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Reclaim the Streets - what happened??

editor said:
9/11 and the subsequent trrrrsm hysteria put paid to any chance of similar protests happening.
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I agree with this completely. 9/11 changed everything.
 
Brainaddict said:
yep, sorry, should have said that clearly
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OK. So there were problems in one group. How does that explain other groups? Personally I found the London group much better than the Manchester one - certain members of the Manchester group seemed to use it to play out James Bond fantasies.
 
Brainaddict said:
It's you that's treating me like I'm your enemy. I'm really not y'know :)
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No?
Brainaddict said:
Hmmm, a bit of an easy get-out clause to explain the group break-up if you ask me.<snip>If you don't admit it when you fail, how are you going to learn?
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Brainaddict said:
You acknowledge that there was bad feeling at the end but you seem to want to downplay it as some kind of minor factor compared to other external pressures.
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Brainaddict said:
You only acknowledged it when I pushed you to (see your first post), and you're still waving it away with the 'Nothing lasts forever' line.
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And then you admit you weren't actually involved at all but are instead relying on second-hand accounts from other people. If you can't understand why I may become slightly peeved, if I'm polite, in repeatedly being told that I'm wrong in those circumstances, I think you've got a bit of learning to do my friend :)
 
bluestreak said:
Brainaddict, do I know anyone of these people who talk about who walked away pissed off? Like paulie I was involved in RTS from the beginning, albeit in a minor way, and I'd be interested in speaking to them.

See, for me, what damaged RTS was that I found myself going on street parties that had no politics. To an outsider they would have looked like it was just a bunch of peopl having a party and not a political action. However that wasn't due to RTS per se, it was due to no individual taking responsibility for explaining to passers by and the media why it was happening.
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Did you go to the big open meetings? I'm not denying there were all sorts of reasons for individuals to stop going to parties when they did. But the big open meetings where a certain amount of organisation was meant to happen ended somewhat unhappily. It's fine if people want to 'focus on the positives' but it could have been a learning experience I reckon :)

A rough sketch being that the meetings became too unwieldy to be useful - after much fervent debate a decision was made to break into smaller groups - the break-up happened but the smaller groups didn't really - and that was more or less the end of RTS London. I'm happy for Paulie or others to comment on factual accuracy, as my info is second-hand.
 
*sigh* It's not inaccurate to say that organisation became problematic, my point is that this (1) wasn't the only reason RTS tailed off, and (2) imo all such/similar movements have finite lifespans, regardless.
 
bluestreak said:
See, for me, what damaged RTS was that I found myself going on street parties that had no politics.
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It seems to me, somewhat depressingly, that there's a regular cycle here:
  • Movement / current / campaign launches on a specific issue
  • Does exciting things
  • Starts affecting the issue at hand
  • Those most active get more politicised
  • They start slagging off "single-issue politics"
  • They move toward organising events that are about everything
  • Those whose involvement is offering their body and soul for a day or so go "eh?"
  • The activists start complaining about people who just come on the events (experts say this is a symptom of lack of sleep)
  • Fewer come on the events
  • ... ... pause ... ...
  • A significant part of the original issue is actually won - though the exciting movement gets none of the credit
  • Those who were most involved get angry if you remind them they won a reform, 'cos they didn't win the quite different things they wanted at the time they stopped being most involves


No, this isn't the whole story either. But I've seen it be part of the story through three generations of campaign/activism/politics
 
The full argument for the demise of RTS is pretty complex, but here's my thinking-out-loud thoughts:

I'd say the issues simply got bigger and the movement lost its focus as a result.

When it started it was primarily against road building and car culture, but then people started to look at what was driving this forward, leading to the focus moving on to the broader issue of capitalism.

The Mayday/anti-capitalist movement was dealt a massive blow by 9/11 (and the subsequent hysteria), given a killer punch by the total failure of the Stop the War march to change a god-damn thing and, coupled with a wider acceptance of consumerist lifestyles, most people's appetite for street protest seemed to have been finished off for now.

When RTS was going on you felt that you could bring about real change and force the political agenda. It felt the same with the CJA marches. Who feels that now with issues like the Iraq war?
 
I agree the anti-war movement (and its failure) sapped a lot of energy from people - that's been a problem for all kinds of political activism lately I think :(
 
Brainaddict said:
It's fine if people want to 'focus on the positives' but it could have been a learning experience I reckon :)
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Ok, 10 learning experiences for you, off the top of my head:

1) it can be fairly straightforward to organise single issue political events initially and create impacts that far outweigh the effort needed to create that action.
2) it is a good thing to do 'politics' in different ways that attract the attention of people who would otherwise run a mile from anything political - see the Westway RTS, for eg, whereby many of the local residents from along the M40 came along and joined in and enjoyed their area without fumes and noise and traffic.
3) music is a rallying point for people, always has been, always will be (see the Samba band now as mentioned before).
4) surprise is your biggest ally. taking the piss completely isn't far behind.
5) too many cooks can spoil the broth, when making and taking decisions.
6) joining forces with other sympathetic people is obviously worthwhile (see the Trafalgar demo with the dockers and others).
7) you will be tolerated for a while, then if you become too good, you'll be stamped on, repeatedly.
8) external forces, issues and motivations change over time, which is why political bodies need to evolve or die. RTS was about reclaiming the streets for people primarily, making people open their eyes a bit and think about where they were living and how. It spawned many more offshoots and in that sense, simply cannot be held to have failed.
9) infiltrators, egoists, arseholes are, unfortunately, a fact of life.
10) make it fun and people want to participate, become dogmatic and turn into a swappie.
 
laptop said:
It seems to me, somewhat depressingly, that there's a regular cycle here:
  • Movement / current / campaign launches on a specific issue
  • Does exciting things
  • Starts affecting the issue at hand
  • Those most active get more politicised
  • They start slagging off "single-issue politics"
  • They move toward organising events that are about everything
  • Those whose involvement is offering their body and soul for a day or so go "eh?"
  • The activists start complaining about people who just come on the events (experts say this is a symptom of lack of sleep)
  • Fewer come on the events
  • ... ... pause ... ...
  • A significant part of the original issue is actually won - though the exciting movement gets none of the credit
  • Those who were most involved get angry if you remind them they won a reform, 'cos they didn't win the quite different things they wanted at the time they stopped being most involves


No, this isn't the whole story either. But I've seen it be part of the story through three generations of campaign/activism/politics
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That is interesting. I am doing a module about radical protest in this next semester, about protest cycles and how radical protest groups actually function.

*saves post*
 
editor said:
The full argument for the demise of RTS is pretty complex, but here's my thinking-out-loud thoughts:

I'd say the issues simply got bigger and the movement lost its focus as a result.

When it started it was primarily against road building and car culture, but then people started to look at what was driving this forward, leading to the focus moving on to the broader issue of capitalism.

The Mayday/anti-capitalist movement was dealt a massive blow by 9/11 (and the subsequent hysteria), given a killer punch by the total failure of the Stop the War march to change a god-damn thing and, coupled with a wider acceptance of consumerist lifestyles, most people's appetite for street protest seemed to have been finished off for now.

When RTS was going on you felt that you could bring about real change and force the political agenda. It felt the same with the CJA marches. Who feels that now with issues like the Iraq war?
Click to expand...

Yep.
And they bought poll tax in anyway. Under another name, and slightly fairer. But not much fairer.
 
That's interesting stuff Paulie. At the risk of sounding like I'm harping on (I am genuinely interested in terms of future organising - not just poking with a stick :) ) what implications would you draw from Lesson 5 for organisations that would like to grow but want to remain directly democratic?
 
Brainaddict said:
That's interesting stuff Paulie. At the risk of sounding like I'm harping on (I am genuinely interested in terms of future organising - not just poking with a stick :) ) what implications would you draw from Lesson 5 for organisations that would like to grow but want to remain directly democratic?
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Well there's the rub innit? You either accept that certain key decisions need to be made and played out by a certain select few, with wider discussion only on the wider issues involved, or you try to be completely egalitarian and let everyone have their say and watch as it eventually develops and/or descends into a "who can shout the loudest" competition essentially.

I'm not sure I've got an answer to how to balance those issues, and if you take the former approach, you not only risk being accused of elitism or imposition of ideology and approach, you also risk missing out on harnessing the energies of people who can really help to move things forward. Further, like laptop says, people come, people go, some get tired, some don't agree with where things are going, some want something else again, so you need to continually strive to maintain momentum and involve more people.

However, if you take the latter approach, you'll soon realise that not everyone is involved in things for the same reason (sounds obvious but its never a bad thing to be explicit) and there are inevitable competitions of ideas (not a bad thing), activities (again, not a bad thing) and egos (guess what?). Throw in a healthy dose of paranoia for obvious reasons, with some strange faces coming along with strange ideas and it can be hard to put a lid on it.
 
Paulie, I agree with all you've said. My understanding is that RTS London did develop something of an 'inner circle' to some extent, but that some people considered it undemocratic because there were invite-only meetings going on and these were not necessarily always transparent to others involved (again, open to factual correction, though I think it was also viewed differently depending on where you were sitting). My feeling is that if you're going to have some kind of 'select few' - or let's say a Working Group - who will make a lot of the decisions, it's better to formalise the arrangement for the sake of transparency and openness. This isn't a solution that is favoured by people of an anarcho persuasion who hate institutions of any kind, but I reckon it is more democratic than falling into the 'informal institutions' trap - which I have witnessed myself in other 'direct democratic' organisations. What are your thoughts?
 
laptop said:
If you were going to hold the 2008 equivalent of an old-skool RTS, what genres of music would you play?


Yes, this is an indirect suggestion for one of the many reasons for it fading.
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ACID TECHNO all the way!!!
 
Dillinger4 said:
That is interesting. I am doing a module about radical protest in this next semester, about protest cycles and how radical protest groups actually function.

*saves post*
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You need to read more about autonomist politics then, and autonomist Marxism in particular. Their concept of 'cycles of struggles' is what you need to know more about.
 
Thanks everyone for the replies and the interesting discussions.

Originally posted by bluestreak
wanderlust, how old are you and where are you based?
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I'm 19 and in Sydney, Australia. From what I gather there were some pretty decent RTS parties on here back in the day. I'm disappointed I missed them.

Originally posted by Brainaddict
after a fantastic few years it became a sad failure of non-hierarchical organising and in my opinion should be recognised as such.
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I don't have any knowledge of its internal workings and structural shortcomings or whatever, but I don't think I could ever consider the movement a failure even if it did split at the seams and (arguably) fail to progress to anything significant. The reason I was so shocked and surprised when I read about it was that living in this time of complete political apathy and numbness by most of the general population and especially other young people, I couldn't even imagine things like that happening so spontaneously and successfully now. It made me thrilled to hear that there ever were such things ... even if it didn't amount to mass changes.


Now, a lot of people here have mentioned that RTS just split off into smaller groups. But wasn't the point in the first place to join groups with similar anti-capitalist/corporate interests? Isn't that how it kind of started?
 
wanderlust19 said:
Thanks everyone for the replies and the interesting discussions.

I'm 19 and in Sydney, Australia. From what I gather there were some pretty decent RTS parties on here back in the day. I'm disappointed I missed them.

I don't have any knowledge of its internal workings and structural shortcomings or whatever, but I don't think I could ever consider the movement a failure even if it did split at the seams and (arguably) fail to progress to anything significant. The reason I was so shocked and surprised when I read about it was that living in this time of complete political apathy and numbness by most of the general population and especially other young people, I couldn't even imagine things like that happening so spontaneously and successfully now. It made me thrilled to hear that there ever were such things ... even if it didn't amount to mass changes.

Now, a lot of people here have mentioned that RTS just split off into smaller groups. But wasn't the point in the first place to join groups with similar anti-capitalist/corporate interests? Isn't that how it kind of started?
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Have you met Australian Class War yet?

Have a look here for references to Darren;
http://ianbone.wordpress.com/
 
Yaeah, the acid techno and penny whistle soundtrack to the revolution back then really did my nut.

If we're gonna go old school can we not at least go for some old school D&B?
 
Intersting stuff...

Note that EF! (who in the mid 90s had dozens of groups across the UK several of which were pretty sizeable and active) dissappeared more or less at the same time. So i donb't think the idiosyncrisies of London RTS meetings are the cause...maybe a symptom.
 
Blagsta said:
Old skool jungle/d'n'b. Get Megabitch out of retirement!
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Old skool!

cooltan5_5.jpg


http://www.urban75.org/brixton/features/cooltan4.html
 
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