Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

what happened to all the 90s political scenes?

cesare said:
I bet hardly anyone has heard of Seattle outside a very limited "scene".
Click to expand...

That is not true. I remember clearly, I was in my second year at university and I used to read the Guardian every day on the way to university. I did not access or know about any less mainstream media (I had read No Logo but that was about it) and I was very aware of what happened in Seattle, possibly even the build up, which must have been from the mainstream media and papers.
 
8115 said:
That is not true. I remember clearly, I was in my second year at university and I used to read the Guardian every day on the way to university. I did not access or know about any less mainstream media (I had read No Logo but that was about it) and I was very aware of what happened in Seattle, possibly even the build up, which must have been from the mainstream media and papers.
Click to expand...
Just because you remember clearly, doesn't mean that it entered "mass consciousness". It hasn't. I hadn't heard of it before this thread. My b/f hadn't heard of it (and he's far more politically aware than me). I could go into a supermarket or pub and ask every customer and employee the same question and I bet hardly anyone would know what I was talking about.
 
cesare said:
Just because you remember clearly, doesn't mean that it entered "mass consciousness". It hasn't. I hadn't heard of it before this thread. My b/f hadn't heard of it (and he's far more politically aware than me). I could go into a supermarket or pub and ask every customer and employee the same question and I bet hardly anyone would know what I was talking about.
Click to expand...

Ok, well that's an empirical question. That's interesting. I have always assumed it was widely known of.
 
8115 said:
What demos in the 90s? Because to my memory and understanding, the second wave of protest kicked off with Seattle, followed by Genoa, and there wasn't much in that vein before, it was more roads/ animal rights/ other things.

The discussion on the other thread that led to this was how much connection there was between 90s protest, and why the energy that seemed to be around died out.

I think one of the reasons could be the higher level of violence (at least against property) now, meaning the police have cracked down a lot more. Animal rights was (is?) a violent movement in some ways but that was distributed and covert making it difficult to tackle. People on the streets smashing windows is in plain sight for one and the police love public order policing, for second.
Click to expand...

that's the fucking westernised media for you - until a major protest happens in the USA it ain't news.

That wave of anti-neoliberalist globalisation protests was called by a group known as People's Global Action, who were (are??) a militant international network of social movements / protest organisations who's main support base was actually South & Central America, India, Phillipines, Africa - the 'Global South', aimed at resisting the global race to the bottom of the neoliberalist globalisation agenda. PGA also had European, American and Australian networks, with RTS being the UK conveners / representatives (lots of cross over between RTS & Earth First networks), and movements such as Taute Blanch in Italy.

PGA organised huge global and regional social forums in South America, Europe, Asia. In 1997 PGA called for global demonstrations against the G7 meeting scheduled for summer of 98, and as European conveners, Reclaim The Streets then stepped up and put out a global call for a global street party / protest on the day of the G8 meeting in the UK, with RTS taking over the bullring area of Brum for most of the day, and simultaneous street parties / protests occurring in something like 100 cities world wide, along with major protests (not really of the street party type) in many of the countries across South America, Asia, Africa etc.

That was the first in the series of co-ordinated global set piece protests against the neoliberal globalisation agenda.

Then in 1999 there was J18 timed to protest the G8 summit in Cologne (with a major protest in Cologne), which in the UK saw RTS - this time with full backing from Earth First affilliated groups from around the UK, taking over a significant chunk of the city of London for most of the day, with simultaneous protests again in well over a hundred cities world wide.

This is the back drop to Seattle, which took place on N30, and similarly was called by PGA, was supported internationally with protests all over the world, although actually it was probably less well supported internationally in terms of events elsewhere than J18 - certainly the case in the UK, but in terms of the protest itself in Seattle it was massive, with 300,000 or so thought to have taken part, and some pretty full on police violence and protestors not backing down. Seattle was also the point where several major unions and more established western socialist organisations really started to get involved, and the point at which the SWP apparently decided the movement really needed them at the vanguard of it........ aka sucking the life out of it.

That was also the point where the neoliberal project did start to hit the buffers, with many of the representatives from the global south saying afterwards that they took heart from the protests and they were instrumental in giving them the strength to say no to the G7 countries railroading their plans through.

As to what happened to the movement... well much of it, or linked groupings have been in power across much of South America, establishing their own alternatives to the IMF, World Bank etc. And in Europe IMO the original groups who had kicked this all off, basically got marginalised and kicked out of the organisation of the Euopean Social Forum by swappie cunts and their ilk, then repeatedly shafted by them in 2005 in Gleneagles when it became clear they viewed us as being as much the enemy to be crushed as they did the neoliberalists.

So what happened.... IMO the movement suffered from a swappie take over, with those who'd been instrumental to the global movement exploding internationally in the way it had ending up being marginalised and forced out, along with massive levels of state infiltration, plus burn out, and just life and babies and stuff getting in the way. Plus the dissillusionment that came from the mishandling of the anti Iraq war protests / us allowing the stop the war coalition to take complete control of the movement, then doing nothing with it beyond a big A-B march, then go home and wait for the war to start... plus the extreme levels of violence seen in Genoa.

Plus a fair degree of disillusionment with a lot of stuff that went on within the 'movement', which I think led to a lot of people walking away. Stuff like having a policy of not co-operating properly with the press / not having spokespeople, consensus decision making processes not really working / being abused, and all being held responsible for a few black blockers deciding to trash the shops immediately next to our camp in Stirling, despite an understanding that Stirling wouldn't be touched in exchange for hosting our camp... that sort of thing.

Stuff like J18 and Gleneagles takes a fuck of a lot of work to organise by a fuck of a lot of people, and they need to be pretty well motivated and enthusiastic to put in that level of commitment. Once they get dissillusioned, it can all stop pretty quickly if nobody else is stepping up to the plate to take over / if those taking over aren't very good at it.
 
8115 said:
That is not true. I remember clearly, I was in my second year at university and I used to read the Guardian every day on the way to university. I did not access or know about any less mainstream media (I had read No Logo but that was about it) and I was very aware of what happened in Seattle, possibly even the build up, which must have been from the mainstream media and papers.
Click to expand...

So being a uni inmate doesn't comprise a "limited scene", then?:D

If you ever have the opportunity, have a browse of the redtops, in fact all the UK tabloids around the time of Seattle. Those that reported it at all, reported it on the basis of some kind of spontaneous social unrest, and although the broadsheets were a little more thorough, they still mostly avoided projecting it as part of an emergent global anti-capitalist movement.
 
ViolentPanda said:
So being a uni inmate doesn't comprise a "limited scene", then?:D

If you ever have the opportunity, have a browse of the redtops, in fact all the UK tabloids around the time of Seattle. Those that reported it at all, reported it on the basis of some kind of spontaneous social unrest, and although the broadsheets were a little more thorough, they still mostly avoided projecting it as part of an emergent global anti-capitalist movement.
Click to expand...

from what I recall Euston got more tabloid attention than what happened in Seattle at the same time, mostly because they had a sexy picture of a punk bloke dancing on a burning police van
 
iirc lots of the local groups had come out against doing much on N30, especially a big "national thing" wary of being drawn into ritualistic set pieces. Which is exactly what happened.
 
chilango said:
iirc lots of the local groups had come out against doing much on N30, especially a big "national thing" wary of being drawn into ritualistic set pieces. Which is exactly what happened.
Click to expand...

yep.

I'm pretty sure none of our lot went, vs J18 where we had a week of actions, and it was all the regional groups who were out doing the autonomous actions across the city on J18 all morning prior to the main action, as well as dishing out evading standards (we had ten of us dishing out bundles of it to commuters inside kings cross for an hour or so in the morning rush hour), and erm well yeah stuff.

Running rings around the police like on J18 takes a lot of time to organise, and did require the assistance of the groups of committed experienced activists from the regional groups to pull off. Hence N30 ending up as the first kettled protest.

I'm not sure the regional groups entirely rejected set piece demos, more that they were against doing another so soon after J18 as they didn't think it was enough time to organise it properly, and wanted to also spend some time being able to focus on activities more locally to them rather than going straight back into organising for N30.

I also really didn't like the whole concept that had been come up with for the protest, it wasn't something I was going to risk arrest for.

We were certainly back for Mayday the next year, and the preceding conference thing. We didn't go back after that though, due to the shitness of the plan for the action, resulting in many of us ending up trapped in traf square with nowt to do, no back up etc. (and erm a certain someone getting nicked for no particularly good reason).
 
eta - IMO the shitness of the plan for mayday was linked to the splits in the movement over N30, with the London lot mostly organising the Mayday think without asking for help, which would have been forthcoming, despite I think the London RTS remnants being pretty burned out after J18 & N30. I think without N30 that Mayday could have been as good as J18.

Water under the bridge now mind, but worth remembering that J18 was only achieved with the active support of a lot of experienced activist groups from the regions, and without that support N30 & Mayday weren't anything like as good / well organised (maybe partly down to differing levels of police infiltration in the regions vs London as well).
 
finding this dead interesting free spirit... i know you mentioned earlier that that kinda 'movement' lost momentum for x y and z reasons. so my question is, is there any continuity with that movement that you recognise with contemporary political movements or is there a complete break? If there are some continuities what binds them together?
 
xslavearcx said:
finding this dead interesting free spirit... i know you mentioned earlier that that kinda 'movement' lost momentum for x y and z reasons. so my question is, is there any continuity with that movement that you recognise with contemporary political movements or is there a complete break? If there are some continuities what binds them together?
Click to expand...

The reason UK uncut has been so successful IMO is that the originators of it (I think) were involved in some way with those previous networks / activities, and gained experience through those that they then applied with UK uncut.

Climate camp directly came out of dissent - I think it mostly used the infrastructure gathered for the G8 protest camp, as well as the organisational model for the camp.

Many of those involved in occupy either had history with, or took much of their lead from RTS / Dissent etc in this country, or related groups abroad such as Taute Blanche and those involved in the summit protests / PGA linked groups. Obviously I'm not saying all did, or that it was in any way organised by the same people, as I don't think it was - more that it was the next generation, some of whom had some direct experience gained through the activities of those preceding groups. The consensus decision making process apart from anything else demonstrates clearly the direct links - they didn't develop that themselves and magically all know how it worked, that spread in the UK via RTS / Earth First / dissent / climate camp etc

My main hope would be that those involved now might learn lessons from the past, but I fear they've learnt some of the wrong lessons - eg managing to run a months long protest camp without ever coming up with anything even vaguely resembling a coherent critique of the current situation, or clearly articulated alternative vision of how things could be done differently.

I think UK uncut had probably best learned and applied the lessons learnt, by starting with a pretty clear critique and alternative vision, and focusing on a specific point that quickly won most of the public round, and might actually have made a bit of a difference to the situation... along with their organisational method of recognising the importance of empowering people to set up their own regional groups, co-ordinate their own actions both on their own, and as part of concerted national campaigns. Ok so the critique is a bit limited, but at least it's fairly coherent and resonates with the public - actually it probably is coherant and resonates with the public because it's fairly limited.

Personally though I'm no longer involved, though I'd not rule it out if something serious actually came along worthy of support. I'm focusing on actually making part of my vision reality on the environmental side of things, as part of the solar PV industry that's installed 2500MWp of solar PV in the country in the last 3 years since we got serious about it, vs around 50MWp installed in total from 1995-2010, when I was more focused on protesting.

I came to a bit of a realisation after the G8 protest, that really it was pretty pointless to spend all our efforts on protests aimed at persuading politicians to change their position and solve the world's problems for us. Better to get on and do it ourselves as much as we can, then maybe use that as a good practice example that's more likely to actually convince politicians to support it... and if not, then just get on with it anyway. Not that this works in all areas of course, but I could either spend my life protesting with little impact, or doing something more productive and being part of actually changing our energy picture entirely over the course of my lifetime.
 
free spirit said:
The reason UK uncut has been so successful IMO is that the originators of it (I think) were involved in some way with those previous networks / activities, and gained experience through those that they then applied with UK uncut.
Click to expand...

People and Planet, and climate camp afaik, though I certainly don't know all of the originators but the ones I do came from those backgrounds. There were a couple of 30-40 year olds in the fortnum and mason trials (though I'm absolutely 100% certain that not everyone who was in those trials were originators or organisors of that or any other UK Uncut action). One of them had a few offences from the 90s that sounded like road protest camp stuff so there were some people around (though perhaps just around for f&m I didn't know the guy) with links going back further.

I think your analysis of uk uncut is totally sound, they got a really soft issue and brought it into play at the perfect moment in time. The biggest success imo was in placing a massive dent in the there is no alternative mantra, and making tax avoidance a huge mainstream issue, and not just in the UK. Some of them are very good with media stuff too which helps.
 
BigTom said:
People and Planet, and climate camp afaik, though I certainly don't know all of the originators but the ones I do came from those backgrounds. There were a couple of 30-40 year olds in the fortnum and mason trials (though I'm absolutely 100% certain that not everyone who was in those trials were originators or organisors of that or any other UK Uncut action). One of them had a few offences from the 90s that sounded like road protest camp stuff so there were some people around (though perhaps just around for f&m I didn't know the guy) with links going back further.

I think your analysis of uk uncut is totally sound, they got a really soft issue and brought it into play at the perfect moment in time. The biggest success imo was in placing a massive dent in the there is no alternative mantra, and making tax avoidance a huge mainstream issue, and not just in the UK. Some of them are very good with media stuff too which helps.
Click to expand...


I'm impressed and inspired by UK Uncut, and seeing them ( rightly or wrongly ) as from a new / younger generation from mine, given a good dollop of hope by what they've acheived, and how new they and their approach have felt.

But then I'm also painfully aware that the G8 tax discussions are a total sham, that there was never any hope of concrete gains in terms of even inching fwd towards a global framework to address the issue, and that all this plays perfectly into Osborne and Camerons " there's nothing we can do about UK evasion by the multi-nats, they'll go elsewhere " narrative, as it now adds a nice " and look how hard / visibly we tried to address the issue " kicker.

So UK Uncuts acheivments in the end could be argued help the Govt build up the smokescreen/spectacle of the issue being addressed/ 'healthy grassroots democracy' in action.Meanwhile, nothing changes.

( Of course, the same can be said for most/all single issue campaigns...and often is )
 
cantsin said:
I'm impressed and inspired by UK Uncut, and seeing them ( rightly or wrongly ) as from a new / younger generation from mine, given a good dollop of hope by what they've acheived, and how new they and their approach have felt.

But then I'm also painfully aware that the G8 tax discussions are a total sham, that there was never any hope of concrete gains in terms of even inching fwd towards a global framework to address the issue, and that all this plays perfectly into Osborne and Camerons " there's nothing we can do about UK evasion by the multi-nats, they'll go elsewhere " narrative, as it now adds a nice " and look how hard / visibly we tried to address the issue " kicker.

So UK Uncuts acheivments in the end could be argued help the Govt build up the smokescreen/spectacle of the issue being addressed/ 'healthy grassroots democracy' in action.Meanwhile, nothing changes.

( Of course, the same can be said for most/all single issue campaigns...and often is )
Click to expand...

I agree there was never any chance of actually changing anything much in terms of tax avoidance but I think the tax avoidance stuff will remain an issue in terms of austerity, I think there'll always be demands from a range of people that the govt find some way of making companies pay tax.

This may end up being something completely shitty like the fee charged for non-dom status if anything at all, but I think that although they'll quiet down the issue by talking about intl agreements, we tried our hardest, couldn't do it, sorry.. that demands can then be shifted to finding a different way to tax companies that doesn't need international agreements. I don't think that'll be achieved but it'll forever beat a stick to beat austerity merchants with I reckon.

I just don't think that they'll be able to kill it completely, let alone turn it to their advantage. The tax avoidance stuff plays real hard on fairness arguments and the only people who really think it's a good thing are libertarians and right wing economists, ask most people if they think it's right that the richest people like Philip Green don't pay tax when we do, or if it's ok for companies to make loads of money in the UK and not pay any tax, and you'll pretty much always get a no, hardly anyone disagrees with the issue really so I don't think that a shrug of the shoulders will be enough.

I've never been particularly good at understanding these political things though so I'm probably wrong :D
 
apologies for the derail, back to 90s political scenes reminiscing.. I was too young to go to any of the road protest camps but it was a movement I supported (as a teenage liberal I wrote to MPs, lol) and I went to the RTS in Birmingham in 97 or 98 that FS mentioned up the thread which was fantastic and definitely went a long way towards radicalising me and helping me to find socialism and move away from left-liberalism.. I also got some of the best pills I've ever had so that was a bonus ;) I liked the whole party/protest combination but I think it just got too hard to do/police got properly on top of it. Saw glimpses of that again on the student demonstrations with people with bike/suitcase soundsytems, lots of heavy dubstep and drum and bass... not so much the techno and house of those days, but another way in which 90s political scenes continue to have echoes in todays things.

I kind of see the Birmingham demo as the end of RTS/road protests and the start of anti-globalisation movement, but I suppose it's all much more fluid than that in reality.
 
Here's another interesting piece from the time that i'd not read for many years, Practice and Ideology in the Direct Action Movement it was produced by Undercurrent mag who were a mixed group from University of Sussex (and not the undercurrents video people) and was part of a series of debates at the time in things like Do or Die etc see this for another one worth the read


Similar to the leninist conception of the vanguard party which they so much despise, the direct action scene shares many of its characteristics. The notion that 'normal people' only need to get in touch with their ideas in order to become revolutionaries, the educational tone of their public outreaches ("a festival of anarchist ideas" or "a spoof newspaper…explaining anarchy"), the idea in general that revolution will only occur when 'normal people' come in contact and get influenced by the 'revolutionary consciousness' that the direct action scene is so full of. At the same time, leftist parties are slagged off in every chance because of their 'vanguard-ism'.

In terms of organisation, although the claim is that the direct action scene consists of 'autonomous' and non-hierarchical structures, the underlying agreement is that things like june 18th or Seattle could never have happened unless they were properly organised. Regardless of the non-hierarchical rhetoric, this fact exposes once again the separation between the 'professional activists' and the 'normal people'. In this way, the 'non-hierarchical' Direct Action Network behind the events of Seattle was able to impose a set of rules and guidelines (9) for those who wanted to take part in the 'anti-capitalist' actions prepared for the WTO conference -to which most objections concerned the actual content of the principles without challenging the notion of principles as such-, while the 'anti-authoritarian' anarchists behind the Mayday preparations have also adopted similar 'principles' and rules in order to exclude the hierarchical trotskyists (10). The illusion that hierarchy can be abolished through the drawing out of 'anti-hierarchical' principles, shows that they (as much as the direct action movement) have an ideological conception of hierarchy, failing to see it as a problem to be overcome by the development of our struggle.
Click to expand...
 
butchersapron said:
Here's another interesting piece from the time that i'd not read for many years, Practice and Ideology in the Direct Action Movement it was produced by Undercurrent mag who were a mixed group from University of Sussex (and not the undercurrents video people) and was part of a series of debates at the time in things like Do or Die etc see this for another one worth the read
Click to expand...

That Do or Die piece is well worth a read for anyone interested in this stuff.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

J
Calling all women and allies in Brixton! London
Replies
19
Views
1K
justagirl
J
C
All Out! The current strike wave- ACG Public Meeting
Replies
19
Views
1K
Rob Ray
Rob Ray
R
Sick of it all! Are NHS workers next to strike?
Replies
11
Views
813
Ming
Ming
furluxor
Stop Rwanda deportations demo - all UK
Replies
1
Views
513
hitmouse
hitmouse
Pickman's model
The Politics, Organisation and Representation of Squatting 1968-79 (online event, 21/01/21)
Replies
19
Views
993
VfromtheG
V
Back
Top Bottom