Fiery scenes from Trafalgar Square Thursday evening of Bush visit

kriptick | 20.11.2003 23:33 | Bush 2003 | Anti-militarism | London

Lots of bonfires started to be lit in Trafalgar Square as the main protest was ending - at least 8 of them when I left so these pictures have a distinctly fiery feel to them.

Video The movie... (modem friendly MPEG1) - video/mpeg 266K

Just like any camp fire from the road protest days.

Burn everything...

Distress flairs...

British passports! YES!

Wots this then?

Now they're burning tanks on the streets of London. Fucking hell!

It's really going now...

The T shirt...

The end

kriptick

Comments

Hide the following 11 comments

Why the fxxx did they burn the love tank?

20.11.2003 23:46

That pink love tank took several weeks of work by that woman who designed it. What sort of stupid, vandalistic, idiots, in a moment of Bush-stylee hysteria put a match to it and destroyed it in a matter of minutes

It was a wonderful turning inside out of the death cult icon of the Tank (which is itself a kind of Dark-side appropriation of the womb).

Respect to the woman who made it.

Idioten

NOT the luv tank!

21.11.2003 00:08

Hold on, hold on. It wasn't the large pink love tank. Just a small one that couldn't contain anyone and with a cute skywards pointing barrel - more like an armoured car I suppose if you're into military details.

kriptick

glad

21.11.2003 02:06

I'm so glad it wasn't the love tank!!
Thanks for hating our pResident!
Lots of us hate him too!

amiko

let them have their little fire.....

21.11.2003 02:37

on 15 February millions marched here and across the world against the war... can anyone explain why then in hyde park and today playing with matches helps beyond your own ego....not sure their to impressed in Palestine...but would you care....

calgacus

no burning barricades, just campfires

21.11.2003 03:15

I was in Trafalgar Square when the fires were on. It was lovely. Like one of the more quiet evenings at the end of a festival. People used the now obsolete placards to keep the fires going, it was all very contained, peaceful, circles gathered around the fires, some groups, some strangers. Many kids, maybe dangerous looking to the uninitiated - dreads, punky clothes, studs, piercings. Some dogs, some drums, a tiny weeny soundsystem. No vandalism, no intention to destroy anything, just an occasion to chill. No traffic. The beauty of spontaneous, self-organised relaxation.

London has hardly any pedestrian zones, and the parks close at dark. You can hardly find a quiet place to hang out for free in London at night. I admire the ability of Londoners to use every occasion to subvert the logics of privatisation, profitmaking, consumerism. A warehouse is empty - artists move in for a few days and create magic spaces. Demos turn into parties, even in the pooring rain. A protest against the world war-monger number 1 becomes a massive carnival, full of creativity, colours, humour, pleasure. Life-and-death issues, like the hungerstrike of the 5 Thessaloniki prisoners, are supported by benefit-gig parties, people dancing their heads off. The limbo in Trafalgar square after the stop bush demo, when the masses had left and the cars not yet returned, morphed into a temporary autonomous zone.

Tonights fires were not burning barricades - this might be left for another occasion.

jab

I suppose

21.11.2003 04:19

I suppose by the look of many of the pics coming out of the UK there would've been lots of socialist worker placards to fuel the fire

Oh yeah wicked shit! and solidarity from those of us here at Aotearoa IMC

YudA
Homepage: http://www.enzyme.org.nz/anarchy

Idioten - well named

21.11.2003 15:44

Piss off, you don't know what you're talking about, as has been pointed out above. And more I cannot say on the matter.

XIV Panzer Armee

Hilarious

21.11.2003 23:08

The tank was made by a group of people from manchester uni, one of whom was kate kirkpatrick, the women's officer at the union. It was made with the intent to be burned, yes it took a while to make but the whole point was to burn it afterwards, what were they supposed to do with it, drag it all the way back to manchester and keep it in a back yard somewhere? Put it to good use and made a point!

mythic north

Global Wamring

24.11.2003 09:19

Isn't this the ultimate irony. Protestors against America, who often cite Kyoto as one of their grievances, sit down and burn piles of rubbish releasing carbon dioxide. Shouldn't they have recycled the material and made the Love Tank into a compost pile?

George

Global warming response to George

26.11.2003 17:21

There's nothing wrong with burning paper and wood as these are bio-fuels. What this means is that they've been created in recent times by trees which have extracted CO2 from the air so by burning them all you're doing is completing the CO2 cycle. Burning fossil fuels like oil and coal is completely different as this releases CO2 that has been locked away safely for millions of years from a time when the earth's temperature was much hotter.

Now stop using your car before making ignorant criticisms.

R Sonist

AND WHY NOT BURN A FEW S.W.P. PLACARDS

19.01.2004 21:54

It's well known that the usual suspects (S.W.Pers)jump on every band wagon so they can sell that rag mag of theirs, at the end of the previous demo while making our way home, we spotted around 30 parcels of their rag dumped outside Warren Street tube station which we gathered up and took to our very large squat to use for keeping the place well heated, thanks for that all you trot twats.
Trafalgar Square was a great site, when the S.W.P. couldn't sell anymore of their trot rubbish they took off, well done to all those that kept the fires burning with a bundle of shitty placards.

Firestarter...