Reclaim The Streets, London May 1st 2000

An interesting and depressing wee chapter of history. The police response - massively redundant numbers of officers, vans and horses, the decision to leave McDonald's unguarded when people were obviously going to want to smash it, the trapping of thousands of people without food, water or explanation for hours on end - all seemed completely insane from the point of view of maintaining public order and at best dubious from a human rights perspective.

On the other hand, from the point of view of making the protestors look bad and putting people off turning up for future demos, the response was pure, ruthless genius.

Here is a song I wrote about the day. A more journalistic sort of account, with photos, can be found at http://fergusmurray.members.beeb.net/may2000.htm/

The Ballad of May Day 2000

On the first of May Two Thousand
We Reclaimed Parliament Square,
Planted blooms and used our trowels and
Redeveloped Churchill's hair.

Then some guys smashed McDonald's
And the little shop next door
And the police in their riot gear
Decided this meant war

So they drove us out of Whitehall
Trapped us in Trafalgar Square
As if our society might fall
If they didn't keep us there.

So we sat round Nelson's Column
Smoking spliffs and drinking beer
While police stood looking solemn,
Immune to all the cheer.

Their line got slowly nearer
As we chilled out in the sun
And they made it ever-clearer
They didn't want us having fun.

They blocked off all the corners
So we had nowhere to pee
And they tried hard to ignore us
When we asked why we weren't free.

Then they drove off the ice-cream vans
So we had nothing to drink
Except whatever beer cans
We had - clever, don't you think?

Then they drove us from the platform
So we had nowhere to sit
What did they do that for?
Just to piss us off a bit.

So we stood around for hours,
Wondering when they'd set us free
While policemen gave us glowers
Let us out in twos and threes.

When I finally left the Square
I was longing for my home
For the food and toilets there
And a bath-tub of my own.

But it wasn't yet to be
They had closed off all the stations
No bath-tub, then, for me
And no food or relaxation.

So I crossed the nearest bridge
Passed a drunkard smashing cars
He was causing lots of breakage
But he can't have got too far

The police were waiting for us
When I reached the other side
For three more hours they would bore us
As the air grew cold outside.

They marched us through the dark streets
At a slow and halting pace
Still no drink and no thing to eat
Shuffling from place to place.

Eventually we reached a stop
In Kennington somewhere
Opposite a grocer's shop
No food for us from there.

Then we sat there for an hour
With policemen all around:
In some strange game of power
We got lost and we were found.

The tragedy of Mayday:
Propaganda victory
For the hypocrites who say they
Are defenders of the free.
 

In the 2002 year, Reclaim the Streets was well publicized. Every major news outlet was broadcasting the point of the riots, and discussions even took place on the merits of the protestors' views.

If you get nutcases like that at an event, people who think that destroying private property - a morally and legally repellent act - is alright, then of course the police want to be there.

It's all too easy after-the-fact to say "Those fucking fascist pigs were provoking us, we had no choice but to attack them!", but that's just logical bullshit. If you get the sort of people at these events who are going to harm property, and who see officers of the law as a "tool of oppression", then things are going to get broken. People might even be killed. The police presence helps minimise this.

As for "human rights abuses" - I'm sorry, but if you go around smashing property and rioting, you lose the right to total comfort for a few hours.

Why should the taxpayer pay for food and water to be provided to these fringe elements of society, whose stated goal is to bring down that society?

This is not an abuse of your right to free speech.

This is not an abuse of your right to assemble peacefully.

This is a protection to stop you abusing the rights of other citizens. And I'm sorry, but whatever you think, you're not speaking the consensus, and most people do not agree with you. And they don't need you telling them they're wrong

Why won't it wash if everyone's being indoctrinated into thinking it by the lack of coverage before? Surely if the media have to change their coverage to show the protestors' point of view because people realise it may be valid, then you have nothing to complain about.

You'd have preferred them to be understrength, so some of them got injured or killed as they were overwhelmed by protestors? You've yet to explain what the problem of a large police force at the event is, and the benefits are so incredibly plain I don't think I have to state them.

The police are there to intimidate potential trouble-makers and deal with trouble when it starts. It started. They sorted it.

Or is that what you meant by them 'sorting' the trouble?

What do you want the police to do, go around asking everyone "Excuse me sir, are you here to smash some shit today?" and then seperating them into two groups? The only way to sort it out is to herd everyone into one place and wait for it to calm down.

If you go to this sort of event, were smashing is going to be taking place, you lose the right to whine about things like this afterwards. You weren't beaten, you weren't tied up, you were kept in one place for a short amount of time. Sure, it's good political capital for you to moan about, but it's barely a "human rights abuse".

Who else is going to pay if not the taxpayer? As for the ice cream van, that was hardly going to provide food for you all, was it? As for water hardly being an expensive resource... it still has a cost, as does the logistics of getting it in there.

You were assembling with violent people. These violent people had to be stopped. The police could not differentiate easily between peaceful demonstrators and ones who might soon commit violent acts, therefore their only choice was to detain everyone. I'm sorry, but whatever your intentions, you were not part of a "peaceful assembly", you were part of a violent one. This was not your fault, but the measures taken by the police were entirely correct. It's not like they attacked you, or took you in and charged you with anything.

What would you like it to do? If you and your people want to set up a political party, you can do it. Someone else would have done it by now. The truth is that it hasn't been done because there isn't enough support for it. They may as well set up an Objectivist party - there are just aren't enough people who agree with these "anti-capitalist" demonstrators.

In any case, it is not really as if we have a shortage of truly anti-capitalist political parties - the Green Party, the Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Labour Party, the Socialist Workers Party, even the Scottish National Party all more or less agree with the aims of these demonstrations. That they don't meet with greater electoral success has as much to do with the failure of British 'democracy' to represent public opinion as it has to do with public opinion itself.

It's ironic that you expect the media - that symbol of capitalism - to raise awareness and support of your cause, when you could do it yourself. Start offering people alternatives and options and maybe you'll get somewhere.

If these protests aren't working, stop moaning and do something else. A published good, factual summary of your aims and goals does a lot more than a bunch of people carry placards ever will.

In the year 2002 , Reclaim the Streets was well publicized. Every major news outlet was broadcasting the point of the riots, and discussions even took place on the merits of the protestors' views.

This "conspiracy theory" type look at the event is absurd. Of course there are thousands of officers at the event - there was a protestor on camera before the event this year saying -

"Obviously we don't endorse the harming of people, but if property gets smashed, where's the harm in that?"

If you get nutcases like that at an event, people who think that destroying private property - a morally and legally repellent act - is alright, then of course the police want to be there. It's all too easy after-the-fact to say "Those fucking fascist pigs were provoking us, we had no choice but to attack them!", but that's just logical bullshit. If you get the sort of people at these events who are going to harm property, and who see officers of the law as a "tool of oppression", then things are going to get broken. People might even be killed. The police presence helps minimise this.

As for "human rights abuses" - I'm sorry, but if you go around smashing property and rioting, you lose the right to total comfort for a few hours. Why should the taxpayer pay for food and water to be provided to these fringe elements of society, whose stated goal is to bring down that society?

This is not an abuse of your right to free speech.

This is not an abuse of your right to assemble peacefully.

This is a protection to stop you abusing the rights of other citizens. And I'm sorry, but whatever you think, you're not speaking the consensus, and most people do not agree with you. And they don't need you telling them they're wrong.

Presumably, the media actually bothered to report the protestors' side of things this time round because they realised the portrayal of the demonstrators as mindless thugs bent on the destruction of our nation didn't wash with a lot of their audience.

Why won't it wash if everyone's being indoctrinated into thinking it by the lack of coverage before? Surely if the media have to change their coverage to show the protestors' point of view because people realise it may be valid, then you have nothing to complain about.

Well, there's accepting that they should be there, and then there's accepting that it was a good idea, and proportional, to have more police at the event than at any other in recent British history. I, for one, do not stretch to the second.

Why not? They had as many there as they felt they needed. You'd have preferred them to be understrength, so some of them got injured or killed as they were overwhelmed by protestors? You've yet to explain what the problem of a large police force at the event is, and the benefits are so incredibly plain I don't think I have to state them.

That depends very much on what the police do, my friend.

The police are there to intimidate potential trouble-makers and deal with trouble when it starts. It started. They sorted it.

Did you mean to write you and all those who happen to be standing anywhere near you [ when smashing of property takes place], or is this just a red herring?

What do you want the police to do, go around asking everyone "Excuse me sir, are you here to smash some shit today?" and then seperating them into two groups? The only way to sort it out is to herd everyone into one place and wait for it to calm down. If you go to this sort of event, were smashing is going to be taking place, you lose the right to whine about things like this afterwards. You weren't beaten, you weren't tied up, you were kept in one place for a short amount of time. Sure, it's good political capital for you to moan about, but it's barely a "human rights abuse".

Who's asking the taxpayer to pay [ for food and water for the protestors]? They didn't have to drive off that ice cream van; and water is hardly an expensive resource.

Who else is going to pay if not the taxpayer? As for the ice cream van, that was hardly going to provide food for you all, was it? As for water hardly being an expensive resource... it still has a cost, as does the logistics of getting it in there.

'Fringe elements of society'? Does the fact that they got up to protest at an event which was also attended by shop-smashing drunkards mean it is right to deprive them of basic human needs without explanation for hours on end?

In the context of the "abuses" you're complaining about, yes it does. It was the only way to defuse the situation - you knew something like this could happen when you went, and the police really had few other options.

Uh... you'll have to go over that one again. I assembled peacefully, which directly resulted in my being detained without charge, without my basic human needs seen to, without any word of explanation despite some persistence. And my right to assemble peacefully was not infringed by any of this?

You were assembling with violent people. These violent people had to be stopped. The police could not differentiate easily between peaceful demonstrators and ones who might soon commit violent acts, therefore their only choice was to detain everyone. I'm sorry, but whatever your intentions, you were not part of a "peaceful assembly", you were part of a violent one. This was not your fault, but the measures taken by the police were entirely correct. It's not like they attacked you, or took you in and charged you with anything.

There is no consensus. But many, many people are deeply unhappy with the way Britain and the world at large are going, and our country's political machinery does shamefully little to represent our voices.

What would you like it to do? If you and your people want to set up a political party, you can do it. Someone else would have done it by now. The truth is that it hasn't been done because there isn't enough support for it. They may as well set up an Objectivist party - there are just aren't enough people who agree with these "anti-capitalist" demonstrators. It's ironic that you expect the media - that symbol of capitalism - to raise awareness and support of your cause, when you could do it yourself. Start offering people alternatives and options and maybe you'll get somewhere.

If these protests aren't working, stop moaning and do something else. A published good, factual summary of your aims and goals does a lot more than a bunch of people carry placards ever will.