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The Summer of Rage?: A critical look at the G20 London protests, a year on

qwertyuiop | 01.04.2010 09:50 | G20 London Summit | Repression | Social Struggles | Workers' Movements

Did anyone notice the summer of rage? Like all British summers, it was disappointingly non-existent: a few letters in the guardian, a climate camp of Cath Kidston tents and, to top it all, hardly a day of sun.

At the beginning of the year, the forecast was hopeful. We were told we were in the midst of a crisis. Each week another bank/factory/country went bankrupt. And everywhere a response: riots in Greece, unrest in France, occupations in Italy. Even in Britain, people were responding. The unions, the Stop the War Coalition, were losing control: workers went on wildcat strikes and February’s Stop the War trudge turned into something approaching a riot.

And we were told that the summer would kick off at the G20 counter-summit, when the recession’s ‘victims’ would come out to fight. We were told when, where and how we would protest; and the invite was made by no less than the country’s most senior police officer, delivered via the great British media. Mobs and cells of hate-filled, masked-up, dirty sofa-owning anarchists, who recruit children and foment protest, were to be hosted by hundreds of riot cops, all leave cancelled. The date: April Fools’ Day.

Any suspicion over accepting an invitation from a cop was forgotten in our desperate hope that this time it was for real, that this was the beginning of the end of capitalism -after all, didn’t they say something like that on Newsnight?– that this would be a counter-summit that went over the summit and out the other side.

We made our separate ways there and our separate ways home. Gone were the days of the anti-road protests, when the meeting at Bank was the culmination of something more –a mass movement apparently moving somewhere. All that united us now was nostalgia, a sense of not being quite sure what we were doing, where we were going –Have we met before? Shall we dance? Whose streets?- rage diffused to confusion.

A decade on, and the terrain hadn’t changed -we were even using the same map– still ‘Squaring Up to the Square Mile’, acting out the same roles, in the same place, but this time the cops were directing. While in those ten years we had lost any kind of strength, the police had been perfecting their response –to learn when to contain, when to hit out, when to arrest, when to take pictures, when to go home.

And they told us why we were there –our battle was with the banks. After all, we were reminded time and time again that this was a crisis not of economics, but of finance; not systemic, but cultural. The Bank of England would play its role as the physical centre of the crisis. Bankers had long ago been auditioned as the baddies: in the media, by the politicians, by the Socialist Worker. Old anarchists were wheeled out by the BBC to warn that bankers would be hung from lampposts, and cops told city workers to disguise themselves in casual clothes, presumably to avoid a hanging. We were provided with a symbolic outlet for the rage -RBS, the baddest of all the bad banks, was left as bait: its windows unboarded.

And we fell for it. For every protestor there were five cameras: smash, smash, smash; flash, flash, flash. The climax -again and again on TVs across the country. Each time a little more unsatisfactory, each time a little more removed –they frame us to act, then frame us in photographs. If our action was ever ours in the first place, it certainly wasn’t any longer. Watching from their living rooms, people were replayed the powerlessness of the protestors, the power of the police; the powerlessness of protestors, the power of the police. Later, arrests. The window is repaired. You won’t try that again.

Nearby, Climate Camp looks like a bad memory of the sixties: tents, flowers, samba, baked potatoes… except now there’s a CCTV camera watching it all. But the ‘good protestors’ don’t get away without a good battering. The cops go in with truncheons. The campers, with upraised and open hands, chant the last words of the day: ‘This is not a riot.’

There would be no riots that summer. Any pretensions we might have had about our power were shown to be foolish: we had been got. Nothing is more indicative of this than that somebody was murdered without a response –we hardly even noticed. The repercussion consisted of a couple of funereal marches, a few letters in the guardian, an enquiry in the distant future, a new climate camp that made friends with the cops, and praise for police reform, again -a summer of middle class ‘outrage’ and reconciliation. The cops weren’t afraid of beating to kill, for they knew –as we should– that there would be no fighting back, because there was nothing there to fight back –we were nothing more than those few hours at Bank. ‘We’ do not exist.

Capitalism might be in crisis, but its defences are alive and well. When Newsnight asked whether Marx was right –is this the end of capitalism?– it was proof of the opposite, proof of a confidence that such a question would be answered with little more than knowing chuckles in middle-class living rooms. The real crisis is not in the state, but in resistance.

If whatever it was that turned up at Bank last year -this weak, containable, directionless scene of a ‘scene’- means anything to capitalism, it is as assistance not resistance. And if the cops were fighting anything that day, it was the threat of something else: some other people, some other ways, some other summers.


qwertyuiop

Comments

Hide the following 14 comments

to the author

01.04.2010 11:41

excellent article, can you get in touch
cheers
dean

 freedomeds@yahoo.co.uk

freedom editor
mail e-mail: freedomeds@yahoo.co.uk


nice article

01.04.2010 11:57

about right I think. A meaningfull, critical opposition didn't emerge (indeed it seems the far right profitted from the crisis a lot more than we did) and what did turn out on the streets was well and truly stage managed.

As for the comment below, I'm not sure you understand the post and it would be great if we didn't drown the rest of IMC in bloody nonsense ranting about people flying to conferences. People spouting nonsense like that are part of the reason no one cares about our politics.

x


A great article, very well articulated..

01.04.2010 14:24

CHEERS!

@narchist


We

01.04.2010 15:27

"'We' do not exist."

Very true. The problem is what to do about it - there is no mass organised movement opposing the status quo in any meaningful way (the farcical term 'movement of movements' is as close as anyone can get to a name, and it's a name that doesn't really mean anything). Whether there is the desire for it amongst people is the important question. A lot of the time it seems that people would rather sit in the 'pure revolutionary ghetto'.

C


my experience of the summer of rage

01.04.2010 17:33

Its truly remarkable. Every analysis who wanted a few column inches were crying doom and gloom and how the markets will continue falling to total destruction. Its the same everytime there is a correction. OK, it was a big correction, but that was all it was. The doomsayers were the exact same people who were shouting out there was neverending bubble in oil prices the year before! The same people who were shouting "Oil will be $200!" were also the same ones shouting "Oil will drop to $20!"

Both complete bollox. The old adage of buying when everyone is shouting sell remained true.

Whilst all these doomsayers were saying that the market was in crisis and would continue to plummet to a new depression.... I bought a load of Apple shares at $106. Now they are worth $236.
I've more than doubled my money but not following the crowd of sheep and ignoring the "summer of crisis" brigade.

When everyone is shouting "sell", then its times to buy. That will always hold true.

wiser than you


DON'T FEED THE ABOVE TROLL

01.04.2010 18:49

IGNORE AND MOVE ON....

TROLL IGNORER


And so?

01.04.2010 22:03

The lie "a new climate camp that made friends with the cops" comes from a person who couldnt get his own way with the camp and rather than persevering has adopted a common course of going off and making a little group of his own. If theres one word that describes the reason why resistance is failing, it is "sectarianism". So now we have yet another sect.

J.H.


do exist

02.04.2010 00:20

'WE' do exist though, at every blockade, at every sit-down, at every demonstration, at every party, in every conversation. It just ain't right and we should to something about it.

Sorry for lack of analysis.

We


Thought provoking but...

02.04.2010 09:17

It's easy to romanticise the past and a mistake to judge today on the basis of measures defined by the cops or media. We never said there'd be a summer of rage and while some elements of meltdown meetings might have sole of hanging bankers and polititians, that (sadly perhaps) was not the aim of most. It's never easy to define what success looks like and not true to say that failure is simply everything other than success.

All that said, I think meltdown organising structure was unsuited to achieving anything more than a police kettle and media spectacle. I think the camp acieved what it set out to do (bar getting across all the desired messaging) but probably only held out as long as it did because police saw contaient of meltdown etc as the main priority. Beyond that, G20 mobilisation was non existant which would be shocking but is no surprise given the levels of apathy, hopelessness and the state of our collective organising abliity.

Ben


to be honest

03.04.2010 11:55

the G20 and the climate camp were pretty irrelevent to any 'summer of rage', workers occupied at Visteon and Vestas, wildcatted at LOR, won strikes at Leeds and Brighton bins... but these were exceptions rather than the rule. we're a long way from the class struggle of the 1970s, we've yet to come to terms with the structural changes to the economy breaking up large concentrations of traditionally militant workers (miners, factories...) and replacing them with casualised service sector jobs. there are ways to organise and resist in such jobs, but the trade unions aren't interested (they're more interested in securing 'consultation' roles for the cuts than fighting them, sabotaging struggles at Royal Mail, Leeds Uni, Visteon), the left aren't interested (doing their historical recreationism 'new workers party' shit) and many anarchists aren't interested (still doing summit protests in an ever-fading echo of Genoa).

tbh


response to J.H.

03.04.2010 14:06

Hello J. H.,

You wrote: "The lie "a new climate camp that made friends with the cops" comes from a person who couldnt get his own way with the camp and rather than persevering has adopted a common course of going off and making a little group of his own. If theres one word that describes the reason why resistance is failing, it is "sectarianism". So now we have yet another sect. "

Why do you assume that this article was written by:

a) a man
b) an individual
c) someone who would be interested in getting their 'own way with the camp' and
d) someone in a sect?

Ten out of ten for a lovely story, (and for your bold attempt to sum up in one word why resistance is failing), but you have done nothing to refute the charge that climate camp made friends with the cops. Do you think that maybe you made up this sect-loving, climate camp rejected straw man, because you are too afraid to engage with what the article actually says?



H.J.


Camp, cops - friends and enemies

04.04.2010 17:39

Why would anyone assume that the comment above referred to the author of the article rather than the source of an inaccurate rumor? The reality is that there was no camp sanctioned friendship establish with the cops at blackheath (or indeed, any noticeable police presence for most of the time). A handful of police came in past people at the gate who failed to do anything to stop them and one individual offered them tea. The camp itself discussed the issue in neighborhood meetings and reaffirmed a no cops on site attitude despite proposals to allow silver command to visit. Any suggestion that the camp made friends with the cops is total bollocks and you have to wonder about their motives for circulating such malicious lies. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Gringo


Bigots

06.04.2010 18:05

"A handful of police came in past people at the gate who failed to do anything to stop them and one individual offered them tea. The camp itself discussed the issue in neighborhood meetings and reaffirmed a no cops on site attitude despite proposals to allow silver command to visit. Any suggestion that the camp made friends with the cops is total bollocks and you have to wonder about their motives for circulating such malicious lies. With friends like these, who needs enemies?"


It was on common land that everyone has a right to access. You cannot prevent people from entering this land without being hypocrite and a bigot. In fact, you can't prevent people having access to this land in the same way you can't murder someone.

The camp did politely deal with a police representative. Thats what people do - be polite to each other.

total foolishness


an impressive analysis

07.04.2010 13:53

This article neatly captures the impotency of the G20 demonstration. Bring on the other summers!
Author - please get in touch.

peel


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