>Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 16:02:39 +0100
>From: Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: London Mayday protests
>>Thirdly the 'middle class' protesters were the ones specificlly
>>heading to Traflagar square to link up with the 'working class'
>>May Day march (and in particular the Dagenham workers).
>Well, the 'trade union' march I saw was a handful of rather conservative
>union bureaucrats from the Longbridge plant, who were more afraid of the
>protesters than the police.
Yes I heard this from a couple of anarchist who were on the TU march but the point I was making was that RTS is far more aware and orientated towards class politics then a lot of the old left realise.
>It would be interesting if the meeting had
>been allowed to go ahead since most of the demonstrators presumably
>would welcome the closure of Birmingham's car plant, as, for example,
>environmentalist George Monbiot did in his newspaper column.
Now this is a more interesting point then you probably suspect. As you may be aware there was a MayDay 2000 conference held over the weekend before the march which most of the RTS activists attended. One session on building for Prague which was attended by 300 or so people discussed the Ford situation and specifically how we could try and link up with 'rank and file' car workers in the same sense that RTS had previously linked up with the Liverpool Dockers. But it was only a couple of days after this meeting that I had the realisation that _no one_ at it argued against any link up. And certainly no one welcomed the closures. This IMHO shows just how narrow an understanding of RTS is that seeks to brush it off as 'middle class envirnomentalism'. If it was ever that it has gone a long, long way beyond it.
>A question: do you welcome the closure? Or do you want to see more cars
>built in Britain?
Well the vague nationalist basis of your question is a little amusing as I'm actually in Ireland, the question of whether or not cars are built in Britain is not an issue for me. What is an issue is that the workers employed in the process should not lose out by whatever does happen. If this means they fight to keep the plants open then I'll support that, if it means they fight for alternate jobs or alternate production at those plants then I'll support that also.
>>Fourthly the very obvious point to be made is that the police
>>choose to offer McDonalds as a handy sacrifice to justify
>>the intervention of the riot police
>Your instinct that the police left the 'rioters' alone is right. But not
>that this was the prelude to heavy-handed tactics.
I'm not saying they were particularly heavy handed (although away from the cameras some people were battered). But they needed a 'riot' because they had to justify there self-described biggest mobilisation for 30 years. I arrived in London to be greeted by the Evening Standard proclaiming 'Army on Standby for riot' it would have been a little embarassing if nothing happened.
>But such characters were far from being out of place. The character of
>the event was plainly middle class, from the drippy-hippy sandpits and
>flowers right down to the theatre workshop protests and tie-dies.
Where as 'real workers' are only interested in football, whippets and cloth caps!
>'Mass movement'? Well, I guess it's all relative.
A fair enough point, RTS can only be described as a 'mass movement' because there is nothing else capable of mobiling those sorts of numbers of people on a sustained basis right now.
>>As far as I can see the only people capable
>>of doing so are the anarchists - certainly at the
>>MayDay conference before the march we were the only political
>>tendancy there that received any respect from the mass
>>of particapants.
>Doubtless, they recognised something of themselves in you.
Giggle ....
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