I went on strike on Wednesday November 30th against changes to pensions for public sector workers - against in short having to work for longer and pay more to receive less. The goverment initially tried to play down the numbers on strike - but even by their own figures around a million were on strike, the largest number for at least 30 years. The unions suggested the number was more like 2 million.
Started to write an in-depth post about capitalism, crisis, the weakness of both the state and its oppenents etc. But that will have to wait for another day, probably another year! Instead, here's some pictures and short commentary from the strike in London - all taken on the demonstration in central London (attended by up to 50,000 people) unless otherwise stated.
'Debt enchains us, work exhausts us, you disgust us'
'Revolution is the ecstasy of history' - banner on picket line at Goldsmiths College in South London.
Nice slogan, even if begs the riposte 'what you mean you love everybody on Saturday night, but can't face gettting
out of bed by Wednesday'
The Occupy London banners were impressive : 'All power to the 99%'
The sound system behind the Occupy banners kept people dancing, righteous reggae and dancehall
among other sounds, but the track that led to a frenzed explosion of energy from hundreds of people was
'One Step Beyond' by Madness!
Nostalgia Steel Band on the march. Clare is angry - and she's not alone!
New architecture of control - police temporary metal barriers in Trafalgar Square
After the main demonstration, 21 people were arrested during an occupation of Panton House near Leicester Square, headquarters of mining company Xstratahe whose CEO Mick Davies was said to be the highest compensated CEO of all the FTSE 100 companies in the last year, receiving pay and shares ot a value of £18,426,105. 37 people were also arrested in Dalston, ironically outside the CLR James Library. Seemingly they had been part of a mobile group with sound system moving between picket lines in Hackney.
Just got back from today's Justice 4 Smiley Culture demonstration in London, pretty impressive with maybe a couple of thousand people heading from Wandsworth Road, along the Albert Embankment, over the river, past Parliament and on to the Metropolitan Police HQ at New Scotland Yard.
A striking aspect of the campaign is that they have used the higher profile death of an internationally-known reggae artist to shine a spotlight on many other less publicised deaths in police custody. The families of some of these took part in the march. Sean Rigg died in a police van at Brixton prison in 2008:
Kingsley Burrell died in Birmingham last month after being detained by police. A speaker from the Campaign 4 Justice 4 Kingsley Burrell spoke at the rally today:
Asher Senator speaking (Smiley's musical collaborator from his school days and later with Saxon Sound System):
There was a determined atmosphere on the march, the noise reminded me a bit of Notting Hill Carnival, with whistles, drums and conflicting basslines from the various sound systems.
Naturally there was lots of Smiley Culture's music, Police Officer in particular getting aired outside Parliament and Scotland Yard. This number also got people singing at the end
Some reflections on last Saturday's anti-cuts March for the Alternative in London (March 26th)... I knew it really was going to be a big one from the moment I left home. The fact of the demonstration was everywhere, graffiti, stickers, a bus full of people talking about the demo. I knew it was going to be bigger still when I got to Kennington Park to join the South London feeder demonstration (see pictures here). This was organised independently of the main demonstration, and the police had contacted the organisers in the week to urge them to cancel it, claiming it would be a tiny failure. In fact by the time we reached Westminster Bridge there were at least two thousand people on it, and I was already noticing that it wasn't just the usual political and union activists - there was my daughter's music teacher, some random people from work, even the guy who sits drinking at the corner of my road.
We crossed Westminster Bridge to the sounds of Get Up, Stand Up (Bob Marley version) on a bicycle sound system. I assumed we must have been near the start of the march because the crowd stretched as far back along the Embankment as I could see. But then I heard that the front of the demonstration had already reached Hyde Park.
The size of the crowd has been estimated as half a million, significant for a number of reasons not least of which is that this big a demonstration is almost beyond the need for representation. A small protest is to an extent dependent on the media to communicate its intent to the wider public, but in this case a good proportion of the public were actually there or would know somebody else who was. Half a million is more than one per cent of the adult population of Britain, and everyone who was there can probably think of 4 or 5 people who said they intended to go but couldn't because of family commitments, illness or other reasons.
The core fact of the demonstration - that a huge number of people are opposed to the cuts and are beginning to take action against them - was viscerally felt by everybody who was there, not to mention the many other people in central London who saw it. And many other people who weren't there would have heard about if first hand from somebody who was. In this context the fact that some of the press and TV coverage may not have accurately reported what happened is arguably less significant.
'Millionaire Boys Club' - 'Tax is for the little people':
Trafalgar Square - 'Strike like an Egyptian':
Much of the commentary since the march has focused on a supposed distinction between the peaceful main demonstration, the non-violent direct action of UK Uncut (including the occupation of posh food store, Fortnum and Masons in Piccadilly) and riotous 'Black Bloc' anarchists. Of course a great diversity of tactics was in evidence and not everybody agreed with everything that was going on , but things were much more fluid than a categorisation of the crowd into three distinct blocs would suggest.
There were thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people, who headed off the main march route into the West End with a sense of wanting to take things a stage further than just a rally in Hyde Park. All round Mayfair, Oxford Street, Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square there were people in the streets. This crowd was much more diverse than just young people in black, all kinds of folk were hanging around caught up in the excitement. A sense too that while not everybody was up for it, many were glad that people younger, fitter and with less to lose than them were acting out the rage they felt.
The actual violence was fairly sporadic and limited, as was the window breaking - what was much more widespread was a diffuse sense of wanting to go beyond business as usual.
Sound Systems
Lots of sound system action - ranging in sophistication from back packs, via speakers in bike baskets to sophisticated bike trailers. Thought I saw Rinky Dink Sound System, one of the original cycle powered rigs from Reclaim the Streets in the 1990s.
There was a sound system next to the line of riot police outside the occupied Fortnum and Mason's (above), and while I was there another one cycled past seemingly called the Tolpuddle 6 sound system, complete with pictures of the Dorset agricultural workers transported to Australia for starting a union in the 1830s. They were playing Got to be Real by Cheryl Lynn, great 70s disco classic and indicative of the diverse music being played on the day. I heard drum & bass, dancehall, reggae, punk, techno and dubstep - including this guy doing human beatbox wobbly bass dubstep in Trafalgar Square:
Back pack sound system:
Sound system in a push chair:
Tolpuddle 6 Sound System:
Also heard reports that at Oxford Circus the crowd chanted the Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers theme at police - as widely used on the student protests before Christmas.
I know it seems trivial to focus on the music played in the recent riotous demonstrations in London and elsewhere against education cuts, student fee rises, and the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance for low income 16 to 18 year olds. Still plenty of other people are commenting on every other aspect of it, and for me what protest sounds like in 2010 is as important as what it looks like.
- Dan Hancox has put together a 2010 Riot Playlist of tracks he heard being played in and around Parliament Square on December 9th. Tinie Tempah, Rihanna, Princess Nyah and Sean Paul all feature, while in the comments others add Rage Against the Machine (Killing in the Name of) and Polynomial-C by Aphex Twin. Dummy mag has turned this into a Spotify playlist.
- I've noted previously that the Star Wars 'Imperial March' theme, also known as the Darth Vader tune has cropped up several times in the current movement. I've been down to the Goldsmiths occupation a couple of times in New Cross and couldn't help but notice that some of the people involved had put together a short film using guess which tune?
- Another track I heard being played at the demo on Thursday was Liar Liar by Captain Ska. It was being played from the fairly dismal National Union of Students bus on the embankment (footage here). It is an explicitly anti-cuts anthem, is this what Dan Hancox had in mind in his recent call to arms for musicians to make some noise about the cuts?:
Not going to attempt to comment on today's epic events in London, with the Government voting to increase student fees amidst riotous scenes, with the Treasury, Supreme Court, Oxford Street shops and Prince Charles's car all coming under attack. Many people injured by riot police charging in with horses and batons.
For now just going to post a few photos and report what I saw. At lunchtime crowds came down the Strand and into Trafalgar Square then on to Parliament Square.
As this sound system came into Trafalgar Square it was playing Damian Marley's Welcome to Jamrock and Tribe called Quest 's 'Can I kick it?'. People were bouncing up and down. Then I heard it playing Benga and Coki's Night.
Interestingly the BBC's Paul Mason has written today of the 'Dubstep rebellion':
'The man in charge of the sound system was from an eco-farm, he told me, and had been trying to play "politically right on reggae"; however a crowd in which the oldest person was maybe seventeen took over the crucial jack plug, inserted it into aBlackberry, (iPhones are out for this demographic) and pumped out the dubstep.
Young men, mainly black, grabbed each other around the head and formed a surging dance to the digital beat lit, as the light failed, by the distinctly analog light of a bench they had set on fire. Any idea that you are dealing with Lacan-reading hipsters from Spitalfields on this demo is mistaken.
While a good half of the march was undergraduates from the most militant college occupations - UCL, SOAS, Leeds, Sussex - the really stunning phenomenon, politically, was the presence of youth: bainlieue-style youth from Croydon, Peckham, the council estates of Islington' .
(though while there was certainly dubstep being played, as Dan Hancox notes on Twitter, the sounds of grime, rap and bashment were also prominent: 'they banned grime from the clubs, now THERE ARE 300 KIDS RAVING TO POW IN PARLIAMENT SQUARE' (Lethal Bizzle's Pow).
I also heard another sound system entering Trafalgar Square playing John Lennon's Working Class Hero!
There was the usual percussion...
... and the not so usual bagpipes:
Later in the evening on the Victoria Embankment there was what seemed to me to be an attempt to use music to pacify the crowd with a National Union of Students bus playing music and then telling people to disperse. Bizarrely they had hired private stewards (SFM) who were blocking the road to stop demonstrators heading down to the House of Commons where a line of riot police were guarding the entrance to Parliament Square near to Westminster Bridge. People pushed past the stewards who got very aggressive - two of them shoved me as I walked through afterwards.
A couple of hundred then formed up at the police line, including this trumpet/guitar duo who were playing 'A message to you Rudi'.
I went round to Trafalgar Square having heard that there was an occupation going on at the National Gallery. Then around half past seven a crowd surged across Trafalgar Square and there was an attempt to set alight to the big Christmas Tree - no doubt inspired by the burning of the tree in Athens during the December 2008 riots.
The crowd of several hundred started going up Charing Cross Road and then on to Oxford Street. The police had totally lost control, in fact they were nowhere to be seen with the exception of a couple trying to keep up. People were blocking the road with rubbish bins etc. and on Oxford St there was lots of chanting outside the shops targeted recently in the UK Uncut campaign - Vodafone and Topshop closed their doors. But I didn't see any windows smashed. I doubled back down Oxford Street where another crowd had emerged by Oxford Circus, with police pouring out of vans. This time the main Topshop window on Oxford Street had been broken, and 'pay your tax' painted on it.
Although by now police had formed across the road, they didn't seem to know what to do. Oxford Street on a Thursday night before Christmas is full of shoppers and tourists and it wasn't easy to tell who was standing around excitedly watching and taking photos and who was a protester. Every so often the police would surge forward and shoppers, tourists and protesters would scatter, then another stand off started.
In the last month a sustained movement against austerity has emerged seemingly out of nowhere. Since the student demonstration/riot in London on November 10th there have daily protests, meetings and occupations in towns and cities all over the UK. I have found myself wandering down Whitehall surrounded by hundreds of school students on an unofficial demonstration, seen students training for direct action in the occupied library of my local university (Goldsmiths) and swapped ideas with people from Brazil, Italy and Greece in a Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination workshop at the Arts Against Cuts weekend. I have been at a public meeting of 500 people cheering a 15 year old talking about organising a walk out from his secondary school.
What has been impressive is the innovation and the rapid circulation of struggles. A group of school students from Camden School for Girls visited the occupation at University College London - today 100 young women have occupied Camden School for Girls. As far as I know this is the first occupation of a school in London for more than 30 years! (anyone know differently let me know).
A 1977 Occupation
The most recent school occupation I have come across was from 1977: ''Sixth formers at Wanstead High School, east London, occupied their common room and front hall yesterday in protest against education cuts. 'We have a lot of support in other schools and our teachers are sympathetic' Richard Boyes, aged 17, a reprsentative at the school of the National Union of School Students, said". The occupation followed a 12 day occupation at the University of Essex "against Government increases in tuition fees" (Times, March 19 1977).
Sheffield Occupation dance off
Reported previously on the occupation dance offs in Oxford and UCL. Here's another one from the occupation at Sheffield University:
Next chapter tomorrow, with the call to Shut Down London on the day Parliament votes on student fees.
So many student protests in the UK in the past couple of weeks that I can't keep up, let alone follow what's happening in Italy and elsewhere. Which is a good sign I think.
On Tuesday things were moving so fast that when I turned up at London's Trafalgar Square the whole demonstration had moved on unexpectedly through the snowy streets of the West End. On the previous Wednesday in Trafalgar Square there was an amazingly lively crowd, with lots of school students and others climbing all over Nelson's Column. We headed off down Whitehall and within half an hour most of the crowd were surrounded by police where many remained 'kettled' until late in the evening. But not deterred, less than a week later a few thousand were braving the freezing cold to demonstrate again. Interesting times.
Plenty of time to ponder this significance of this later on, for now just a few more notes on the musical aspects. There were a couple of small 12v sound systems on the 24th November London demo including this one, which was playing hip hop when I saw it - to be precise Modern Day Slavery by Joell Ortiz/Immortal Technique.
Lots of other music and dancing going on. Here's students dancing during the occupation of University College London (UCL):
But what is the tune of the of the movement so far? Unexpectedly one contender is from the soundtrack of a film made in 1980. On this week's protests GdnEdinburgh noted: 'Student protesters are singing the Darth Vader tune as police move in to guard the door at the Scottish Parliament'. Meanwhile on the same day in London, Tanya Gold reported: 'We gather at Trafalgar Square at 12 and run. The protesters say they do not want to be kettled like last week in Whitehall. And so the students, a block of teenagers with a sound system that plays the Imperial March from Star Wars, run under Admiralty Arch and into the Mall, then past the Treasury and into Parliament Square'. Two weeks previously on the first big student demonstration in London, Luke Young from Swansea posted on Twitter 'Students on this bus hummed the Darth Vader imperial march as I walked past earlier. They will feel the force later' .
The Imperial March, aka the Darth Vader theme, was composed by John Williams and first featured in the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Fights Back. CoincidentlyIrvin Kershner- the director of the film - died this week.
The ultimately successful fight of the Jedi against the Empire is now an established myth for rebels everywhere. The Fight the Imperial Forces image below comes from Alec Empire's 1994 album Generation Star Wars.
After the exuberance and excitement of Wednesday's massive demonstration (50,000+) against education cuts in London, the hangover is setting in as the inevitable witch hunt is launched against those accused of taking part in the clashes at Millbank Tower, where the headquarters of the Conservative Party are located.
So far more than 50 people have been arrested, with newspapers including the Daily Mail and the Telegraph running photos of protesters and urging people to shop them to the police. I hope some of the Facebook generation don't have to learn the hard way that there are times when filming every moment and sharing it with the world can put people at serious risk. No doubt in future protests too the police will be back to cracking heads Iain Tomlinson-style, now that they have 'shown' what happens when they are expected to show restraint. Today's Observer quotes a 'senior police figure' as saying 'In the past we've been criticised for being too provocative. During the next demo no one can say a word'. You reckon? A swifter and more brutal response at Millbank might have saved a few windows, but seriously injuring students would inflame the protest movement across the whole country.
So potentially dangerous as well as exciting times ahead, but it does feel like a turning point has been reached. Two years after the 'credit crunch', and months of phony war about austerity, the reality of cuts is beginning to be felt and the opposition to them is beginning to get serious. Nobody should dismiss this week's demonstration as just a bunch of students protesting as usual - in the history of the education system in the UK there has never been a student protest of this scale or militancy.
An article in the Evening Standard by the pro-cuts Chris Blackhurst on the day after the demonstration warned: 'The temperature is rising all the time. Already, we've had strikes from the Tube drivers and firefighters, and now students are taking to the streets. More groups are likely to follow suit... Disturbingly, the scene is set for more yesterdays. The police will undoubtedly be better prepared. But that is not to say there won't be trouble or that the rage is going to disappear ('Expect more rage if the rich and poor divide gets bigger', 11 November 2011).
The Government is clearly hoping that the diffuse nature of the cuts, with different groups affected in different ways over a long period, will prevent a united movement. They are trying their best to inflame division and resentment between those bearing the brunt of the cuts. For instance claiming that attacking benefits claimants is good for ordinary workers because it is 'unfair' that some people earn more from signing on than others do for working - easily remedied by increasing wages, rather than cutting benefits which will actually tend to put downward pressure on wage levels as a whole.
In relation to the students protests, we are told that they are being selfish and that they will be the privileged of the future. Some of them may be, but many of them will be 'lucky' to find a job when they leave college. Many of those protesting this week, including some of those arrested, were actually working class 16 & 17 year olds facing the axing of the Education Maintenance Allowance, the small payment to young people from the lowest income families to help them stay on at school or college.
In any event, the current generation of students will not be affected by the planned rise in fees as they are likely to be phased in for new students. So their motives cannot be dismissed as simply narrow-self interest (not that there's anything wrong with that). As Nina Power argued this week: 'The protest as a whole was extremely important, not just because of the large numbers it attracted, and shouldn't be understood simply in economic terms as a complaint against fees. It also represented the serious anger many feel about cuts to universities as they currently stand, and the ideological devastation of the education system if the coalition gets its way. It was a protest against the narrowing of horizons; a protest against Lib Dem hypocrisy; a protest against the increasingly utilitarian approach to human life that sees degrees as nothing but "investments" by individuals, and denies any link between education and the broader social good'.
Dancing in the streets
Anyway I was at home sick during the demonstration, so had to make do with watching on TV. Like at the G20 protests in London last year, the endless looping of the image of the windows breaking was used to convey a sense of an ongoing orgy of destruction. Clearly a time limited episode of smashing things up was part of what was going on, but there was also celebration. At one point on Sky TV they showed footage of people dancing to some wobbly bass and the presenter announced 'drum and bass is playing, and the beer is open'. Yes a cycle-powered sound system was on hand, according to a participant account at The Commune: 'A sound system started playing dubstep leading to a Reclaim The Streets carnival atmosphere'
Some good footage here of people dancing, with a megaphone-wielding MC:
This film provides a good overview of the whole event - clearly the main demonstration was carnivalesque, not just the Millbank protest, with people climbing on bus shelters etc:
* Rouge's Foam has a good post on the demo, including some reflections on the music used:
'That day music stepped out of the record collection paradigm and played a role in raising morale, coordinating chants, and most importantly cohering and drawing attention to ourselves as an organised collective. Just south of Trafalgar Square as the march was starting I was near the back and still stationary, tightly packed in and shivering with hundreds of strangers from dozens of different universities. Eventually a sound system started up and boomed out Cee Lo Green’s ‘Fuck You’, a powerfully catchy, upbeat song and a perfect choice at that moment.
Recognising the sentiment we all turned, smiled, and started dancing and singing along, our eyes meeting with a strong and implicit sense of mutual understanding and agreement. There were performers on instruments too. The music of drummers and samba bands contributed to the sense of a shared mood. Outside the Houses of Parliament a student brass band were playing a characteristically old-fashioned and very English sort of music, and yet it only enhanced the atmosphere of diverse voices contributing in every unique way to one cause. By the time I arrived at the Millbank buildings, sound-systems were playing techno, dub, and if I’m not mistaken, Aphex Twin’s ‘Come to Daddy’. Together with our reasons for being there, the sense of collectivity that music instilled that day was ten times as strong as that whipped up at the very best of raves, and I’ll never forget it'.
* Beyond the Implode has done a very funny riff on the line 'drum and bass is playing and the beer is open'. Wish I'd recorded that Sky broadcast, would be a great sample.
My recent hypothesis that the vuvuzela is becoming the protest instrument of choice for the emerging movement against austerity has received some independent confirmation. Bat020 spotted one on the demonstration outside the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham last weekend (pictured below):
Meanwhile from Sweden, Birdseed reports that in the anti-racist mobilisations in the lead up to recent elections the vuvuzela has 'been ever present both as assertion and as sonic disturbance (of the extreme right)'.
All of this put me in mind of Peter Linebaugh's classic article 'Jubilating; or, how the Atlantic working class used the Biblical Jubilee against capitalism, with some success' first published in the journal Midnight Notes in 1990. In this text, Linebaugh looks at how the Biblical notion of Jubilee as the periodic cancellation of debt and slavery has inspired radical movements through the ages. And he notes how this is heralded by the sounding of a trumpet:
'Jubilee. Etymologically, jubilee comes from yobel, a Hebrew word meaning 'ram's horn'. Ever since, it's been associated with music, a horn, a cornet, a trumpet, and later with singing. The cornet descends from the shepherd's cornu; the trumpet and bugle from the Roman soldier's buccina; these horns are instruments of gathering and militance. In the West Indies and the South Sea Islands the spiral conch emits a very large sound. It was used by the Tritons of ancient mythology, and by the Haitian slaves on 21 August 1791 as a call to the war of liberation in the first successful slave revolt of modern history. The first thing about the jubilee, then, is that it is heard'.
Linebaugh quote from the Bible:
'You shall send the ram's horn around. You shall send it through all your land to sound a blast, and so you shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberation in the land for all its inhabitants' (Leviticus 25:9-10)
... and from the Jubilee Hymn written in 1782 by English radical Thomas Spence:
'Hark! how the trumpet's sound Proclaim the land around The Jubilee... Now hath the oppressor ceas'd And all the world releas'd from misery!'
On the subject of radical Biblical references, good to see that in my old town of Luton, some people from the former Exodus Collective (famed 1990s drum'n'bass free party sound system) are still going strong, putting on regular parties as the Leviticus Collective.
A couple of weeks ago (16 September) I wandered down to the Waterloo headquarters of the London Fire Brigade, where hundreds of firefighters were staging a protest outside a meeting of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA). They were demonstrating against management proposals to impose new shift patterns - with the threat of mass sackings if they don't comply.
One thing I noticed was a new instrument of protest - the vuvuzela. The plastic trumpet beloved of South African football fans has now circulated around the world following the exposure given to it in this summer's world cup.
I saw a few firefighters blowing vuvuzelas to cheer speakers:
Seemingly back in June, firefighters staged a specific vuvuzela protest outside a similar management meeting:
So as cuts and austerity take effect, is the vuvuzela going to be the sonic weapon of choice for the strikers and demonstrators of 2010-11?
Is there a more obscene media spectacle at the moment than British newspapers like the Daily Express whipping up people to rally round BP (see for instance this front cover from June 11th)?. On the one hand, Obama is criticised for calling them British Petroleum when they have rebranded themselves as plain old multinational BP (British Polluters?); on the other we are told that the British Government should do more to defend them because of their importance to the British economy. It may be true that a collapse in BP's share price will hit pension funds, but that just highlights the absurdity of older people's incomes being at the mercy of the market lottery. Of course other oil companies are just as bad, and indeed governments all over the world, including Obama's, are deeply involved in their activities.
Shortly before the Gulf of Mexico explosion, there was a protest against another BP operation - the strip mining of a huge area of the Candadian wilderness in Alberta to extract oil. The International Day of Action on the Canadian Tar Sands on 10th April was marked in London with a 'Party at the Pumps' at Shepherds Bush Green BP Petrol Station. Using a tactic developed in the 1990s Reclaim the Streets parties to outwit the police, people gathered at Oxford Circus tube station, most of them unaware of the location of the protest. They followed a few people with flags on to a train, who signalled with a whistle blast at Shepherds Bush station that it was time to get off. Meanwhile an advance party had occupied the petrol station forecourt.
More than a hundred of people took part in the four hour long 'Party at the Pumps', dancing to live music from the Rhythms of Resistance samba band, the Green Kite Midnight ceilidh band and the Bicycology sound system
Meanwhile, in Casanare, Colombia, workers have been occupying a BP plant in a wages dispute. According to the Colombia Solidarity Campaign (6 June 2010):
'There has been an upsurge in workers and community protests against BP in Casanare since the beginning of 2010. Workers at the Tauramena Central Processing Facility (CPF) starting 22 January went in strike supported by USO, the National Oil Workers Union of Colombia. On 15 February riot police brutally attacked the picket line, sending three workers to hospital. Demonstrations and popular assemblies in support of the stoppage took place in Tauramena and surrounding villages from February onwards. The USO union and many different community sectors came together to form the Movement for the Dignity of Casanare. The strike ended after 30 days when BP promised talks...
On 21 May workers involved in construction operations in the Tauramena installation entered into occupation demanding: a wage increase; the establishment a wage scale; due process in disciplinary decisions; and labour guarantees for the workers. On 2 June army forces entered the plant and at time of writing are harassing the workers, who stay overnight chaining themselves to plant equipment so that they cannot be dislodged'.
In the past activists opposing BP in Colombia, whether on environmental or workplace issues, have been killed by right wing death squads.
BP started out as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in 1909, after oil was discovered in Iran. It was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935 with the British Government taking a controlling interest, and the British Petroleum Company in 1954. It notoriously played a role in the 1953 military coup which overthrew the MohammedMossadegh as Prime Minister after his government voted to nationalise AIOC. As Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, summarised in a recent interview : 'the oil that fueled England all during the 1920s and '30s and ’40s all came from Iran.... Every factory in England, every car, every truck, every taxi was running on oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which was projecting British power all over the world, was fueled a hundred percent by oil from Iran'.
Well yes, I'm a bit slow off the mark in posting up these pictures from the demonstrations around the G20 summit of world leaders in London at the beginning of April. Not having much original to say about it all my intention was just to document some of the diverse musical forms on the protests, a project that seemed a bit facile after Ian Tomlinson was killed by the police on 1st April.
Old school brass band with the RMT (railworkers union)
Then on April 1st I headed into the City for the G20 Meltdown protest at the Bank of England, where my main concern was avoiding being surrounded by police and prevented from coming or going for several hours (ye olde 'Kettling' technique). Apparently Billy Bragg, Kate Nash and Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly did a few acoustic numbers for the crowed, but I didn't see them or Enter Shikari's Roughton 'Rou' Reynolds who was apparently there.
This mobile sound system was stopped by the police from joining the crowd outside the Bank of England - until it started playing gabba and suddetly the police line parted! (probably only to widen the cordon mind).
Didn't find either of the actions particularly inspiring, but for all their limitations I guess I feel that some kind of movement is better than none. The long history of deep capitalist crises demonstrates that without a strong counter-movement the cost of recovery will be paid by those of us enduring pay cuts, job losses and reductions in public services - if not worse.
For some really deep history of the current crisis, take a look at David Graeber's 'Debt: the first five thousand years' in the new issue of Mute magazine (also available online at their site)
Jambalaya
