Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

J18: 10th Anniversary

In Bloom said:
But seriously, "celebrat[ing] resistance against oppression, injustice and exploitation" is not a form of direct action in and of itself and putting people off by smashing their cars is fucking stupid.
Click to expand...

im not sure anyones car got smashed, a jaguar showroom got burnt out but thats a bit different
 
tbaldwin said:
No. Your right the organisers didnt really have any achievable aims. But what the day did show is how demostrators could have the power to close down one of the worlds main financial capitals.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the Monday lolz. Needed that. They were fought off by some traders before the coppers arrived. Even if they had "occupied" a Trading Floor the bank has a backup at much more secured location elsewhere...

Here's a idea. Have a protest where stuff doesn't get smashed up. And then you might have the public re-engage with you...
 
funny how a mild scuffle between a couple of security guards and a few anarchists on an escalator has metamorphed in this city legend of heroic traders fighting off the mob
 
partyzan said:
I think the very fact that J18's being discussed ten years on and one of the most senior Police officers in the country revealed just the other day that it has had a significant impact on current policing tactics where political protest is concerned, suggests it has had a pretty "serious" impact.

Anti-capitalism - a "hobby" that involves the risk of serious injury or even death at the hands of a baton wielding militarised police force, the arbitrary withdrawal of your civil liberties, and the threat of arrest and imprisonment. That's some "hobby"!

I'm sure you are a serious socialist and I applaud you unconditionally for that, but perhaps you should consider being a little less judgmental in your assertions, when it comes to those individuals and groups that choose to express their opposition to capitalism through the use of creative and situationalist forms of civil disobedience.
Click to expand...

I have made no claim of being involved in worthwhile political work. This thread, in any case, is about 'J18' and its nostalgists, not about me.

If your 'anti-capitalist' hobby was really as dangerous as you say, that's all the more reason to ask whether you achieved anything or could achieve anything with stunts of that sort. I don't mean an 'impact' on plod tactics. I mean: have you made any progress at all towards whatever it is you want or even any progress in clarifying what you want?
 
tbaldwin said:
No. Your right the organisers didnt really have any achievable aims. But what the day did show is how demostrators could have the power to close down one of the worlds main financial capitals.
The day showed a good example of people power. Unfortunately the people behind the demos didnt know what to do next. And then the SWP stepped in ,by that november they held their own "anti capitalist" demo at Euston station.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure they shut much down, but I don't really know. What stopped working and for how long?

The demonstration at Euston certainly attracted lots of Social Workers - whether they or other people had called it. I knew a couple of Social Workers who came back very upset at having been penned in - or kettled, as plod says now.

The funny thing about the Social Workers is that having completely missed the stunts of 'J18', they decided that this 'anti-capitalist movement' was where the action was internationally and before long they were berating their US counterparts for not being involved enough. It led to yet another split.
 
JHE said:
I have made no claim of being involved in worthwhile political work. This thread, in any case, is about 'J18' and its nostalgists, not about me.
Click to expand...

I think if you read the thread properly, the discussion is not about nostalgia, but rather whether any attempt at a organising an anniversary event would be in any way constructive.

JHE said:
If your 'anti-capitalist' hobby was really as dangerous as you say, that's all the more reason to ask whether you achieved anything or could achieve anything with stunts of that sort. I don't mean an 'impact' on plod tactics. I mean: have you made any progress at all towards whatever it is you want or even any progress in clarifying what you want?
Click to expand...

Hang on a minute it's not 'my' anti-capitalist hobby as you put it, or 'my' anything come to that! But if it makes you feel better to personalise it then so be it!

What I was trying to convey, is that to consider participating in such events as a "hobby", was bordering on nonsensical, bearing in mind the potential consequences. And surely history shows us that those movements which pose a serious challenge to the state, have always tended to be at the sharp end of public order policing tactics.

As for progress, well I doubt you would have G20 and the other Mayday demonstrations if it hadn't been for J18, although let's not forget that Stop the City protests first started taking place in the early 80s. So yes, the fact that I didn't attend, and yet participating in what seems to be a passionate discussion about it now, would undoubtedly show that it acheived a hell of a lot, in that it hasn't been forgotten.

I'd even hasten to guess that the contemporary usage of the term 'anti-capitalist protest/demonstration' and its derivatives, originated in J18 and similar protests of the period. I rest my case mi lud
 
JHE said:
...I mean: have you made any progress at all towards whatever it is you want or even any progress in clarifying what you want?
Click to expand...
At various RTS events over the years there was focus on road building, cars versus green transport, privatisation of transport, health and education, PFI, GM food, the WTO, Oil drilling in Colombia, "Guerilla Gardening", climate change, the arms trade, dock workers, human rights, animal rights etc.

There has been progress on some of these issues since the 1990s. RTS was just one part of the overall process.

Edited to add: It could be argued that the wide appeal and fun and creativity of RTS was ultimately undermined for many people when everything was bundled/collapsed together into "anti-capitalism" and old-left 'revolution', protest and confrontation became the focal point instead of it things being a fertile meeting point between squatting/raves/festivals/DIY-culture and a broad range of single issue NGO and community groups (with the ideology and confrontational aspects following rather than leading. I never got the feeling that the point of RTS were 'protests' as such as opposed to parties, doing stuff and showing 'normal people' that radical politics wasn't all about boring shit and causing trouble, but about taking control of our lives back from big government and big business. The reclaiming of public space on certain dates was just a very visible 'example' of bigger idea, but as soon as this just became aggro and ideology, then it kind of lost its way in that respect...

...the DIY-culture, the single issues and the philosophy of community empowerment still all exist and continue, but maybe they just don't sit comfortably with summit protests or other kinds of traditional protest?
 
partyzan said:
As for progress, well I doubt you would have G20 and the other Mayday demonstrations if it hadn't been for J18, although let's not forget that Stop the City protests first started taking place in the early 80s. So yes, the fact that I didn't attend, and yet participating in what seems to be a passionate discussion about it now, would undoubtedly show that it acheived a hell of a lot, in that it hasn't been forgotten.
Click to expand...

i think the main success of rts was that it harnassed what was certainly the biggest youth cultural movement ive seen in my lifetime ie rave

thousands of people were coming into conflict with authority on a weekendly basis because of their lifestyle and rts harnassed that which ended up with instead of munters shouting at coppers at a party or going on about legalising e, to instead becoming politicised and questioning capitalism

theres lots of people i know who would probably have never become involved in radical polititics (myself included tbh) if it hadnt been for rts and the experience of taking direct action against the state in an organised way

often the way a protest or a movement changes the individuals involved is every bit as important as whether it changes society as a whole
 
_float_ said:
...the DIY-culture, the single issues and the philosophy of community empowerment still all exist and continue, but maybe they just don't sit comfortably with summit protests or other kinds of traditional protest?
Click to expand...

Excellent post....but I think the 'philospohy of community empowerment, single issues and DIY culture' have very much been part of anti-globalisation/summit protests - past and present - and in both a national and international context. If you want me to expand on this then I'm happy to, but I would have thought many of the people who attended the G20 might well have been involved in J18/RTS type stuff.
 
Reclaim the spirit

Hi all 1st post on this site.
Read this particular posting and thought i'd throw my thoughts in.
J18 was to me a wonderful form of protest and was very political in the sense that it was about reclaiming some power and control for ourselves similar to the poll tax riots (yes i'm another oldie, who should know better)In amongst the crowd people we're partying and rejoicing in the zones we had created for ourselves. Yes it was for a day and yes more can always be done and should be done to create grass roots resistance in our own communities and work places, but J18 was a day of shown resistance and done what it set out to do on the tin....Reclaim the Streets...
 
balls... I just wrote a big reply to this thread.

the gist of it being that this is no time to be calling pointless 10 year anniversary parties, as the fight is very much still ongoing, so IMO we should celebrate anniversaries after we've won, not mid battle. Also, as far as I can tell, those calling this protest have no link to Peoples Global Action, no link to RTS, no wider mandate, are not calling it inresponse to an international call to a day of action, are not calling it to coincide with a WTO / G8 meeting etc. etc. so they basically don't even have the first clue what J18 was about, how it was organised or why.

as for whether J18 was a success or not... you have to look at the london event as being part of the 2nd big global day of action called by people's global action in an effort to halt and eventually reverse the neoliberal global trade reforms that were taking place. As such, J18 led directly onto Seattle, Prague, Genoa, and all the other huge global days of action against the WTO / G8 / IMF / World Bank, and it's perhaps worth noting that there has been no successful global trade round since, with the Doha round being perpetually stalled amid huge protests wherever they meet to discuss it. Also, much of South America is no run by people who're broadly sympathetic to much of what PGA stands for / against the neoliberal view of the world, and the worst excesses of neoliberalism have been pretty well exposed for all to see in recent years.


eta - ah, looks like they've cancelled the j18 anniversary thing.
 
RTS was a new (and wonderful) idea, stretched to its limit at J18, and it took a few years before the cops came up with a way of preventing its continuation in Britiain.

the only way i would get back out on the streets would be for another new idea, a new tactic that overcomes the british cops' current tactic.

however i have heard there is a book being compiled to commemorate the anniversary and i'd love to contribute potentially - anyone know any more about it?

i think its worth commemorating, and celebrating as a moment in time, despite the anti-climax afterwards.

it is also crucial to understanding the recent history of policing of demos in Britain and how it came to the point it's at now.

x

ps. pixies worked on the making it happen (in Britain anyway) for J18 for at least 18 months. it's not that unusual for an international, PGA inspired, event like that. i hope the book will reflect the fact that J18 really did happen in almost every continent, umpteen cities in umpteen countries...
 
janis joplin said:
RTS was a new (and wonderful) idea, stretched to its limit at J18, and it took a few years before the cops came up with a way of preventing its continuation in Britiain.

the only way i would get back out on the streets would be for another new idea, a new tactic that overcomes the british cops' current tactic....
Click to expand...

When you refer to the british cops' current tactic I presume you mean kettling, but this is a strategy that was first used by the police in dealing with political protest, at least as far back as the 80s.

I think that your reasoning behind no longer taking to the streets, would put a smile on every coppers face, because if everyone thought like that, we'd have no protest movements at all!
 
partyzan said:
When you refer to the british cops' current tactic I presume you mean kettling, but this is a strategy that was first used by the police in dealing with political protest, at least as far back as the 80s.

I think that your reasoning behind no longer taking to the streets, would put a smile on every coppers face, because if everyone thought like that, we'd have no protest movements at all!
Click to expand...
thing was that RTS had a really good tactic for dealing with the kettling pre mayday guerilla gardening*, which they abandoned for reasons that went along thelines of 'protesting is serious business, and not for partyheadz'.

the tactic in question being to put a big fuck off sound system in the middle of whatever road junction they wanted to take, surround it with thousands of party / protest heads then party for as long as they wanted while the police blocked them in, then when it seemed like time to leave, simply get everyone to walk en masse with the soundsystem towards the weakest looking police line until they backed off, and it was all tickitiboo.

as soon as the sound system got removed from the equation people suddenly started moaning about being trapped inside police cordons, and feeling all helpless and unable to break through the cordons at will.

there was also probably a fair amount of better location selection, better planning, keeping the police guessing etc eg the bullring in birmingham where the police kettled the roads, but paid no attention to the underpasses running underneath them, but it was the sound systems that made teh difference between being kettled for 6 hours and having taken, held and partied a space for 6 hours IMO.

so new tactic = old tactic = moar suicide rigs, less standing around meekly waiting for the police to let you go home IMO



*yes I'm aware that there was a rig that got trapped outside the cordon for that mayday, but there were also loud voices pushing for their not to be a sound system because they thought the protests needed to be more serious / sound systems took away from the message of the protest etc, and on previous events much more emphasis had been put on getting the rig in (eg birmingham having 3 rigs at different locations to bump up the chances of one of them getting in)
 
There was an excellent article on RTS and mayday and that in one of the last Do Or Dies. Got all the big questions right. I'll see if i can find it.

Edit: here we go
 
butchersapron said:
There was an excellent article on RTS and mayday and that in one of the last Do Or Dies. Got all the big questions right. I'll see if i can find it.

Edit: here we go
Click to expand...
good article.

interesting what they say about the regional earth first groups largely not being involved, as on J18 IIRC the regional groups had been the ones doing most of the autonomous actions in the morning, and as sorted affinity groups had each taken on key roles in the main event to free up the main RTS London people to do what they needed to do... this tactic also confused the fit I reckon, as none of the regional groups had been to any of the planning meetings, so they'd not have been on the watch lists, all of this had been sorted out on a person to person basis via trusted people, so there was no chance of infiltration, and stuff like flags, masks, instructions could be brought in with relatively little possiblity of the people being targeted.

I know newcastle EF was down in force for mayday guerilla gardening, and helped out where we could, as newcastle green festival had partly coincidentally moved dates that year, but it defo felt like the whole thing was lacking a lot of sorted people. The few that were involved were obviously running on empty, with doing the conference and the protest, but hadn't particularly asked for help in advace (ie we'd have brought a rig if we'd known it was needed).

I remember being given a bag of flyers to hand round with the whole 'follow the red flags' instructions on them, and tying one of our banners up before everyone started following the samba band up to trafalgar square, and just getting fuckloads of people trying to find out what was going on, and nobody around who really knew. That's why when the samba bands started off up to trafalgar square pretty much everyone set off to follow them... because the only info they'd had was from the flyers we'd been asked to give out... fuck knows what those flyers were about if the intention all along was to stay in parliament square, I've heard one version saying they were a bluff that backfired, and another that there was a rig planned for trafalgar square, but it got stuck outside police lines.

Personally I don't believe the stuff about trafalgar square not being part of anybodies plan for the day, but if the flyers were a bluff, they really should have found someone shitter at giving out flyers than us to give them out. I kinda think that in a way the thousand or so of us trapped in traf square probably acted as enough of a diversion to keep the police resources tied down so that those in parliament square could break out. Had we had a sound system in traf square we'd have broken out as well, but there really was no rallying point in that square, and no real affinity groups to lead any break out (trust me, I looked).

***

sorry rambling... poiint being not to forget the importance of the regional affiinity groups when organising a big national action. Worth also bearing in mind that on the Dissent G8 side of things, it was largely the regional EF related groups that actually pulled the thing together, while the Wombles as the main london presence served to mainly distract the police and keep them guessing about where the real action was going to be (a useful job mind).

That mayday was the last one that newcastle came down for in any numbers as well, as the green fest moved back to it's traditional mayday date, and I suspect that most other regional groupings also had long standing mayday commitments... bottom line, if you're going to organise a national level event, then don't take the regional groups for granted, and pick a day which isn't mayday.

IMO
 
I wasn't at J18, but I was there on the Guerilla Gardening day. Finally thought we'd got out of Trafalgar Square, left the crowds behind us, tried to navigate central London, and some gimbazoid copper told us to go over waterloo bridge - which was just where all the crowd was going. Ended up getting held up for another two hours in Vauxhall.

The funniest thing though was I got home and turned on Sky News, and they were rounding up the day's events.

"And, towards the end of the day, the hardcore, most violent rioters were shepherded over Waterloo Bridge"

And on that word the camera was fixed straight on my mate, looking really pissed off (he only went along to see what happened)
 
I found it in a box when i was moving house, and it's now on my bookcase.

IIRC the 'visions, collisions and reality' is also well worth a read.... ay, just reread it, and it is.

10,000 fliers were printed specifically to brief people on the plan for the day. How many of these were given out is unsure, it seems some of them never made it to the square ! These 'essential' fliers explained that Guerrilla Gardening was a "peaceful celebration", that it was about participation and it also described the use of different colour flags: Red for crowd movement, green for starting to garden and black for the public assembly at the end of the day.
Click to expand...
most groups in parliament square got one... problem being that green also means go usually.


this bit's also fairly telling...
* AN RTS MASS ACTION WITHOUT A SOUNDSYSTEM; who'd have believed it! That we managed to pull-off what to many was a successful action, without a soundsystem, is important. We're still evolving..
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

C
Anarchist Communist Group Online Public Meeting on Wed. Sept 10th
Replies
1
Views
442
charlie mowbray
C
R
Reclaim The Streets 30th anniversary reunion - Saturday 17th May 2025
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
168
Views
9K
Miss-Shelf
Miss-Shelf
Fozzie Bear
30th Anniversary of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts 26-27 April LDN
Replies
17
Views
932
The39thStep
The39thStep
C
ACG Online Meeting June 18th
Replies
1
Views
358
charlie mowbray
C
C
a 30th Birthday Anniversary ride for Critical Mass London - Sunday 14/04/24
2 3
Replies
70
Views
4K
cm.london.30
C
Back
Top Bottom