From: "Macdonald Stainsby" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 5 May 2001 16:44:11 -0700
To: "Rad Green" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [R-G] Repression won't stop this movement
Police repression can't stop Global Justice Movement
Ten thousand police were mobilised May 1 in London, against the 'threat'
posed by 5000 anti-capitalist demonstrators. This grotesque overkill was
accompanied by a weeks-long barrage of press hysteria, warning of 'anarchy'
and mayhem. Prime minister Tony Blair condemned the planned demonstrations
as representing 'spurious cause' and warned that demonstrators would be
dealt with. Former Labour left winger Ken Livingston, now mayor of London,
chimed in with strident support for the police.
Huge numbers of police were used in London's Oxford Street to entrap large
crowds of demonstrators, and keep them penned in for up to seven and a half
hours - together with bemused Japanese, Chinese and other tourists. Oxford
Street had been chosen by demonstrators because of the presence of GAP and
other shops which use cheap third world labour.
The police operation cost �1.2m, including �20,000 for breakfasts which for
some reason the cops couldn't have at home.
Before the demonstrations, there were heavy hints that plastic bullets and
tear gars would be used, and a warning from senior police officers that all
demonstrators could be arrested and their photos and details taken.
As it turned out, the clashes were small-scale, and mainly caused as some
demonstrators tried to break out of the police pen. The trouble was on a
much smaller scale than the rather tame riot which occurred on May Day 2000,
which itself mainly revolved around the trashing of a small branch of
McDonald's. Both events were small beer compared with the 1990 poll tax
riots.
So why the huge police mobilisation? Why the hysteria in the popular press?
In fact, the political and police offensive against the anti-capitalist
movement on May 1 was not an isolated incident. In February, the umbrella
organisation Globalise Resistance found that two successive venues for its
huge weekend conference were cancelled at short notice. Clearly 'someone'
had talked to college authorities and warned them off - finally the
conference was held at the town hall of Labour-controlled Hammersmith.
The events in Britain follow an international pattern, vividly demonstrated
by the police riot against anti-capitalist globalisation demonstrators in
Quebec City in April. This in turn followed the pattern established in
Seattle, and followed in Washington, Prague, Sydney, Nice and many other
major cities. The leaders of the major capitalist powers have declared a
'get tough' policy against the global justice movement. They are attempting
to isolate, demoralise and criminalise the movement - and to divide it on
the issue of 'violence'. They are in effect issuing a warning that daring to
demonstrate against global capitalism will carry a heavy penalty in terms of
repression. In the short term this policy has had some limited success in
Britain.
Leading global justice campaigners George Monbiot (author of 'Captive
State') and Naomi Klein ('No Logo') have contributed misguided articles to
the London Guardian, the former arguing that the movement has to deal with
its 'violent' element, and the latter calling for less attention to public
demonstrations and more involvement in the community from 'rootless' rebels.
Both arguments are way off the mark.
Neo-anarchist streetfighters are a tiny grouping in Britain, and nothing new
- they were much more in evidence during the poll tax riots ten years ago.
The conditions for confrontation are created by the heavy hand of thousands
of riot police.
And counterposing working in communities to public demonstrations shows a
rather limited knowledge of what anti-capitalist campaigners in Britain are
actually doing, not least in the huge election campaign being prepared by
the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party (but also in a
plethora of local campaigns against privatisation, racism etc).
Debate in the movement over tactics is perfectly normal, and in every
country campaigners will have to discuss out what methods lead to the
biggest and most politically influential mobilisations. But so long as the
capitalist leaders have decided on repression, street confrontations are
bound to occur.
Not even the whole of the capitalist press was taken in by the
police-government charade. Mirror political columnist Paul Routledge
attacked the police action as a threat to democracy. London's only evening
paper The Standard gave a page to its columnist Zoe Williams who was on the
demonstration to denounce the police methods. She said, "This is not just
about whether the police are stupid, or even about globalisation, this is
about whether the police should have the right to trap 5000 people for up to
seven and a half hours, for no better reason than they might break
something." And further "the police proved that in the event of revolution
they might possibly be able to quash it, provided only 5000 people turn up!"
On Ken Livingston, Zoe Williams pointed out that he strongly supported the
Seattle demonstrations, despite the (police) violence but "unfortunately his
firebrand principles only seem to apply to his own political advancement -
when it's his own back yard, he falls in line with the police like the
miserable little tick he is".
The Guardian asked the rhetorical question 'What did the demonstrators
achieve'? The answer of course is they raised the whole issue of capitalism,
with activists invited to the BBC's Newsnight to debate with MPs, the Daily
Mail rushing to publish an article 'In Praise of Capitalism' and acres of
publicity about the demonstration. Of course the media was overwhelmingly
hostile, but huge sections of the population are cynical about what the
press tells them. If the demonstrations had been completely peaceful, that
wouldn't have reduced the hostility one little bit. Media hostility won't
stop this movement ; global justice campaigners can't avoid a bad press
unless they stay at home and keep their mouths shut.
The truth is that the offensive against the global justice movement follows
a pattern of vilification and repression which has existed for centuries,
one which any major movement for social justice will eventually face. The
mammoth October 1968 anti-Vietnam war London demonstration was preceded by
months of press hysteria, and 9000 cops on the day. The British ruling class
are past masters of this technique, and have added the awesome power of the
modern media to the repressive armoury used against radicals since the
anti-trade union Combination Acts.
However, repression and propaganda barrages can only have a limited effect.
An opinion poll this week found that a large majority of British people
think transnational corporations are only interested in profit, not the
needs of people. When Tony Blair appeared with Nelson Mandela at the South
Africa Day Concert on April 29, he was booed by the whole crowd.
The leaders of world capitalism, in governments, corporations and
institutions like the WTO, World Bank and IMF, are scared of the Global
Justice movement. Campaigners used to decades of neoliberal domination and
triumphalism sometimes find this hard to accept. But the reason for it is
obvious. For the first time in the post-war world a global mass movement has
emerged which sees its enemy being the system itself. This the delayed
pay-off from the collapse of Stalinism, and the West's victory in the cold
war. Socialists predicted in the early 1990s that the battlefield would be
cleared, the issues simplified, and the cause of the world's major problems
- capitalism - more starkly posed. As ever with enthusiastic socialists, the
timescale was optimistic - but this time only slightly. From January 1 1994,
when the Zapatista rebels emerged from the Chiapas jungle to challenge the
poverty and misery of the indigenous people of Mexico, a growing challenge
to neo-liberalism, and then capitalism tout court, has been evident.
For the capitalist leaders - 'the lords of human kind' - a challenge to the
system itself is obviously an explosive issue. The more clear-sighted of
them can see the danger, prefigured at times at mass union mobilisations in
global justice demos in Seattle, Melbourne and Nice, that the
anti-capitalist movement can link up with the workers movement, greatly
strengthening the already growing revival the international left - which
capitalist ideologues hoped was dead and buried.
In consequence a new pattern of repression is emerging. The astoundingly
repressive new Terrorism Act in the UK is in effect a new 'subversion' law,
potentially criminalising any form of political activity in opposition to
the status quo. Similar legislation is being prepared in several European
countries. Since the attempts to disrupt the 1996 Amsterdam demonstration -
by for example stopping demonstrators from Italian Communist Refoundation
continuing their train journey through Germany - police forces in Europe
have been closely co-ordinating their actions against the global justice
movement.
The fundamental answer to this repression lies not in knowing how to rebuff
police aggression and defend demonstrators, necessary though that is. The
answer lies in building the movement and promoting its alliance with the
workers movement. Therein lies the indispensable role of socialists and
socialist organisation, and why for example Socialist Alliance activists in
Britain see election work not as counterposed to the global justice
movement, but opening another front for it.
Building unity with the working class movement necessarily involves a debate
about overall objectives. This was hilariously demonstrated by the May 1
self-parodying London banner, origin unknown, which declared: 'Abolish
capitalism and replace it with something nicer!' More seriously, George
Monbiot has begun to argue that the solution may be in capping the size of
corporations, not abolishing them outright. But as US activist Dan La Botz
has put it (in the magazine Against the Current):
"Ultimately the struggle over the control of capital raises the real
question: whether corporations, whatever they may have contributed to
economic development, should even be allowed to exist at this stage of
history. Do private banks and companies have the right to invest money or
decide to open, close or move a factory, when those decisions can destroy
the environment, throw thousands of workers out of their jobs, bankrupt a
community, or even take control of the government of a foreign nation?
Historically the idea of the democratic collective ownership and control of
the economy by the people has a name: democratic socialism."
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