Several thousand people from children to elders converged on Westminster for an all night protest, once again raising the old reformist standard of 'fair' trade in contradistinction to the 'free' trade espoused by the neo-liberals currently calling the shots for global capitalism. So many people converged on Westminster Abbey for the opening event at 22:00 that soon afterwards the announcement went up that the place was full to capacity. Many folks made use of the surrounding grassy grounds to relax before heading off to Whitehall for the mass candle-lighting at 23:30 which began the all-night vigil.

The crowd control barriers the cops had erected along the east side of Whitehall were wholly inadequate to contain the huge mass of protesters, who occupied the whole of the east carriageway. Despite having such an overwhelming numerical superiority over the cops, this was no revolutionary direct action crowd, so instead of reclaiming the whole street for people power, they meekly (yet noisily) followed the instructions of stewards and cops to allow the traffic to keep flowing on the west carriageway. As the organiser's leaflet made explicitly clear, "Make sure that you follow any instructions given by stewards. The event has been developed in full cooperation with the police," -- caution: free thought and autonomous action not welcome here. In an echo of New Year celebrations, in the moments before midnight a loud countdown of the seconds to go gave way to a respectful one-minute silence for the billions of victims of 'free' trade.

I bumped into that most excellent comic and satirist Marcus Brigstocke outside Downing Street, snapping pic's on his phone's camera. He was one of several entertainers involved in the many surrounding activities, but the 'Comedy: Gagging for Trade Justice!' event in which he was collaborating with Robert Newman, Ivor Dembina and Andrew Maxwell proved so popular that I was turned away at the doors a good 15 minutes before showtime :-(

While I am heartened to see so many people willing to take to the streets over a chilly night in April in a radical effort to progressively change the world, nevertheless such efforts to reform capitalism are not only doomed to failure, but can only help prolong the death rattle of an obsolete, decadent and decomposing economic/social system.

"Violated, dishonoured, wading in blood, dripping filth -- there stands bourgeois society. This is it in reality. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretence to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law, but the ravening beast, the witches' sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form."
Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet, 1916

Notice that this statement could be referring to the contempory imperialist butchery in occupied Iraq, or the daily decimation by disease of 15,000 Africans who die for the want of inexpensive medicines taken for granted in the imperialist heartlands of North America, Europe and Japan. The state of affairs described so accurately and eloquently by Red Rosa is now over 90 years old, and still the most important history-making question she posed has yet to receive a definitive answer: reform or revolution? Socialism or barbarism?

My 'optimism of the will' sincerely hopes that an ever-growing and significant minority of the upcoming generation of world-changing idealists so well represented on this protest, when educated by the experience of their inevitably futile attempts to plead for 'fairness' with the bosses' lackeys (be they in a 'New' Labour government, the G8/EU/UN/IMF or World Bank), will become convinced that Rosa was right -- only through a worldwide workers' revolution that sweeps capitalism into the dustbin of history can we bring real hope to the present and future victims of its disgusting trade swindles and finance scams.

For the most politically astute coverage and analysis of the ever-deepening global economic crisis, I recommend the International Communist Current's 'Economics' portal page:  http://en.internationalism.org/taxonomy/term/30

In International Solidarity,

Tim D Jones

All these photos are 'CopyLeft'. This means you are free to copy and distribute any of my photos you find here, under the following license:
Copyright ©2005 Tim D Jones
Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute copies of these photographs, in any medium, for personal and not-for-profit purposes, provided that this copyright notice and permission notice are preserved, and that the distributor grants the recipient permission for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.
Modified versions may not be made. Accreditation:  tim_d_jones@yahoo.co.uk