Smash EDO protest report from the front
May 5 2009 10:17
Well right from the start I can say it was an utter shambles. The whole thing was an utter clusterfuck from start to finish.
We set off about quater to One, and for the first hour or so, it looked pretty good. People marched through the centre of town and the whole thing had a party-ish atmosphere. FITwatch did well, shutting down several teams and (rather notably) a CCTV van. A banner was hung off the scaffholding on a Barclay's bank. The people who did it where succesfully de-arrested by the crowd and a laugh was had. The Babykiller (army) recruitment centre was hit by a red paint-bomb, and again, the guy who did it was protected from the cops.
However, as soon as we reached the McDonalds on London Rd, things kicked off. I can understand McMurder being a target for an anti capitalist protest, but for fucks sake guys, there where kids in there. People where hurling bricks and bottles at windows with kids right behind them. Civilians are NOT a ligitmate target! Of course this caused the (up til now) peaceful pigs to kick off in a big way. They started batoning people, horses and tear gas where used, and a pigvan was rocked back and forth to the amusement of all.
After this, the cops took a harder approach to where we went. condons and kettles where formed, but it didn't stop the majority of protestors escaping into the local park, and then into a residental district. By this point it was obvious no-one knew where the fuck we were going. About 500-700 protestors ran around a residental district for a couple of hours, with sporadic outbreaks of violence on both sides, protestors and pigs. And to the people kicking over people's bins and kicking cars - what the fuck did that achieve except pissing people off?.
About 500 of us made our way back into town, and where eventually blocked off by a line at the back of the laines. A stand off lasted about half an hour, with protestors chanting "This is not a riot!" and police yelling about battons being used. However, people found a back way through a car park and made our way back to the beach, where the remaining 200 or so where kettled on the seafront. Maybe 20 of us escaped the kettle and made our way away.
So, all in all, we achieved nothing. We didn't make it within half a mile of EDO/MBM. We didn't end up looking morally superior to the pigs. In fact, the prevailing mood in brighton seems to be the police didn't go far enough, and should just shut Smash EDO down. The main headline in the local rag today is "SHAMEFUL!" (and this is a paper that has been supportive of SmashEDO in the past)
May 5 2009 12:38
#2
Brighton SolFed attended this. We distributed 500 leaflets to demonstrators and bystanders, linking repression and militarism with the origins of mayday. we avoided batons and kettles and had some interesting conversations with people. We'll stick the leaflet text online for reference shortly.
Fwiw, I think the 'tear gas' was a flour bomb thrown by demonstrators.
May 5 2009 13:41
#3
Muff wrote:
Well right from the start I can say it was an utter shambles. The whole thing was an utter clusterfuck from start to finish.We set off about quater to One, and for the first hour or so, it looked pretty good. People marched through the centre of town and the whole thing had a party-ish atmosphere. FITwatch did well, shutting down several teams and (rather notably) a CCTV van. A banner was hung off the scaffholding on a Barclay's bank. The people who did it where succesfully de-arrested by the crowd and a laugh was had. The Babykiller (army) recruitment centre was hit by a red paint-bomb, and again, the guy who did it was protected from the cops.
However, as soon as we reached the McDonalds on London Rd, things kicked off. I can understand McMurder being a target for an anti capitalist protest, but for fucks sake guys, there where kids in there. People where hurling bricks and bottles at windows with kids right behind them. Civilians are NOT a ligitmate target! Of course this caused the (up til now) peaceful pigs to kick off in a big way. They started batoning people, horses and tear gas where used, and a pigvan was rocked back and forth to the amusement of all.
After this, the cops took a harder approach to where we went. condons and kettles where formed, but it didn't stop the majority of protestors escaping into the local park, and then into a residental district. By this point it was obvious no-one knew where the fuck we were going. About 500-700 protestors ran around a residental district for a couple of hours, with sporadic outbreaks of violence on both sides, protestors and pigs. And to the people kicking over people's bins and kicking cars - what the fuck did that achieve except pissing people off?.
About 500 of us made our way back into town, and where eventually blocked off by a line at the back of the laines. A stand off lasted about half an hour, with protestors chanting "This is not a riot!" and police yelling about battons being used. However, people found a back way through a car park and made our way back to the beach, where the remaining 200 or so where kettled on the seafront. Maybe 20 of us escaped the kettle and made our way away.
So, all in all, we achieved nothing. We didn't make it within half a mile of EDO/MBM. We didn't end up looking morally superior to the pigs. In fact, the prevailing mood in brighton seems to be the police didn't go far enough, and should just shut Smash EDO down. The main headline in the local rag today is "SHAMEFUL!" (and this is a paper that has been supportive of SmashEDO in the past)
kicking over peoples bins and vandalising peoples cars is just bang out of order-do that to the local police station not the local neighbourhoods... Talk about turning the people against us. We are meant to be on their side ffs.
May 5 2009 13:52
#4
Quote:
McMurder
Its 2001 all over again.
Quote:
Civilians are NOT a ligitmate target!
Either is McDonalds really.
May 5 2009 15:00
#5
As long as yous did not target Burger King cas belfast anarchists would be well pissed off- especially deezer...
May 5 2009 15:24
#6
why don't we target the HQ? if there is such a thing =)
May 5 2009 16:23
#7
I came away from this feeling quite positive, but we were only there for the first part. I agree that direct action without a specific goal is little more than vandalism. It would have been a good idea for SmashEDO to hand out leaflets to the general public, a lot of people didn't know what it was about. On the plus side - there was quite a good turnout, the atmosphere in the beginning was pretty good, mostly it didn't put people off but generated interest. Also, three people asked me if I knew about it at work today, so it did have some effect.
May 5 2009 16:30
#8
i hardly need to give this a disclaimer but that attacks on anything aside from corporate/military property are stupid and make me feel more than uncomfortable. However, i personally saw little in the way of this sort of thing, and when it did occur there was an immediate outcry from those around.
there were a lot of mistakes made and as an individual event it's probably caused more damage to the smash edo campaign than it was worth, but it seemed to me to be a step up in many other respects, especially in terms of the crowd being very conscious of police tactics. people made decisions to back off and avoid getting bogged down in pointless battles (and the inevitable kettles) which meant not giving the police a chance to wade in with batons, whether they'd been ordered not to or not.
next time however i might bring a map...
May 5 2009 17:20
#9
weeler wrote:
Quote:
Civilians are NOT a ligitmate target!Either is McDonalds really.
to be fair, McDonalds apparently hold shares in ITT corporation, EDO MBM's new owners. that's why they were targetted.
May 5 2009 18:14
#10
I was there and thought it was an excellent display of spontaneous organisation and decision. I left around 2 hours in as I was flagging, but just to note there were a few incidents of anti-social behaviour - one guy thru a bottle at this old man who was having a go at the march as it went past. The guy who did it looked like your typical light blue hoody on a bike who joined in on the day, there were alot of kids from brighton who were not involved in the core message of the demo but were more into the anti-police, anti-authority aspects of it.
The cops were the most disorganised I have ever seen, they did not want to kettle people, they made little attempt to premptively undermine the demo - no defensive barriers were seized or helmets confiscated. that allowed a large bloc of maybe 200-300 black bloc'ers to form up that led the march.
It was all fairly nice, noisy, militant and dare I say it, empowering. however if I were not an anarcho and were standing on the side lines I would have thought "what the fuck is that!", it definetly was a sharp contrast (positive and negative) to the March 28th Militant workers block. Though our objectives then were not to be prepared for a fight with the police, unlike Brighton.
I like the fact that there are still people with a passion for a direct confrontation with the state in this basis, I also like the fact that other anarchists are building other forms of resistance be it at Visteon or in the NHS. The issue will be when can these disperate elements converge, and in what context.
May 5 2009 19:57
#11
"Come dance, fight, and remember the victims of ITT".
What genius wrote your propaganda?
May 5 2009 20:05
#12
used to be me 
May 5 2009 21:01
#13
May 6 2009 16:05
#14
nice leaflet
May 6 2009 16:31
#15
huw wrote:
You achieved nothing because there was no objective for direct action to achieve. Direct Action without a specific goal is ridiculously counterproductive (I'd probably just call it vandalism), and it's nice to see you've highlighted that here.Mass marches like this should be about the clear expression of an issue and a chance to have a little fun and meet some new people, social activism not thuggery.
I'd say there were objectives that could've been achieved - the primary one being to cause economic damage to EDO or Thales, a secondary one being damage to companies linked to ITT (like Maccy D's). If an army recruitment centre gets trashed on an anti-war march, I think the issue being expressed is pretty clear.
May 6 2009 17:55
#16
Fair point, Farce. Been chatting to some people taking part since and they said that it was encouraging, if only because of the polices failure to keep people trapped, so maybe I was a bit hasty.
May 6 2009 22:18
#17
huw wrote:
Been chatting to some people taking part since and they said that it was encouraging, if only because of the polices failure to keep people trapped
this has been a bit of a tradition in brighton since halloween 2002, when a mass direct action against the war took the streets. there's a bit of (recent) history and analysis in aufheben's 'a phenomenal anti-war movement?' (see the section from 'Movement dynamics in one town').
May 7 2009 08:14
#18
I'd say the repeated, albeit messy, escapes from police closures was a success in itself, and as mentioned, the numbers involved in disrupting the FIT team is a good sign, although questions need to be asked how this can be done when they start getting tooled up.
As for the damage, whilst I don't have any problem with it, it's difficult to tie McDonalds into ITT; many people are feeling this is baseless vandalism. Smash EDO should really sort out their propaganda and explain why these companies are justifiable targets. Also, smashing windows with people behind them is never on.
May 7 2009 08:52
#19
And the whole thing was a huge fucking waste of time anyways JR. Hurr durr, lets do an anarchy in brighton.
May 7 2009 08:58
#20
Bobby wrote:
nice leaflet
SNAP!
May 7 2009 09:55
#21
jolly roger wrote:
I'd say the repeated, albeit messy, escapes from police closures was a success in itself, and as mentioned, the numbers involved in disrupting the FIT team is a good sign, although questions need to be asked how this can be done when they start getting tooled up.
Yeah, although it is hard to say how far we were able to escape the police because of our own ingenuity, and how far it was just because the cops were just wearing kid gloves as part of the official "stop just randomly batoning newspaper dudes to death" policy.
Quote:
As for the damage, whilst I don't have any problem with it, it's difficult to tie McDonalds into ITT; many people are feeling this is baseless vandalism. Smash EDO should really sort out their propaganda and explain why these companies are justifiable targets. Also, smashing windows with people behind them is never on.
True. Although you might think that a business that was a fairly standard target for anti-capitalist demos anyway, and had been publicised in advance as a target for this specific demo, might have the sense to close the doors and pull down the shutters for a day. Can't disagree that any such actions should be properly contextualised, though.
May 7 2009 10:00
#22
Yeh, they should have known to shut down their local store of a franchise that sells cheap as fuck food to working class people, an obvious target for an anti-arms march. Any people inside when it was attacked were collaborators. Funnily enough I've never seen a high end restaurant fucked up by the ninjas.
May 7 2009 10:14
#23
weeler wrote:
Funnily enough I've never seen a high end restaurant fucked up by the ninjas.
Are you kidding? Their parents might be eating there! Good-bye trust fund, and all that.
May 7 2009 11:27
#24
Serious conversations never last here eh?
May 7 2009 12:34
#25
I am serious, all of the so-called successes you listed are really just self congratulatory childish bullshit.
May 7 2009 13:02
#26
weeler wrote:
I am serious, all of the so-called successes you listed are really just self congratulatory childish bullshit.
I think you need to diversify your diet. Too much potatoes me thinks.
May 7 2009 13:16
#27
Aye, you're right, not getting caught nor photographed enough is a total failure.
May 7 2009 14:19
#28
I don't get caught or photographed pretty much every day.
May 7 2009 14:29
#29
Quote:
a franchise that sells cheap as fuck food to working class people
So are you saying that you'd support the smashing up of a franchise selling expensive food to posh people? Or are you just throwing irrelevancies in to confuse the argument?
Quote:
an obvious target for an anti-arms march
Since it's a company that invests in said arms company, and this'd been publicised in advance, I would've have thought it was kind of obvious. Like, just from a coldly rational capitalist perspective, I would've thought that if you saw an article in the local newspaper warning that your franchise was gonna be smashed up next week, it'd make sense to avoid the costs associated with that by drawing the shutters down for the day.
May 7 2009 14:38
#30
posi wrote:
I don't get caught or photographed pretty much every day.
That's probably because you're also not on marches every day.
More like this
- Interview with McDonalds Workers Resistance - Face magazine, 2000
- "On the Verge" the Smash EDO campaign film - Kings X - Fri 11th April, 7pm
- Anti-militarism: an anarcho-syndicalist perspective
- Brighton arms factory 'decommissioned' in Gaza protest
- Anarchism used as an identity instead of social change?
You achieved nothing because there was no objective for direct action to achieve. Direct Action without a specific goal is ridiculously counterproductive (I'd probably just call it vandalism), and it's nice to see you've highlighted that here.
Mass marches like this should be about the clear expression of an issue and a chance to have a little fun and meet some new people, social activism not thuggery.