Fallujah Protestors Block Piccadilly Circus

d mish | 10.11.2004 23:57 | Anti-militarism | Cambridge | London

This evening (wednesday 10th november) twenty demonstrators blocked Piccadilly Circus in protest at the slaughter being committed by US forces, aided by British forces, in Fallujah.

Banners were unfurled in front of the traffic and gathering crowds, below the Eros statue. Many passers by voiced their support for the action taken, some even joining in. Some drivers were less than amused however, some trying to grab a banner from the demonstrators.

One of the demonstrators, Tom, who had travelled from Cambridge, said "I'm here to voice my outrage at what's currently going on in Iraq. Our government is currently bombing defenseless civilians on our behalf, and I think it's important to get people involved in resisting this in whatever way possible.".

Three police vans and a Forward Intelligence(?) Team (FIT) turned up after around ten minutes, at which point the demonstrators dispersed into the crowd to regroup later.

It is believed that more actions are planed.

d mish

Comments

Hide the following 11 comments

We need more of these

11.11.2004 00:15

cool :)

DISRUPT THEIR PATHETIC SELF-CENTRED LIVES AND REMIND THEM WHERE THEIR TAXES ARE BEING SPENT - KILLING BABIES FOR HALLIBURTON AND THE NEOCON CABAL ...

Angry Manc
mail e-mail: angry_manc@hotmail.com

are you sure?

11.11.2004 05:00

i dont know if we do, i cant see that anything positive will really come out of this. all i see it doing is annoying people getting places, stopping tazi drivers who are just trying to earn a living from doing so. its not gonna make people think "maybe they have a point" its just gonna think activists are completely thoughtless, if this was an RTS i would be in full support but that wasn't the issue here, so why do it on a busy street surely it would make much more sense protesting to someone/thing who was actually involved? outside an oil HQ or american embassy etc?

spoon

Traf Square

11.11.2004 11:32

I believe some people later reassembled and blockaded trafalgar square for five minutes, before being pushed away by the police.

Further action

11.11.2004 12:56

Yes..another attempt at blocking Trafalgar Sq was made later in the evening but the police arrived after 5 minutes and took away the long banner that was in use. Apparently despite no arrests the banner was evidence of an offence being committed. Before that an attempt to block Charing Cross Rd was thwarted by the arrival of numerous cops who had followed activists leaving the earlier Piccadilly blockade. At Piccadilly, despite some hostility from taxi and bus drivers and commuters (and a fashion punk!!)there was some feeling of support and solidarity from passerby.
As a participant though i have to say that i agree that in the end we are just a bit lost about what to do. The action was fairly spontaneous and the point was to signify our anger and outrage about the continued war in Iraq. However, yes! i the main its just stopping workers going home or theatre goers gong to plays. Its too moralistic i feel to target these people but it comes out of frustration that the anti-war 'movement' has no answers to need for effective and angry protest that challenges the war and also gets in its way.
Best wishes to all

Otto Gnome

Debate

11.11.2004 15:23

I took part in this action and the above report and update comment from otto seem accurate to me. I share some of the tactical concerns expressed above. It needs to be pointed out that this was not an entirely spontaneous action. After a result of a previous blockade action on Monday (see this story), a meeting point was arranged to take further actions. Once there, we dispersed to another nearby location as police had been at the initial meeting point earlier. At the new location we spent about 20 minutes using consensus to come up with a fairly detailed plan. We agreed to melt away as soon as it looked like police were going to move us by force. We came up with 3 locations to do traffic blockades, while engaging those we were blocking, telling them why we were there. This did happen, with mixed success as reported above. My impression was that overall, onlookers supported us (lots of pedestrians stopped to watch, take pics etc.), though maybe thought it was the wrong tactic (one driver asked "can't you do it on the side of the road?" an irate bus driver said something to the effect of "do it over by Parliament").

It's not that we were unthinking - we were actively trying to raise awareness in people going about their normal lives, reminding them that people are dying in Fallujah. That was the idea behind it, and I still think this is an important task for us. In retrospect, I did feel a tad judgemental standing there. Perhaps it needs to be linked up more to the wider movement. Making it follow on from the Parliament square demo more explicitly would have been one possibility, though that is problematic from a tactical point of view. A better idea may be the one suggested above, and I heard from one other person last night - targeting financial and government institutions that cause and/or benefit from the occupation (incidentally during the planning, it was raised as a possibility that we target the MoD but this idea was mooted because it was thought that most staff would have left already).

Whatever we do, we should not let a fear that we will not have the best tactics stop us taking *action* that goes beyond worthy speeches. It's all part of the learning process. At worst last night, we still made quite a few people think. Anyway, it was only about 15 minutes out of their lives. Not the end of the world. I don't think it alienated anyone who would otherwise have done something against the war.

A meeting to discuss and plan further actions was arranged for tonight (Thursday) at 6pm in the Crypt cafe underneath St. Martin's near to Trafalgar Square. Bring positive ideas to improve tactics and your friends :)

blocker

Missing link

11.11.2004 15:28

The words "this story" in bracket above were meant to be a link to the address below, but the IMC software seems to strip HTML tags. Anyway, this is the story I meant:

http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2004/11/300795.html

blocker

Well done!

11.11.2004 15:31

Well done and thanks for those excellent pictures. You did very well with just 20 comrades to stop the traffic like that. Here in Edinburgh we had two demos - one on Monday evening and one on Tuesday evening - here is a report of Tuesday's demo:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2004/11/300953.html
There will be an all Scotland demo on Saturday 13th in Glasgow when hopefully we will be there in some numbers.
Keep up the great work! Paul.

Paul O'Hanlon
mail e-mail: o_hanlon@hotmail.com

What awareness ?

12.11.2004 09:55

This was not a protest about some envisaged policiy - people are dying in Fallujah now in a wide scale military assault. People know about it, and don't really care, don't care enough to do anything about it anyway. For me, that's what this action was about ; trying to wake up people, to somehow bring that reality back to them : this is REALLY happening NOW. It's not entertainment on the 10'OClock news ; it's not something you just talk about in the pub along with the football results.

I do agree, on the other hand, that staying 15 mn at the same place was too long, because only the first few rows of cars can see you. We should either have just stayed 5 mns, then moved on (before the police even arrives there at all) ; OR have people walking down the car lanes with leaflets explaining "this is why you are beeing delayed".

musing

12.11.2004 18:12

I too was involved in this action and on reflection I agree with pr and other comments above: a series of shorter actions with more preparation (leaflets) would have probably been more effective in that it would have reached more people, made it harder for the police to break us up after the event, and avoided some of the growing annoyance from random people who perhaps were stuck quite a distance from the actual event. The idea of leafletting cars was discussed after the event, again this seems like a good idea.

The action quickly generated a large audience who seemed genuinely interested in what was going on, I think it would have been a really good time to go out and raise awareness with some funky literature about the issues, and also e.g. local groups to get involved in, websites to look at etc. People also seemed interested in participating, we had people coming up and talking, holding our banners with us etc. Perhaps in the hypothetical situation described above, if we could have explained that we were only going to be there for a short time and didn't intend seriously risking arrest then we could have encouraged more people to take part, to empower themselves, maybe get them interested in getting involved generally.

Obviously this is just one tactic; getting people's support for larger actions as well as appearing fleetingly in junctions would have to be an aim in the longer term. A group of simultaneous actions like this within a small area could be exponentially effective, although we're still talking about offending random road users then. It can be a bit strange, to want to fight the power and to end up arguing with someone who wants to get home for their tea ten minutes earlier. Anyway, it felt good to do something, nothing seems enough.

So yeah, it'd have been good to print some leaflets in advance. Some more organised people brought banners, longer ones are very useful for blocking the road, as well as the obvious use of advertising our reasons for being there. I think this event has to be seen in context, as otto suggests, of people who weren't all necessarily organised in advance wanting to get out and do something, anything, just to register their feelings, attempt to communicate with other people as a quick reaction to the ever-more awful situation. I think it'll be useful as a learning experience for next time.

d.p.

Inconveniencing the People that Matter

15.11.2004 17:49

Would the gates or road running past parliament actually work for these kind of direct action road blocks, or does the already existant police presence rule it out?

we need to think of many other ways to raise awareness

20.11.2004 19:35

I took part in the action and think that the blocking of Piccadilly Circus was effective. It needed to be in a popular, public thoroughfare. Sympathetic bystanders were glad that action was taken to express anger at the genocide in Fallujah. Some wanted to know how to join in, saying that the Stop the War Movement was ineffective, so future action ought to include information on how people can get in contact or suggestions on action to take. I don't think that the blocking of Trafalgar Square was as effective, because it isn't as well lit or full of pedestrians. What was more effective there was standing on the island holding the Voices in the Wilderness placard with a photo on it, as several passers by did look and were sympathetic. We ought not to become too stuck on blocking traffic. What is more important is to operate as a media vehicle that gives out information to counter the brainwashing of the mainstream media. Not everyone uses the web and 'alternative' politics can be a bit exclusive.

maru