Police repression can't stop Global Justice Movement
by Ernie Tate
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."
Louis Proyect
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