What really happened at the Stirling Campsite?

I do not usually have a tendency to gossip and I am aware this may sound like I am making some cheap political points but the following stories are meant to reflect on the political shortfall of the kind of tactics and strategies which certain people use inside the movement.

Background

You may be aware that during the recent G8 two campsites were organised. One in Craig Millar, a working class district in Edinburgh organised mainly by the SSP & G8 Alternatives the other in Stirling, mainly organised by G8 assembly and dissent.

Prior to the G8 summit, the G8 Alternatives had to tackle the local press who spread myths and scare stories that 1,000s of people would descend on Craig Millar and run a mock on their estate. Thankfully, members of the SSP managed to persuade the local people at Craig Millar to allow the campsite to go ahead. As a matter of fact, the council provided excellent facilities with showers (with hot water) , rubbish containers, bus shuttle service, clean toilets and the local people served breakfast at the community centre. On our arrival, the locals held a disco in the community centre and provided us with cheap drinks.

Diarrhoea, embarrassment & alienation

In contrast, Stirling camp was set up in a rush, with little support from the council. As a result there was very little in the means of toilet facilities and according to a source people suffered with dysentery.

During their stay, the Anarchist came up with the idea to go around Stirling with the aim to smash up the first McDonalds restaurant they saw. This type of action happened in central London a few years ago and it must have seemed a good idea at the time. However, what the anarchist did not expect was that the local people may object to this kind of action in their town. The following day, a group of angry locals, mainly young men challenge the anarchist and threatened to beat the shit out of them if they did not leave their estate. The anarchist, rather embarrassed, went away with their tails between their legs. Isn’t it obvious that the local people would object to their shops being smashed (even if it is a McDonalds)? Rather than getting the local people on their side they totally alienated the locals as a result from their behaviour.

Insensitive.

An other incident occurred when some people on the Stirling camp decided to march around the estate chanting “whose streets, our streets!”. Unknown to them the estate happened to be a loyalist area and saw this type of march as a threat to them. Again they were asked to leave the estate.

These examples demonstrates what happens when you organise unplanned/ undemocratic action (did any of the anarchist even bothered to ask what the local thought of the action they had planned?). This is what you get when you get a bunch of self appointed leaders carrying out actions on other people’s behalf. What a bad impression they made on the locals, a discredit to our movement or what?

The sad thing about all of this, is that this was totally unnecessary, there was more than enough facilities at the Craig Miller site to accommodate all the people in the Stirling campsite, it was only because people in dissent did not want to share a campsite with G8 alternatives, their motives are still unknown, but I suspect that it had something to do with making sure people did not fraternalise with other people who stayed in the Craig Miller site