Re: anti-capitalism protest?

Further to this, from a pluralist liberal perspective, a bit of historical 
contextualising re the J18 City activities:





    The theatre of riot
    
    Previous rioters saw an industrial
    revolution which they did not like. With
    this crowd, it's globalisation

Guardian 26-06-99
    
    Jonathan Freedland
    
    They are "evil savages," "masked thugs" and
    "hatefilled yobs". Their violent, booze-fuelled
    rampage through the City of London brought
    terror to the capital last week, and on Monday
    they were at it again desecrating the ancient
    jewels of Stonehenge. The front-page
    consensus has been loud and clear: the rioters
    are scum, a new and dangerous threat to the
    British way of life.

    But what if the rioters are part of the British
    way of life? What if they are not some new
    phenomenon but rather the latest example of a
    long British tradition of dissent, one that
    stretches back to the earliest days of English,
    Welsh and Scottish history? And what if the
    sheer similarity of the current "mob" to rebels
    past offers a sharp warning to the governing
    class - in Britain and beyond?

    The parallels are certainly striking. The June
    18 or J18 demo was billed as a Carnival against
    Capitalism, a street party replacing "the roar of
    profit and plunder with the sounds and rhythms
    of carnival and pleasure!" Until things got out
    of hand, that's how it was: live music, jugglers,
    stilt-walkers and magicians filling the streets
    usually occupied by pinstripes and mobile
    phones. Protesters were urged to come in
    disguise, in order to blend into the City: "Office
    worker or bike courier costumes work best!"

    How sensitive to tradition these radicals
    were. Exactly 160 years earlier, the Rebecca
    Rioters of rural Wales also
    donned costume - women's clothing, to be
    precise - to protest against the capitalist evil of
    their day. Their target was
    not the London International Financial
    Futures and Options Exchange but the series of
    tollgates erected along the country lanes of
    Wales. Farmers complained that these tolls -
    effectively privatising the highway - were
    bleeding them white. Every time they led their
    sheep to market, they had to pay up. So dressed
    as Rebecca, (associated with gates in the Book
    of Genesis), these Welsh farmers staged an
    elaborate piece of street theatre by each of the
    offending gates - before promptly
    smashing and burning them. Just like the J18
    crowd, they felt an industrial revolution was
    coming over which they had no control: then it
    was the machine, now it's globalisation. And,
    just like them, the Rebeccas knew how to stage
    the perfect blend of costume, drama and force.
    Ceremony was indispensable, then and now.
    Social historian Bob Bushaway called his book
    on 19th-century dissent, By Rite, in deference
    to the rebels' love of ritual. That tradition lives
    on, too, with many of today's protestors forging
    a New Age faith all their own. The Stonehenge stand-
    off is a case in point: it's a fight for the right to
    observe druid custom.

    So little has changed. The modus operandi of
    dissent remains word-of-mouth. The J18 event
    surprised everyone because it had been
    coordinated below radar, on the internet - the
    bush telegraph of the protest movement. In the
    days of Captain Swing, the rural revolt that
    swept across southern and eastern England in
    1830, word was spread by William Cobbett's
    Political Register, the home-made newsletter
    which served as the internet of its day.
    Both then and now the authorities were foxed:
    who was the mastermind behind this
    insurrection? The police don't know who
    organised J18, just as they never found a single
    Captain Swing or the real Rebecca. The
    pseudonym remains a favourite tool: Swampy
    would have felt right at home with his ancestors,
    all of whom took on the system under a nom de
    guerre.

    And yes, they all broke the law. "The
    conscientious objectors did it, so did the gays,
    and the Suffragettes chained themselves to the
    railings;' rattles off Tony Benn, the grand old
    man of English dissent. He hasn't just
    chronicled the rebel tradition; he's lived it.
    Physical protest is part of our heritage, says
    Benn, from the Peasants' Revolt through to the
    Levellers and the Chartists. "I believe in non-
    violence myself, Im a Ghandian," he adds but 
    is quick to point to Britain's long history of
    direct action. The Luddites smashed the
    machinery that was making their skills obsolete -
    but they spared the bosses who fired them. Not
    one of the J18 demos that took place in 40
    countries on Friday advocated bloodshed. Their
    goal was capital, not capitalists.

       Another tradition has been
        honoured just as faithfully:
        the rebels have been pillo-
        ried by press and politicians
        alike. They've been dismissed as a "rent-a-mob," 
    tanked-up on drink. Bushaway says Captain Swing and
    the Rebeccas were similarly swept aside.
    "Those in power could not accept that
    these passive, compliant people would ac-
    tually stand up to be counted," he says.
    They had to have been stirred up by
    agents provocateurs, probably from
    France. This time the bottle is the culprit.
    There's one last similarity, one which extends
    far beyond a shared experience of ostracism and
    a common knack for resistance theatre. The
    dissenters of the last century arose because
    they had no other outlet. Captain Swing resorted
    to unrest because he could not find a voice in a
    House of Commons as yet unaltered ed by the
    Great Reform Act. The next wave of rioters had
    first decided they could not be 
    heard any other way.

    A similar motive appears to be at work today.
    The newest generation of British rebels say they
    can see nothing for them in conventional
    politics. 'Who gives a shit about the European
    elections?" asks Warren, a direct action
    campaigner involved with the Brighton-based
    alternative
   
+++++ dropout ++++


    To call the
    interviewer
    'Mr Pax-ton
    reveals how
    utterly
    disconnected
    you are

++++++++ end dropout ++++


    newsletter, SchNEWS. Motivated enough to
    have been at both weekend showdowns, he
    nevertheless has no interest in formal politics.
    Warren reckons that of the .500 fellow activists
    he guided toward the City event, not one voted
    in the Euroelections. Why should they bother?
    "What's the difference between Labour  and
    Conservative?"
    
    You could see the point on Newsnight's 1 live
    outside broadcast from Stonehenge. Jeremy
    Paxinan interviewed a woman called Helen Hat
    who, true to her name, wore a splendid, laurel-
    wreathed piece of headgear. She twice addressed
    her interviewer as "Mr Paxton." There's not a
    person alive in conventional British politics who
    would have made that mistake. It was proof
    positive that Ms Hat and her comrades are utterly
    disconnected from the official national
    conversation.
    
    Tony Blair is unlikely to lose much sleep at
    this prospect. He has enough trouble
    tending his New Labour roots, without
    worrying about the wilder flowers on the
    anarchist fringe. But he should pay attention all
    the same. For an iron law of politics states that,
    when a body of opinion has no mainstream
    outlet, it finds another channel - outside legal,
    peaceful debate if necessary. That's what
    happened in the Italy of the 1970s, when he left
    was shut out by an all-encompassing in,
    coalition aimed at excluding the Communist
    party. The result was the terror campaign of the
    Red Brigade.
    
    Right now, the British opponent of
    globalisation has no home in democratic
    politics. The Greens come closest, but they're
    too remote from power. Blair can ignore this
    disenfranchised voter if he wants to; he hardly
    needs him or her to expand his massive
    coalition. But he should listen all the same. The
    reason is plain to see: it's there, in black-and-
    white, in any book of British history.

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