Anyone know of any plans for an autonomous bloc in London for the demo? If we do have one, lets do more this time than piss off to the pub after the march!!

There's defo going to be some sort of A-bloc on the march, but I don't know details myself. And I certainly hear rumours of some good ideas going round. Unfortunately I'm not sure what (I'm only in touch by phone, and not a great line for that matter...), but I'm assured it should be good fun. Bring your super-strength lager! I mean black flags!

 http://www.londonclasswar.org/newswire/

yeah lets bloc up for london...


bring attitude and TOP SECRET PLANS! ;-)

Don't forget your black flag to show that you are the only radical ones in the march whereas everyone else is a sheep. Also it's a good way to point yourself out to the police who are intelligent enough to do much else than look out for the posse with the black flags. If you were serious about something other than marching, you would consider doing something away from the march as affinity groups.

Actually, we already do do stuff away from the marches as affinity groups. That doesn't preclude using the march as a way to interact with the mass of people who are being used by the STWC leadership and interacting with them to find new ways of protest that they can be involved in.

Which brings me neatly to the point that we've never suggested that everyone else on the march is a sheep or acted in any way that suggests condesention towards them. This sort of sectarian finger-pointing accomplishes nothing. Now stop it.

Here's a really good idea why doesn't everyone go on an A to B march in one big block, masked up like it's halloween waving black flags around so it's easy to identify.

That'll achieve a lot especially if you want to bring down alot of needless heat on the march organisers and get yourself all weighed, measured and photographed by the FIT guys making other activites more difficult.

If you seriously wanted to make an impact on the people on the march you'd go dressed down and walk amongst them.

In London, there's usually a feeling that the autonomous block is the one that is the most radical whilst everyone else on the march are liberals or trots. The block marches along with black flags and kids in faux-black block dress and then they take pictures and put them up on websites. If you're lucky you can get a copy of the Class War leaflet that suggests the anti-movement needs a dose of Viagra.

See:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/03/393557.html

The problem is really that no-one knows what is actually useful to really stop the war (or just war in general), so we need to find to new ways that don't reproduce boring old ways that don't work (A- B marches). Autonomous blocs aren't really autonomous of much on a big demo. So in some senses they are just feelgood things (ok but not very useful).

What is to be done? An old question. I think eventually we will collectively find new ways to resist and organise against capitalism. Some things usually arrive, new ideas, new forms of working together, inspirations from other struggles worldwide. It's not really anyone's fault that we are a bit lost now. The anti-war movement ceased being a movement in 2003 when the fight was removed from the war bases and brought back to London / Glasgow etc. Partly this was due to the STWC and their desire to keep direct action out of their favoured mass mobilisations but it was also due to radicals not working independently to build bigger (or smaller!!) actions at military bases. Hey it's also partly due to more repressive policing since the early 2000's aswell.

There is a lot more peace activists doing great local stuff but this doesn't really merge with more radical people. Maybe that's just always been the way?

All the best to all doing stuff anyway.