As far as I'm concerned, the main problems on J11 were:

- The massive police presence
- The cops nicking a lot of stuff (banners, masks, flags, and people) at the start
- Small numbers - at least in comparison with the police

I was pretty shocked and disappointed by how few activists had come from London or other UK cities. This includes anarchos but also more mainstream groups. It felt like at least half the people present had travelled from overseas.

The police repression is to be expected, but was something that could have been effectively countered with a much larger crowd. Even going beyond Mayfair to do actions was problematic, since the low numbers meant that many of the UK activists were juggling a thousand things at once (sorting out alternative accomodation, new workshop spaces, facilitating meetings, prisoner solidarity etc etc).

I'd really be interested to know why so few British-based activists turned out. If the reason is fear of police repression, perhaps people should check out the situation in Turkey or Bahrain.

Hats off to everyone present though. There was an incredible determination on the day, as we were repeatedly driven apart, sought each other out, re-grouped and retook the streets. Lots of de-arrests and prisoner solidarity as well.

A remarkably negative and somewhat inaccurate report from Schnews. Of course, there were not tens of thousands on the streets, and no, we didnt bring down Capitalism. But this g8 mobilisation took place against all the odds, and delivered some tangible and imprortant achievements.

The 'fading relevance' of the G8 is a piece of spin which does Schnews no credit in repeating. The G8, along with its sister organisations the IMF and World Bank, exist to promote the interests of global corporate power, which are still predominantly based in G8 countries. This has not changed, although they would like to do so under less media attention than they got during the big summit mobilisations in Seattle, Genoa, Annemasse etc.

In the last few years policy decisions by the G8 have steered the European austerity programme, the pursuit of oil exploration (especially the development of fracking, deep sea oil and tar sands extraction), the securitisation of borders and pursuit of 'terrorism', and the 'protection' and advancement of corporate investment during the Arab Spring transitions.

The G8 also spawned the 'New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition', a cynical strategy which globally promotes the control of food production by multinationals, including GM producer Monsanto, and global polluter Coca Cola. War on want have criticised this programme on the basis that it creates the poverty and hunger it espouses to prevent.

While it would be nice to think that the G8 is of 'fading relevance', its importance to oil companies, GM food producers, investment banks and other corporate power-houses, suggests otherwise.

David Cameron promised to keep the G8 'low-key'. The g8 protesters have, at the very least, got the G8, and opposition to it, on the front pages of the media. If nothing else this has allowed the space for some proper discussion of the G8, and its connection with other struggles in the UK and beyond.

We all know that it is hard to organise against corporate power on an international level, especially when disrupting anti-G8 events has become a priority for G8 states. That doesnt mean we shouldnt do it. This was the first concerted attempt at anarchist organising on a national / international level for many years. It would have been nice if UK anarchists / activists recognise what has been achieved in very difficult circumstances, rather than this tiresome negativity and a defeatest attitude that suggests we are incapable of standing up to state / corporate power.

We could indeed have achieved a great deal more if we had got better support from UK activists. We are all stretched and fighting on various fronts - but this was an opportunity to pool our strength and challenge the state in solidarity. Those that did take part showed remarkable determination and resilience, and the anarchistic nature of the mobilisation undoubtedly created real difficulties for the police. In learning lessons for going forward its important that we look to what we have achieved, not just what we are yet to achieve.

I think the piece by Schnews was actually rather charitable. IMO the reason why people didn't turn up was that the event had no popular support within the movement, or more importantly, beyond it. This was for a number of reasons including:

1) A small number of people tried to re-enact an event (or series of events) from another political era, yet without the context, engagement, or reasoning behind the previous ones.

2) Some people tried to push discussions and analysis about the context for any mobilisation against the G8, yet they were largely ignored by a few people who seemed to have already decided that they knew what need to be done. Those people then left the group.

3) The organising group didn't have the ability (skills, resources, money, time) to pull off an event that they had images of in thier own minds. There was very little publicity, no media interest beyond "anarchists causing riot for no good reason" coverage.

It was a missed opportunity for a useful radical mobilisastion that engaged with people beyond a few hundred activists, and things like that are really needed in these times of austerity, but due to a number of people being unwilling to try and think beyond just trying badly to repeat what's had been done before but in a shit way (I mean even down to the name ffs!) it was a disaster, although luckily such a small and irrelevant one that it won't have damaged anything outside it's own little circle.

Stop the G8? Thoughts, concerns, and possibilities…
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Let’s start at the beginning
The gathering in Birmingham, the Anarchist Bookfair meeting, some comments on the ‘Stop G8’ email lists, and now the recent international call-out have raised some significant problems for us about what seem to be the fundamental politics, structure, and direction of the ‘Stop G8’ organising that’s happened so far.

The writing here, while critical, is also intended to be constructive and comradely. Of course we have a real desire to make the most of the G8 coming to these shores next year, but we feel that to do this we’re going to have to ask some hard political questions about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

These are difficult questions, and we hear them being asked in many radical political circles at the moment, and it seems surprising to us that they aren’t being raised in the ‘Stop G8’ meetings as well. We think the issues the questions raise need to be addressed in order to make anything we organise next year effective and useful for anti-capitalist politics and the associated movements here in the UK/Europe.

First time as tragedy…
When thinking about next year’s G8 it has perhaps seemed obvious ‘common sense’ to some people to look at past examples of other mobilisations to see ‘what is done’ in these types of situations. However, we think that without trying to learn about exactly why those previous mobilisations happened and how they were organised, what they aimed to achieve, and how well they achieved those aims, it can lead us to look through blinkers at the past, and ignore the crucial contexts, discussions, and aims of each very different mobilisation.
This problematic tendency was illustrated at the Anarchist Bookfair meeting. Other mobilisations were mentioned (and a video clip or two of them was shown) in a kind of 'look what we did on our holidays' way. They were all mentioned on an equal footing, with no thought or discussion given as to what made them useful (or not) politically, what political and social context they occurred in, the underlying goal/s of doing them, and what lessons we might be able to draw from them for organising next year’s events.

The problem is not only one of looking to past events as blueprints for what to do now, but more generally in looking for off-the-shelf, quick-fix solutions in complex social and political circumstances, and also of a focus on acting (which often comes out as a desperation to just “do something”), which if not grounded in aims and purposes can be at best ineffective and meaningless, or at worst highly destructive.

The goals of any political intervention will depend on the political contexts, circumstances and point in history it is situated in. We are at a unique point in time, with some countries in Europe falling apart, criticisms of capitalism being very much in the public sphere, and with many peoples’ lives becoming much more precarious – a very different point than we found ourselves in 10 or even 5 years ago.

This failure to address the context and aims has also arisen in the organising meetings themselves, and most recently in the international call out, which have both made assumptions about organising strategies and formats without thinking through what we would hope to achieve by organising in this way.

Organisational capacity
Another concern for us, exemplified in the international call-out, is the capacity (by which we mean our collective resources and ability to utilise those resources) of the national meetings. At the moment we feel we are far from being in the position of being able to promise a 'large mobilisation' and the infrastructure that this might entail. The G8 Gleneagles mobilisation (as well as other significant ones) took 2 years to discuss, plan, and organise, whereas we currently have about 7 months, with fewer together and experienced people organising nationally at the moment.

We’re not saying that a large street mobilisation at the site of the G8 can't happen (if we decide that's what we want to do), but we need to be sure that we have the organisational capacity to be able to do it before we commit ourselves, rather than pushing something we can’t actually pull off when it comes down to it. Recent 'large scale' shit mobilisations/events should make us wary of hyping something with no decent plan or politics, that we then also can't back-up with the ability to organise useful and radical events.

We haven't yet decided what form the nationally organised resistance to the G8 might yet take, but we seem to be sleep walking along the path to some kind of mass mobilisation very similar to ones that have been done before. Some people and writing (again, for example the recent international call-out) seem to assume that it will be some massive street mobilisation, when we don’t yet really know whether we want to do that, or even can…

In addition to this, and just to make things very clear, as there sometimes seems to be a reasonably carefree air to some of the discussions, any street mobilisation that's organised will almost certainly draw large numbers of people into the street and possible confrontation with the State. And every time this happens we risk the death of one or more people and the imprisonment of others and ourselves. For this to be justifiable and worthwhile we need to make sure we’re pretty fucking sure it’s a risk worth taking.

Some kind of answers?
There is a strong narrative in the media/amongst people right now that capitalism is broken and faltering. In attempts to ‘fix’ capitalism politicians are forcing through austerity, while liberal and reformist campaigners moot unrealistic and unappealing ‘friendlier’ forms of capitalism. We live in a situation where the three main political parties have been shown to be explicitly anti-working class – and by this we mean the economical class, not the problematic social categorisation that is sometimes used.

We think that any anti-G8 events could be used as a chance to openly talk about capitalism as crisis and, with an explicitly anti-capitalist politics, talk about how and with what we might be able to replace it, and then to organise around those ideas. Any political organising should take into account the huge potential that our current political and social context offers for generalising struggle and radicalising people.

We need to start thinking really hard about what the aims of a mobilisation against the G8 would be. We’ll offer a couple of ideas here, although of course these need to be discussed and decided upon as a group.

One aim of organising around the G8 could be to draw existing anti-capitalist groups into having a stronger ability to actually work together on radical projects, and to try to push other less radical groups and organisations into a more explicitly anti-capitalist position. In a time when many groups have lost momentum or fallen by the wayside, it might offer a chance for a new focus, or help with the emergence of new anti-capitalist groups – providing energy which could last beyond the G8 and giving us some of that renewal of radicalism and longevity that has only been paid scant lip service so far.

Another aim might be to give expression to anger and disillusionment for people who lack a clear focus of what to attack. We think that the G8 can give a face and place to capitalists and that can be useful, but we also think that fetishising capitalism as these things is problematic, and we need to resist the temptation to allow this in our discussions and propaganda. We can do this by using the activity against the G8 to illustrate and attack the social relation that capitalism requires – that in which resources are out of our control and guarded by the lackeys of capitalism – rather than it just being about a meeting of leaders.
And having considered the aims, we need to think about who will be able and willing to help with meeting those aims. For this to be a truly national (or international) mobilisation, for us to really achieve something, we need to have groups from around the country engaged and involved, and talking about the G8, capitalism, and anti-capitalism in their groups and communities, whether locality-based or otherwise. We need a structure for the national meetings that is able to co-ordinate this, whilst dealing with proposals efficiently and usefully, something that many other national meetings have struggled to do.

In terms of structure we think it could be useful to regard the national meetings as coordinating bodies for the events around the G8. This means not thinking of them as a new organisation, nor a potential network in the making, nor something that will exist beyond the G8 next year. We think that the longevity will be provided not by the ‘Stop G8’ meetings themselves, but by the concrete ways in which we organise outside the meetings (local and community groups based around a real, effective, and long term resistance to capitalism) and the more ethereal connections we make between each other, as well as already existing groups and organisations that we make links with in this process.

It was hardly a disaster, given the outcome in the media, including front page headlines about anarchists and awesome TV coverage. It got a message across to millions of people about anti-capitalism and police repression, which is no mean feat.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1ir_7vgdKg
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU9UBzxqbWg

If numbers were small, whose fault was that? Not that of Stop G8, whose publicity efforts were certainly not too crap if so many internationals managed to find out about it and get to London. Mainstream media coverage in the run-up would obviously have been useful, but there did seem a deliberate strategy of ignoring and downplaying it (which backfired, in that the protesters had not been sufficiently demonised to publicly justify the brutal attack on the squat and J11 protest).

If the problem was publicity within the wider movement, whose fault was that? Perhaps those who felt the need to snipe and sneer all along and undermine a brave effort to kickstart a wave of resistance against capitalism?

There seems to be a degree of factionalism involved here, with “anarchist” referring dismissively to “a small number of people” and “a few people” and even concluding that the J11 outcome “won’t have damaged anything outside it’s own little circle”. So who are this big majority of anarchists that you represent, then? Why didn’t they help publicise it or at least turn up on the streets in solidarity, even if they had some reservations? What else were they doing at the time?

If this was really “a missed opportunity for a useful radical mobilisation” then was this the fault of those who bothered to organise for it and take to the streets or of those who sat on the sidelines with a negative attitude? “Anarchist” (the inverted commas are very necessary here) was presumably hoping all along that this would be a flop. But, despite everything, it wasn’t – so the smug “told you so” response is inappropriate as well as rather revealing…

I don't know what you think is revealing about anything, but I'd suggest that an explicitly anti-capitalist event with months of build-up, against a public meeting of the leaders of the 8 richest nations in a time of harsh Europe-wide austerity, that just manages to get just a few hundred people, mainly already involved activists (the fact that such a number of them were from overseas is even more a sign of weakness), needs to have some serious discussion about why it was that weak, and that discussion shouldn't just 'blame' everybody who didn't work on it. It was a fundamentally flawed project, most people outside those who were caught up in the bubble of excitement and desperation knew that, hence the lack of attendance and participation.

Sorry, but the excuse that there was insufficient publicity is bollocks. Publicity involved regular updates on Indymedia, open and pre-announced planning meetings, translations into over 15 languages, Twitter, FB, flyering and outreach at plenty of events, plus a European infotour... As the above commenter has said, how did Spanish, Dutch, Belgian, German and French activists manage to mobilise and so many local activists fail to show? Tbh, the turnout of locals was pathetic and shameful. Well done to all those who did bother and who held it together on the day.

Also, the notion that 'things have moved on', is an inadequate explanation. For one, many of those involved in the anti capitalist/anti globalisation protests of the late 90s are unlikely to be still around or involved anyway. There's also new generation of people who are active in grassroots activism, who don't necessarily share your experiences or cynicism. Many of those involved on Tuesday were pretty young - but where was everyone else?

Oh and Schnews - are you suggesting that the growth of BRIC economies somehow undermines the importance or necessity of mobilisations against the G8? When the G8 includes all the world's top 4 arms exporters? Bizarre.

There are real questions about why numbers were so small. I don't think this can be blamed on the organisers, who worked very hard and did the best they could with low participation and few resources. In fact most people involved in the convergence centre, demos etc. I've talked to seem really positive about the week, saying it was a week of strong encounters and solidarity. This doesn't take away from the fact the numbers were very low. But then no one, absolutely no one, has managed to get out large numbers (except for a trade union A to B march etc.) on the streets of London since 2011. This isn't just true of the stopg8 organisers by any means. Where are the great events "anarchist" has organised? What's your secret recipe no one else can figure out? We all of us need to ask questions about what is happening in this country and how we can get things moving.

Some possible reasons:

1. Maybe it didn't capture people's imaginations? Same old "go to London and get pigged to f**k" scenario? Most of us have enough experience of those to know that they only tend to be effective when the number of up-for-it people is unusually high. Which only tends to happen when there's a vibrant and active movement behind the event; it doesn't come out of a vacuum for a one-off event.

2. It was on a weekday. A lot of people have to work. I know there are good reasons for having it on a weekday, but it's good to be aware of the drawbacks too.

3. A sense that most people aren't planning to go to something is self-perpetuating. I went, but wasn't expecting much from it because most of the people I spoke to weren't going. I didn't ask why not, because I didn't feel enthusiastic enough about it to defend its effectiveness, and also because I didn't want to guilt-trip them.

4. I get the impression publicity didn't reach very widely. Not necessarily a criticism of organisers, because there's only so much a small group of people can do. I know bundles of leaflets were sent out to groups around the country but if people weren't feeling inspired by the mobilisation they would have been less likely to distribute them.

5. I also got the impression that we didn't succeed at attracting many people from outside the activist ghetto. Given that it was on a weekday this was unlikely to happen anyway, I suppose; it's hard enough to convince someone who doesn't self-identify as anticap/actvist/anarchist to come on a demo, let alone if it means having to take time off. But I also think a leaflet design more aimed at non-activists might have been useful, if only for awareness-raising.

These all feed into each other; if people had felt more inspired by the mobilisation (ie that it had a chance of escaping the old routines and contributing something new to the movement) they would have been more up for coming, more up for taking time off work, and collectively inspired each other more by the sense that lots of other people were coming, and been more motivated to do more outreach, leafletting and infonights. Which contributes back into the sense that the mobilisation is worthwhile and inspiring.

So why did I go? Mainly out of a sense that, in these desperate times, something is better than nothing. I'm still not sure if it was worth it or not, because it diverted some of my energy away from local grassroots community organising, which seems (in theory at least!) like a more reliable strategy.

But I don't think it was entirely pointless; as others have pointed out it did raise publicity/awareness.

** PS Will there be a debrief meeting to discuss all this constructively? Seems important. **

is a troll.

Painting the event as a complete success is unhelpful
...it's obviously bollocks.

Painting the event as a complete failure is unhelpful
...it's obviously bollocks.

Blaming the organisers is unhelpful
...the wider context (ie lack of an underlying movement) matters!

Accusing anyone critical of being a troll/armchair activist is unhelpful
...if we're criticising, it's because we want to learn from our mistakes and do better!

Drop your egos and grow up a bit :)

I just don't know what your reasoning for shouting troll is when I'm trying to raise some political and organisational issues that affect us all unless it's just to draw attention away from actually discussing things.

If you say there was sufficient publicity (which I'd still dispute) then it's even more worrying that so few people turned out, as it means there was something about the project itself that didn't appeal to people rather than them not knowing about it.

I do think a problem is that people think publicity is the way people hear about things and get inspired. My take on it that what is needed is lots of personal contact, speaking tours, video showing, discussions with people who disagree with doing it, writing articles on why we should mobilise, etc etc. and then the posters and stickers and FB events are just the icing on the cake. I think there is a tendency to forget the first harder bit and just reply on the second. (People also underestimate the amount and quantity and type of publicity that went into the massive mobilisations in the 90s/00s).

Basically you need to convince people why it's a good thing to do, especially in these times when lots of large mobilisations in London have been not that great, and the Stop G8 group notonly failed to try and convince the movement, they weren't even up for discussing it in their own meetings.

As well as that there were problems with the capacity of the group to organise anything on a masive scale, and also the plan itself was flawed in peoples' perception. It was never made clear (beyond some it's the 'centre of capitalism' sentences in the publicity) why it was a good idea to go to the West End. To everybody I talked to - anarchists, activists and non-political people - it didn't make sense. It *might* have, but why it did was never communicated to anyone.

Many criticisms have been made of these type of mobilisations, not all of them I agree with, but I do think some of them are useful and help us to work out what's productive to engage with politically. This event seemed to ignore all of the useful things that have been raised time and time again about the roles of activists, activism as an activity, thinking capitalism is about banks and rich peoples drinking clubs, and just re-hashing the same things again and again but in an spiralling downward trajectory.

The UK political/radical scene really needs to ask itself some serious questions about it's structure, organisational strategy and activity, and how these can relate to what's going on in the wider world at the moment. IMO the G8 had some potential to fit into this, but has singularly failed to do.

Regarding the previous comment, below are the explanations for the choice of the West End on the Stop G8 site. Bit more than one sentence! But I guess if you don't read it, it's not going to convince you. Oh, and also the map detailing 100 very solid reasons for picking out the West End... ( https://network23.org/stopg8/files/2013/05/citymap_g8_webposter.jpg)

Restrospectively, the police over-reaction to the protest is another reason why it's good to target the West End - it scares the shit out of them!


London is right at the heart of global capitalism. And the West End of London, including elite areas like Piccadilly, Mayfair and Knightsbridge, is where power and greed are most concentrated. The West End is home to:

* Corporations. Many of the world’s most brutal and polluting companies, including oil and mining giants, arms dealers, and the businesses profiting from cuts and privatisation.
* Vulture funds. Global base of the “hedge fund” and “private equity” industries, laundering the world’s blood money to invest in war, food speculation and debt slavery.
* Tyrants. Government offices, embassies, cultural and commercial fronts of colonial powers and murderous regimes.
* Playground of the mega-rich. Middle Eastern dictators, Russian mafia oligarchs, and home-grown parasites all see London as a “safe” place to hide and spend their loot.

 https://network23.org/stopg8/j11-carnival-against-capitalism-2/

London has three main economic power centres. In two of them, the City and Canary Wharf, the big banks shout their power with glass skyscrapers and neon corporate logos. But much of the power in London is quietly concentrated in the old elite areas of the West End. Here deals are done in whispers, behind unmarked doors.

Money.

Mayfair is home to private banks, banks that cater to the wealthy and don’t ask questions. The map shows just a few of them, including some dedicated to washing money for regimes like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The deregulation and financial boom of the 80s and 90s led to new forms of investment including *private equity* and hedge funds. These also gravitated to the private banking zone, making Mayfair the world’s second hedge fund capital after New York.

Private equity investors buy companies and shares in private deals, rather than on ‘public’ stock exchanges. They are less transparent, less regulated, and can make much bigger profits. Some private equity funds take over existing companies, sacking workers and ‘asset stripping’ the firms. Some speculate in real estate, including the ‘land grab’ funds buying up farmland in poor countries, displacing communities and pushing up food prices. ‘Soft commodities’ funds speculate on food and water supplies. Other funds specialise in privatisation, using their political contacts to grab cheap government assets.

Hedge Funds are ‘alternative’ investment managers specialising in risk, secrecy, and big profits. In contrast to the cautious and relatively tightly regulated pension funds of the City they are private partnerships, usually run by a few superstar managers, that publish little information and attract wealthy investors. Hedge funds follow a range of different strategies. Some make their money by gambling on currencies and other financial markets: a number made a killing out of the sub-prime mortgage collapse of 2008. ‘Distressed debt’ funds, sometimes called ‘vulture funds’, are glorified debt collectors who buy up and chase bad debts, including those of struggling countries like Greece and Argentina. Many fund bosses are big political party donors, which helps them fend off regulation and investigation despite their unsavoury reputations.

Dirt, blood and spin.

Some of the world’s bloodiest and most polluting corporations are based in the West End. Oil giant BP and mining companies like Lonmin are vestiges of British colonial power, still plundering Africa and other resource rich regions. Their new neighbours are ‘emerging market’ giants like India’s ArcelorMittal, Tata and Vedanta. A number of these companies are based around St James’ Square, south of Piccadilly, the area that is also the traditional clubland of the old British ruling class.

Where there’s a goldmine or an oilfield, you need guns (and drones, jets, guided missiles, etc) and hired killers to defend it. The West End is also the main European base for many of the world’s largest arms companies, including BAE Systems, Thales, Lockheed Martin and more, and also of mercenaries and private security contractors. These can be found clustered around Victoria, and throughout the area.

Some unfortunate regimes and corporations suffer from ‘reputational issues’: i.e. people realise that they are murdering bastards. This is where Public Relations companies like Bell Pottinger, Brown Lloyd James, and M&C Saatchi step in to spin destruction into development. The West End has become a key base of the global PR trade, traditionally centered around Soho.

Dens of the rich.

Once you’ve made obscene money, you need to spend it. London real estate is a prime investment opportunity, and you can get round planning laws by knocking mansions together and digging down for underground swimming pools. The boutiques of Bond Street and the nightclubs of Mayfair and Knightsbridge mix the prestige of the old aristocracy with the glamour of the new mega-rich. Crucially for them all, London is a haven of ‘stability’: extradition treaties don’t touch the elites, and London’s occasional riots usually stay safely away from rich areas.

If we knew our power …

The old idea was that we could overthrow capitalism by uniting as workers and taking over production. But London doesn’t produce anything: the only work left is in the ‘service’ sector, serving the rich. If we want to destroy the system that is killing us, and replace it with sustainable and worthwhile ways of living, we need to identify where our power lies today. Cities like London are key hubs in the circulation of finance and information that keeps the global system going. To function they need stability and security. They rely on us to keep tame and compliant. Time to wake up.

 https://network23.org/stopg8/j11-carnival-against-capitalism/j11-map-of-the-capitalist-west-end/

I come from the background of having taken part in various protests and actions over the last decade or more, including the 2000 MayDay, 2001 Mayday, various other MayDays and countless others, the G20 and some European protests as well. I am an experienced activist, a seasoned protestor, if you will, and so my comments come not to blame or accuse, but merely to add to this discussion as a comrade to most, if not all of you.

I saw the first flyers and posters for StopG8 sometime last year and immediately thought two things, 1) isn’t that picture from another slightly different campaign? And 2) isn’t StopG8 a rather unimaginative title for a group that would never be able to stop the g8?

Putting those two not very important - but today seemingly a bit relevant – questions aside, I noted the dates and decided I was gonna take the day off work and travel to London, preferably with some sort of paint bomb/smoke bomb resource, which I believed would add to whatever other comrades were planning on doing/bringing, etc. The usual thought processes then followed:

Should I take paint bombs? Will I get nicked before I get chance to use them? Will I be scared to walk around with them in case I get stopped and searched? Will others be using other stuff to attack targets? Will I be out of place? Will I be able to blend in to a sizeable blac bloc? Will there even be a blac bloc? Will there even be a protest?

Anyway.

Months went by and I spoke to one or two other ‘activists’ and they expressed concern that it would be a waste of time as the movement in this country is on its knees, although we did agree, the anarchic-feminists (men and women) have done loads of positive work and campaigning in recent years, probably more than any other ‘part’ of the movement.
However, in terms of mobilizing against G8, we are maybe a thousand at the most, with the potential to pull in thousands of student/tourist/London folk/hippy-radicals/Left-leaning liberals into a wider protest which could lead to the advantageous situation of ‘the chance to kick off’. Please don’t be quick to dismiss ‘chances to kick off’ as it’s pretty much what half if not most of our European brothers and sisters turned up to do.

So more time went by and I still stuck to my cap guns, thinking ‘fuck it, im gonna go down on my own if I have to’. My thinking was, I at least have to turn up to oppose the G8, even if it means standing around in the rain with a couple of others, waving banners and being watched/searched/ followed by pigs.

First point being, ‘the advertising was fine’. I knew when it was, I knew when and where the meetings were, I could have gone if I wanted, but I never do as they are often infiltrated and my wanting to bring ‘stuff’ to the protest could be hampered by being bugged or photographed at meetings, which could have afforded cops the chance to pick me off as I drew close to the protest meeting points or Beak street convergence space.

No problems with the publicity then, is what im saying. Well done to those that made the effort, although the name StopG8 and the design of the flyer could have been reconsidered to bring freshness to the whole campaign. It’s my understanding that the design – of an activist facing down a digger - originated within the eco-anarchic scene (of Rossport)….if im not mistaken? (If I am mistaken, let me know).

Continuing:

Firstly, I decided to go on my own, as other activists seemed to still be shrugging and saying stuff like, ‘well the local zine im working on needs more volunteers in time for the meeting about..blah blah, such and such soup kitchen skip food my bike needs fixing, etc, etc.’
Fair enough, I thought. You have to do what is important for you and your community. Regionalist grassroots stuff seems to be where most of the UK activists put their energy, particularly as they appear to have been persuaded by clever – and not completely misleading – critiques of ‘summit hopping’ or the trend of going to big summit meetings and kicking off. Copenhagen Cop15 was probably the last one for the UK scene before we, as a movement, started to really let rip on ourselves about ‘summit hopping’.

Second point – The UK scene is tired, we all seem to know that and feel that. Lots of people have burnt out and have so many commitments that our energy isn’t the same as it was years ago like for the 2005 G8 (which received thousands in funding from gigs like the Shakedown, over 25 grand from the Nottingham gig alone, if im not mistaken. Whereas this years shakedown in Nottingham raised around 3 grand. Again, unless im mistaken.)


So, I decided against the smoke/paint bombs as I figured I would then have to wear blac bloc attire and thus make myself a target for stop and search even before arriving at the meeting point and being on my own was too much for my nerves to be walking through central London with a bag of stuff.

I opted for colourful clothing and a banner, completely ignoring my spikey tendencies and optioning for the fluffy approach. However, I hoped – as I always do – that a big enough blac bloc would turn up and trash the west end. As we know that didn’t happen…But I’ll get to that in a second.

Third point – UK scene is overtly cautious, especially when it comes to tooling up/blac blocking/direct action. A number of reasons for this, including cop-infiltration, (thanks to mark kennedy, et al), anti-terror laws, which are some of the tightest and draconian in the world – even the 2000 anti terror laws alone are enough to slow us down and hamper us, as a current story on IM timeline will show with people being stopped on their way to ireland.) So it seems, certainly to me anyway, that we in the UK are more likely to avoid the ‘criminal’ aspect of our determination to confront the powers that be, as the laws and the state of the media and its ‘hunt-a-terrorist’ headlines and attitude are constant reminders that we face hefty prison or other restrictions on our freedom and movements if we even smell like we are gonna break the law. SHAC/SMASH EDO activists have been at the sharpest end of those police and state tactics in recent years, as have the eco-comrades and the squatters.

Having said all of this, I still made my way to London on J11 as I hoped, like other people have mentioned, that the sun would come out and thousands of like minded rebels and what-have-you’s would turn up and a merry day would be had by all, including the fluffies, the coloufuls, the blac bloc and whoever else turned up. We’d win and the papers would spend days and days after ripping into us whilst their coverage afforded us the propaganda we so often desire around these big events, in order we may enlighten the ‘public’ and/or attract like minded people to the cause. It is propaganda, after all, that gets most of us involved in the first place.

Fourth point – the scene is always hopeful, if a little too hopeful. The days are long gone when the sound systems were towed in the back of a (rented) truck, and the money came in to afford glorious banners and costumes and an array of carnival style puppets and other odds and ends. When the road-protestor/hippy-new-age travelers movement moved away from the protest scene (around 9/11 and after), to concentrate on getting themselves to Goa/Ibiza/other parts of Spain/Portugal/Bulgaria in trucks and buses or into ‘proper jobs’ (and this only needed to be a few hundred people to make a difference), the protest scene in the UK took a big blow to its numbers and so ‘new recruits’, mostly students and post-grads, including keen anarchists, took up the reigns to fill the gap. This happened at the time when the laws were coming into their own and the mark kennedy’s of the world were in place to fuck stuff up and help the state to infiltrate the movement in a way that further helped to damage us when he was outed and others in his unit were too.

So along comes J11.

The European anarchists and activists have made strong links with UK based protestors, particularly through No Borders/Calais-style immigration related campaigning and anti-prisons, pro-squatting scenes as well as touring punk bands from across the continent. Therefore when they turn up here, they are expecting us to lead the way to the riot. But, as I have pointed out, the scene here is in no way as vibrant as in say, Italy, Greece, Spain or Germany and Holland. The reasons for this I have touched on above.

The day itself:

I was impressed with younger members of the protest, especially the young Turkish lads that linked up with the body of the group outside charring cross pig station which then went to Trafalgar square and hooked up with Turkish protestors there. Whether we agree or don’t agree on certain protests in other countries, it is still good to see young people hooking up in this way, particularly as one of the most heard slogans was ‘no justice, no peace…fuck the police’.

Interesting to note quite a few of the older UK/European anarchos were mostly missing from these later developments. That in itself is interesting.

Earlier in the day, the way we kept the cops on their toes was as good as could be expected given the Beak St raid put people and resources out of action. Some of the arrests and searches put people and resources on the bench, so we made do on the day and we all saw what happened: we ran around when we had to, met up when we could, and reclaimed whatever space we could for whatever purposes we decided. For me, marching to the cop shop was a highlight and if I was an arrestee I would have been super stoked to know hundreds of peeps were blocking the road outside the cop shop to show solidarity. Whether or not any of our arrested friends were actually in the cop shop at the time is irrelevant. It’s the thought that counts and the propaganda that matters. At one point I did jokingly encourage some of the younger masked up crowd to ‘do whatever you want’ in the hope they would take the hint. Alas, I think they were simply happy to wander the streets chanting. (Not disimilar to the SWP, but with masks on). However, it wasn’t for me to tell people what they should be doing, even if I thought it would have been amazing to see some more direct action, and I wouldn’t want any of the younger crowd to think I was a ‘provocateur’. So I held my tongue.

Ok, so I’ve gone on a bit and maybe gone off on a few tangents. But my over arching point is this: We do what we can, go where we can and get on with it as much as we can and we’re not perfect.

After all, we are only human.

Thanks for the comments here, and I think some of them have identified a fundamental issue and problem with the G8 mobilisation and the activist scene that organised it that really makes organising and moving forward in a prodcutive way very, very difficult.

People keep saying that the UK scene is 'on it's knees' and is totally broken and weak, and I personally think that's completely wrong. I think as never before there are people being fucked over by austerity imposed by the State and needed by capitalism. Anti-capitalist ideas (even if not expressed explicity as such) are common currency, and anger and disillusionment rife.

The anti-capitalist movement (or the movement against capitalism maybe...) is only fucked and weak if you think it's comprised of a load of young activists who consider themselves radicals and summit and campaign hop about the UK and Europe. That's activism, sometimes with revolutionary or radical potential, but often more just a issue based campaign.

The G8 was a chance to draw those people not involved in activism into something to give expression to their anger, but all it did was look inwards and try to just draw the few thousand people who consider themselves radicals already (and it didn't even do that very well).

It was telling to me that people got all excited about some Greeks coming, when really just drawing a loads of people like us from over Europe is a sign of weakness, not strength. And seperating off the days into individual actions is another error and sign of weakness.

A revolutionary movement is not just a collection of campaigns or issues, and anything that just has that as it's building block is doomed to fail.

As someone who was involved in the 99 J18 'carnival against capital' and reading the many thoughtful critiques above I think it would be useful for future mobilisations and just on an everyday level to gather up these (and other) thoughts/observations and print them up as a booklet like we used to. It would be seriously shit to let this valuable stuff just drift to the bottom of the Indymedia site and into the void. I'd do it myself but lack the resources at the moment and did'nt get to any of the events for various reasons. I did at least get some flyering done round my area. Anyhow thanks to all for doing the do.

Thanks Ian Vypotp and others for taking the time to write down those really useful reflections. Agree with pretty much everything you said. (Just one little thing, the poster was originally made for stopg8 then copied by rossport for their post-g8 week.)

The reality is we really are on our knees in this country at the moment. Yes we're facing massive class attack with austerity etc., and seeing virtually no resistance to it. It's certainly not just a problem with StopG8. Or even just with big street mobilisations. It's not like everyone has stopped doing big demos and actions so they can get stuck into organising local grassroots resistance. There is hardly any local grassroots organising either, probably much less than there was when the big counter-summit spectacle stuff was at its height. It seems like we (which you can read as you want, but the problem goes much wider than just anarchists) have across the board lost the numbers, the energy, the commitment, the will to fight. Yes, we are on our knees.

Personally I retain some optimism remembering that things can change, rise up, move in new directions, when you least expect it. No one expected Millbank, just like no one expected Tahrir square. Shit does and will happen. What can anarchists be doing, in our tiny numbers, to prepare for it, to spark it when we can, and try and spread our ideas more widely? We are very small, but small groups of committed people can have big effects.

Oh and also it was great seeing the shutters down on the Ritz all week, the security guards and cop vans stationed outside targets all week, the hedge fund panic emails, etc. Maybe we're just the mosquito in the room of capital right now, but that's much better than lettting them sleep in peace.

for clarification on the poster design. my mistake.

also, would be a good idea to see these ideas printed off and circulated.
would make a handy e-book.......

also, anything i said was not intended to take any thing away from all the positive work that is done every where by lots of people, always facing the struggle with devotion and often lacking in resources and wider support.

personally, i say we target bilderberg next year,

Don't mention Bilberberg as having anything to do with our politics, what a crock of shit that is and what a bunch of fucktards it attracts.