FYI ...

1) the SWP and Respect split over a year ago - which one of these 'hijacked' the demo? Or perhaps you don't know, just going by appearances? Birmingham has a strong Respect group and councillors elected. Are Respect and the SWP working together again in the Stop the War group?

2) 'Hijack' or 'Organise'? Both these sort of groups 'hijack' events because they 'organise' them. They may not be the majority on the actual demo - but they 'call' the demo by gathering around themselves a group of allies from unions and other groups of campaigners. Then they form this into a 'united front' built around a minimum set of demands or single issue slogan: i.e 'Stop the War'; 'Solidarity with the Palestinians'; 'End Low Pay'; Stop the Nazi BNP'. or 'Save Our Hospitals'. By restricting the mobilisation to basic demands that seem sensible to the majority of the population - rather than saying 'smash capitalism'; or 'Fuck the Police' they are able to mobilise a demo far beyond their ranks. They issue press releases, put up posters everywhere, leaflet shopping centres, colleges and Mosques to ensure a big turnout for the demo. They book coaches and sell tickets etc. Perhaps more anarchist groups should use some of these tactics sometimes? Then they might be able to get their way - instead of just moan here on indymedia! Of course, some skilled and level headed anarchists do help organise mass protest...

3) Whether a mass demonstration should engage in mass direct action is a tactical issue - sometimes its a good idea, sometimes not. Some lefty groups seem on principle to reject confrontation and direct action - while some anarchist groups seem to want to only advocate this and nothing else all the time - on principle. Neither group has a grasp of when this might be the right tactic in a particular situation.

*** *** ***

P.S to give you a semse of the mindset of the organisers - below I have pasted something from a Respect Activist:

 http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=3408

17 January, 2009
BIRMIGHAM PROTESTS FOR GAZA
Filed under: Birmingham, Palestine — admin @ 9:27 pm

By Ger Francis

Birmingham had its Gaza protest today. According to the Police estimates over 5,000 attended and I would say that figure is about right. Labour MP’s Richard Burden, Lyn Jones and Jeremy Corbyn addressed. Also Clare Short and John Hemings MP from the Lib Dems plus local councillors, trade union and interfaith reps.

The build up to the march saw the most remarkable behaviour from the Tory/Lib Dem coalition that runs Birmingham.

Despite indicating that there would be no problem with a route, the council stance hardened in the aftermath of Tuesday’s historic recommendation that Birmingham city council should take boycott action against Israel. The council withdrew cooperation and left march organizers with the prospect of thousands of people coming into the city centre to march and no legal route to take. It was our feeling that some within the leadership of the council were setting a trap, and would have been quite happy for there to have been trouble to discredit the march organizers, and particularly Salma Yaqoob, who is driving the boycott issue in the city.

Thankfully, due to political pressure we could muster we managed to split the ruling coalition on the issue, with prominent Lib Dems supporting the right to march. In addition, we managed to exercise pressure within the Police who broke with the council and invoked emergency powers to agree a route with organizers in order the a legal march could take place. Tory driven attempts to stop the march failed. The march was loud, passed without any incident, and was the biggest ever expression of Palestinian solidarity in the city.

Following Tuesday’s council lobby, the historic call for a boycott of Israeli goods, and today’s demonstration, the issue of Palestinian solidarity is on the map in Birmingham like never before.

And also:


Birmingham Councillors call for boycott action on Israel

Politicians from all four parties on Birmingham City Council have called on the Council leadership to pursue a policy of instituting sanctions against Israel.

The call, for a boycott of Israeli goods and services, was initiated by Cllr Salma Yaqoob, Leader of the RESPECT Party, and supported by Tariq Khan (Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group), Cllr Tahir Ali (Labour) and Cllr James Hutchings (Conservative).

The City Council, meeting today (13 January 2009), heard politicians from all sides of the chamber condemn the Israeli attack on Gaza. The cross-party statement recommended that the Council Executive lobby the government to permit local authorities to exercise moral, ethical and human rights considerations when awarding contracts.

"This is a significant breakthrough," says Cllr Yaqoob. "The principle here is moral consistency. It is not that Israel should be singled out for punitive measures, but that it should stop being treated with kid gloves and given diplomatic cover for acting above the law. For too long Israel has felt it can bomb and terrorise innocent civilians with impunity. International pressure on Israel has to be intensified to ensure it adheres to international law and UN resolutions."

She continued: "One of the factors that helped bring an end to the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa was international pressure for economic, sporting and cultural boycotts. It is time that Israel started to feel similar pressure from world opinion. We will now be pressing the council leadership to act on the strong feelings expressed across the whole of the City Council."

Members of Wrekin Stop War and Wrekin Anarchist Group collectives have two collectives behind them, so at least six people. Why not have your own demo rather than complaining about someone elses - afraid no one will come?

The website of the group in whose name this statement has been issued - Wrekin Stop War - does not even have the issue of Gaza on it - or any news of Gaza protests! Instead on it's front page is a call to participate at last summers Kingsnorth Climate camp. Shows how much they have really been doing on Gaza - this kind of diminishes their right to criticise the protests called by others! This hardly shows a currently active group! The news section contains few posts in recent years.

Then the 'about us' section of the website tells us how Wrekin Stop War differs from other Stop the War groups - they deal with every issue, not just war "many issues including the environment, animal rights, homophobia, gender discrimination, globalisation and the nuclear threat". This leads on to the admission that:"We have found that most of our group are of an anarchist persuasion, if not anarchists already" but seem proud of this isolation! But what about those people who may want to oppose the wars in Iraq or Palestine - but are not anarchists or into animal rights? Added to this these statements jointly by Wreken STW and Wrekin @'s - then its obvious to all that they are the same people then! Amid all the talk of 'hijacking' movements - what about the claim that Wrekin STW has been 'hijacked' by '@s?!!! The Wrekin STW model sounds like a recipe for loosing the ability to mobilise broad protest movements like the Gaza ones.

Looks like an isolated individual or two slagging off those who have organised a big demo. Pity Imc has highlighted it.

And if even the police claim 5,000 on the demo why does Wrekin @'s claim only "two hundred, perhaps three hundred"? !!! Some people might wonder whose side you are on when you give a lower estimation of popular resistance than the forces of the state!

Nevetheless - despite their mistakes - Wrekin @'s / STW are probably a sound bunch of people who I'd like - and well done for anybody who stands up against war and capitalism in all sorts of different ways.

I don't know anything about this particular instance, but I have had very similar interaction with SWP in the past.

At the start of the Iraq war, Cardiff Anarchists organised, along with a number of other groups, two mass demos in Cardiff. On both occasions it was the anarchists who organised to do more than just stand around listening to speeches, and took the demo onto the road, shutting down traffic for hours. Police responded initially with patience, eventually with force and batons.

On both occasions, but especially the second, the SWP did every trick possible to undermine the action. They took a megaphone and announced that 'they' had arranged with the police to clear the road by 7pm. They stood and talked about the need for peaceful action and to avoid trouble. They also claimed, wrongly, that they had organised the demo!

The problem is not SWP members, many of whom are decent, caring and committed people, and are often prepared themselves to get stuck in when the situation demands. The problem is the hierarchical nature of the organisation itself, and the idea embedded in it that they can tell people what to do and how to conduct their protest. And it's not just the SWP of course, many other organisations do exactly the same thing.

My suggestion is to ignore the megaphones and the preaching. Go prepared to do your own protest, in your own way, and see who joins you. As a strategy it doesnt always work, but you may at least find some like minded people. And some of them might even be SWP.

I was there and it was the most dispiriting so-called protest ever. It wasn't just that the t-shirt, flag and SWP newpaper sellers practically outnumbered the protestors but that the whole thing was stagnated by the not-very-interesting speeches at the start, stating the bleedin obvious to the already converted.
As to the first poster's comment: "The demonstrators, mostly below 25-30 years of age, had a passion and longing to do something for their fellow human beings .." You must have age-blindness. There were ALL ages there, kids and pensioners, all equally upset and angry but all eventually numbed by standing still in the cold listening to boring crap. I only went along to boost the numbers in case reports get back to Gaza that people have been protesting on their behalf. Fuck the speeches - meet up, break away and do stuff.

Can Wrekin Stop War please clarify if they are even talking about the same protest which took place on Saturday 17th January? You have not provided a date, and the author of this article states that there were "two hundred, perhaps three hundred" people present when there were clearly 5000 plus. Even West Midlands police agreed with these figures, and they are not an organisation known for their liberal estimates of protest crowd numbers.

Also, the protest was organised by Stop the War and PSC (not the SWP) although the closely allianced Respect party were running their party political agenda and have been since the beginning of the Gaza crisis. The SWP and Respect split some time ago, as it became apparent that the unholy alliance of left wing activists and conservative Muslims had too little common ground after the Iraq war.

This would have been Friday the 16th so the numbers were about right.
We made attempts to get some alternatives going early on in the demo, a woman we talked to said she did not want to participate in any decision making as she was from the SWP and thought it would have been inappropriate, but this changed when a megaphone and then Selma Yaqoob turned up and any alternatives were drowned out by the usual calls to in-action.

Just a few quick responses from someone involved in both collectives named in the original post:

REGARDING POINTS (1) AND (2) FROM OTHER VOICES:

Point (1): SWP/Respect or People’s Front of Judea/Judean Peoples’ Front - same difference as far as I’m concerned. Both were present at the demo but from what I saw, Respect were more low-key.

Point (2): I would say that mass protest is only valuable if it actually changes something. The Stop the War Coalition are still harping on about ‘2 million taking to the streets of London to give Tony Blair what for’ and it changed nothing. Numbers on demos have declined consistently since and although I’m not pretending to have all the answers, simply marching or gathering and adapting the same old slogans to fit the particular cause celebre of the moment achieves very little other that sometimes swelling the ranks of ‘the party’ slightly. Four legs good, etc, etc.

REGARDING THE POINT MADE BY YEAH YEAH NO:

We have organised numerous demos, actions and events of our own locally and no, we’re not afraid, because we already know that no-one will come! Signing petitions are about the most active people get round here but this doesn’t stop us we hope that this will change with opposition to proposed open-cast mining locally.

During the Israeli attack on Lebanon, we did engage successfully with a group of local Muslims (and also hold our meetings at the mosque because no-one else will have us!) but they were only interested in that one particular issue and after they came to a few of our meetings, they were openly uninterested in the wider issues we discuss and stressed that they ‘weren’t political’. We tried to build on the initial success by producing a leaflet about the group in English and Urdu but five different individuals declined to translate the leaflet for us because they said they didn’t want to be involved in the politics of our group. Interpret that as you will.

We are undertaking our own local activities on this issue as well but thought this larger demo would be worth supporting. I was pissed off by the SWP/Respect sloganeering and recruiting but equally concerned by the some of the ‘non-political’ but vocally-Muslim protestors. One guy claimed that every single thing we’ve heard about Osama Bin Laden is a lie and he’s actually the world’s greatest peacemaker and all round good egg while another group were in such a frenzy that they were virtually fighting over how and where to burn the Israeli flag. Why not just make a bonfire of all national and religious flags and really make a statement? When another protestor disagreed with what Salma Yaqoob was saying, another group gathered behind him and threatened him with violence if he didn’t shut up.

IN RESPONSE TO DISCOTRON:

You’re right about our website and I can’t really argue with the comments you have made. We have all adopted the decidedly un-anarchist policy of putting the responsibility for the site onto one individual, who no longer has the time to regularly update the site. We’re all strapped for time, as are most people trapped in the rat race, but we’ve also been slow to set up alternatives that we can maintain in a more co-operative fashion. Will try harder!

We tried to work with the Stop the War Coalition locally on Afghanistan and Iraq but they only wanted to march in London and we thought events at the important military sites locally would be more effective in an area of high apathy. After the large march against the invasion of Iraq, their numbers began to dwindle but if we proposed a local action, they arrived at meetings en-masse and voted us down. Of course, we took undertook our local actions anyway and that’s how WSW came into being and perhaps you’re right that we’re proud of our isolation, in that we’ve certainly undertaken far more direct action on a variety of issues over the last five years than the StWC, who appear to be defunct.

So no sour grapes about a big demo because we believe that some of our smaller, more creative events have got through to more people who might otherwise have ignored a larger group chanting slogans. We didn’t know this was an SWP demo and as the post above says, they denied it was until the megaphone and banners turned up and then they suddenly seemed to be in charge.

Anyway, thanks for ending by giving us the benefit of the doubt!

AND FINALLY:

I think this has been dealt with but just to confirm that we went to the demo on the evening of Friday 16th.

Rachel - cheers for your response. Agree with much of what you say. But a few points...

You said "I would say that mass protest is only valuable if it actually changes something".

I suppose I have a problem with the word 'only', here! It kind of implies that we shouldn't value many other important aspects of mass protest. But protest can change many things over many different time scales.

Yes, it would be good if protest movements instantly achieved their immediate and declared goals. But in history they rarely do. Sometimes strikes have been able to win immediate victory for a workforce - over a limited and well defined aim like better conditions or pay. And so have other local protests restricted to limited demands.

But we may sometimes achieve more than this, you may be right - I do remember how on a bigger scale we beat the Poll Tax with mass non-payment and a huge protest that became a huge riot! That was an inspiring victory - (although while we got rid of Thatcher and the Poll Tax, these were soon replaced with Major and the Council tax!) I really do wish we had victory like the anti-poll tax one over Iraq and stopped the invasion. I think that might have taken a general strike or something.

But other struggles - such as the Suffragets and votes for women, the 1960's black civil rights in USA or Anti-Aparthied in South Africa - etc. - victory was not instant - but took years, of many thousands of different acts of protest. No one protest can be seen as the instant act of liberation or victory. But in these struggles, people build up political consciousness and organisation in part through rallies and protests. But of course they don't win instantly - social change isn't like making cheap coffee - you don't just add hot water! It takes time.

One obvious thing the big London Iraq protests did achieve was to help build and consolidate a deep, society wide anti-war political consciousness. This has all sorts of longer term cultural impacts. Most importantly I think it was one of the reasons that we have seen such an enormous wave of protests over Gaza. People in Britain have become politicised over the Middle East, and can see through the media lies and propaganda on the issue. And links that were made between left-wing activists and Muslim communities over Iraq and Afghanistan have resurfaced again, and powerfully over Gaza. So its a long term struggle - to turn the tide against militarism and imperialism.

I think we need the big London marches - they are an important part of the mix. And I think we need legal demonstrations, too. Protest must involve more than the usual suspects - it must be accessible for the majority to join in. Big legal marches are an easier way to participate than risking arrest in direct action. And I want it to be easy for people to take the first step into movement activism. I see you collect signatures on petitions. This is a way of ,making a space for people to easily participate. Marches are one step up.

But of course big legal marches in central London on their own are not enough. And here is where the STWC fall down. I understand your frustration with the limited strategy of the STWC. And sounds like the local SWP / STWC behaved like arrogant t*ssers towards you. Yes, we also need anti-war direct action. Street sit-down blockades of arms factories and oil depots (no blood for oil) would help resist the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a whole complementary mix of different scales and levels of action, including mass direct action and mass marches. They can feed into each other. But sometimes a culture of pure direct action - as a continual and single mode of operation - can exclude people and lead to smaller, more exclusive movements. However, I think the climate camp was really good - and it would be great if STWC went for a similar 'war resistance camp' outside a suitable part of the war machine.

The other issue in our discussion here seems to be about how to generalise the issue outwards - and link it with associated issues like climate change (war for fossil fuels) the racism / islamophobia generated by the war, and other oppressions such as homophobia. How to grow from opposition to war to resistance to the causes of war - i.e to capitalism?

I toyed with the idea of arguing that the local anti-war group I was in should generalise. We called it a peace campaign - explicitly because peace means more than the absence of war but the positive presence of social justice. However, decided to keep it to the issue of opposing war - and to try to create a social forum to bring the anti-war movement into a parallel space with environmentalism, feminism and other social movements. That would leave each campaign with the advantages brought by remaining focused on a single issue - but also adding the strength of linking the issues as well. In my view a good example of how to do both! (Pity the SWP did their best to scupper these initiatives, preferring the Respect adventure as their chosen vehicle for generalisation instead).

Sounds like lots of people wanted a stop the war group to oppose war with - and didn't come with you on becoming a general anti-system group.

Specifically with local Muslims you worked with who you say "were only interested in that one particular issue and after they came to a few of our meetings, they were openly uninterested in the wider issues we discuss". All the better reason to keep the anti-war group focused on opposing the war! Perhaps it should be about building long term unity with diverse groups rather than expecting to convert them on mass to your predominantly anarchist world view?

I'm an out of the closet gay man - and I have worked with respect alongside Muslims in the anti-war and peace movements. Its so far been fine, and supportive. But I would not demand that the anti-war group also makes homophobia or any other issue a main focus to campaign on. It would surely drive away important allies. Sure - some people I unite with against war may be socially conservative on this issue but I try to change minds with patience and example. I would not want to lay down a precondition for initial unity. Of course I would challenge homophobia within the movement - or any other prejudice that would prevent people from participating.

Well thats my view.

In the end though - just do as you think best! We need to try many different models of campaigning and resistance. But I favour having a division of labour with a local radical anti-capitalist group AND campaigns that remain focused around a key issue or battle. These can then feed off each other.

Cheerz,

Barry Kade

Hi Barry

I was going to say here’s my two-pennies in response but it’s more like a full shilling and, as an anti-capitalist, perhaps I should leave money out of it altogether. Anyway ...

Perhaps my wording was a bit misleading. I don’t dismiss mass protest entirely but believe that the brand of mass protest that repeats the same formula over and over again, usually on the streets of London (or other urban centres) is a waste of time. When I said ‘only if it changes something’, I wasn’t just referring to the issue that the protest is about but something within the individuals and groups taking part, i.e. empowerment. I just don’t see the SWP or Respect doing this and most of the people I know who have been in the SWP or associated with them (which I think is most of us at sometime in our naïve youth) have dropped out of activism altogether. Relatively few continue their involvement in the party or move on to other leftist ideologies.

The last StWC march I went on in London achieved numbers of around 10,000, which seems significant but you only had to look around at those not involved in the march and they weren’t taking a blind bit of notice. In fact, I would argue that these marches are actually expected and even welcomed by the state as a known quantity and a manageable form of protest that they can deal with whilst maintaining a veneer of free speech and freedom to protest.

I certainly don’t believe that many people have become politicised by the large demos against the invasion of Iraq or the more recent protests over Palestine. Where did those 2 million people go? Most went back to suburbia feeling they’d done their bit and when it didn’t change anything, they slipped back into defeatist apathy. A few lingered on for the Respect charade but otherwise numbers declined rapidly and now five, nearly six, years in it’s as much as people can do to even muster a signature on a petition for the people of Iraq.

98% of the people I spoke to at the Gaza demo last Friday weren’t in the slightest bit interested in the wider politics, even though some were brandishing Respect/SWP banners, leaflets, etc. One youngster was really interested in the ‘no borders’ issues and joined us in challenging the Osama Bin Laden fan club but that’s about it really.

Of course, anger and raw emotion sometimes take over, especially when dealing with such hideous abuses of human rights, but directing this anger into slogan chanting and building it up to a fever pitch and then saying, ‘no, you mustn’t actually DO anything, it might upset the police and the council’ is, in my opinion, alienating and defeatist.

You might find the article ‘Who Are The SWP?’ an interesting read, which can be accessed here:
 http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/who-are-the-swp/

Whilst I agree with you that high-profile mass protest movements have the effect of bringing the issue to a wider audience and perhaps changing the system to some degree, for me that’s the problem. The system only ever changes within its own prescribed boundaries.

Beyond the issue of the vote, which is a dubious privilege in any case, the Suffragettes were basically middle-class women fighting for middle-class rights like property ownership. When more radical women like Sylvia Pankhurst tried to bring wider working-class issues into the campaign they were criticised. When she went a step further and spoke out against World War I, her mother expelled her from the WSPU and tried to claim she was deluded. Emmeline Pankhurst and numerous other Suffragettes went on to join the group handing out white feathers to men not fighting in the war. It is, however, somewhat ironic that Sylvia was generally against direct action and militancy, although she participated, whilst the political conservatives supported it.

Similarly, civil rights in America produced some iconic figures and speeches and, on paper, may have brought about equal rights but the reality is very different. There are some black communities in America where a young black male has a better life expectancy if he shoots someone and gets put on death row than if he stays on the streets.

The election of Obama is being portrayed as the crowning glory of the civil rights movement but I fail to see what the election of yet another capitalist within an elitist system does for anyone’s civil rights, whatever the colour of their skin.

The core of our group has remained firm since we left the StWC so those who were keen to adopt more direct action have stayed together. Those from the original grouping who do not participate are all SWP or Respect but those who were either politically neutral or tend to only take part in action at times of major crisis, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, etc, generally contact us to find out what is going on because they know the StWC won’t be doing anything.

The local Respect bods adopted the standard ‘class war’ line to Climate Camp, considering it too bourgeois for them to be involved in. That is until it made some headlines and local activists from the camp were in the local press and o the radio. Then they thought it was wonderful and wanted to be involved but soon lost interest at the mention of that little word, ‘non-hierarchical’.

The group of Muslims I referred to weren’t just uninterested in discussing wider politics, their focus was entirely on Palestine and even when we tried to broaden the discussion slightly into some of the wider factors in the conflict itself they insisted that this was an issue solely of nation -v- nation and religion -v- religion. Even to the point when they refused to acknowledge that ANYONE in America and Israel is against what is happening is Palestine, something that I also encountered at the demo on Friday 16th in Brum.

Someone also said to me on Friday that this was a specific agenda against the Muslims by the West and no-one else. When I mentioned that various human rights abuses in South America, Africa, China and in the West itself that don’t involve Muslims, they walked away.

Perhaps homophobia isn’t at the top of the agenda when people are being blown to bits but I still want to know who I’m working with on the immediate issue and what their attitudes are towards peace, freedom and tolerance in the long-term. I’ve often accused the SWP and Respect of being too quick to adopt the mantra that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ and stand by that. But some of the literature being handed out by Muslim groups on the streets of Birmingham a few years back, despite coming under the heading ‘Islam -v- Capitalism’, was less like socialism and more like the Christian right in America.

I also couldn’t fail to notice that many of the America-hating youngsters at the demo on Friday were festooned in some of the most iconic American corporate logos. A poor show for the people of Gaza but a great advertisement for the power of capitalism, which, funnily enough, didn’t seem to be very high on the agenda.

Just like the original poster made it clear that he wasn’t attacking individuals from the SWP, I’m not attacking those individuals or those who choose to adopt the Muslim faith. However, I think that within the establishment left at the moment dogmatism is feeding dogmatism and that this should be resisted, even if it means isolating ourselves from publicity-grabbing events and having to work harder to get the message across to the people we meet every day in our own communities.