What happened:

The London protest march of 2nd April 2005 was part of the 2nd European-wide action day to defend Freedom of Movement and to demand the Right to Stay for immigrants. The action day had been planned during the 2004 European Social Forum in London and was organised subsequently by various actors in the social movement.

Roughly 4-500 people turned up to the demonstration at Clerkenwell Green in Central London to march into the suburb of Hackney. On the way, a rally was held outside the Communications House – a home office building to which asylum seekers are required to report. The march ended in a park in Hackney.

At the assembly point, police presence practically outweighed demo participants, with numerous vans and bikes on the square and in the side streets. For most of the way, police officers flanked the protest march on both sides at roughly ten yards intervals.

Participation:

The demonstration reflected broadly the mobilisation within the social movement. Most of the people there were activists and generally part of the so-called anti-globalisation movement, led by a pink samba band. Further, there were many representatives of local migrant organisations.

Thus, there were very few migrants themselves. The march was 90 per cent white, which stands in stark contrast to the marches in Italy, Spain or Greece and even Manchester, were the action day focussed on three immigrant families. Apparently, migrants had not been included successfully in London. Seeing the large police presence, it could also be that migrants were too afraid of arrest.

The “ordinary citizen” did also not turn up for the day. Most protesters were very young, with rather radical ideas about borders, nationalism and racism. The turnout thus reflected the radical call for Freedom of Movement and the Right to Stay much better than in other places, such as Manchester.

Divergence:

This is not to say that the crowd was largely homogenous and “united in its difference”. Instead there appeared a few rather interesting conflicts. We are not going to comment here on the endless rift between “revolutionary Marxist parties” and the “autonomous anti-authoritarian left”. But it was interesting to note that the march tried to unite anti-nationalist sentiments (“All Nations are Prison Camps”) with several national flags (Cuban, Palestinian).

If we want to establish a link between “nation-states” (nationalism, borders, states etc.) and the racism of “immigration management”, then surely we should ask ourselves to what extent we should support the existence and creation of other “nation-states”.

Achievements:

We should also criticise ourselves for what we have achieved (or not achieved) on that day. With a crowd of maybe 300 radicals, some form of direct action could have been possible. Outside Communications House, in particular, there could have been the chance to voice our protest in a more confrontational way. Instead, the march gathered 100 yards away from the building for a while, and then resumed its way.

Further, it is very unlikely that anyone heard our message. There was little or no distribution of literature explaining to the general public what the demo was about (at least we didn’t see any or distribute any: we’d gladly be corrected here!). Maybe it would have been interesting to display banners along the edges of the march rather than across it, in its midst. This would have meant firstly that our messages could be read from outside of the demo itself, and secondly that could have created some sort of barrier of our own against the wall of police escorts constantly surrounding us.