Reclaim the Streets - what happened??
- Thread starter wanderlust19
- Start date
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Do you not see that most people, not just "liberals", wouldn't fancy a spell in prison unless it was for a damn good reason?
Can you not see the alienation here?
TopCat
Putin fanboy
I think trying to overthrow capitalism is about as good a reason as you can get.
Paulie Tandoori
shut it you egg!
Or you could throw in that encouraging attacks on coppers for barely explained reasons and faulty logic isn't a very productive strategy in growing the numbers of supporters for your strategy, particularly if they follow an ethos of non-violence.
TopCat
Putin fanboy
Anyone who follows an ethos of non violence in trying to overturn Capitalism is a naif mug.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
yes.
but that is WAY too abstract.
Part of the problem with RTS/EF! etc. from about `97 onwards was the move towards ant-capitalism without a clear projection of what steps were to be made to acheive this.
To use your example ( i think) How would going to a summit, rucking with cops and smashing the centre up actually threaten capitalism?
I can see that
a) the capitalists would be maybe a little threatened
and
b) some of those involved in the action would have increased confidence
but conversely
a) the police would stop you the next time
b) you would lose activists
c) you would alienate allies
d) capitalism would still be functioning just as well.
e) many people would not see the connection between fighting outside a summit and the abolition of capitalism or at least how one leads to another.
The EZLN and APPO here have recognised that even in their context military escalation is not a strategy they should CHOOSE, why would you advocate it?
Paulie Tandoori
shut it you egg!
yeah right, cos violent confrontation has really produced some startling successes on that score hasn't it?
nessuno
Well-Known Member
Genova, 9-11 and beyond
I think the success of RTS in the late 90's was that there was a growing concern that globalization was going to effect young people and they looked for ways to party and protest. there was also the spin off criminal justice demos of the mid 90's.
alot of people forget the Genova G8 and the continuing trials there. I have seen how the movement could be a threat to the state in 2001. It paid a heavy price at genoa when captain Mondelli disobeyed orders and attacked Tute Bianche and caused a thousand casualties. There was also the Diaz raid. Never forget what happened at the Diaz school.
It could also be the decision making process. alot was to do with ego's and people trying to take lead of the movement in europe.
Then there was 9-11. no wonder the movement has been fly squatted out of existence. it didn't fade. it was partially lack of faith but it was also the state wanting to smash down. Don't forget the state has other bigger problems to worry about. Sure the civil population demonstrated on feb 15 2003. By the time of Gleneagles, the movement was a shadow of its former self and totally outwitted by the G8 in terms of location and show of force.
7/7 convinced the population to give up civil liberties in exchange for security. It is almost impossible to demonstrate about anything in central london.
Is there a positive future? forget anti-capitalism. anything described as anti is a non starter with most people. Drax and the Heathrow climate camp have shown a new active path of protest. Also bush is almost gone. positive alternative change....
I think the success of RTS in the late 90's was that there was a growing concern that globalization was going to effect young people and they looked for ways to party and protest. there was also the spin off criminal justice demos of the mid 90's.
alot of people forget the Genova G8 and the continuing trials there. I have seen how the movement could be a threat to the state in 2001. It paid a heavy price at genoa when captain Mondelli disobeyed orders and attacked Tute Bianche and caused a thousand casualties. There was also the Diaz raid. Never forget what happened at the Diaz school.
It could also be the decision making process. alot was to do with ego's and people trying to take lead of the movement in europe.
Then there was 9-11. no wonder the movement has been fly squatted out of existence. it didn't fade. it was partially lack of faith but it was also the state wanting to smash down. Don't forget the state has other bigger problems to worry about. Sure the civil population demonstrated on feb 15 2003. By the time of Gleneagles, the movement was a shadow of its former self and totally outwitted by the G8 in terms of location and show of force.
7/7 convinced the population to give up civil liberties in exchange for security. It is almost impossible to demonstrate about anything in central london.
Is there a positive future? forget anti-capitalism. anything described as anti is a non starter with most people. Drax and the Heathrow climate camp have shown a new active path of protest. Also bush is almost gone. positive alternative change....
free spirit
more tea vicar?
I agree with most of this, other than the G8 bit. In 1997 in Birmingham at the G8 RTS mustered around 3000 people to do a one off afternoon demo / party in birmingham city centre, when the summit was actually at some posh hotel miles away.
In 2005, dissent mustered at least the same number (over 3000, probably nearer 4000) people from all over europe to travel all the way to a 5 day long camp in Stirling, with hundreds of the protesters so up for it that they fucking hiked overnight the 12 miles from the campsite to gleneagles to blockade the roads around the G8 from dawn, with another 6-700 marching out of the site on mass at 2am to fight their way through police lines to block the motorway, and hundreds more heading out all the next morning, and a total of something like 600 people getting nicked from the dissent side of things, and the police forced to use fucking chinooks to move their forces around because the roads were so fucked.
Then later the remnants who'd not been nicked on the blockades went back out and joined the more militant end of the socialist mob in storming the fence. Oh, and not forgetting the kids column of getting 50 odd cars, double decker busses etc chock full of activists with kids, that set off in the morning to reinforce the blockades in a highly effective yet very fluffy way.
The only way they managed to stop us was to stick 700 riot police outside the gates to the site on the second day of the protests, but even then several hundred sneaked out to joint an rts style street protest in glasgow.
I don't think we were totally outwitted at all, for much of that morning we were running rings round the police, who couldn't redeploy their forces because the roads were blocked. Had the g8 alternatives mob allowed people off the coaches they'd got organised to join the blockades, who knows how long we could have carried it on for, and don't forget the REVO lot actually got through the fence unopposed, but bottled it after half a fieldm declared a moral victory and turned back round and went back through the fence again. The reason they were able to do that was because we'd got the police so run ragged they'd not got the forces in the right place to deal with it, just a shame REVO bottled it IMO.
oh yeah, we were also running convergence centres in edinburgh and glasgow at the same time as the camp in stirling, so that probably takes the total numbers upto more like 5-6000.
I think it was probably more difficult for those actually out there doing the blockades to know how successful the action actually was, as they'd only see their individual blockade which might only be 20-30 people, or even some smaller groups of 5-6 people who would still manage to pin down 7-8 riot vans for hours at a time... I was on the gate at the camp, with the information coming in from all the blocakdes, and from 4am til around midday we pretty much continuously had every road into the gleneagles hotel blocked at one point or another. anyone that arrived later for the g8 alternatives fence attempt may also be under the impression there weren't many dissent types there, but that was largely because we'd already had 4-500 people nicked by that stage, and been out blockading since 2am, so most that weren't nicked headed back to the camp to sort themselves out, before mostly heading upto the fence late afternoon.
Another thing to remember when thinking about why the protests fizzled out after the first day is that we'd had so many people nicked that people had been taken to police stations and court houses all over scotland, and all the 8 minibusses and all the minibus drivers pretty much were on a continuous mission to pick up prisoners as they were released, meaning we'd got no transport left for protesting on the thursday... never mind the london bombings demotivating everyone.
bottom line, the government laid down the challenge by moving the G8 to gleneagles coz they thought we'd not make it up there, but we did, and in force, and we very nearly had them on the run.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
btw I'm not taking anything away from RTS, that demo in birmingham was the focal point of the first proper global day of action, largely initiated by RTS (following the call from People's Global Action), and I know that j18 etc got way more people, I just needed to set the record straight about stirling/ gleneagles.
also most of the core dissent mob, and regional groupings were old RTS types, and the G8 pretty much was what a fair few of the still active RTS bods were focussing on pretty much exclusively from 2003 onwards - the point at which the Mayday things started to fully fizzle out IIRC.
I'm not entirely sure what happened to dissent post g8, if everyone else was anything like me though they were just totally burnt out by the end of it, as it had been a fucking stressfull hard slog. I'd only properly jumped on board 3-4 months before it, so I hate to think what state the crew who'd been doing it solidly for 2 years were in.
also most of the core dissent mob, and regional groupings were old RTS types, and the G8 pretty much was what a fair few of the still active RTS bods were focussing on pretty much exclusively from 2003 onwards - the point at which the Mayday things started to fully fizzle out IIRC.
I'm not entirely sure what happened to dissent post g8, if everyone else was anything like me though they were just totally burnt out by the end of it, as it had been a fucking stressfull hard slog. I'd only properly jumped on board 3-4 months before it, so I hate to think what state the crew who'd been doing it solidly for 2 years were in.
northernhord
Active Member
The last RTS party I went too was on the Cowley Road in Oxford, a decade ago.
Someone should restart RTS, I cant think of a better time for them to exist doing what they do.
Someone should restart RTS, I cant think of a better time for them to exist doing what they do.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
<point of order>
It was initiated by people from Birmingham who had been involved in some RTS actions previously in Brum. You couldn't say it was initated by RTS though.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
I stand corrected... though I'm guessing the london rts mob were more involved in pushing the whole global street party thing, which was what I was really on about in terms of RTS initiating the first proper global day of action against the G7 (as it was then IIRC).
I've got total respect for the crew who organised the brum rts btw, I loved every bit of it, from choice of location (with easy access to the pub / toilets etc by walking under police lines through the pedestrian underpasses) to the banners up lamposts crew, to the crowd that actually managed to stop the couple of 'overenthusiastic' heads from moving from lobbing rotten cabages at police to bottles, thus ending my slightly dangerous game of dodge the bottle while sitting in front of the line of riot police, and then the final act of marching the car with souind system straight through police lines to the safety of the que club... genius
Actually when I think about it, when I said the Dissent G8 thing was mostly ex RTS types, in reality there wasn't really that much support from london, most of it was the old regional RTS groups, who were mainly based on Earth First groups anyway... So I guess maybe nessuno was correct in that the London RTS activists and supporters were a shadow of their former selves in Scotland, with most of the effort focussed around some of the wombles efforts to hire a train to bring a trainload of activists up from london. I'm not sure how that actually went, I could be wrong, but I get the feeling it didn't work too well, as I don't remember there being anything like a trainload arriving from london, though I think the Wombles mostly stayed in edinburgh at the convergence centre there rather than coming camping with us lot, so I don't really know what happened - anyone?
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
So, no takers then?
free spirit
more tea vicar?
mostly I think the working class probably thought it was a bunch of hippies having a party in the street, sticking 2 fingers up at authority with some vague hippy politics behind it that they couldn't be arsed to bother to try to work out.
which isn't too far wide of the mark to be honest.
That's presuming you're on about the working class in this country, not the millions of members of the various militant landless peasants movements, Zapatistas etc. across much of the global south that made up People's Global Action who'd been the ones to issue the calls for the global days of action, who I believe saw the RTS protests that linked with the Global action days as recognition that not everyone here was ignorant of their situation, and that people over here were prepared to stand up and protest in support of them.
RTS was more linked to the global poor than to the UK working class IMO, which I personally don't view as necessarily being a bad thing.
Fascinating thread, relived a few old memories. Reclaim The Streets Action Network started in '91 to bring an urban focus to the anti car movement - us urbanites feeling guilty that lots of our mates were getting trashed at Twyford Down. The first action was blocking Waterloo Bridge as part of an anti-car day, seem to remember dumping a load of chalk from Twyford Down on Hyde Park Corner and smashing up a Mini we have taken apart at CoolTan put on the tube, reassembled at Hyde PK Corner, added supermarket trolley wheels, pulling it up Park Lane and pulverising it in Hyde Park in May '92. The original RTS office was at CoolTan and we had groups all over the country where ever the Tories road building programme was taking place. Things morphed into the Freedom Network and the campaign against the CJB and the then the M11 campaign took in most of the original RTS activists. After M11 RTS regrouped with a wider understanding than just road building, but the huge road camps at Newbury, Bath etc provided a space for a different life style and lots of people up for doing lots of stuff. Lets not forget we did stop the Tories road building programme. The rise of the street parties led to a cross fertilisation with Seattle and it really looked like things were going somewhere as the focus shifted to anti-globalsisation G8 protests. The Street Parties made it hard for the state to marginalise us. Some RTS activists moved on to anti GMO stuff and again changed the public view on GMO food and i'm sure if they did'nt GMO would be widespread in UK now. The links with the Liverpool Dockers were truly inspiring and the dealings with Liverpool Police at the squatted customs house truly terrifying. That night's lock in & drunken sing song at a knocking shop in the docks with the dockers cemented what had been a standoffish relationship up till then. It led to the Trafalgar Sq Support the Dockers demo / party which failed to take a large empty government building but did take the Square and what a party that was. J18 gave the police and media an easy 'violent thug' label to put on us and that was the excuse they needed for increased FIT (Forward Intelligence Team) to harass, watch, filming anyone coming in and out of meetings and just changed the public impression from street parties to smashed up city buildings. That created a strange dichotomy of trying to have open consensus meetings which were infiltrated by FIT so decisions were made in small groups, which did create inner cabals and made things seem less open to new comers. The CJA (Criminal Justice Act '94 from the then Home Sec Micheal Howard assisted by a young advisor called David Cameron) made tresspass a criminal offence and protest a lot harder, but it did unite road protesters, ravers, squatters, hunt sabs, & football supporters all who came together and made the Street Parties and politicised a good part of that late '90's generation. What J18 did in UK 9/11 did in US and changed the agenda hugely so we are in the state we are in now. A peak oil inspired recession / depression looming and the state thinking it is ready for a bit of societal breakdown again. Their only recent setback is losing half the population's data which has set back ID cards a few years but otherwise tightening up the dole, loans instead of grants for students, a lack of empty buildings for squatted community centres and a compliant media means activism seems to be at a low ebb right now and does make the late '90's seem like salad days when we were actually making good progress, lost a lot of battles but were winning the bigger wars. Anyway let's see what happens when the recession/depression hits.
chainsaw cat
Tea. Biccies. Happy now?
Not sure.
Compare with Tories, Lloyd's Bank, the Catholic Church, gentlemen's clubs, Cambridge Footlights, CAMRA, Monster Raving Loonies, IRA, NRA, Shining Path, Quakers.
They're all lasting or lasted, all of them are special interest or single issue pressure groups.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
good post, sounds like you were part of the first wave that inspired me to be a part of the second wave or something like that... respect
eta - not that swp version of respect either
free spirit
more tea vicar?
Tories = political party of the rich, paid for by the rich to keep themselves rich.
Lloyds bank - bank, people get paid to work there...
catholic church - believe they are guardians of the legacy of christ, plus it's been a fucking good scam for a lot of powerful people for much of the last 2 millenia.
gentlemans clubs - mix of socialising and scratching of backs for mutual economic and political gain.
cambridge footlights - recognised work experience type root for students to gain exposure and get a foothold in the drama world post university.
CAMRA - yorkshire men thinking someone might be taking away their bitter and replacing it with fosters taps... not to be messed with lightly.
Monster Ravign Loonies - erm fair play I guess, everyone's got to have a hobby, but I don't remember them ever getting kettled or having the fit outside their houses, plus they only have to do anything once every 5 years or so.
IRA - when you've been occupied for several centuries and the choice is oppression or fighting back, it's not really surprising the IRA lasted a bit longer than RTS, though they've had their share of splits and changes over the years... IRA, Provo, sin fein, Real IRA etc.
NRA - americans love their guns, and it's hardly anti-establishiment, or run by volunteers
SHining path - don't really know enough about em to comment
Quakers - generally genuinely good people
erm anyway, RTS as a group that was entirely voluntary, relied on volunteers to spend months of their lives planning the big protests, and was under severe state pressure from infiltrators and fit, plus involved people risking having rigs worth thousands confiscated... ah it'd have been a miracle if it hadn't burnt itself out to some degree. Besides RTS in many ways was a tactic, and one that the police had increasingly got wise to, and the RTS method was really to be sneaky and outwit the police by adapting, and changing so RTS is dead, but long live RTS (or something).
Our resistance continues to be as transnational as capital... well as soon as we back away from the pc screens and actually do something again that is
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
Taxamo Welf
kebagels pls
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Interesting post, esp given what ShaneC says about the roots of RTS, and refreshingly honest about the perception held by the w/c in the UK.
So essentially while it was clearly a good party time, fuck all was actually achieved in terms of changing the UKs car culture or the situation of the w/c in the UK.
Taxamo Welf
kebagels pls
free spirit is on the money here i think. i'll add:
how did it link up? - it didn't really, but would have inspired people just getting into politics (regardless of their class background) in many ways to follow certain forms of activity. There's the dockers thing, but having chatted to the people involved and read a decent enough book they did, that was pretty much the beginning and end of RTS in an explicitly class strugle setting. Not for lack of trying and it was great etc, but that is where it began and ended really... There as the campaign agaist that agency tht killed that lad - simon jones? - too. But neither lead things towards bread and butter class struggles. I mean what is an RTS? Its a party, a street party. Its organisation is a group of people who will organise said street party. It cannot be criticised for not being an organisation that could fight on class issues/social issues then, cos unless they need a street party done then its not in their remit.
how was it perceived? - dunno. Due to its fairly flowery prose and the simple fact (as has been pointed out) that RTS was only explicity anti-capitalist at the end of its life, being seen as a class influenced group was probably very rare. This is not a criticism, RTS's mystique was probably really good for it. If you are to explicit you are not much fun,and it needed to be fun.
Most RTSers who kept going on other things i have worked with are the kind of people who are more 'anti authoritarian' than class struggle, so its not neccessarily the media's fault: class took a backseat in a lot of things. If we look at a lot of the prop, as free spirit kinda says, its more about the third world and ow shit cpaitalism is over there. There isn't much on the fact that you get paid x and your boss gets 2x for the value of yer work etc etc.
I'm not saying that would have have made it any more interesting to workers in the UK mind
Maybe slightly more relevant, but only on paper.you can't blow up a social realationship/you can't rave-up a social relationship
Taxamo Welf
kebagels pls
eeeeh,maybe going a bit too far their...
it did defeat the roads program, but that was EF! not RTS alone, and i thinkit has certainly certainly radicalised people in environmentalism and introduced a lot of them to anti-capitalist politics.
as for the situation of the working class - not really no, but there were far huger proccesses at work throughout that time... New forms of employment and employers, New Labour...
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Some of EF!/RTS did get involved with more traditional workplace stuff.
The dockers were the famous example, but there were EF!ers on strike support committees in some places and active in Unions. EF! also took (or talked about) action in support of the striking siganal workers.
Also open-cast mines in working class communities in South Wales were oppossed and some were cancelled due to this opposition iirc, thus directly benefitting the working class, no?
The dockers were the famous example, but there were EF!ers on strike support committees in some places and active in Unions. EF! also took (or talked about) action in support of the striking siganal workers.
Also open-cast mines in working class communities in South Wales were oppossed and some were cancelled due to this opposition iirc, thus directly benefitting the working class, no?
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Fair enough there tax, but I have to say that were anyone on this thread presenting the results of actions taken at a meeting, most of the replies on here are full of equivocation and pretty flimsy:
I'm proud of you sometimes Tax
I'm proud of you sometimes Tax
Taxamo Welf
kebagels pls
aye if it weren't for people like you, bombarding me with annoying memes for shit i do not want or want to want, perverting mediums i always saw as creative and reconstituting them as entirely destructive and soul crushing, i'd never have the capcity for cold hard analysis that i do
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
See? Capitalism works
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
But it also likes to party sometimes.See? Capitalism works
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
EVERY day is a party for the capitalists. A party of DEATH!!!!!
