Wisconsin comes to London

My amusement has centred on UK Uncut going after Fortnum’s. For it’s owned by Wittington Investments and the argument seems to be that another subsidiary of Wittington does something dodgy in Luxembourg. The details of what dodgy are so far most unclear.

The bit that seems to have got missed is that Wittington is actually 79.2% owned by the Garfield Weston Foundation, one of the largest charitable grant givers in the UK. £40 million a year or so.

So Fortnum’s profits flow up (as do the proceeds of whatever tax skullduggery other subsidiaries do) to a charity which then spends them all on the sort of health, education and arts stuff that everyone is complaining the money is being cut for.

I can’t help but think that this protest needed just a leetle more thought before it went ahead.

“The bit that seems to have got missed is that Wittington is actually 79.2% owned by the Garfield Weston Foundation, one of the largest charitable grant givers in the UK. £40 million a year or so.”

The fact that they evade taxes placed on them by a democratically elected government in order to then spend the money in ways dictated by private ideological concerns still makes it an issue.

and weren’t the Weston Foundation in the news for their large donations to the Tory Party and the Centre for Policy Studies which were possibly in breach of a number of guidelines?

Apparently the demonstrators in Fortnum & Mason did over £50,000 worth of damage – they knocked over a jar of olives.

A few words of clarification for our transatlantic friends:

1. The people staging a sit-in at F&M weren’t part of the Black Bloc. They were much more your ‘traditional’ street theatre orientated hippy-dippy types. (I mean, they interviewed one of the founders of UK Uncut on the news last night and his name -perhaps serendipitously – was Winstanley)
By all accounts they did no damage, not even to a jar of marmalade.

2. As I passed F&M about 4-4.30 on Saturday there was a crush as people stopped to look at what was going on (see pt 3 below). But on the other side of the street were a row of young men dressed completely in black with black bandannas round their faces, watching the riot police who were watching them. I was keen to shepherd the three 14 yr olds in my charge away from this incipient scene which had ‘kettle’ written all over it.

2. People had stopped to look at some young folk on the ledge above the ground floor who were prancing around without bandannas, scrawling stuff on the walls with chalk, waving red and black flags and generally acting up without offering any obvious violent threat. It was all a bit puerile but mildly diverting: I suspect most of us who passed the sight felt a modest sense of identification with them, tempered by a rueful, ” well, kids will be kids” feeling.

I disagree that most people on the March accepted there should be cuts, just slower ones as per the official Labour line. I would guess that the dominant feeling was more along the lines of ,” OK, we understand we’re in a hole but the time will come for talking about cutting public services if and when we’ve stopped the tax dodgers and made the bankers pay for what they did”.

Is this an less than totally comprehensive position? Yes, partly. But then as Paul Mason acutely describes it was a demo which called forth lots of people who perhaps aren’t that used to formulating political views – and it was all the more powerful for having done so.

“People had stopped to look at some young folk on the ledge above the ground floor who were prancing around without bandannas, scrawling stuff on the walls with chalk, waving red and black flags…”

Okay. So anarchists condemning Fortnum and Mason for evading taxes that the state has imposed on them. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Chaps, you need to disaggregate UKuncut, various kids in bandannas, the TUC, and the mass of the people on the demo. Only then does it make even a little bit of sense.

This “500 ‘anarchists’ overshadow 500k peaceful protesters” line is nonsense – it only makes sense if all the media outlets and political organisations repeating it add the phrase “We have decided that…” to the start of it.

Ob F&M gag: Protesters blockaded Fortnums by piling containers of food in the entrances. Police operations were said to be hampered.

CW is quite right at #12 about the need to disaggregate and that is what I was trying to do in #8. The folk dancing on the ledge of F&M weren’t part of the Black Bloc in my view, they were just a bit over exicited and then got nicked for their trouble.

& even the Black Bloc is hardly fearsome in Britain by international standards. I mean it was mainly paintball guns we’re talking about, plus a few smashed windows. I’m not condoning it , but I do recall routinely seeing worse at 1970s football matches…

Mike Otsuka 03.28.11 at 4:08 pm

” Okay. So anarchists condemning Fortnum and Mason for evading taxes that the state has imposed on them. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

It makes a whole lot of sense if you actually think about it.

I don’t think the “anarchists” deflected attention at all. I think the media in the UK, much like the media in the USA in similar circumstances, simply decided not to pay attention to the size of the demonstration, or its politics, and, having made those decisions, all that was left was to focus on the tiny minority of Black Bloc types. Same story in Seattle at the WTO protests in 1999, or for that matter at the US antiwar protests in 2003.

What makes you think UK Uncut people are anarchists, rather than socialists, or indeed pissed-off one nation Tories or real Liberals?

Back in the run up to the Iraq I participated in several mammoth demonstrations in San Francisco. The anarchists–around here we called ’em the street puppet people–were a tiny proportion of the enormous crowds. I don’t remember that the press focused on them disproportionately, at least in the local media; but they seemed to be engaging in a cultural ritual rather than trying to effect change or even alter public opinion and that made me a little mad. It was a social occasion for them, a chance to say hello to the old friends who had been turning out for these things since Vietnam without achieving anything—a next year in Jerusalem moment. I don’t know if the Wisconsin marches or what happened in the U.K. will amount to anything more, but I’m only interested in such manifestations if they can lead to actual political success.

And, er, is everyone aware that they have a website at ukuncut.org?

Having tried that one, I think ukuncut.org.uk is actually more like it.

Ob F&M gag: Protesters blockaded Fortnums by piling containers of food in the entrances. Police operations were said to be hampered.

Drôle.

Interesting that every marcher I saw interviewed (as opposed to holding SWP signs) agreed there needed to be some cuts

How wonderfully moderate and reasonable! Thank God the BBC didn’t give a platform to SWP-sign-waving maniacs like Paul Krugman.

As they have done on previous occasions, they started a fight and then took the ensuing melee as an excuse to kettle their victims. Why would they do this? You may as well ask why they would assault Jody Macintyre, put Alfie Meadows in hospital, punch a fifteen year old boy, and rough up teenage girls. It is because it is their job to contain threats to ‘public order’, and they see violence and intimidation against selected groups of identified ‘troublemakers’ and ‘ringleaders’ as the most effective means of doing so. History would suggest that they are not wrong. That’s one reason why the people who suffer from police violence and harrassment need to our solidarity. It’s also why it is vitally important not to fall into the knee-jerk, at best disproportionate, denunciations of ‘violence’ against property. Because in doing so, you corroborate the police’s narrative and alibi. You displace the proper focus on far more serious and potentially lethal violence inflicted by people who are armed and trained in its application – I don’t know how bad things got tonight, but they are going to kill someone one day if things continue in this direction. And you thus assist the weakening and intimidation of your movement. Earlier today, I was listening to a policeman complain to a member of the public that people confuse the police with the government, and forget they’re public sector workers. I thought, but did not say, that it’s easy to forget when the police spend all their time attacking the government’s opponents with big sticks.

“our friend CP’s comment on the role of the anarchist block in deflecting attention away from the political aspects of the demonstration and onto their own self-indulgence.”

Apparently risking arrest (in a country tyrannised by advanced crb checks) in order to highlight tax avoidance is not political and sheer self-indulgence. And there was me thinking that the UK tax gap was actually bigger than the interest payments on the national debt that is causing these very cutbacks.

My experience – and indeed my opinion of it – is very much like Tim’s. For 4yo and dog, read 5yo and 8yo. I too headed straight for the Park (after taking in the Dan Dare exhibition at the Science Museum in the morning – which Spufford had a hand in. Very cool, very scary – bits of Comet in front of a WE177, forex). Not much caviling from the missus, partly because she was working and partly because she has seen my kettle-avoiding fu in action and knows its power. I avoided the demo proper largely because I thought it would take three-four hours to walk it, and by that time my kids would have decided to become fascists.

So we saw a lot of people streaming into Hyde Park. Stepping high, but not a lot of chanting. I’d say that about a third of them looked like the classic lefty demographic: people who have been on demonstrations before. But the other two thirds were the kind of rank n file Unison, GMB, FBU, etc members who would definitely go on strike if one was called, but would be very unlikely to attend many or any union meetings. The next layer down, in other words: people who’ve, for example, never really been exposed to the ultraleft long enough to be irritated by them.

The march appeared ‘whiter’ than the UK as a whole, but not hugely so. It was probably about the same age, too, with quite a few of the 30-50somethings who usually tend to stay at home with the kids while the hotheaded kids and the pigheaded elders do the week-in, week-out boring stuff.

And there were Morris Dancers. Look for ‘Morris Liberation Front’ on Youtube, and gasp in wonder at their take on ‘Panic’ and ‘I Fought the Law’. The words that stuck with me (aside from a few bits of Dan Dare, natch) were those of the MLF’s barker: “Mr Cameron, this is your big society”

Okay, then put away the red and black flags.

What on earth are you talking about?

What on earth are you talking about?

Comment #8, point 3.

1. Oddly enough, the one person involved in UK Uncut stuff that I know of is a Miliband supporting member of the Labour Party.

2. In the video I can see the red and black flags and the anarchy signs. But I can’t see anything in the video to suggest that its associated with UK Uncut. And looking at the list of their actions onSaturday , I can’t see one that is obviously targetted at a bank.

3. From an outsider’s perspective (I live on the wrong continent to see this from close up) It seems a bit odd to complain that other groups are ‘piggy-backing’ off the TUC, given that the TUC chose not to organise a big demo before the end of March, meaning that those other groups have been doing the bulk of the work in building whatever momentum the protests have since the autumn.

It really isn’t seen as anything like a credible idea outside of Whitehall and Westminster

and, apparently, the AHRC.

Sorry, that one really did need a link:

http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Documents/buildingthebigsociety.pdf

The Raven @18,19: the Conspiracy is not all-powerful. Exhibit, Kearney:

fair point – it’s changed in the programme itself,

Martha

—–Original Message—–
From: t.wXXXX [mailto:t.wXXXX]
Sent: 29 June 2009 12:41
To: WATO
Subject: [BBC Radio4] Contact Us Submission

Someone has completed a form on page:

Sender’s name: Tim WILKINSON

Sender’s message:
I’ve just heard the 12:30 trail for the World at One. In it the
G20 riots are mentioned. I must have missed those – perhaps the G20
protest drove them off the front page?

Or are you referring to That Window, broken by a tiny group of
protestors while surrounded by press photographers with police looking
on?

(Yes, ‘There Is No All-Powerful Conspiracy’, They tell us. And we the conspiracy theorists agree. The proof is a priori, and sound, and of impeccable Conspiracist provenance: Don’t let them see us! Don’t tell them what we are doing! Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the Earth?)

Yeah right. If we really must talk about spraypaint and broken windows, let’s also talk about how much of each results – in my actual lived experience – from engineered recessions, coming as they do along with non-optional non-humorous extras such as smack epidemics.

Considering that a) the situation in the U.K. isn’t anywhere close to being as dire as it is in parts of the U.S., and b) even those parts haven’t rioted, I’d say c) the whole thing is a bit pre-mature.

I’m certainly not an anarchist, but I see no inconsistency between 1.) the short-term defense of the welfare state, the attack on which having a class struggle character; and 2.) the vision of a stateless egalitarian society. Surely a well-known political theorist like Mike Otsuka must have come across Chomsky’s views:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky%27s_political_views#Views_on_the_welfare_state

But Mike, maybe they are philosophical anarchists who merely deny any sui generis obligation to obey the law, in a ‘if you can do the time, why not do the crime?’ kind of way?

But there are a few ‘very ideologically confused anarchists’ among the ‘150, non-violent and non-vandalising, UK Uncut protesters’ who occupied Fortnum and Mason.

And it’s terribly important that we make a big deal out of this because…?

This is the only picture I have of the outside of Fortnum’s:

No anarchist signs visible to me, although if you’re really set on the idea I suppose you could claim they all came out after I left or they’re lurking behind me or something?

Nice attempt to prove a negative, Sam! But see anarchist flags waving here. Uncut banner hanging at left, but I guess completely unrelated.

Incidentally, since we’re looking closely at bits of video, this is also worth a look

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/444-police-stand-by-as-colleagues-in-plain-clothes-break-windows

I’m not sure I see what Dan Hind sees here. But the point about Mark Kennedy seems worth noting.

Oh, and a giant, very sharp toothed saw, labeled “Capitalism” that had apparently done the cutting.

Nice attempt to prove a negative, Sam! But see anarchist flags waving here.

I’m sorry… I’m not quite following you again? And I’m afraid your link seems to be broken.

In any case, I think I’ve contributed everything I’ve got that might be useful t0 your investigations. If you’d like to talk to anyone who was actually there then your best bet is to pick some names from the UKuncut blog and look for them on twitter.

@58, what Dan Hind sees in the BBC vid is that there’s a fracas between some demonstrators and police in a gap between two phone boxes. Police counter-attack from the gap, then four of them block it. A biggish person all dressed in black walks right up to the police lines, and stands about a foot away from the central cop. When I first saw the clip my reaction to this move was ‘here’s a nutter about to get himself battered or nicked. He stands in front of the cop for about three seconds, and may or may not show him something – it’s impossible to tell. He is then passed through the police line, and walks round the back of the phone boxes, shielded from the crowd. Then the camera pans away.

This doesn’t prove he was a provocateur of course; he might just have been gathering humint from the crowd. Before 1973ish, it was SOP for Special Branch to seed every single demonstration with plainclothes guys who would peel off at intervals and ring in a report: they were really pleased with the prospect of CCTV technology because it meant they could get location data on the cheap. Perhaps they are doing a bit of retro policing?

No, waving anarchist flags at a UK Uncut rally is not such a big deal. But it’s kind of a stupid thing to do, since it’s hard to square with the targetting of people for avoiding paying taxes to the state (not impossible to square, as I agree that there are sophisticated ways of reconciling these stances) and it makes it more difficult for UK Uncut to distance itself, which it would reasonably like to do, from the self-styled anarchists who are going around bashing things. Their destruction of property isn’t in itself such a big deal either, though it serves to hijack the protests of the other several hundred thousands. Why don’t they instead break things on one of the several other hundred days a year when others aren’t protesting in London? Because they’re assholes.

Here are the links, first to the UK Uncut protesters inside Fortnum and Mason:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7UETxLTgog

And now to the people on the roof:

Harry, I have myself taken a very active role in suppressing adventurist nonsense on demonstrations that I’ve been chief steward of. Because I’d decided, as part of a political movement that agreed with me, that then was neither the time nor the place for that kind of thing. I fully understand that your demo, in your country, almost certainly fell into that category, and clearly you’re the one to judge in this case. I too could list any number of demos which I’ve been on in which any violence would have been equally counter-productive.

If I’d have seen anyone on the TUC demo (say) throwing stuff, I’d have intervened to stop them (probably by telling my daughter to shout at them…). The body calling a demo ought to be able to direct, control, and if necessary police it, and the supporters of the movement ought to aid it in that. This issue didn’t arise for me on Saturday, largely because, as I hope I’ve made clear earlier, for every demonstrator kicking off there were between 500 and 1000 who weren’t. Savour that ratio for a moment, will you?

(savour time)

What I’ve never done, though, is asserted that ‘the movement’ is responsible for everything that happens in central London on the day that it calls a demo. It never can be. Thus, it shouldn’t apologise either. Nor should people who went on the TUC demo have to account for the actions – however purposeful or inane – of those who weren’t on it. Ask _them_ that.

If we really must talk about spraypaint and broken windows, let’s also talk about how much of each results – in my actual lived experience – from engineered recessions, coming as they do along with non-optional non-humorous extras such as smack epidemics.

That’s a great link, Tim, a reminder that those who are breaking windows and spraying paint may be a greater threat to effective protest than mere attention leeches. All the more reason to speak up against it.

If we really must talk about spraypaint…

Let’s! If anyone reading should ever feel inclined to go raise a ruckus and spray-paint the town, yet feel squeamish about the amount of property damage that such an activity would traditionally cause, be aware there are cheap and widely available tools for the purpose.

Chalk spraypaint used to get deployed on the U.W.-Madison campus all the time, mostly by those of us too lazy to kneel and physically chalk special-events info on the sidewalks. The stuff works as well as spray paint, with the potential added benefit of making objectors look like asses for confronting you about what they presuppose is defacement — and if the anarchists don’t know that their ignorance is culpable. Lines like “the state is as legitimate as this graffiti is permanent” complement a circled A quite nicely, and if you can snap a photo of the firefighters dutifully hosing it off, well hey…

Relatedly, “Sir, I’m going to need you to put away your Fisher-Price toy” is the funniest thing that a cop can say to you that is not actually a joke.

(But for those who would like to take their fake spray-painting more seriously, Krylon makes a few high-quality chalk sprays. They work best on grass in my experience.)

Part of this conversation revolves around whether one shrugs off the juvenile antics as marginal, accepts them as inevitable, and becomes inured to them. Some of us have experienced Wisconsins, however, and we see alternative worlds. Personally I consider a strategic consideration of tactics essential to movement building and building a majoritarian sentiment. Granted, my piece was written in a polemical manner – Mr. Block – meant to accentuate the imbecility of silly and self-defeating tactics, but it was hardly written from the right-moralistic point of view of the Murdoch press. It should have been pretty clear by my allusions to the Wobblies, a general strike, etc., that I was writing from the point of view of building a labor fightback against the cuts. We may be in a quixotic moment in that respect anyway, but the black bloc helped make sure most Britons would look at this and never bring their kids to such a march again. Because they find it hard to separate out the march from the bloc, and who can really blame them, given that the bloc broke away from the march.

I recently finished the novel GB84. It is a semi-conspiratorial account of the miners’ strike. It struck me as a bit loony as all conspiracy theories do, but it does make one think. If there were Tory slush funds right now, and the undercover police were active, would they be using the black bloc for all it is worth? I certainly think so, viz:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/26/mark-kennedy-undercover-cop-environmental-activist

The right and the state have gotten infinitely better at thinking strategically than the left. The black bloc antics are part of a politics that confuses radical tactics with radical strategy. But in this kind of instance these tactics are not strategic, except in serving a strategy contrary to the left’s ambitions.

Sorry, the above was a response to Harry’s response to me, currently at 70.

“I’m certainly not an anarchist, but I see no inconsistency between 1.) the short-term defense of the welfare state, the attack on which having a class struggle character; and 2.) the vision of a stateless egalitarian society. ”

I certainly AM an anarchist and this is correct — there is no inconsistency between a short-term defence of the welfare state and the long-term aim of a stateless society.

After all, anarchists are against the state because it is an instrument of class rule whose function, as Proudhon put it, was “protecting the nobility and upper class against the lower classes.” In short: “In a society based on the principle of inequality of conditions, government, whatever it is, feudal, theocratic, bourgeois, imperial, is reduced, in last analysis, to a system of insurance for the class which exploits and owns against that which is exploited and owns nothing.”

At its most basic, anarchists are anti-state AND anti-capitalist — privatising state functions, handing over services to capitalist companies, reducing the state to just defence of private property are anti-anarchist. Proudhon, for example, argued back in 1851 against both nationalisation and privatisation in favour of workers’ associations to run industry:

“It is in such cases, perfectly defined, that association, due to the immorality, tyranny and theft suffered, seems to me absolutely necessary and right. The industry to be carried on, the work to be accomplished, are the common and undivided property of all those who take part therein: the granting of franchises for mines and railroads to companies of stockholders, who plunder the bodies and souls of the wage-workers, is a betrayal of power, a violation of the rights of the public, an outrage upon human dignity and personality.” (General Idea of the Revolution)

Of course, the Tories have tried to appropriate mutualism as part of this attack on working class people, but this is nonsense: Mutualism: Fake and Real.

These cuts are top-down class war by the ruling class, ideologically driven to grind the working-class even more into the ground (“fairness” being used to level down the many while enriching the few!). Anarchists are taking part in this struggle, I myself like many anarchists was on the main TUC march with my union and we were arguing for occupations, strikes and other forms of direct action across the country to stop the cuts. I’m sure, as I argued in Freedom, that if we DO take that kind of action then the ConDem’s will use the state to try and break this revolt.

If we are strong enough, we can create a popular power able to control (and ultimately destroy) the state — which is another good reason to support these protests.

Overstated perhaps (language more categorical than advised) but not completely wrong. I think the natural impulse of many with children is to not want to put them at risk at all. The question I’m trying to pose, whatever inadequacies of phrasing, is this: Does the conduct inhibit or complement the building of larger mobilizations? Would you argue that it does not inhibit it in the slightest?

I was on strike last week, I’ve occupied spaces in the past, I’ve participated in civil disobedience, I above outlined a creative artistic contribution that really dazzled me at the demo precisely because it was fresh and new. I am not saying that the law is inviolable. I am not saying don’t frighten the horses. I was criticizing the black bloc, not UKUncut (whose name never appeared in my article or posts – and whose action on Saturday I don’t pretend to know about but whose campaign on behalf of taxing the evading corporations I totally agree has been magnificent). I’ve tried to find the footage I saw on Saturday that led me to write the piece which was of a street block filled with black bloc up against the police, in the middle of the afternoon, shot from above, coincidentally (or not?) timed in split screen against Miliband’s speech. I saw it retrospectively after getting home from the demo very late at night. I have no concern for middle England if it means the “aspirational” or the fate of the new Labour at the polls. I am writing from a standpoint that values the self-activity of working people, some of whom are in the middle of England geographically and culturally if not in income and ought to be reached, not pointlessly estranged. We need movement activities that challenge power creatively and are creatively disruptive, yes. But not pointlessly alienating. You say the black bloc stuff is just to be set aside as something extraneous but that avoids the fact that a) many youth do think of it as radical and revolutionary and “libertarian socialist” and b) others may not see the distinctions you do and c) it is valuable to draw the distinction time and again so that the confusion not exist and so that we remind ourselves of strategic thinking as needing to be at the center.

I’ll be off this discussion to teach 10-5pm so others must carry the ball now, if it is to be carried at all.

#84 “…You say the black bloc stuff is just to be set aside as something extraneous but that avoids the fact that a) many youth do think of it as radical and revolutionary and “libertarian socialist” and b) others may not see the distinctions you do and c) it is valuable to draw the distinction time and again so that the confusion not exist and so that we remind ourselves of strategic thinking as needing to be at the center…”

I was with three 14 yr old boys who were quite excited at seeing their first paint splattered windows and broken glass and ‘Circle A’ Anarchist spray-painted signs at a demonstration. But they all really ‘got’ the idea very quickly when I told ’em that the folk who did this were a bit bloody silly, really, and, by the way, had they noticed the size of the shoulders of that copper over there in robocop riot gear ? I don’t think I was being ‘strategic’ in having this conversation, I was just offering normal adult advice.

Nor do I think my son and his friends were unusual in being able to grin at some wreckage but know, deep down, it really wasn’t helpful. What I think quite literally never occurred to them was to mistake such signs of ‘vandalism’ with the mass of people they’d marched with in a good humoured way for several hours before, nor with the peaceful UK Uncut groups sitting in polite circles in the road a few hundred yards away from the broken glass.

Could it be you’re making too much of this becasue the mainstream media are?

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/03/plain-clothes-cops-sabotage-anti-cuts.html

dsquared: with an undertone of “how much better it would be if everything was organised like the unions, whose decision-making process is widely renowned for efficiency and fun.”

Yeah, well, fuck formatting anyway.

Andrew, how close to a demonstration would horrible badness have to happen for it to tar your cause utterly with the stench of badness? I’m pretty confident in my ability, given a supportive movement, a few weeks in which to set the tone, and a good stewarding team to work with, to veto bad things along a line of route. Next street along perhaps, but it’ll be a strain. Next borough? No chance.

So, Andrew, you think I should apply for my own section 60, banning all other demonstrations in the capital. Do I have to enforce this myself, will I get invoiced by the Met if they enforce it, or does all this happen for nothing? Perhaps you, or any of the other voices of reason on CT could think this one through for us?

Perhaps it’s better to refuse to accept that this is my responsibility, and push my soundbites (ENGINEERED RECESSION AHEAD! LOOK OUT!) rather than get into a tizz about badness?

I’ve been mulling over something Joe Strummer (and a few friends) said in 1977, in the middle of a rendering of What’s My Name that was being shown on Revolver. Sang, rather – he inserted an extra verse, which went like this:

JOE: Here we are on TV!
What does it mean to me?
[looks at crowd]
What does it mean to you?
JOE AND CROWD: F*** ALL!

At the time it was true, too.

As a general thing I think we all pay far too much attention to rally-as-spectacle as distinct from rally-as-collective-event. But beyond that I think there’s something quite minatory about the media’s insistent focus on Teh Violentss – which can only serve the cause of more and heavier policing on the next march – and something slightly sick, or at least self-loathing, about the eagerness of so many on the Left to join in the denunciation of the Violent Minority who Spoil Everything. I don’t believe the day would ever have ended without windows being broken – or, for that matter, without the police getting some action; consequently I don’t believe the media coverage would ever have been positive or unbiased or balanced or respectful. Everything would always have been Spoilt (see D^2 @85).

As for our actually-existing Violent Minority, the best thing to do, if you care enough, is to make contact and argue with them – as Chris says, it’s not impossible. If we’re not going to do that, I can’t see why we should pay them any attention at all.

Just to reiterate, I was concerned almost exclusively about kettling, baton/shield-edge/cavalry charges and retreating crowds, and getting nicked with a (barely) 4yo kid (Brutus not so much, though he would be fine in a police kennel and probably get quite a fuss made of him). ‘Violence’ by protestors was not an issue, even in the heightened state of risk-sensitivity that comes with responsibility for small offspring (+ Jack Russell).

Going by past observation, I suspect there are two considerations which undercut the ‘condemn the distractors and discreditors’ stance to some extent.

1. The airtime and column inches dedicated to ‘violent’ + other aspects is almost certainly not zero-sum: if there were no ‘violence’ to report on I doubt very much that there would be the same total amount of coverage. In fact I suspect the amount dedicated to non-‘violent’ aspects would be not much greater than it actually was.

2. In any case, there seems to be a Parkinson’s law analogue whereby the absolute quantity of ‘violence’ by protestors is irrelevant to the overall coverage given to it I think That Window is pretty good example

Er, three actually:

3. Even if ‘violence’ did not exist it would have to be invented – overt provocation by police, covert incitement and perpetration, engineering situations like the Window event at the G20, and 0f course the smoke/fire conflation of police violence with protestor violence (delete those which would be acknowledgable if only they weren’t a bit too ‘loony’ for comfort) all make it more or less inevitable, given the way the media works, that the main story would be ‘violence’ by protestors, or reluctantly violent responses to unspecified stimuli by the helmeted and de-numbered volunteers of the hitting-people-with-sticks unit.

Four, in fact; four considerations:

4. As demonstrated above, remonstrating with journos who have at least the self-image of professionalism is not a futile activity, and since they are the problem here, efforts should be directed at them. Just as hypocrisy is a constraint on vice, ‘making it look good’ does risk it actually being somewhat good. And a part of the focus on violence is surely just a constrained ‘if it bleeds’ principle, which might be overcome if journos can be redirected towards something equally newsworthy but non-‘violent’. This is not straightforward, since as the Law Lords have certified, the human right against arbitrary imprisonment is compatible with (punitive) kettling on the pretext that a road is being blocked. And as any fule no the purpose of a kettle is to prevent boiling water spilling everywhere. And ‘breach of the peace’ has a violent sound to it but covers almost anything (cf. Law and Order, violence/criminal damage, crime and disorder, ASBOs etc).

Five:

5. Given the short shrift the exceptional anti-Iraq protest, for example, got, I’m not sure what it is hoped will be acheived by getting more randoms on the TV news saying ‘I know we must have these cuts – but I don’t like them’. If the cameras have to be attracted by coloured smoke and red-and-black flags before they will go anywhere near anyone who is actually trying to point out that rather a lot of things are being held constant in order to derive the conclusion that adminsitering the coup de grace to the welfare state is a regrettable necessity, then for those who view these things ‘strategically’, I don’t think the matter is at all clear-cut.

(Also Harry – I have a nasty feeling you’ve explicitly said you prefer people not to swear on your threads, so apologs for the triple epithet attached to the name of the L****r Party, however heartfelt and IMO richly deserved it may have been.)

Forgot link to HoL decision (esp. for pg barebones)

I just mention this because my experience of the reaction among City traders to the 1999 May Day “Smash The City” protests was a lot more complicated than that – I don’t think anyone was radicalised or moved to give up their job on that day, but there was certainly a grudging respect for them, even among the LIFFE traders who were busy mythologising their fistfight. I doubt it’s a remotely typical case or one worth studying, but it stuck with me. I certainly know that “The Vast Majority Of Law-Abiding Football Fans[tm]” have a *very* complicated relationship with “The Small Number Of Idiots Who Ruin It For Everybody[tm]”.

(thinking about it, the really interesting case would be the relationship between Harley-Davidson, Inc. and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. I am pretty sure that HD’s spokesmen would unequivocally condemn any and all instances of methampetamine dealing, aggravated assault and illegal gun dealing, but I am equally pretty sure that you are not going to see a blanket disavowal of the “outlaws” any time soon).

These issues were also thrashed out in Toronto at the latest G8/G20 event. The key phrase there was “diversity of tactics” and you can find lots to read by googling that, for example greenpeace. Philippe Duhamel, who writes the Greenpeace post there, is someone who I knew slightly many years ago and have a lot of respect for.

1%ers, yeah – that was the initial reaction of the American motorcycle industry to the gangs (things are complicated here because Honda had their “you meet the nicest people” advertising campaign which was certainly based in opposition to the big-bike thugs, but in a much more subtle and graceful way). But in the end, it was their brand’s association with the 1% that kept Harley Davidson trading for a very, very long time during which they produced dreadful bike after dreadful bike.

I’m sure you’re right on the official name of the march, but to us it was “Smash the City”, presumably because previous ones had been so called; I remember it vividly (perhaps not accurately). Everyone was expecting it to kick off, and as they went down London Wall it was absolutely apparent that the combination of hot day/cider was giving things a bit of “atmosphere”. We had a sizeable element who were entirely up for it and who were visibly and, I think, genuinely disappointed when it turned out that LIFFE was the flashpoint rather than anywhere near us.

Potentially even fewer; of the 149 arrests, 138 were the nonviolent F&M sit-in, but some of the remaining eleven might have been for nonviolent public order offences too.

It was months – up to 12 of the same – in the case of the big Cast Lead demo. My old colleague Joanna Gilmore has done some good work on this.

Henry, you got a DOI for the ASR piece? Your jstor ref is locked to your institution.

Last time I checked (roundabout the big banlieu riots), the best sociological work on (violent / non-violent) demos was still Waddington et al’s _Flashpoints_, but that’s not really much about impacts.

The second half of that url is. But it’s available to the general public too:

http://pics3441.upmf-grenoble.fr/articles/inde/Protest%20under%20Fire.pdf

(the second half of the url to which that one redirects, I mean)

it appears that eleven (11) people

Thank you. I didn’t know what “eleven” spelled.

But the impression was definitely there, and the coverage massively disproportionate. The journalists writing those stories are not going to go any further than that in distorting things, are they. As far as the majority of them are concerned, at least, they are professional reporters of fact. There’s a pyramid of consicous and uinsconsicous bias which can be mapped straightforwardly onto a differential promotion filter. But also and in any case, caveat-burying is quite a well-developed art – when it’s done well, all the balance is in there to be brandished on demand, but its contribution to whole is somehow muted, especially when read quickly. (To use the standard technical sense of ‘burying’, note that even in the headlines, the bold portion comes second.)

And even overshadowed a huge peaceful march is a pretty self-fulfilling, dissociative kind of thing. Overshadowed how? By being disproportionately focussed on. Reminds me of the political correspondents who used to write admiringly of how effectively Blair manipulated the press.

Also, articles that wouldn’t have been written at all in the absence of the civilly disobedient black flag crowd: but one question is, would some other articles about the protests have been written (or rather published) in their place?

In general, you can look a bit too closely and read a bit too charitably with these things. To the person who is not that interested, not paying that much attention, who might be persuaded to think again about the issues but might not, the preponderance of pieces about violent troublemakers just shuts the whole issue down.

TBH, I’m not sure what the mechanism is whereby public opinion is going to avert the programme before it’s more or less irreversibly implemented anyway, really. the next election is probably going to be too late, and I’m not really convinced that Cameron or Osbourne are bothered enough about a second term to be deflected if it should really come down to it – weird though that may seem on standard-ish pol sci assumptions.

Hitting their mates really hard in the pocket (somehow) might conceivably get some movement, but they too are probably keen on the programme and willing to take a short term hit, anyway. Stories about the costs of putting shoppers off Oxford street would suggest that the window-breakers came closest to doing that, but (a) it’s a drop in the ocean, (b) that’s propaganda intended (with expert insensitivity to relative magnitudes) to suggest that they were jeopardising the ‘recovery’, depleting the treasury, exacerbating the problem.

I think it might take some pretty extreme events to make any significant difference in the short time available. (And I don’t think that’s a particularly breathless assessment – look at what they’ve done already.)

“It was only later that a BBC colleague told me that violent protests had started at almost exactly the same moment as Mr Miliband began his remarks, prompting the rolling news channels to split their screens before finally cutting away from Mr Miliband completely.”

Francis Urquhart couldn’t have done it better.

When there is a whole street block full of at least a hundred black bloc people throwing smoke cannisters at a line of police, as occurred in the middle of the afternoon, the number of those arrested, prosecuted, or convicted after the fact is totally immaterial. This is a matter of political imagery (in aerial shots) and consequence (in diverting the focus of a press all too willing to be diverted), and those things are simply not measured by the extent of law enforcement. So to focus on the number of arrests made as if that measures what actually ensued baffles me. Actually what was remarkable to me in all the video that I watched was the police inactivity in restraining or arresting people who were flagrantly involved in unlawful activity directly in front of them.

When there is a whole street block full of at least a hundred black bloc people throwing smoke cannisters at a line of police, as occurred in the middle of the afternoon, the number of those arrested, prosecuted, or convicted after the fact is totally immaterial

it’s your impression that counts?

Actually what was remarkable to me in all the video that I watched was the police inactivity

I suggest you report them

It isn’t an impression of mine that matters but rather the impression of millions created by certain behaviour.

So… Labour’s popularity is way down? Public pressure is causing anti-anarchist witch hunts at the TUC? Concerned citizens are forming Bank Window Protection Groups? Ed Milliband is being denounced as an enemy of the state? Cheering crowds no longer throw flowers when a black bloc goes by?

Not so much a conclusion as a less boring way of asking what impression you think was created and what measurable effects you think it’s having.

I don’t hate moderates, actually. On this thread I linked to Paul Krugman, who is a moderate I have the highest respect for (okay, he calls himself a ‘raging moderate’).

What I will admit I have always found a tad annoying otoh is the kind of ‘reasonable’ lefty who reacts to George Osborne’s announcement that we should eat the poor by trying to persuade him to compromise on a casserole rather than a stir fry and then congratulates himself for keeping Osbonne’s fellow gourmands on-side.

Though he has, I see, left the thread, I’ll add — just to spell it out

the impression of millions created by certain behaviour

and/or by “certain behaviour”, by inadequate, biased, or lying reports in the media (some, made in good faith).

Salient @121: I picked the first of your headlines, and looked at the article, which is here The Guardian. In that story, the first half is entirely concerned with the violence. What follows then is a quote – a lengthy quote to be sure – concerning the actual issues of the march, and then a concluding paragraph about the violence. The story about the aims of the march is completely buried in the story about the violence. And that’s The Guardian.

Chris @94: I didn’t mean to imply you, or anyone else, did anything wrong. Whoever got that many people to march obviously moved mountains, and has my respect.

I think the point many here have been making is simply that this kind of stuff can be really harmful, and that this is a problem worth solving, if it can be. As to what tactics work best in preventing it… I bow to those with more experience. Perhaps increased coordination with the police, some creative legal work involving some type of restraining order (this may be impossible, but worth investigating – the attorney must not mind the possibility of the judge glaring at him incredulously and curtly denying), or even, if the connections are there, better communication with the anarchists themselves beforehand.

Tim @98: Your arguments depend on negative publicity increasing the amount of good publicity, where the latter outweighs the former. 2 column inches before anarchists’ festival of window-smashing turns into 10 after, right? Even if this were true, though, the resulting split will likely be 3 column inches on the march – at the end of the story – and 7 on the violence in the lead – see the story I link to in this comment. The picture will be of the violence. Your message has been buried in the story, and the event of 500k marching has become the event of a march/and violence.

Dsquared @101: Yes, they will try to smear you anyway. But whether it WORKS or not is an open question. As Harry pointed out, it failed completely in the case of Wisconsin, precisely because the protesters there did a stone-cold brilliant job of image control. The enduring image and message is teachers, families, firefighters, etc., coming together to protest against the governor’s actions. It sparked a constructive national conversation that is ongoing; it likely prevented Republican governors in other states from embarking on similar campaigns; and overall I think it blunted much of the Republicans’ momentum.

I thought Pete’s question up at 95 was worth repeating here (I don’t have a firm answer): Here are some things that are bothering me about the whole concept of mass street protest in the UK: – there is a normal lever of power for the public, in the form of the ballot box. But there are never any protests near election time. It’s like they operate in a seperate space. – How, exactly, is the lever of protest supposed to work?

It isn’t an impression of mine that matters but rather the impression of millions created by certain behaviour.

But you just somehow know that millions have the same impression you do. Perhaps they support you in email?

Really, and putting down the snark for a minute, it hasn’t occurred to you that substituting your impression for “the impression of millions” may be a logical error?

(This tapped out before reading Harry’s, which appears at first glance to cover some similar ground)

When your back is to the wall turn around and fight

I’m with engels here – I note he’s the only commenter who has provided any useful information about the key issue on which public opinion needs to be changed in the first instance – the Economic State of Emergency and the inevitability of deep cuts. And the kind of ‘reasonable’ lefty who reacts to George Osborne’s announcement that we should eat the poor by trying to persuade him to compromise on a casserole is really very obviously not helping with that. Hardly surprising that some think a reversal is going to mean dishing out a bit of the Greek-style treatment.

What is to be done?

I’d draw a few conclusions about how those who are thoughtful and kind with a well-stocked mind should be dealing with the small matter of teh bloc heads. I’m assuming that for all the reasons previously mentioned, you are going to get some events which can fill the space allocated to ‘violent’ disorder in any large protest in any case. (Excuse any egg-sucking-instruction element)

1. Don’t waste any time on condemnation

Get it out in the approved throat-clearing method (per dd @ 101). Doing anything more not only cedes the agenda to the opposition, but implicates you – why apologise for something that is nothing to do with you? (The politicians have already established that expressions of regret are a form of apology.) Furthermore, and more controversially, I would at least want to leave open the possibility that those who are getting destructive might be (not justified of course, but) doing so out of understandable frustration. One major obstacle to this is that the hi-tech security state menas that disorderly/destructive protest is going to involve masks, uniforms and a distinct lack of spontaneity, which makes the whole thing look much more sinister – part of the logic of repression. I think the questions about efficacy of protest raised by Pete @95 & me @122, reiterated by Andrew @138 and to which one answer is provided by Sam Dodsworth @139 are very reasonable ones, as are the points made about near-inevitable smears (passim) and about recruitment of the ‘lost generation’ by dsquared @89 and Sam, ibid. (Scroll for victory!)

2. Challenge exaggerations and distortions

In particular, those members of the press and media who are not self-conscious propagandists (sorry, polemicists, sorry, opinion columnists) can be influenced, at least at the margins, and this should be done. The example of my tiny efforts is at 46 – and achieved exactly the aim I had, very much in optative mood – in mind, which meant that rather than feeling rather silly and green-inkish for bothering, I was rather disproportionately pleased with myself. But also in interviews etc, or if you know any journos, draw attention to bias, and the propaganda role thsi stuff plays.

3. Get real

If you are of sufficiently high status to get away with it, for ***k’s sake please stop self-censoring when it comes to the obvious facts about the way these events are acquiesced in, engineered, provoked and yea, even perpetrated by police and other security organisations. Document and publicise known instances, familiarise yourself with the ample precedents and parallels, and try and get it in there somewhere, at least if the topic can’t be budged onto the actual issues. If you can unmask a provocateur, you have of course hit paydirt. There can be very few things more grotesquely shifty, repellent and discrediting than seeing one of these ***ts unmasked and cornered, as the link 71 I think shows.

4. Have a reasonably clear and unified position, and get it out

The fundamental problem, it seems to me, is that the key issue has been ceded to the War on Deficit crowd. If you accept that massive cuts are needed, you are left either with reality-defying demands and wishful thinking, or fighting over the scraps, even if only implicitly by endorsing one cause over another. This means:

(a) pointing out in no uncertain terms that the ‘cuts’ are not a tactical retreat in the face of overwhelming economic pressure, but part of a strategic offensive (one may point to reforms that are costly in the short term as one kind of evidence for this);

(b) pointing out that the deficit is not bad in itself, but only insofar as it causes actual problems, i.e. interest payments. (Perhaps a deficit levy on the banks to cover a large proportion of the interest would focus their minds on stimulating the economy rather than retrenching for the duration of the naturally-occurring low tide of the current business cycle? Obviously many details to be filled in, but still.)

(c.) Marshalling – even Keynesing – the economic data to show exactly why, in general, cuts – where the ‘reforms’ actually are cuts – are not the best way to deal with the deficit, even insofar as it is such a massive problem as it’s presented as being;

(d) Following the generally excellent example of UK Uncut, propose alternative sources of net revenue that might be made in the short-term without destroying what remains of the welfare state.

I would love to see a thread dedicated to thrashing all this out and developing a 5-bullet plan (we keep one in the cylinder for if it doesn’t work).

Again, these are proposals for discussion, and I’m under no illusions that I’m in a position to take a didactic tone – the apprearance of such a tone is just an artefact of not adding modesty-verbiage to an already long post.

Yeah, I meant factsheet rather than plan. That’s just the kind of thing I’m thinking of. My own experience: I didn’t see anything like it at the Hyde Park protest – only some single-issue flyers. I think if one could be formulated and posted somewhere, it would probably get a big take-up, because as far as I can make out, the answer to your question is ‘no’.

To make it slightly clearer:

What I have always found annoying is the kind of ‘reasonable’ lefty who reacts to George Osborne’s announcement that he intends to eat the poor by trying to politely persuade him to compromise on a casserole rather than a stir fry, and then congratulates himself for keeping the Gourmet Dining Club of Tunbridge Wells on-side.

Further clarification: I’m not against being reasonable. That’s why the word is in inverted commas.

Btw did anyone else see this?

[…] Jezza, an anarchist from East London, said: “I find it disgusting that every time we hold a protest we have to put up with these idiots coming along. You never see the Ed Milibands or Brendan Barbers during the bread-and-butter work of community organising but as soon as there’s a big march they all come out of the woodwork, just wanting to further their own political agendas.”

Sarah Smith, a public sector worker who came to the protest by coach from Newcastle, told us: “I was all in favour of kicking off, but when we got here I found out we’d have to listen to some boring speeches in a park.”

Commander Bob Broadhurst, the officer in charge of the policing operation, said: “We like dealing with the anarchists because at least we get some exercise. But when the TUC appear, some of our officers find it difficult to stay awake, alert, and on their feet for a whole shift.” […]

@139: no, the question about effectiveness was in good faith. Having seen the striking lack of difference that Stop the War or the Countryside Alliance made, I want to at least ask the question as to why we think the thing that didn’t work then will work now.

(One vital difference between the UK, and both Wisconsin and Egypt, is that recent protests in the UK are simply a saturday afternoon event, whereas the others have massed large crowds for periods of many days)

Re-opening the discussion about police infiltration, here’s a post on agents provocateurs (‘agents provocateur’? does it properly follow ‘trades union’? whatever.) on Saturday:
http://johnbloggs.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/agents-provocateurs/
There’s a long lead-in, a magnified clip of the infiltrator+phonebox moment, which repeats the claim that this is evidence of definite provocation rather than merely of infiltration (the latter being my position). Then this statement, which I’ve not seen anywhere else as yet:

“Another incident which seems to have been carried out not by black bloc but by another group saw a number of youth’s armed with an arsenal of glass bottles carried in multiple plastic bags, throw these bottles first at protesters (including myself and a comrade) then Police, on a side street off Trafalgar square (possibly Duncannon Street). These youth’s strode down this street with no fear of consequence or reprisal in the form of arrest, as they made no attempt to cover their faces or wear clothes that could stop them being identified. ”

I’ve also seen a clip of a chunk of the crowd chanting ‘police infiltrator’ at a guy in a brown hoodie, who walks along in front of the police lines not responding to them. This in itself is evidence of nothing at all.

Any other claims / evidence out there?

My comment growed. (And again. Part 3 to follow.)

Phil’s question is good, and his comparison right.

Cheers, but which bit(s) did you mean?

protesting, many with signs advertising that they were cops

Yow. That’s when you know you’re winning, surely. (Fraternise with the National Guard and you’ll be home free.)

I like Tim’s idea, and Harry’s example, of a unified message, with materials in support.

Remember though that the impact of those materials depends significantly on the image of the source. I don’t think condemnation of masked idiots should be mumbled. It should be clear, forceful, and succinct. This isn’t about a war on business or capitalism.

The undecided or weakly decided portions of the public are far more likely to have friends and family who work at companies than they are to have friends and family deeply committed to “direct action” or whatever the latest euphemism is for destruction of property. Fail to firmly reject such tactics, especially when those tactics are reported in the same breath as your protest, and you destroy the chance of that undecided or weakly decided portion identifying with your protest or trusting your claims.

Phil, in his (very eloquent) linked post, describes the violence at the protest as simply a tactical problem. However if the protest is a key part of one’s strategy, and the violence undercuts the effectiveness of that protest, then that tactical problem has some serious strategic implications.

Ah – that was Pete, not Phil. Nemmind.

Fail to firmly reject such tactics, especially when those tactics are reported in the same breath as your protest, and you destroy the chance of that undecided or weakly decided portion identifying with your protest or trusting your claims

I think Phil’s example of the suffragettes is very apropos here.

Well, there’s two periods to look at when talking about suffragettes: if my cursory reading of the timeline is correct, it was about 10 years from the founding of the WSPU to the start of the first world war, during which time they did most of the attacks; then during the war gave up activism in the interests of national unity; then achieved the right to vote after the war.

You could argue that universal suffrage was more a result of the extreme violence of the war than of the demonstrators. External enemies are good for solidarity.

I’d also like to drop in for consideration the idea that today’s corporate structure is more Dilbert than Marx: the people running the business aren’t owners, the owners end up being entities like pension funds. The goal of the manager is to inflate his own salary (extracting surplus value), which ends up being at the expense of the capital owners, and then blame the workers.

This model works in the public sector too.

I’d like to second Andrew’s agreement with Tim Wilkinson’s suggestions at 144 (if I understand them correctly, which I may not–I don’t know a lot about the details of support for these kinds of things in the UK).

Pete@155 Back to direct action: isn’t this basically going back to the miner’s strike, and the intent to disrupt normal life for everyone in the country by starving electricity generation of coal?

I was thinking more of the sort of stuff that the student activists have been doing – flashmobs, occupations, and small pop-up protests arranged via social media. Those are more about getting attention than causing inconvenience. Ukuncut actions are very much the same sort of thing.

And, can anyone who has influence or the skills, either find a reliable fact sheet for us to publicise, or make one, or get someone with the relevant knowledge and skills to make one. Presumably the TUC and the Labour Party still have research departments, no?

Andrew – with respect, I think you’re backtracking further than your earlier comments really entitle you to. Put it another way: could your earlier strictures on the black bloc reasonably be paraphrased as “if they carry on with tactics like that, it could be as long as five years before they get most of what they want”?

Harry:

do people really judge that in this context the violent actions against property and police that we saw (as opposed to UKuncut, which seems an entirely different kettle of fish) makes it more likely that the cuts will be prevented or diminished, or made less damaging?

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that case. Some of us are suggesting (variously) that the violence hasn’t in fact done much harm to the cause, if any; that it was understandable and foreseeable; that violence is often provoked by the police and almost always amplified by the media; that it is, at worst, a tactical problem for the anti-cuts movement, and should be dealt with within the movement; and, above all, that we don’t think the Left should be diverting its energies into the endless and sterile pastime of denouncing other bits of the Left.

When Charlie McM writes his macro that pastes in “I agree with Chris Williams”, I will ask for a copy and change it slightly so it pastes “I agree with Phil Edwards.”

One big difference between Uncut and the others is that real embodied people who are open about their identity are actually engaging and arguing with people about why they did what they did (e.g. terrific woman on Jeremy Vine today, who did extremely well despite, presumably, limited training, and with hostile callers).

AAh. Look, I admire the suffragettes, and think what they did was justified, and effective (a contribution to, but certainly not the whole explanation of, getting women the vote).

I agree and also I think both suffragettes and the suffrage movement may be bad examples anyway (I say “the movement” because suffragettes were only a part of the UK movement, though I didn’t check the relative sizes of the WSPU and the NUWSS — suffragist — before posting).

However — 177, Andrew

Although I don’t think the suffragettes seem to be a great counterexample to either the former or the latter implication, given the duration of time between their violence and complete female suffrage in Britain

the reason to take the 1918 date is that it marks a change from it being totally illegal for women to vote, as it were unthinkable that female suffrage be granted, to, yes, women voting, legally; a measure passed overwhelmingly. 1918 is just 4 years, war years, from militant suffrage activity. The suffragettes don’t seem to have harmed, delayed, the cause that much.

Salient @177: two quick possible criticisms (prefaced by saying I understand where you’re coming from):

(1) Does it really benefit the left to accuse the police of deliberately causing violence at the protest? Does that help achieve the goals of the protest, or the ultimate policy goals? My sense is that this sort of stuff hurts more than it helps.

(2) Do we want the news cycle to be a discussion of the masked idiots? Isn’t that what TV shows are for?

This type of conversation would simply kill the actual goal of the protest. You’ve generated a lot of smoke and heat about the police and the mysterious gentlemen who’ve forgotten the proper use for chairs, but no one is talking about the fiscal cuts, or the types of people who were marching, or what finally got them out to march, etc.

I don’t think that coming out with stuff about police engineering ‘violence’ etc. is viable as a primary topic for mainstream discourse, which is why somewhere above I suggest that this kind of thing should only be mentioned in proportion to one’s status relative to audience/ability to get away with it. At the moment it’s a Dave Spart issue, as in the current Eye:

THE ALTERNATIVE VOICE – DAVE SPART (Co-Organiser of the Dollis Hill Facebook Anarchists Against the Tory Cuts Collective)

The right-wing press have utterly, totally and predictably unleashed a barrage of sickening hypocrisy and deliberate smears against the activities of a totally peaceful group of anarchists, ie myself and my colleagues who demonstrated in non-threatening balaclavas due to the cold weather and carried heavy walking sticks for negotiating the cobbled streets, er…er…we were merely asserting our rights to forcibly occupy the citadels of capitalism and oppression such as the Ritz, Fortnum and Freemasons and, er, Ann Summers, the unacceptable face of the sexual industrial complex who objectify women as mere sexual chattels and thereby make themselves a legitimate target for peaceful acts of rioting and arson, er… small wonder the fascist police blatantly did nothing to obstruct us in our smashing up of the hated cashpoint machines of global capitalism and the spraypainting of the Nazi lions in Trafalgar Square, er…er… thereby deliberately making us look bad which is not surprising given that many of the so-called anarchists were probably undercover police officers working for MI5 such as Steve who I have never liked and who I did not want to join our collective in the first place (cont. p. 94).

See also last night/today’s Any Questions (about 10 mins in, after the Libya-related confabulations), with Laurie Penny trying some ambitious positions in front of an Ashford, Kent audience, and predictably getting pretty effectively done over by the others, esp. the brutally efficient gravitas-monger Anne Mc s*dding Elvoy. Most of the callers on Any Answers were more reasonable apart from the Tory Boy idiot who could have been from Down the Line (rather good R4 spoof phone-in).

Still not sure about the eff’y of getting (more) public opinion onside as a way of influencing the current parliament, though. Certainly the direct action stuff (nice or nasty) is a far stronger source of pressure person-for-person than pedestrian protest – the problem being that critical mass a la Greece is miles off, and the Brians not up for it. Neither are the underclass, of course. Bloody dependency culture.

But, again, any consideration of public opinion, or indeed pressure on members of govt, is pretty otiose in the absence of an actual clear message backed by solid facts and argument. How about a bit of brainstorming re: bullet points? I’ve suggested one aspect – which goes to the basic blanket justification – is the non-cost-cutting cuts aspect.

Needed:

summary of which services are being cut (legal aid, CABs, libraries, etc),

which preferred sources of savings (cost cuts/revenue increases) are not being used – UK Uncut’s points about tax stitch-ups are good ones of course- figures needed for the Vodafone etc deals

which other structural changes are bing made (eg GOP fundholding) – trouble is of course to keep to a core consensus position, without going into too specific a political programme/critique. Still I think saving the welfare state/public services (synecdoche: NHS) is really the key issue.

actual numbers and analysis relating to teh deficit: how much is being paid off, what the impact of it is in interest payments, er, other stuff like that..

Macroeconomics

Andrew: Tim @98: Your arguments depend on negative publicity increasing the amount of good publicity, where the latter outweighs the former. 2 column inches before anarchists’ festival of window-smashing turns into 10 after, right? Even if this were true, though, the resulting split will likely be 3 column inches on the march – at the end of the story – and 7 on the violence in the lead – see the story I link to in this comment. The picture will be of the violence. Your message has been buried in the story

Yeah, I’d mentioned the burying aspect – and I’m not at all sure about this – nor the argument you criticise – but I got the impression there was a certain amount of red-n-blackness going on in the vicinity of the UK Uncut protest – and that the reporting of it was done (and thus poss. motivated) at least partly on the basis of assimilating it to the general category of direct action/disruption/detruction/violence. Perhaps a strategy is to fool the cops and media into thinking there is ‘violence’ going on, when in fact all they can actually manage to report is non-violent protest.

You have unmasked and open and visible in order to communicate with large numbers of people and to make use of arguments and reason? Damn. I wish someone had told me that before.

What, you mean you’re not the famous Engels? (I did think it was a bit odd.)

Phil, two things. First, sure, my argument relies on accepting certain empirical assumptions about the impact of violence on (1) coverage of a protest, and the impact of that coverage on (2) undecided or weakly decided portions of the public susceptible to persuasion. Absolutely. I think those assumptions are pretty reasonable, though, which distinguishes the argument from the “Don’t let George join us!” caricature. If you think the assumptions are NOT reasonable, then excellent; I’d like to hear why. If your point is simply that the assumptions haven’t been empirically substantiated here in the comments, then I agree. Does that mean we should reject them, even as operating assumptions for maximizing the effect of a protest? No.

Second, just a minor thing, but I’d want to, and I’ve tried to, distinguish between the efficacy of a single protest, and the efficacy of an entire movement. A single protest can be less effective than it otherwise might be for all sorts of reasons. Simultaneous events might completely overwhelm coverage of it, for example. The entire movement however might have a very effective strategy that involves various lines of effort.

Tim, I agree with your reasoning though I’m less certain about your argument for assigning motive, or the absence of opposing vectors.

As (nearly always) I agree with engels.

Does it really benefit the left to accuse the police of deliberately causing violence at the protest?

I dunno, but it definitely benefits the left if the possibility is in the air, and it definitely benefits the left to provocatively suggest that the black bloc are attempting to undermine their protest.

I mean, seriously, the black bloc are not leftists, not even radical leftists. They go wreak havoc during Ed Miliband’s speech and during Uncut protests but not during Cameron’s speeches or during conservative rallies. They pull media attention away from the left — which is exactly what everyone’s pointing out, right?

Seriously. Think about that for a little while. They’re acting like anti-left reactionaries, they’re walking like anti-left reactionaries, they’re quacking like anti-left reactionaries. I think it’s reasonable to accuse them of being anti-left reactionaries, or more honestly being unwitting patsies of anti-left reactionaries. Let them answer for themselves howsoever they choose.

If they’re not an enemy, they’re acting like one. Regardless of whether we should regard them as intending to be our ally or not, it’s perfectly reasonable to publicly declare that they’re acting to undermine and destroy left protest, and raise the possibility in people’s minds that it might be intentional.

They won’t reason with us or collaborate with us or coordinate with us or plan with us or interact with us or negotiate with us or hell, they don’t even independently time their attacks in a way that would support us or augment us.^1^ They’re not an ally. If they claim to be, well, they sure don’t act like it.

^1^(I feel kinda bad about saying “us” when I wasn’t part of the protest, but more complicated grammar would just awkwardify the sentence. I’ll definitely affirm my support for those who participated in the Uncut flash mobs, and I’m with ’em in spirit, for whatever that’s worth. If you wanna sell your drugs, pay your tax…)

They won’t reason with us or collaborate with us or coordinate with us or plan with us or interact with us or negotiate with us

Eh? Have you read the letter Phil linked, to UK Uncut members from some of the folks who participated in the black bloc tactics on March 26? The letter that praised the UK Uncut action and said that “many of us would favour mass direct action over property destruction”?

They certainly seem to be trying to reason with, coordinate with, plan with, interact with, and negotiate with UK Uncut. Unless you’re going to read UK Uncut too out of “us”, this is a clear counterexample.

And one I’d expect. Most of the anarchists I’ve worked with “favour mass direct action over property destruction” – they’d rather be doing banner drops, lockdowns, and blockades than breaking windows (not to mention Food Not Bombs, bookstores, and infoshops). It’s true they have no great compunction about breaking windows when they think it appropriate — and like most of the folks on this thread I wish they had more concern for the strategic effects thereof.

But saying “Tactic X undercuts the effectiveness of Tactic Y and therefore those who use X are the enemies of those who use Y” is counterproductive on so many levels I can’t count them. For one thing, it has no possibility of discouraging Tactic X. When we’re working for great change, most tactics fail, most of the time. To keep a movement for change alive we need stubborn pigheaded people who will keep coming back to butt head against wall (or truncheon), over and over again, in all the different ways heads can butt against walls. Usually we just get bruised heads. Occasionally part of the wall unexpectedly falls over, and maybe we learn from the tactics of the folks who achieved that.

In some ways that’s where black bloc tactics came from: David Graeber says that many of the black bloc anarchists in Seattle 1999 were forest activist who had developed lockdown tactics and been subjected therefore to “what can only be described as torture techniques: rubbing pepper spray in the eyes of incapacitated activists”. [“On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets”, in his collection Possibilities, p. 411] I don’t know what experiences the people had who signed the letter to UK Uncutters; I do know my friends’ experiences: beaten and arrested for walking down the street dressed in activist-looking clothes, beaten in jail after arrests for completely nonviolent sit-in style actions, shot in the breast with a bean-bag gun at a demonstration where nothing even remotely provocative was going on (save by the police).

I could wish for my friends the wisdom of Gandhi and the ability to absorb these repeated abuses with saintly restraint. But not at the cost of their pigheadedness. Which is (at least sometimes!) different than stupidity. There must be at least a few hundred people in Wisconsin who’ve participated in black bloc tactics; probably half of them were in those demonstrations, without forming a black bloc, because they too thought it would be a counterproductive strategy.

Show people better tactics and they’ll use them. The folks who wrote that letter seem to be at least wondering if UK Uncut’s tactics might be an improvement on theirs. That (might!) convince where a scolding in the Guardian will not.

Andrew @194:

I think those assumptions are pretty reasonable, though, which distinguishes the argument from the “Don’t let George join us!” caricature.

Your argument is eminently reasonable and makes perfect sense. What it doesn’t appear to have behind it is evidence that it applies to the real world. So far we’ve got one example of a case where violent tactics seem not to have been counter-productive, plus an assertion that this time round they would be counter-productive. In that respect I think your argument is closer to my reductio than you think.

I agree wholeheartedly with Andrew@201 (slightly to my surprise), & second Yarrow’s comment in toto – particularly the last paragraph. We should be criticising bad tactics (and celebrating good ones), not anathematising people who use bad tactics (or rather, people who use what we think are going to turn out to have been bad tactics).

And thanks, Harry, for not being controlling! I thought salient’s comment

They’re acting like anti-left reactionaries, they’re walking like anti-left reactionaries, they’re quacking like anti-left reactionaries. I think it’s reasonable to accuse them of being anti-left reactionaries

was truly dreadful advice which should not be followed at any cost. I’m fairly passionate about this because I’ve studied (and written about) a period in which precisely this approach was adopted by a huge and influential element of the Left- with results which were dismal, then disastrous, then dismal again. Examples could be multiplied, but here’s one (Lama was the leader of the CGT, the Communist-allied trade union):

For Lama, the ‘new fascism’ is not only revealed by the use of violence and repressive intolerance. Fascism itself, he says, had at the outset ‘demagogic and irrational roots like these’, particularly among young people’. Then there is the right-wing populism of hostility to the parties, concrete politics, the mechanics of democracy. There’s the attack on symbolism, stripping it of meaning, the nihilist derision typified by slogans such as ‘Fewer holidays, more exploitation’ or ‘Dromedary power’. And, naturally, there’s the choice of enemies: the unions, the Communists. ‘How else do you recognise fascism?’

Well Phil, but it hasn’t been established that the suffragettes didn’t harm the movement. You’ve asserted as much, but if you’re raising the standard of empirical substantiation, an assertion won’t cut it.

If the empirical assumptions I make in the argument are reasonable – reasonable in this context of course – then I’m not sure how you escape the conclusions. Is there an equally reasonable, or more plausible, argument that supports the conclusion that violence in this context does NOT harm the efficacy of a particular protest?

The only ways in which I can think violence here might be useful is:
(1) To gain public attention, as Tim Wilkinson suggested;
(2) To force a government to concede to demands rather than face continuing unrest;
(3) To win sympathy from the public by demonstrating just how sharply desperate matters have become.

Is it one, or all three, of these possible lines that you have in mind? I think we can toss out (3) and (2) at the outset in this context, which leaves (1). And that public attention, at least in the articles I’ve seen on the protest, confirm the prediction that coverage of the violence would overwhelm coverage of what the protest is actually about.

it hasn’t been established that the suffragettes didn’t harm the movement

Partial success in five years, complete success in another ten. It just looks a lot more like movement that wasn’t harmed by its violent elements than one that was.

As for the current movement, I think we’d all be better off reserving judgment on why the violence had the effects it did until such time as those effects have had a chance to happen. Right now, we don’t know.

salient: it’s a long story, but basically in the mid- to late 70s in Italy you have a huge and polymorphous radical social movement – hard-core ‘militarists’, masked molotov-throwers, intellectuals who believe in fusing Maoism with Dadaism, public housing tenants who want to withhold the rent, kids who want to bunk into cinemas, performance artists who at once embody the movement and take the piss out of it, and several other gradations and permutations. And then you have the Communist Party, with over 30% of the vote in the last few elections; the party’s leaders believe it’s closer to power than ever before, and think they can attain power by keeping very very quiet and being very very responsible. So just at the moment when the radical Left is at its most radical, the Communist Party is encouraging its members to work harder and take pay cuts. Wackiness ensues. Denouncing the movement as fascists does not work. Denouncing the irresponsible violent hard core of the movement doesn’t work either. Endorsing a massive crackdown on the movement as a whole sort of works but sort of doesn’t – it’s followed by an abrupt decline in movement activity, but also by a sharp rise in the level of ‘armed struggle’ actions. And the Communists’ own support peaked just before they took a stand against the movement, and then went into a decline from which it never recovered.

Heh, I too am glad Harry didn’t cap it off with my words; every critical response since has been much appreciated.

Blast it, though, it’s looking like there’s not a copy of Phil’s book in this blasted state for library checkout. I blame democracy. (It’s at the top of my to-find list, Phil. There are a couple collectives with offline book collections, I can ask around.)

The letter that praised the UK Uncut action and said that “many of us would favour mass direct action over property destruction”?

I feel like “there is a valid debate to be had over tactics — which ones further the anti-cuts movement or are counter-productive — and many of us would favour mass direct action over property destruction” is welcoming the tactics-oriented criticism written by Harry and Christopher, isn’t it?

I suppose it would be completely fair to say that the letter is a pre-emptive (and more or less satisfactory) response to the sorts of questions I proposed should be hung in the air. I’ll have to give it more thought, Andrew and Yarrow; both of your comments seem persuasive to me.

But saying “Tactic X undercuts the effectiveness of Tactic Y and therefore those who use X are the enemies of those who use Y”

Ah hell, though, I never said that. Nor did Harry or Christopher. In fact we’ve all emphasized we intend quite the opposite, I think (possibly not, I really dislike speaking for other people for fear I misspeak). In fact, it would be [quick check of statue of limitations] uhh, it might be potentially very hypocritical of me to say something like that, in possibly the same way it might be potentially hypocritical for folks who participated in some ROTC protests that may have involved some covert defacement of ROTC property (and also chalk spray!)

Perhaps a strategy is to fool the cops and media into thinking there is ‘violence’ going on, when in fact all they can actually manage to report is non-violent protest. Perhaps Salient’s chalk spray?

Indeed, that’s basically the point. Like many of the most effective direct action protests (I think), it has the benefit of humiliating police and/or making them look like godawful dopes. My basic theory is that many of the most effective protests are engineered to humiliate the hell out of the people who suppress them, and/or make disinterested people watching think the suppressors are acting like godawful stupid brutish dopes, with violent reactions wildly disproportionate to the protest.

Salient, your comments have always been a breath of fresh air — perhaps the fact that I intensively disagree on this issue is making the contrast loom large. In response to “saying ‘Tactic X undercuts the effectiveness of Tactic Y and therefore those who use X are the enemies of those who use Y'”, you write “Ah hell, though, I never said that. Nor did Harry or Christopher. ”

I agree you’re not saying that anyone who breaks a window is an enemy of the left. I do hear you saying that only enemies break windows at the wrong time and place (e.g., at the hour of and close to the TUC march). But that too is a tactical issue! I can agree that it harmed the effectiveness of that march (while being not at all sure of how much harm). Even granting for the sake of argument that it was a clear case of boneheaded stupidity, it’s much less harmful to say “that was stupid” than “you’re an anti-left reactionary”. (Been there, done that, pulled the silk screen equipment apart before we could print the T-shirts.)

P.S. When someone comes around to say that the Wisconsin recall efforts are objectively counter-revolutionary because they make a general strike less likely, let me at ’em! I’m easy — I’ll scold anybody.

I’ve just remembered why it was that I have a little bee buzzing round my bonnet about the effect or otherwise of “direct action” on public perceptions – it’s all about Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Gymraeg. The Welsh language movement had a quite aggressive program of criminal damage (mainly of English-language road and shop signs, but there was also the Fire At Lleyn) and it worked; lots of them went to prison, but we got the Welsh Language Act and S4C. Even the holiday cottage arson campaign, which was denounced by Cymdeithas (in, I note, the throatclearing manner which I recommended in #101 above) probably did as much good as harm to the nashie cause among the Welsh-speaking population.

I was at school in Wales in the early 1970s – right on the border between rural-Welsh Carmarthenshire and the weird ‘English’ enclave of south Pembs. Once for my English homework I wrote a lament for a vandalised signpost, after Ogden Nash (quite a long way after) –

“Once with ‘Haverfordwest’
Written bold on its chest…”

“‘The English,’ they shout,
Had better get out!’
And all tourists they seek to confuse.”

(I think those were the best bits.)

I didn’t get a very good mark that week, to my surprise.

Anyway – the timeline goes
1970s: protests, sit-ins, vandalism
1972: Bowen Committee recommends provision of Welsh-language road signs
1979: Tories and Labour promise a Welsh-language TV channel
1979-91: holiday cottage arson campaign
1980: Tories renege; Gwynfor Evans of Plaid Cymru goes on hunger strike until they back down
1982: S4C
1993: Welsh Language Act mandates bilingual road signs (among much else)

Again, I think you’d have to look at that for quite a long time before you could interpret it as evidence of violent protest not getting results.

Cymdeithas yr Iaith (“cwm” is closer to the Northern pronunciation but that’s the spelling) was formally established in 1963, but it was the same few bodies that had been doing basically the same thing within the context of Plaid Cymru for twenty years, which is presumably why you remember them in the 50s.

I think Phil’s timeline only omits

1979 – the devolution referendum is a great big disaster for the Nationalist cause

It’s important to underline that for a lot of the 70s and 80s, it was not at all obvious that CyI’s cause had any great widespread or even mainstream support, even in Wales, even in North Wales, even in North West Wales. Plaid were rarely off Wales Today condemning the “extremists”, who “distracted” from the main task of Welsh Nationalism (ie, dual carriageways). It was more or less entirely kept alive by the direct action movement, for better or worse.

re capable of making a specific point about tax stitch ups – I listened to the reincarnated Jeremy Vine, and the UKUncut person came over well in general, but actually didn’t aquite in the event make the point about stitch-ups – going exclusively for the expensive avoidance strategies (‘technicalities’) angle instead. Bit of a weak one – while people love complaining about technicalities, e.g. those which allow suspects to ‘walk free’ from court, they also commonly either recognise or embody the ambivalence that means one man’s technicality is another man’s rule of law.

The bit I loved about that quote was the Bullingdon Club bit — I should have simply quoted that and the whole thread would have been different. I’m 100% converted to UKuncut, brilliant.

There are nationalists, just a few, who think it would be worth going to prison to get rid of S4C…. The rules around Welsh language schooling are much more significant. (My recently deceased great uncle was a leader in Swansea of the Welsh language movement, as well as prominent in the Labour party, which made him a rarity — he never actually criticized S4C but it was clear that he didn’t think it was a crowning achievement).

The causal issue is interesting. Just as D2 asks way upthread whether we have any evidence about the effects on opinion of coverage of these kinds of things, I’m curious what the evidence is concerning the cottage burning and vandalism in Wales. There’s no doubt that the Welsh language movement (rather than PC) was essential for getting the rules around schools, and S4C, but the determination of Welsh Labour to resist nationalism was too, and it helped that the Tories were very unpopular when they were forced to deliver… etc. Do we know anything about the effects of the cottage burning? (I’m not being picky, I’d ask the same about large peaceful demonstrations letter-riting campaigns, etc).

Do we know anything about the effects of the cottage burning?

I think it was, strangely enough, a bigger thing in England than in Wales. I just vaguely recall it as being one of those things, which is odd, because not only did I grow up right in the Gaeltacht[1], my family actually owned a number of holiday cottage properties. I’m surprised to find from Wikipedia that 220 homes were bombed. The main impact on Welsh politics was the proliferation of purity tests and scholastic reasoning about which kinds of property damage were and weren’t acceptable. Oh, and it made a convenient excuse for Plaid when trying to explain away yet another dreadful result. I suspect that if anyone had ever been actually hurt (which was not for want of trying – there were letter bombs sent as well as the attacks on empty homes), it would have changed things greatly.

[1] it is profoundly to the credit of the Welsh that, whatever else, they have never needed a word meaning “that part of our country where we speak our language”

Nobody’s said they think that barging into a march, letting off smoke bombs and mixing it with the police is a good idea

I’ll admit that at the time I was writing, it seemed to me that the black bloc did exactly that. [I’m worried we’ve been talking past each other.]

I don’t really see the similarity between anarchist violence and the Bullingdon Club. The Bullingdon Club just smashed things up because it was fun, and because they were rich enough not to have to worry about any consequences. Although (like afaics everyone else here) I’m not advocating such tactics I see more points of comparison with the peaceful direct direction of groups like UK Uncut and a strike. All three are based on the principle that ‘If the economy disrupts our lives, then we must disrupt the economy,’ (to quote UK Uncut’s slogan.) The main difference with a strike is that it is likely to be far more effective in achieving this.

Apropros perhaps:

Ryder says: As a Metropolitan police officer are you are telling us that your training says that that if someone represents no threat to you and not threat to another person, you are entitled to baton them?

Harwood replies: Depends on the circumstances.

The link must have been mistyped cos the server has inserted this page’s url into it. Correct address (I hope): teh graun.

Also: permalink to a later version of engels’s quote.

dsquared wins the thread. (This is the point at which people who know the literature go into a huddle and say “ah, Supreme Court, political opportunity structure, external allies, cleavages within the elite, very much what McAdam said, really”. Which is fine – better than fine, it’s valid – but it does implicitly concede the point I’ve been trying to make all along, which is that a violent tactic is just a tactic like any other. Ascribed “violence” is used to exclude people from the political process, but actual physical violence doesn’t need to have taken place for this exclusion to happen, and can take place without it happening.)

engels, re police tactics – I can’t honestly say I’m surprised. Last year I showed students a C4 programme about the policing of the G20 protests, in which the programme-makers talked to a protester who claimed to have been hit in the face with a riot shield, then found video footage of a police officer hitting someone in the face with a riot shield. They then asked the friendly and helpful police officer who had agreed to be interviewed, “are officers trained to hit protesters in the face with riot shields?” (It was a reasonable question on the basis of the video footage alone; it didn’t look like someone losing his head in the heat of the moment, it looked like someone acting quite deliberately.) The answer quite conspicuously failed to include the word ‘no’.

Perhaps UBL’s success in getting US troops to relocate from his country to Qatar would be another rather extreme example.