(no subject)
I was up in London the other day, for a completely unrelated business (checking out the Photographers Gallery's new site off Oxford Street), but I found myself gravitating towards the City protest. London is a strange place on a day like that - there's the slightly uncomfortable sense that something important/big is happening, given off not so much by the Evening Standard sellers announcing 'Anarchists Fight over City,' but by smaller things like Oxford Street being a little less frantic than usual, the central line a little emptier, and a general subconscious buzz. This was added to by the weather - it was probably the first properly sunny day of the year, and the t-shirts and sunglasses were out in force amongst more than just the usual cold-resistant hipsters.
Having drifted all the way up to the police line outside the Bank protest (drawn somewhat by the sense of occasion, but more by the desire to see whether Billy Bragg was going to be performing an impromptu set or two), I stood there for a good 20 minutes, somewhat hypnotised by the amount of police about (more than I've ever seen in one place), and the crowd atmosphere. Then after the 20 mins of standing, the police suddenly stepped aside to let people through, and I followed on a whim. Once inside the thing that struck me most about the protest was how disorganised it was. I've seen a couple of protests in my time, from the fringes, and they seem to work best when there's a central presence coordinating the throng, drumming up enthusiasm and giving voice to their message.
And perhaps that was the problem with the protest - there was no clarity of message, no single statement the crowd was trying to put across. There were banners everywhere, all of them angry, but at a range of targets and subjects - the bankers for screwing up the economy, the world's governments for ignoring climate change, the labour government for doing both, for interfering too much with the economy, for not interfering enough, for Iraq...There were knots of Socialists, some 'professional protesters' who conformed to every stereotype Middle England has ever held about liberal activists, people who had just turned out to dance in the sun to some pounding drum and bass, and plenty of journalists and amateurs holding aloft cameras (I even saw a Super-8 at one point).
Sometimes it seems to me that in the current age of mass-media, where there are so many potentially opinion-forming influences out there, any sense of a single common communal experience and approach has dwindled somewhat. I see this particularly as a music fan (in what is primarily a music blog), where today it's so easy to find new pockets of talent in whatever genre you most approve of, but the flipside of that is you're cutoff from other people. It's the same with television, to a lesser extent. And so I can rather poorly apply this analogy to my political experience on Wednesday, and extrapolate from that without factual evidence in my support that thepolitical landscape of the country is more fragmented than it's ever been.
As for the reported violence...well, once inside the blockade, after having wandered around for alittle while I decided I'd seen enough for one day, and went to stand next to one of the 6 or 7 police line, waiting to be let out in a similar fashion to which I'd been let in. No such luck - after about an hour, the news about a few idiots deciding to break the windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland reached me, and I knew I was trapped (in a tactic which I later found is known as 'kettling'). So of course I took the only sensible option, and found a nice sunny spot to sit and read in. I didn't personally witness any real violence, although I did at one point witness a charge of protestors rushing towards the police barrier at Prince's Street, accompanied by various hurled missiles. This had the main effect of pissing off both the police, and the peaceful protestors who were standing there, waiting to be let out and listening to Billy Bragg (he got half-way through a modified cover of One Love before the charge forced him to stop). The police I came into contact with (not physically) ranged between the gruff and the friendly, but all seemed professional, even though those kitted in riot gear and mounted on horses were (effectively) intimidating.
And so my overall experience of the protest was not of engaging political activism or of wanton police brutality, but of boredom. At 3.30, I realised that police had pulled back rapidly along one of the streets, leaving the way clear for people to leave. I made my escape, wondering at the streets filled with people rather than cars, and the constant glare of neon visibility jackets, and headed for the refuge of Rough Trade East, and meatball sandwiches.
Having drifted all the way up to the police line outside the Bank protest (drawn somewhat by the sense of occasion, but more by the desire to see whether Billy Bragg was going to be performing an impromptu set or two), I stood there for a good 20 minutes, somewhat hypnotised by the amount of police about (more than I've ever seen in one place), and the crowd atmosphere. Then after the 20 mins of standing, the police suddenly stepped aside to let people through, and I followed on a whim. Once inside the thing that struck me most about the protest was how disorganised it was. I've seen a couple of protests in my time, from the fringes, and they seem to work best when there's a central presence coordinating the throng, drumming up enthusiasm and giving voice to their message.
And perhaps that was the problem with the protest - there was no clarity of message, no single statement the crowd was trying to put across. There were banners everywhere, all of them angry, but at a range of targets and subjects - the bankers for screwing up the economy, the world's governments for ignoring climate change, the labour government for doing both, for interfering too much with the economy, for not interfering enough, for Iraq...There were knots of Socialists, some 'professional protesters' who conformed to every stereotype Middle England has ever held about liberal activists, people who had just turned out to dance in the sun to some pounding drum and bass, and plenty of journalists and amateurs holding aloft cameras (I even saw a Super-8 at one point).
Sometimes it seems to me that in the current age of mass-media, where there are so many potentially opinion-forming influences out there, any sense of a single common communal experience and approach has dwindled somewhat. I see this particularly as a music fan (in what is primarily a music blog), where today it's so easy to find new pockets of talent in whatever genre you most approve of, but the flipside of that is you're cutoff from other people. It's the same with television, to a lesser extent. And so I can rather poorly apply this analogy to my political experience on Wednesday, and extrapolate from that without factual evidence in my support that thepolitical landscape of the country is more fragmented than it's ever been.
As for the reported violence...well, once inside the blockade, after having wandered around for alittle while I decided I'd seen enough for one day, and went to stand next to one of the 6 or 7 police line, waiting to be let out in a similar fashion to which I'd been let in. No such luck - after about an hour, the news about a few idiots deciding to break the windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland reached me, and I knew I was trapped (in a tactic which I later found is known as 'kettling'). So of course I took the only sensible option, and found a nice sunny spot to sit and read in. I didn't personally witness any real violence, although I did at one point witness a charge of protestors rushing towards the police barrier at Prince's Street, accompanied by various hurled missiles. This had the main effect of pissing off both the police, and the peaceful protestors who were standing there, waiting to be let out and listening to Billy Bragg (he got half-way through a modified cover of One Love before the charge forced him to stop). The police I came into contact with (not physically) ranged between the gruff and the friendly, but all seemed professional, even though those kitted in riot gear and mounted on horses were (effectively) intimidating.
And so my overall experience of the protest was not of engaging political activism or of wanton police brutality, but of boredom. At 3.30, I realised that police had pulled back rapidly along one of the streets, leaving the way clear for people to leave. I made my escape, wondering at the streets filled with people rather than cars, and the constant glare of neon visibility jackets, and headed for the refuge of Rough Trade East, and meatball sandwiches.