Noreena Hertz, academic and author of an acclaimed critique of globalisation, joined last week's May Day protesters. What she saw was an unholy alliance of police and media
Special report: Mayday
Sunday May 6, 2001 The Observer
She couldn't have been more than 20. Dressed in a maroon, long-sleeved T-shirt, pink, knee-length skirt and no overcoat, she must have been freezing, because it was bitterly cold on Tuesday, May Day, the day the city at play became the city at war. For me, this anonymous girl-woman I saw armed with no weapon other than a bunch of pink flowers and a balloon, who stood 10 inches away from a cordon of Darth Vader-helmeted riot police, staring into their eyes so courageously that I saw the policeman opposite her turn away in shame, epitomised what the protest on Tuesday had become: 'them' against 'us'. And, frankly, the 'us' on Tuesday is an 'us' that I am not proud to be part of.
That day, central London was a city under siege, not by the protesters - there were not that many of them - but by the police and the media, who outnumbered them by far. Two forces that seemed intent on pigeonholing the marchers as the great unwashed and violent to boot. Two forces often in the past at odds, but for that day united, intent on protecting property rights, not people's right to free expression.
The back-slapping we witnessed the next day - Tony Blair and William Hague's joint congratulation of the Metropolitan Police in the House of Commons, the proclaimed victory of Sir John Stevens's planning in the Mail , Guardian and Mirror , praise for Red Ken's zero-tolerance strategy - was confirmation that this take on the affair was one shared by all the powers that be, regardless of party allegiance.
If even the liberal elite marks the police's efforts as a triumph, something is clearly awry. For penning thousands of people into Oxford Circus, so that girls had to pee squatting surrounded by their friends, so that people dressed as mermaids and clowns grew thirsty and hungry, denied food or water for hours on end, so that those who only a few hours before had been peacefully dancing to the rhythm of carnival drummers were disallowed their right to be heard, is not the mark of a democratic society, but of a society that acts in the interests of the many and ignores the rights of the few.
Of course, there was always some threat of violence by a minority and I did find the masked faces of the Wombles menacing rather than funny, but nothing warranted such an overreaction by the state. The droning of the helicopters, motorcycle cavalcade after cavalcade, police van after police van, handcuffs and truncheons, the threat of rubber bullets and the ominous reality of black shields testified to the hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money spent in the purported defence of the realm. In fact, the apparatus of the state was not being used to protect a general public interest, but that of a very particular group.
At its essence, Tuesday was not about globalisation or capitalism but them and us, those included in society versus those kept out, those served by politicians versus the politically dispossessed, a smashed shop window perceived as a greater evil than a cause left unheard.
Exclusion was the word on the protesters' lips: exclusion from the system itself and, most worryingly, from the whole political process. When I asked the bike riders and cartoon characters around me whether they were planning to vote at the forthcoming election, the question provoked much mirth. 'Vote! Why vote? What for?' a young guy who'd travelled down from Barnsley to take part in the protests asked me. This was a sentiment not particular to those youths who gathered in the rain, or the 18-year-old girls in fairy outfits and boys with 'Stop the Cuba embargo' badges, but shared by the young throughout the UK. Only 44 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted at the last election, and 71 per cent of 16- to 21-year-olds feel that whoever they vote for, it would make no difference to their lives. It was our youth who stood in the rain and cold in that pen.
But it isn't only the young who feel alienated from politics: the poor and socially excluded feel the same way. I also spoke that day with homeless men, single mothers and dole claimants who shared this lack of faith in traditional politics. 'I don't believe my vote matters,' I was told repeatedly.
And indeed the correlation between low social and economic status and voter abstention is becoming ever more pronounced. In the Benwall ward of Newcastle, one of the UK's most deprived inner-city areas, where three-quarters of children live in households with no earned income, voter turnout at the 1999 local election was only 19.4 per cent.
Surely both these groups, the young and the socially and economically excluded, represent an untapped market opportunity for any political party. So why are politicians concentrating their energies on swing voters instead of trying to reach out to this group? Why do they seem intent on putting them down?
Laziness? Fear? An unwillingness to concede that the brand of capitalism now proselytised by parties of Left and Right may lie at the core of the problem? All these go some way to explaining politicians' inertness. Of course, it is undoubtedly easier to ignore this group, to act to preserve the status quo. And there is a real risk that by trying to address these constituents' concerns, a party could alienate itself from its core vote.
To tackle the needs of these non-voters, of which a visible subset were the 5,000 who chose to stand outside in the cold, we would need politicians brave enough to accept that some of the tenets they preach may be fundamentally flawed: wealth may not always trickle down, privatisation may not always be the best solution, the unchecked growing dominance of corporations may need more than the market to keep it in control.
Today's politicians have no intention of engaging in such a debate. As ideologies have converged, they have become purveyors of a homogenised politics, which fights for the middle ground and essentially represents the ever growing middle class, increasingly distancing itself from a large part of the electorate.
It is wrong to see May Day as a triumph for the state. Instead, we must see it as evidence of its failure, a sign of weakness rather than strength. Instead of celebrating a wonderful policing effort, we must ask ourselves whether our defence of orthodoxy has gone too far. Is it right that the apparatus of the state should be used not to protect but to conquer, not to include but to divide?
We need to enter into a dialogue, to air the concerns espoused that day and not shut them away. Nor must we forget the girl with the bunch of flowers and the balloon who stood in the cold and the policeman who turned his face away in shame.