Against Capitalism June 18

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Fri Jun 18 18:14:51 PDT 1999


This has turned out to look very significant. It was much more than a riot in London, as the reports of action elsewhere show. It sounds as if at least 5000 took part in London.

City firms shut up early, advised their staff not to weak suits or posted notices in the windows about how much they support the third world.

The report I gave yesterday morning was based on the campaign by the churches with the support of social democrats.

The answer to Doug's question is yes:


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Chris Burford wrote:


>Yesterday he gave a news conference with an elaborate satellite connection

Is this sort of Reaganesque/Clintonesque stuff new to British politics? Or has it been around for the last 20 years too? <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Some of the bourgeois media had close ups of "hooligans" in masks smashing a window of a Macdonald's. Some of more eccentric people. Some played up the marriage of Sophie and Edward. The Telegraph emphasised the threat to the City of London.

An acquaintance of mine told me how she got stuck in a bus on the outer vicinity of the city for a long period.

Reporters suggested things got more violent in the afternoon after people had been drinking. But there was clearly a lot of planning in the street theatre.

These events are a first and look very significant, even if marxists would have some reservations about the anarchist position. The target is clearly and openly indentified as world capitalism, something that was not done easily when communist parties in some countries at least had electorates in the millions.

The anarchists are far from isolated. They are linked to much wider demonstrations the previous weekend on "breaking the chains of debt" which were being talked up by social democratic ministers.

The activists are well informed.

And there are global links through the net.

visit http://www.greennet.org.uk/june18/ if you have not already.

Relevant propaganda and agitation appears to have been targetted on specific sites.

They draw some of their political inspiration from the anti-poll tax movement, and more recently from Reclaim the Streets, against motor car capitalism.

Note also this site is clever enough to have links to the official conference site of the G8 summit in Cologne: there is no squeamishness about being in the business of reforms, just a desire to make them more radical.

No doubt the authorities will counterattack by tracing net contacts through the site, and it would be unwise to assume the activists who were violent to property will necessarily be the vanguard of the movement. Because they are few in numbers and are dependent on state benefits which detach from the means of production.

What is significant is the breadth of the movement that capitalism must and will be held accountable, and on a global scale.

The G8 summit will talk up their debt "forgiveness" programme, which is reformist because it does not address the global uneven accumulation of capital. A very broad coalition of strata are on to its case.

Chris Burford

London



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