Video of police assault on Ian Tomlinson

Reactions to G20 Summit

G20 outcome – 'a bitter pill for the world’s poor' says banned World Development Movement more>>

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G20 slammed for ‘shortsighted’ deal - War on Want response more>>

"Tacking climate change on to the end of the communique as an after thought does not demonstrate anything like the seriousness we needed to see." - Greenpeace response more>>

G20 summit - planet short-changed again as world leaders fail to take bold action on climate - Friends of the Earth response more>>

BUT WAIT...

Real progress at summit, says TUC more>>

Is there nothing that TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber won't do to avoid criticising Gordon Brown?

Police Thug Aggression

Wankers...

Police run amok in the City

One day on, I’m still angry about the conduct of the police in the Square Mile and I’m reminded of a quote by George Orwell, who wrote “whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.” The police revelled in their apparent invincibility on the streets during yesterday’s protests and at times were out of control. It certainly looked that way to many protesters.

I cycled up to Liverpool Street and headed over to take a look at events at the Bank of England, having planned to attend the Climate Camp protest on Bishopsgate. I’m glad I managed to get away just before the imposition of the police tactic of the ‘kettle’, which amounts to imprisonment in a contained space for hours on end, without food or water or any of the formalities of arrest. As soon as people tried to leave and were refused, it was almost inevitable that tensions would rise, which from what I saw was what a number of the riot cops were itching for. Reports in today’s rightwing newspapers have praised the police, unsurprisingly, but even the liberal press have trotted out nonsense like the laughable ‘protest tourism’ of Deborah Orr in the Independent and the claim, by the idiotic Sandra Laville in the Guardian, that the Met are “said to be among the best public order officers in the world” – by whom? And the ‘best’ at what, shutting down legitimate protest?

Over at the amazing Climate Camp, it felt relatively calm for most of the afternoon, despite the surly aggression of the police officers in the boiler suits who clearly felt they had drawn the short straw as they stood at either end of the occupied road outside the European Climate Exchange. Sadly the calm didn’t last: from around 7pm, riot police violently attacked the camp, injuring many who had been engaged in peaceful protest and once again refusing to allow anyone to leave the area. As the police advanced, Climate Campers held up their hands and chanted “peace not violence”, but it didn’t do any good – the police waded in with their batons. See the following footage of the violence of the police:


I hope that police tactics will come under greater scrutiny over the coming weeks, not least because of the shocking news of the death of a protester caught by in the ‘kettle’ near the Bank of England. This has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, for what little that is worth, whilst the police have already spread smear stories saying they were attacked when providing assistance to the injured man, which have been contradicted by eye-witnesses. As anyone who recalls the aftermath of any death involving police contact will know, lying seems to be the standard police procedure in these circumstances. But if the police get away yet again with their decision to treat all and any protester as violent and dangerous, there are a number of major potential consequences for any demonstration that doesn’t involve a stroll from Embankment to Hyde Park along a prescribed route.

Firstly, the prospect of creating anything like the carnival atmosphere of peaceful opposition and freedom of expression that existed at Climate Camp, or briefly outside the Bank of England, will have been taken away, perhaps forever. As a result, future protests are likely to be less collective and coordinated, more autonomous, aiming to ensure they are more difficult to cordon off and control. That’s fine for the committed activists but uncertainty about protest plans and the fear of violence from the police – the only genuine fear felt by most people yesterday – risks making people think twice about exercising their right to protest in any manner other than one ‘approved’ by the state.

Moreover, if non-violence protest is routinely met with beatings, intimidation and harassment, then what point is there in chanting “peace not violence” when no-one cares and no-one is listening? What incentive is there, if fact, not to forcefully defend yourself? At the moment, I’m not so sure that is such a bad idea, even though I have never been comfortable with violence. I certainly saw the breaking of a few windows at a Royal Bank of Scotland branch yesterday as staged for the scrum of photographers. But if hundreds of police officers square up with their shields and their batons hoping to batter a few scruffy hippies and instead get a bloody good kicking, isn’t that bully’s justice? Why should those prepared to exercise their right to self-defence deserve condemnation rather than praise? To misquote a statement that is often also attributed to Orwell, could it be that “people can protest peaceably in their streets only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf”?

Our police ‘service’ should remember that whoever is winning at the moment can change. There’s nothing inevitable about invincibility and if you assume that every protester is violent and dangerous, one day you may well turn up to repress another protest and find out your prejudices have come true.

If that happens, yesterday’s events in the City will start to look like... well, a peaceful picnic on Bishopsgate...

Climate Campers - Hi di hi!

Everyone has been having an inspiring day in the sun - and the suits have all look worried...

Outside Bank of England

Amazing - everyone made it on time!

Fluffy G20 protest largely uneventful

Squaring up to the Square Mile

Click on the map to enlarge.

Architects of the crisis

Gordon Brown
UK Prime Minister and former Chancellor

1997-2007: "No more boom and bust."

1997: "I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the future."

2005: "The new model we propose is quite different. In a risk-based approach there is no inspection without justification, no form-filling without justification, and no information requirements without justification. Not just a light touch but a limited touch. Instead of routine regulation attempting to cover all, we adopt a risk-based approach which targets only the necessary few."

2007: "Over the ten years that I have had the privilege of addressing you as Chancellor, I have been able year by year to record how the City of London has risen by your efforts, ingenuity and creativity to become a new world leader … So I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London …

"So let me say as I begin my new job, I want to continue to work with you in helping you do yours, listening to what you say, always recognising your international success is critical to that of Britain's overall and considering together the things that we must do - and, just as important, things we should not do - to maintain our competitiveness … [such as] enhancing a risk based regulatory approach, as we did in resisting pressure for a British Sarbannes-Oxley after Enron and Worldcom …

"The financial services sector in Britain and the City of London at the centre of it, is a great example of a highly skilled, high value added, talent driven industry that shows how we can excel in a world of global competition. Britain needs more of the vigour, ingenuity and aspiration that you already demonstrate that is the hallmark of your success."

David Cameron
Conservative Party Leader

2006: "The growth of the modern City as we know it was shaped by three critical Conservative decisions. First, because of our attractive tax regime, in the 1970s, US bonds were traded in London - the so-called 'euro-bond' market. Then the big bang of the 1980s removed a huge swathe of regulation that allowed the City to expand and removed restrictive practices. And by being open to competition from banks from anywhere in the world, we injected an enterprising spirit into the City.

"The success of the City helps to drive the UK economy and provides huge benefits for our wider society... It is also highly innovative. You cannot simply set in stone a tax or regulatory regime for the City as it is today because it's always changing, adapting and mutating.

"[We need] to build a flexible economy with low tax, light regulation and open markets...

"Many on the left-of-centre still seek to solve problems through more taxes, more laws and more regulations… But we, on the centre-right, prefer to step out of the way of business."

2007: "When I studied economics, 20 years ago, arguments raged about the most basic principles of how to run the economy [and]...there was a vast gulf between left and right as to how this could best be achieved. The left advocated more intervention and government ownership. Those on the right argued for monetary discipline and free enterprise. That debate is now settled. Over the past 15 years, governments across the world have put into practice the principles of monetary discipline and free enterprise. The result? A vast increase in global wealth. The world economy more stable than for a generation...

"Our hugely sophisticated financial markets match funds with ideas better than ever before."

Put Gordon Brown First?

As the London G20 summit of world leaders fast approaches, it might be worthwhile to cast our minds back to 2005 and to the warning by George Monbiot that protests at the G8 summit at Gleneagles, the focus of the mobilisation by the popular ‘Make Poverty History’ (MPH) campaign, would be “far too polite”. He argued that by following the agenda set by Bob Geldof and the millionaire tax-avoider Bono, to “turn the political campaign developed by the global justice movement into a philanthropic one,” there was a real risk that MPH would be “sell us down the river.” Like Monbiot, others were warning that a number of the aid agencies, notably Oxfam, and the TUC were complicit in allowing the co-option of MPH by Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, leading to campaign demands that largely mirrored the issues that the government wanted to press. And so it proved: protests in July 2005 were overshadowed by the Live8 concerts and by Bono and Geldof’s praise for the world’s leaders for promises that turned out to be completely bogus.

Now, in response to the economic crisis and the forthcoming G20 summit, we have a new campaigning coalition that, like MPH, seems impressively broad. ‘Put People First’ is organising a protest on 28 March in London and has 100 organisations supporting it, predominantly trade unions and development NGOs. Unlike MPH, the ‘celebration of celebrities’ seems to have been avoided this time, although once again, many of the ‘12 key policies’ for the UK government proposed by Put People First – particularly on ‘governance reform of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’ or ‘a green new deal to build a green economy’ – are unlikely to greatly trouble Gordon Brown. What we do know is that the G20 summit is enormously important to the UK government, one of the last opportunities before a general election to present Brown as a potential ‘saviour’ of the global economy. For his Labour Party allies in the TUC, this is enormously important too. That’s why it is hardly surprising that two separate sources have now told me that the TUC comrades within Put People First are busy vetoing any speaker at the Hyde Park rally on 28 March who may be tempted to utter damning criticism of Brown or his efforts to bail out free-market capitalism with our money. So no change there then.

What seems to be completely missing from the Put People First initiative is any reflection on the causes of the disaster we face. Its website says, “the world has followed a financial model that has created an economy fuelled by ever-increasing debt, both financial and environmental.” But it makes no mention of the fact that it has been the politicians from the ideologically dominant players within the G20 – particularly Gordon Brown during the decade when he was Chancellor – who have helped create the crisis by vigorously defending this model, which for the sake of argument, let's call "capitalism". This failure to point the finger at those who are guilty of leading us into the global financial and ecological crisis goes to the heart of the dilemma facing the ‘polite’ campaigners: the crisis is not simply a natural disaster, but the result of the actions of governments. The banks acted in the way that they did because state governments favoured ‘light touch regulation’. The World Bank and WTO are undemocratic and accountable because it has suited state governments to maintain them this way. Multinational corporations are neither transparent nor answerable to global citizens because state governments have no interest in challenging their power. And efforts to combat climate change have been undermined by the desire for continued growth - or now, in a recession, the desire for a rapid return to growth. "There can be no return to business as usual," say Put People First. But governments have other ideas and the campaign is more concerned with how we can talk to them, not how we might stop them.

If there is one lesson to take from the experience of MPH, politely suggesting to the arsonists that they put out the fire simply doesn’t work. It's one that Put People First seems not to have even considered.

There will be a 'militant workers bloc' on the Put People First protest and other demonstrations in the Square Mile - see G20 Meltdown in the City