I shall make this short as 'Jackboot' earlier put up a very detailed eye witness report to the police brutality and intimidation that took plce in Trafalgar Square and on the strand yesterday and I do not wish to repeat the same information again.
I was trapped with fellow protestors on the Strand towards the end of the afternoon and witnessed some very aggressive and hostile activity by the police. So how did the crowd respond? The use of a sound system to hold a street party, block the streets and hence challenge the normal business of capitalism in this area of the city was good. Yet it seemed to me that the crowd was largely made up of people who just wished to get stoned, have a party and stick two fingers up to the powers that be. Well sure, there's nothing wrong with this, but if we are to progress beyond this phase then the movement needs to get serious about organising some self-defence against the agressive police tactics that in the end smashed our collective solidarity.
There were some moments of heroism as the police attemped to attack us near Boots on the Strand etc, but as the evening wore on and boredom set in the lack of organisation amongst people in the crowd meant that everyone eventually came to accept the police request to disperse one by one; which in effect meant that our collective solidarity was smashed as we failed to leave the demo as one large group!!!!
Now I was in a similar situation on a demo held in Copenhagen last December during the EU summit and due to the organisational tactics of the local anarchists we managed to fight off the police attacks and leave the demo as one large group. How did we manage this? The local anarchists at the very beginning of the demo went up to people and urged them to link arms and march in a chain formation.Although the march was not attacked immediately, later in the day when we were attacked and surrounded the tactic worked as it prevented the police snatching masked people and ultimiately, because we held our nerve, the collective solidarity of the demo remained solid due to the chain formation. After a stand off of a few hours the cops gave in and we left the demo collectively! Surely it should not be too difficult for us to organise something similar like this in the UK for next Mayday? This empahsis on individualist anarchism in the uk is not just beginning to look rather foolish but it's politically very dangerous! At this rate the cops will manage to atomise and ultimately crsh this movement. Clearly we need to do some serious thinking about organisational tactics for demos in the future!!!!!