Seeing riot police in central London facing thousands of anti-capitalist protestors invariably awakens pleasure in my being. Particularly as such protests have largely been confined to more rural settings until now. The previous London protests were occasional street parties by “reclaim the streets” and the last major demonstration against the Criminal Justice Act in 1994.
That a generation is waking up was obvious in yesterday’s events, the skill in which they “spontaneously” upset the everyday functioning of the city expressed the dynamism of the youth. Sad though I was at the absence of these same people on the Anti-War demonstrations, the fact that the Financial Times today leads with the headline.. “Anti-Capitalists lay siege to the City of London” shows that the ruling class take what happened yesterday very seriously. For at a certain stage the wrecking of the City of London by protests is inevitable even in the most surgical revolt imaginable. In 1968 the stock market in Paris was burnt down if I am not mistaken. It is a joy to see young people protest with energy and innovation, able to close down tube stations, freeze the movement of traffic in the metropolis, close down major train stations, and generally upset the balance in society, even if only for a day! On all such occasions, the normal motion of the people is no longer governed by the market and the promotion and sale of their wares, the normal patterns of walking, being and looking are disrupted.
For weeks a man has wandered around protesting for nakedness, there he was in Trafalgar Square wearing his clothes and a banner calling for nudity whilst some dancing protestors, breasts exposed, were in the fountains enjoying themselves.
Is this just a bunch of anarchists? Well none of the conventional left were there…but where are they anyway? When it comes to protesting there is rift between the forces which traditionally talk and call for protest and those who were celebrating yesterday, as the Financial Times said, “The protests were orchestrated by a little known umbrella movement called J18”… “they were united in their hatred of capitalism, which they claim is destroying the environment and forcing millions to live in poverty.”
It is essential that comrades from New Youth turn towards these youth, participate in their actions and promote Marxist ideas amongst them. Many of them will be receptive, but we too must be receptive, willing to learn from them, reflect and express the dynamism of the youth rather than be old dullards.
This comes back the issues Adina raised in her last columns. If such protests had taken place against the recent war the British would not have been so “warish”, it does take major disruption to make people focus on the issues raised by a protest. The one day of demonstrations yesterday revealed the impotence of the organisation of the anti war movement. Firstly in terms of the innovative and disruptive nature of the June 18 protests compared with the weak pathetic rallies of the Anti war movement. Secondly in terms of them being unable to mobilise these youth who could have been on the antiwar demonstrations as well. In Germany to be fair to their protest tradition, the left youth have a culture of their own and use protest as a means of expressing, creating and re-creating that counter-culture, British take note..
In the 1960’s the Socialist German Student Organisation, SDS led by Rudi Dutschke played a tremendous role in the Anti-Vietnam movement, not only in Germany, but they sent delegations to Britain to teach them (learn from each other to put it politely) how to protest. A well organised protest is like a military operation, but a little chaos is the added ingredient that often wrong foots the state. The SDS was also specifically Anti-Capitalist, they had a central core of 15 members, who could call out 2-5000 people at 24 hours notice and with a week or two they could call out 20-50,000. It is precisely such forces that New Youth should, can and must be able to mobilise today in the major cities of the world. We can do this provided we approach the issues with enthusiasm, energy and the intellect that comes from a Marxist understanding.
Heiko Khoo
June 19, 1999
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