Well 6000 celebrated mayday in London. About the average weekly attendance of a 3rd division football team. Don’t get me wrong I’m taking nothing whatsoever away from all those that attended and well done to the organisers. It’s good to have a day or two to celebrate and rejoice together. But this is where my concern is, not so much the very small number that attended (though well up on the hundreds in the 80’s who took part in the stop the city demos). My concern is that this is not so much a movement but a stagnant pool. We do not seem to be progressing, a lot of us bicker amongst ourselves,
GR/SWP/VARIOUS BLOCS/ETC/ETC. Meanwhile the far right are gaining in momentum, the royals are attracting 1000’s on their PR whistle stop tour winning back support for the monarch in her jubilee year and probably removing what little chance we had of achieving a republic. Towards the end of the 70’s and thru the 80’s we smashed the then national front who had a lot of followers in working class areas including mine. We took the fight right up to them inside and outside the football grounds where they recruited and had taken route, we drove them out. The original NF was finished. They formed the BNP and attempted to put a respectable face to their policies. Nazis in suits and smiles and who’s laughing now? 84/85 saw my community under attack, in what was nothing less than a class war aka the miners strike, 1000’s were involved in bloody confrontations with Thatchers boot boys from the London met and the spg (special patrol groups = violent thugs who were eventually disbanded)).
Also at the same time was the anarcho punk scene/animal rights/CND and eventually of course the poll tax. Literally thousands of us (yet still a minority) were in conflict with authority, fines/prisons and mental homes were handed out regularly yet still we would not give up. Now I fear it’s too late, I honestly feel we have lost it all. For over 2 decades (own involvement (I know its probably a wee bit longer on the whole!)) the working class fought against the private take over of the UK, a lot lost a lot/some are still rotting in prisons/some give their lives. Now there is no real working class, I myself am employed in the service industry making millions for fat cats and share holders in a industry which was once a public utility. The majority of people are selfish, perhaps that is just human nature? Perhaps there is nothing we can do.
On a lighter note I read that the media and the police themselves are praising the policing of the mayday festival for preventing trouble and quelling crowd disturbances…….Really as if the fluffy protesters were out for trouble. One question tho if the police tactics are so good and the protesters were so hell bent on trouble…what went wrong at Millwall officer????

NO ONE LIKES US WE DON’T CARE……