TUC and policing 26th March London demo.

An excellent opportunity to expose the TUC as the class enemy they are.
The details described in the article, if correct, are incredibly blatant.

Sounds like the police think that the anger over the student fees hike may have abated slightly and that an aggressive strategy will scare people off. Personally I think it will back fire spectacularly, especially as Osbourne's budget is 2 days before and will be fucking offensive.

On a side(ish) note if they do have a hardline plan to spot and deal with 'trouble makers' then the proposed radical or black bloc would then be self-defeating. Much better to integrate and make any TUC intervention as visible as possible.

can't say I expected anything less from that bunch of cuntbags but it's still jaw-dropping. I think the lack of very experienced legal observers could become a real problem- I agree with Sir Arthur about this backfiring, I can't see how this will achieve anything other than alienating a huge number of people from the traditional avenues of struggle. A significant number of people have their backs up against the wall thanks to this government's offensive, they're not about to listen to a bunch of dickheads in yellow bibs.

TUC = the Tories' Unashamed Cops

on the student demos i saw many non-radical students visably appalled at the way the stewards formed a line around the march and could be seen talking to police. i think there is an underlying frustration with the unions and an implicit assumption of their impotence.

aaron porter's denouncing of milbank etc really drove this home
it was really something straight out of may '68

Are the police and TUC actually banning our usual legal observers from legal observing on the demo? Marion

P.s. I don't read the article as meaning this but maybe you know otherwise?

no, nor is there any way they could ban anyone from participating

It looks to me like the gap between the TUC organisers, the official apparatus at its higher levels, and a very large contingent which is in one way or another in favour of independent action, is becoming more and more explicit. With such close cooperation between the police and the union stewards, it is all the more important to avoid getting pulled or pushed into traps.

What do people think are the main dangers facing the 'unofficial' forces?

apathy and disengagement / a feeling that protesting is repetitive and boring / its all over or futile (which all forces of society constantly throw at us). 90 percent of students on the the big demos last year had never been on demos up till then.

the biggest danger i think is that currently the unofficial forces rely upon the official 'labour' apparatus to mobilise/call the big protests.

the only path i can see out of this is a spontaneist one, beginning with sustained protest and moving on to general occupations and wildcat strikes. but i never really know when my practical suggestions become utopian suggestions of revolution

its the excitement that people feel from acts of collective radicalism that is the only tool for non-bureaucratic mobilisation. normally that excitement just flares briefly, and then people go home and back to their lives. it needs to get to a level where it becomes cumulative.

Two points:

Militant are just the same old Militant. If you don't know already, CWF went up to court because of direct action outside Hackney Town Hall in the eighties during the struggle for working class survival in opposition to the Poll-Tax. (Poll-Tax form burning-deniers, they!)

BARAC are joining the 'radical' bloc from Kennington Park on Saturday. Pin your earholes back for African drums!

? yeah Militant Tendecy are cunts, but whats that got to do with this thread?

are you referring to the Militant Worker's Bloc? if so, thats got nothing to do with Militant, and is organised by libertarians

http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/March_Stewards_Dealing_with_situations.pdf

Don't live in the UK, so won't be in London Saturday, but that TUC leaflet is begging to be detourned. Reminds me a bit of this.

Whats' the 'radical' block? Lee Jasper is chairman of Black Activists Rising Against the Cuts and a 'leading' member of Claire Solomans' Coalition of Resistance. It looks like the dinosaurs who leeched off the race relations industry in the 1980s' and 1990s' are back in force.

Ah - him.

Harrison wrote in answer to my questions about the dangers we face on Saturday:

"apathy and disengagement / a feeling that protesting is repetitive and boring / its all over or futile (which all forces of society constantly throw at us). 90 percent of students on the the big demos last year had never been on demos up till then.the biggest danger i think is that currently the unofficial forces rely upon the official 'labour' apparatus to mobilise/call the big protests. the only path i can see out of this is a spontaneist one, beginning with sustained protest and moving on to general occupations and wildcat strikes. but i never really know when my practical suggestions become utopian suggestions of revolution. It is the excitement that people feel from acts of collective radicalism that is the only tool for non-bureaucratic mobilisation. normally that excitement just flares briefly, and then people go home and back to their lives. it needs to get to a level where it becomes cumulative".

I agree with a lot of this, but there are a still a lot of questions. The main threat to the unofficial forces, such as those gathering at Malet Street, seems to me less one of relying on the TUC, because it has rather openly revealed itself to be part of the police apparatus. I would say that a greater danger for us is being divided and disorganised, and having illusions in more radical forms of leftism. Also the danger of minorities underestimating the need to convince the overwhelming majority of the need for radical action, and thus being tempted into substitutionist activism, which also has the disadvantage of exposing the whole movement to the forces of direct repression.

couldn't agree with you more.
i think its to do with despising the trot groups and swinging to the opposite pole. the sad thing is that even stupid groups like REVOLUTION then make inroads where libertarians/left-coms normally do

this is certainly the case with the Black Bloc / ninja attitude

Yeah the Kennington one was organised by the Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham anti-cuts groups. I don't know about the second two but the first is largely based around Lambeth Unison. The route has been agreed with the police. On the plus side all three groups voted against Kate Hoey being invited to speak at the start of the march.

Examples?

Yeah Jim, what do you mean?

Purely out of interest, Tommy Ascaso, when you write

, was this just a sloppy formulation (something we're all capable of) or do you really believe the cuts aren't an absolute necessity for capitalism and can be reversed? I'm not trying to be nick-picking - it's just that I seem to be regularly having this discussion with cdes who see the (international) attacks on wages and the social wage as reversible, rather than the expression of a bankrupt social system that has no alternative other than to attack the working class.

i assume this is a reference to the row over Clare Solomon preventing an occupation of ULU on the grounds it was a 'tiny unrepresentative minority' (sound familiar?), which was supported by at least one prominent anarchist.

i think everyone can learn a bit from Red Action and the iwca

Demonstrate as much as we did, shout as students or be beaten as workers, in the end you will lose. Democracy has killed any chance of revolution in the UK so either take up arms as a vigilante, annoy the police on a demo with annoying peace singers, or work day to day to turn where you live into a commuity. They fight better, just in case.

Not that I would't love revolution, but the games that I have seen for years on demos tells me you are not the ones. Yaaaaawwwwnnn

I agree that you can't identify the feeder marches as such with 'unofficial' forces, which isn't a very precise term anyway. Also agree that there is a danger of people seeing this as a one off - there are certainly some elements who have very exaggerated hopes about what might happen on the day, and who could become demoralised if it doesn't match up to expectations.
The term 'direct action' also leaves a lot of vagueness. It can mean genuine collective action that has the potential to bring in more and more participants (many occupations for example) or it can be something that goes against the real dynamic or just expresses the whims of small groups and has no sense of trying to draw others behind it. Some of the actions by activist groups being proposed at the 'direct action' planning session in ULU last weekend seemd to me to fall into this category, as does the 'black bloc'/ninja stuff that Harrison mentions.
This week Miles and I organised a meeting at our college for staff and students to discuss 26 March. It was quite well attended. The students who came (but they are only a very small minority of the whole student body) seemed attracted by the idea of going to the Malet Street feeder. Some of the staff were more cautious and did not want to get drawn into any confrontations, in fact just wanted to march. If we are saying that the A-B procession is not enough, we have to find ways of convincing very large numbers of people that this is the case. Perhaps the majority of people marching under trade union banners will start off in this category.

Alf- you talk about students - ;.0

In the UK, with experience of occupations and other entertaining student actions, I would give up. They shout a lot until their job comes up. I still know my old revolutionaries from the miners' strike, from fighting Eddie Shah, and now they have houses with kids!!! Probably read the Guardian though

I hope I am wrong and the workers will follow this vanguard. Does the menu say No Violence, No Doing Anything That Scares?

Yeah, reproducing! The bastards!

Oh my god, you're right! I never thought of it that way. Thanks for putting in the time to wake me up out of my revolutionary stupor.

Nice one Django. Why should I use home ownership and procreation as a cause for attack,

Home ownership? Do you really think that is ever progressive?

Kids? Well we were all some kind of child once, but when you had the most passionate comrade dissolve into a Mills and Boon victim you know where the power lies. Then she thinks a kid, then she forgets politics, then she disappears.

I have known families where their radicalism is transmitted downwards through the family, but in my view people who have kids become conservative, their personal security or health comes before the world

Thtas fine redsdisease.

I love the words, the unoriginal rhetoric that brings the sons and daughters of the rich to march next to you.

Why not shoot them on Saturday? They will become the enemy soon, just give them a few years of forgetfulnes

Tell me, who are you relying on to trouble the British govt? I hope you have an answer because I have been waiting a long time. And if the students bring down Cameron this weekend, what then? What is the agreed philosophy for these rich kids?

Hardly surprising, but a Met officer's been caught bragging about kettling Year 10 students and proclaiming that 'all students are the enemy' back in November:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/03/476561.html?c=on#comments

I agree Millbank and the Town Hall events recently were collective action. And most collective actions begin small. And sometimes revolutionaries are the ones at the forefront of them. That's not the point I am making here. The question is how do we engage with the vast mass of people who want to express their discontent but are not yet ready to break out of the official framework and even see it as some kind of protection? It would be interesting to know what discussions have taken place among the comrades forming the Radical Workers Bloc about this question.