactic is alive and well - with resent actions in Uraguay, Sydney, and one coming up in Dublin over mayday. It is not about a group no longer existing but about new people taking initiative and moving on to new ideas and actions.

so, the last big action was mayday 2000 and noone has dared to put on a street party since. some say it's because policing of street parties has become too on top, and others suggest that the tactic has run its course to the point where a street party would just be a bunch of crusties occupying a road and getting on peoples nerves.

while there mat be something to be said for these points, they both overlook how London RTS got itself into trouble with mayday 2000, and how certain issues have not been addressed. perhaps a little recap is in order. (Somebody can correct me if i'm wrong about the details - this is the bits and pieces i've heard from various people since):

following june 18th in 1999 and seattle, an idea floated by an anarchist collective in Bradford to hold a conference and mass action in London on Mayday is taken on by the radical social justice and ecological movement. RTS in London decide to organise a high profile action in London. The Earth First network looks to organise events around the country.

Everyone is enthusiastic at first, but - perhaps because its not clear what the point of the whole scenario is - a number of people drop out and leave a handful to do the organising. These happens in Manchester and Shefield just as much as in London, but apparently 15 people in London are left to coordinate a mass action. And this a high profile action with the police and media screaming bloody murder. The 15 organisers are soon under heavy surveillance, with teams of four special branch per person assigned to keep watch and track their movements. So they are under a lot of pressure and feeling a lot of stress.

The action decided upon is a guerrilla gardening action in Parliament Square - a not too confrontational but kind of in your face idea, which is itself a great idea for community based activism, but clearly with hindsight not sucha great idea for a mass action in the centre of London. All the pre-publicity for the action says meet at Parliament Square.

So on the day most people go to Parliament Square - except for about 600 people who have heard of an earlier meeting point at Hyde Park with the samba band - this early crowd is to make its way from Hyde Park Corner to Parliament Square. There are some leaflets to gove out. It has some description of the ideas behind guerrilla gardening. There are also some instructions. 'On the signal, follow the red flags - when we arrive at the action location, green flags will go up'.

The leaflets are meant for people at Hyde Park. The troupe makes its way to parliament square behind red flags. when they arrive there is already a large crowd - people who have gone directly to Parliament Square. The green has been waterlogged by the police. the Green Flags go up - they are eighteen inches in height and noone notices them. Mistakenly, people carry on giving out the leaflets that carry those instructions.

The Green is a boggy mess, once people have done their gardening there isn't much to do, so some may feel it's all a bit underwhelming. The communications team for the Samba Band take a short break. At this point the Kurdish Workers Party decide they want to move, so they raise there red flags and move towards Trafalgar Square. A lot of people assume that this is 'the signal' and follow the flags. The musicians in the band decide to join them - they take the majority of people in Parliament Square with them.

Someone chases with the band and pleads with them to return to Parliament square, which they eventually do. Along Whitehall the police leave a McDonalds unattended. Some people decide it would be fun to cave in the windows. Along the centre of Whitehall the police form a cordon, splitting the crowd into two. They then surround the crowd gathered in Trafalgar Square, and on the pretext offered by the destruction of McDonalds set about the crowd with battons. People in and around the side streets of trafalgar square get the worst of it. A week later there are still people hospitalised by police brutality. It's a rough scene.

Back in Parliament Square the situation is not so bad. The remaining crowd decide to bust though a police line, which they do. There are a few running battles on the south of the river but most get unharmed.

The next day the media is predictably going ape shit about a bit of graffitti, broken windows and a piece of turf. Reclaim the Streets - or a small group from within, who maybe the ones who organised the action - issue a press statement, and attempt to dissociate themselves/RTS from 'the violence'. They state that what happened in trafalgar Square was not part of the guerrilla gardening action and that people were led there by 'thugs and idiots' or words to that effect. A few days later the Guardian publishes a back-stabbing article penned by George Monbiot.

Over the next weeks and months RTS concerns itself more with Monbiot's article than the fact that they have just alienated the vast majority of people who have gone to RTS events. At no time since has there been a statement or attempt to put that right. Just an apology and a recognition that mistakes were made might have helped to limit the damage.

So in short i think the reason there has been no RTS organised in London is because deep down people know that these days not many people would bother to show up.

The above text is very close to how i remember the day and the chaos afterwards, the red flag diversion was an accident and does not mean they delibrately abandoned people - but it is a bit simplistic in defining what has happened since.

The situation in the london scene is alot more complicated than this statement makes out, it is true RTS has gone a bit quiet but it is not so linked to Mayday, as to internal energy. As said above there have been many RTS actions - see indymedia archive - maybe they are sick of people waiting for them to do all the hard work and then sit on their arse slagging them off for years to come - all actions are two way - people join in and people organise and people take it further.

The demonstrators on Mayday have some responsibility themselves toward these mass events - don't expect the organisers to predict everything that could happen, and as for asking for an apology... I agree the statement to the press was not needed but it happened and we have to live with it.

And is this really news or just a chance to settle old scores...

well, i'm not trying to settle any old scores. the fact is i think rts in london and street parties in general have been amazing, and like a lot of people i am sad at their demise. i know that rts in london have organised actions since, but since mayday you may notice there have been no street parties or mass actions on the scale of previous years, with the exception perhaps of DSEi last year which had masses of pre-publicity and a pretty low turnout. so far as i know rts as an organisation kept in the background for mayday last year. if people's energy in london rts since matday has been low, then perhaps they should be asking why that is. are they still tired or has the revolutionary spark been well and truly extinguished?

i was never in london that day, i just heard a lot of tales afterwards including someone from rts saying that the whole day was a big set back and that they should never have gone ahead with the action. the fouled up logistics on the day can be put down to too few people taking on to great a responsibilty. the press release afterwards, however, dissociating rts from 'the violence' was a serious mistake - this was raised at the following earth first gathering. to understand this you have to put yourself in the position of somebody who arrived at parliament square and was then passed a flier instructing them to 'follow the red flag'. the red flags go up, the band follows the flags - so what do you do but follow the flags in good faith. if you've not been to hyde park corner you won't be any the wiser. so you go up to trafalgar square where you get surrounded by thousands of police and have to endure a very traumatic few hours. the next day the 'organisers' call you 'thugs and idiots'. ask yourself, are you ever again going to want to go to another action organised by these people?

when somebody raised these points the response, he said, was people were 'sticking their fingers in their ears' and were 'more concerned about the opinions of a middle class journalist'.

Hello,

This is from the May Day website ( http://diy.spc.org/ourmayday/):

London Reclaim the Streets will host a 'Free Market' - 10 to 4pm
Running up to Mayday, it will be a practical alternative to the apparently never-ending, sad
story of our throwaway society. The idea is simple: we can create a thriving market without
money! Come and have a look for something you want and then take it for free. And you are
most welcome to donate and bring along anything that's cluttering up your closet, whether its
books, clothes, music, board games. Just leave your wallet at home! 'Free Markets' are
common for example in Argentina where the current crisis has deprived so many who through
the collective and cooperative exchange markets have found new ways of getting their basic
needs: even hair dressers or tailors are common on such exchange markets!
London Reclaim the Streets: 020 7281 4621; email:  rts@gn.apc.org;
 http://www.reclaimthestreets.net
Venue: London Action Resource Centre: 62 Fieldgate St., corner of Parfett St.,
London E1. (Aldgate East or Whitechapel tubes.)
LARC Tel: 020 7377 9088
LARC Email:  fieldgate@gn.apc.org

The group has other small unannounceable plans.

Keep the faith,

Sam