Some people just aren’t happy unless there’s a bundle. Sections of the press, for example, whose statements got crazier by the day. The police, they said, claimed 6,000 anarchists had swooped in from Europe. Wouldn’t someone have noticed if 12 jumbo jets-worth of anarchists had slipped into the country, or did they come in on stealth bombers to avoid the radar?
The London Evening Standard had to top this, so on Monday they revealed that Special Branch “fear protesters may try to use a network of ventilation shafts in a bid to disable the Tube as well as move around the capital”.
They’ve been watching too much X-files, the Special Branch. You almost expected the article to continue: “...and police fear a regiment of super-thin alien anarchists have crawled into the water pipes of selected banking institutions, in a bid to disrupt the air conditioning and cost the country billions of pounds in lost business.”
Another piece in the same paper warned that protesters were “arming themselves with protective clothing”. Surely the word “arm” implies a weapon, not protection against other people’s weapons. But the paper was quite specific. The protesters would have “football shin-guards”.
Wouldn’t we find it odd if John Motson told us: “You have to say Gary, the Arsenal defence has come well tooled-up”? They would also wear, it went on, “white overalls and ear plugs”. Presumably if the police had seen someone with a set of furry ear-muffs, they’d have whispered: “He must be the ring-leader.”
The press took their lead uncritically from the police, claiming the Mayday Monopoly leaflets urged protesters to “to target prime areas, to bring London to a standstill”. The leaflet did target certain areas, typically King’s Cross railway station, where they gave away free veggie burgers. So if you’re planning to hold a barbecue, be sure to charge for the burgers, or the ensuing chaos will bring London to a standstill.
This carried on into the day itself. A television news broadcast in the morning declared mournfully that demonstrating cyclists had “blocked the road for a short while”. The reporters should come round to my road on a Monday morning, where dustmen block the road for almost 20 minutes, surely and international scoop.
Then came Tony Blair, who declared the violence had to be condemned. It is bad enough, after a demonstration, when politicians condemn violence that hasn’t happened. But it shows he is prepared to show zero tolerance to any violence that takes place in his own imagination.
The protesters, he said, “were bringing fear to London”. So here’s a question. Which of these objects is most likely to bring fear: a cardboard castle built by protesters at Mayfair, or rubber bullets, which, announced Lord Harris of Haringey, the police would be prepared to deploy?
So, in contrast to the desperate pleas from every group involved in the protest that they wished the day to be peaceful, the police, press and politicians created an atmosphere of tension and expected violence.
Even then, the 5000 protesters arrived at boarded-up Oxford Street, helicopters circling, every back street clogged with police vans, riot police jogging in formation from street to street, and for the most part, they whistled, drummed and gave out peculiar leaflets with titles such as “The Discordant Red-I Knights of the Secret Order of Odd”.
Some blew bubbles, some were dressed as Vikings (maybe they were Vikings, which would account for how the 6,000 slipped in - they came in longboats), and one group was dressed, fro some reason, as Balkan folk singers. The self-made placards proclaimed slogans for asylum-seekers, the starving of Africa and unfairly treated dairy cows, and one placard said: “Don’t shoot me - I’ve got a dodgy hip.” But as horses and riot police moved into their positions, in keeping with the build-up to the day, the humour was relegated behind other emotions. I contacted someone who had been hemmed in at Oxford Circus for three-and-a-half hours in the cold and the rain. He told me “We’ve just sung ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and we’re about to do ‘Yellow Submarine’.” These sick anarchists.
Meanwhile, waiting to add my worthless comments to the BBC’s Newsroom South East, I bump into Angie Bray, Tory member for Westminster of the Greater London Authority. “The trouble is today’s youngsters aren’t interested in politics,” she said.
I said that I’m always impressed how today’s youth is so well-informed on issues such as medication being denied to Aids sufferers in Africa. She said: Yes, but they couldn’t tell you which century Winston Churchill was born in. They’re more interested in where they are getting their next line of coke.“”
Then she, whose party supported the sinking of the Belgrano, the bombing of Baghdad, and the apartheid regime of South Africa, went on to condemn the day’s violence.