Not a news report

Reporting on a Street Party is a challenge to journalistic practice. In short you don't really understand - and thus you can't represent all sides - unless you've danced. The result of applying standard news-values is seriously crap reporting, by anyone's standards.

So here are minute-by-minute notes from a keen observer who felt too tired to dance this time. A theoretical justification for this as a form of reporting is under construction.

15:28 Follow a small, noisy, lively crowd with banner and whistles past New Street Station.

15:31 Catch up and realise that this is a contingent from a Catholic girls' school going home from the Jubilee 2000 hand-holding event. (They might want to Reclaim the Streets, but their parents would throw fits.) Go off in search of party.

four-ish Been following a bunch of drummers and a dragon around for a while now. We shuffle onto central reservation of one of the roads converging on the Bull Ring, towards another crowd. We shuffle off and stop in the road. Police rush in, form lines. Only kidding. Shuffle off.

16:20 Feels like we've been waiting much longer than 20 minutes. I'm even more wired than I thought. Have to trust that there's someone out there with a clue.

17:00 Crowd moves off onto the Bull Ring roundabout. Percolates through traffic... "No - leave those tyres alone. That's public transport."

Pushing on up the A47 road - there's a tripod up in the road and a mass of police moving towards it. And a mass of people moving to defend it too...

People push up the other side of the road, which is totally empty. Police form a single line to stop them going any further. The crowd pauses and then - this is difficult to describe - pushes through the police line with grace. "Ignores its way through the line" might be better.

Two or three hundred people surge on to another roundabout. This is Birmingham, after all. There's always a roundabout.

Chaos. (The party, it seems, is supposed to be back there, not up here on a bridge with 10- to 20-metre drops on either side. Just as well, really.)

(When two journalists meet on a gig like this, very often the first question they ask each other is "Where's your escape route?" It's a deeply ingrained habit - no point being there if you can't get the story out. It gets in the way of relaxing and going with the flow.)

Drift back towards the Bull-Ring. A few people are getting over-enthusiastic about this stopping traffic thing (confusing the traffic with the vehicle). "It's a bus, for Chrissakes, let it through!" There's also some kind of white GTI with an obnoxious driver. Within five seconds, a couple of people move to sit down in front of it and the driver puts his foot down, knocking one person aside and with a man on the front - then the bastard in the GTI (this is Birmingham, after all) starts the Starsky-n-Hutch weave-over-the-road move to throw the guy off. No serious injuries that I know of - someone says of the man knocked down "he's a good dancer", which does explain something.

17:15 The sound system arrives. In a hearse?

18:00 Long gap in notes; still wired. Time to relax.

(After all, the party's kicked off well around the sound system. Banners going up all over. Instruction to self: chill.)

18:08 Outside the arch of the Bull Ring Centre, cops shuffle forward a couple of metres on to the people sitting down in front of them. Big boos from all over the place. Pathetic piece of transparent but failed who's-in-charge psychology. (At least they're in regular uniform, not Darth Vadered up to tension-building let's-have-a-riot screaming pitch.)

18:09 Wow! Where can I get red streamers that float in the air? Spectacular ribbons tangling up maybe 100m!

18:15 Someone's throwing stuff at the cops outside the Bull Ring and there are siren whoops from the A47.

18:16 Calm again. There's a tall man in dreadlocks talking earnestly (or so it seems from 40m away) with the most senior policeman present.

18:18 Someone hands me a DIY photocopied flyer - for a self-published economics thesis. Sale closed (even if it does sell itself by reference to Schumacher).

18:19 Jugglers, by creating an occupied space between the police and tired dancers, chill the situation.

18:27 Yes, people are throwing stuff at the police - fruit. Pears, mostly. Out of concern for their diet, no doubt. And green vegetables.

18:35 So far I've seen Mohicanned punks, purple-taloned Goths, militant skateboarders, beer-lesbians and fetish-kitsch. (You seem to get a wider mix out of the capital. Nice.) The dancers are pretty white, and the crusties stand out. There's a wide cross-section of Birmingham watching and generally smiling at the edges. (Let me remember: some families who probably hail from Pakistan, some from Bangladesh; Black guys in their forties amazed at the audacity of the dancers; Birmingham's equivalent of mall-rats; a fat - probably Gujurati, certainly well-to-do - boy of eight misbehaving like some white kid; generic Brummie men in modern fabrics...)

If you're Black or Asian or Irish, you don't put yourself voluntarily into the police's way. Simple.

(By now the dance area is an exclusive club. The sound system's not very large, and the road around it is packed solid. If you weren't there when it arrived, and you wanted to feel some bass, you'd have to slide between several hundred sweaty bodies to get there. Only those who can really dance well could do it. Except...)

18:35 A knot of maybe 30 police in shirtsleeves walk through the crowd towards the sound system. Weird! People throw drinks at them. I see pushing and shoving and hear booing. But for the next ten minutes I see no punches thrown.

18:47 Big shout for a woman dancing on her friend's shoulders with a police helmet on.

(I lost track of those police in the crowd. One of the keenly-observing Brummies tells me they went straight out of the other side. I later read that they were escorted out by dancers.)

18:48 I'm convinced the Chief Constable's on acid.

19:02 While I've been meeting old friends, the lemon-suckers have arrived. Yellow jackets, helmets, no shields. (Raising the tension one notch? Why? Oh yes, "lemon-suckers". At the end of the M41 motorway Reclaim the Streets, I note the arrival of the police Tactical Support Group vans with their wire visors. "We call them the lemon-suckers," volunteers a shirtsleeved cop, "'cos they sits in their vans, sucking lemons so they'll look 'ard.")

19:08 There is, still, a woman in baggy leopardskin shorts and a three-foot pink-spotted tail dancing on a ledge 10m off the ground...

19:13 Looks like the cops have the order to deal with the fruit-throwers. (They start ordering people off the ledges between them and the fruit-market.) No sense of humour. Or maybe they haven't had that order - suddenly they stop and move off back to their vans. Venting, clearly. (Can't do a whole shift without ordering someone about...)

19:22 Lemon-suckers grappling with a man at the edge of their line.

19:24 Will that concrete roof overhang take that many people? Surely it's a design criterion? (Or would be, if we'd designed public spaces for carnival rather then them designing them for well-regimented consumers... oh dear...)

19:25 Fashion note. Hardcore dancers: tutus and boots. (That sums up the variety as well as anything.) Brummie youth: really boring boys in shirts-with-collars of one kind or another; and blouses or halters with sprayed-on gym shorts.

19:30 Look, there's a man taken all his clothes off. And he's waving his willy at the cops. Big cheer.

(Some other time, must try to express the sexual politics of the dancefloor and the dancestreet. The amazing level of mutual trust involved, that sort of thing.)

19:37 There are 250 people on that roof (all watching to see whether it "kicks off", whether there'll be a spectacle, a riot, a story... or maybe looking for their mates).

19:38 Fifty cops walk off. (Leaving about 50 at this end - there are two other cordons.)

19:42 Banner check: "Protest is hope". "Misbehave for the planet". "Under the road, the dancefloor". "Under the tarmac, the grass". And the list of parties around the world.

19:45 Overheard conversations on the fringes (this terrace is turning into the chill-out space): "empowering myself more than analysing"; "What're you doing at Glastonbury?"; "Hello friendly person" - to me from a guy who looks like he doesn't normally like men who write in notebooks.

19:57 A definite chill in the air.

20:07 Woman in climbing harness: "I worry about lamp-posts. Not a lot of people do that." Pause. "Where's the 'under the road, the dancefloor' banner?" "There. You just put it up".

20:10 I'm told there's a legal club for everyone to go to from 9pm to 6am "and the Bill can't do a thing because he's got a license".

20:17 Now I'm discussing Deleuze and Guattari (with a guy I last met surrounded by Liverpool Dockers and a free bar).

20:21 Lots more cops, and shouting. But they're only back up to the numbers they were at 43 minutes ago.

20:25 Where is the country's best riot photographer, but there in the 2-metre space between the cops and the dancers? (This is how the professional/official record is distorted. He may have some shots of the banners and the dancers and the joy. But if any get printed, it'll be these portraits of confrontation.)

20:28 Reinforced cops move forward 10 metres. Bottles are thrown - say six? Another two or three go over their heads (the throwers are well back in the crowd). Man rushes past "Come on, get down there where you're needed". That's the only "attempt at organising violence" I've heard. A known subversive wanders past. "Stupid assertion of their strength, that."

20:29 Sound system has stopped. (Tension rises.) Bad move. Or is it theatre? (DJs incorporating the police threat in their duet with the dancers...)

20:30 It's back.

20:31 Police running back to their vans for their shields.

20:32 Sound system quiet again.

(Long, eerie period of people milling around. Dusk is falling. It seems very quiet.)

20:41 Passer-by: "Do you know what the police are doing? Do you think they do? They always seem to want to cut off all the escape routes." (I think he's a journalist - see above. But I've seen so many people I'm suffering face-blindness. If that was you, Danny, sorry.)

20:42 Banners coming down.

20:43 'Nother known subversive: "So we're going to get that sound system through that line of police?" Me: "Seems so..." Drunk 1 (fifties): "God almighty!" Drunk 2 (twenties) "They're going to beat the shit out of us - hurrah!"

20:49 Someone's burning placards on top of a bus shelter. They get a cheer. Oh - they're the flags of the G8 states daubed on sheets. Nice to see the traditions being upheld.

20:52 Couple, filtering out through police lines arm-in-arm: "You look silly." "Why don't you do a synchronised dance with your shields?"

Sticker on lamp-post: "BERRESKURATU KALEA!" Discussion with others about what language it might be.

20:57 There are four people sat in a small circle right in front of a four-deep line of maybe 100 police in yellow jackets. If the woman with the Instamatic reads this, do send a print, however rough, and I'll try to recover something from it.

21:00 Still quiet. Three people are pulling the upturned car out of the road. There are at least 300 Brummie bystanders on the high pavement looking down.

21:10 Time for a word with the Forward Intelligence Team - the cops with the expensive cameras, anyway. There's no serious spaghetti around - that is, no-one senior with stuff on his shoulders. "Seems a bit odd to me, hemming people in on all sides. I gather there's a party they want to go to..." Cop with camera and scowl: "Depends who was in the wrong in the first place." "But now we're in this situation, in terms of getting out of it..." Grumpy silence.

Grumpy cop's colleague is congratulating the climbers taking the banners down on their street-lamp technique (until he spots me overhearing and shuts up looking guilty).

21:18 The sound system moves, surrounded by two to three hundred people (could have been more in retrospect) towards the wall'o'cops blocking the A47. That's chutzpah... (Heart in mouth...)

...and the police walk backwards in an orderly fashion, nose-to-nose with the front of the crowd.

There's an exit on the left - and the crowd keeps going (up the ramp to the high bridge). Cops seal the exit off (well, form a straggly line), robotically, merely from force of habit.

Cries of "stop" on the bridge. (The crowd is simply re-forming, bunching up.) They move forward again, deliberately.

Senior cop issues a concise order: "Piss off!"

A throng of calm, determined faces, just a few grinning, just keeps on coming.

As the crowd walks the police out of the way, some people are whistling but mostly I hear more eerie silence. They are advancing into a speckle of flashing blue lights.

The mandatory minimum of nickings happens at the back of the crowd. (Small surge of people go back to see or to rescue. But everyone else processes on at their funereal, confident pace - oh, I forgot, they are walking alongside a hearse...)

21:29 Civic Time Lots of clocks in Brum.

The crowd, now a little more ragged, bumps into a line of four police. Pause. Move.

To police constable: "Is this Corporation Street?" (That's where the legal party is.) "Your guess is as good as mine. I'm from Leicester." She wears a big grin.

There's a guy who had said he was "with Class War". Didn't believe him. He's shouting at the people milling around to get into the party to "Come on!" in the direction of a police line which now numbers, oh, six. No-one else appears to hear.

Next he tries "Free beer! Off-license!" No response.

Too tired to think about another party. Eavesdrop on cops telling each other their stories of the day. "There we were, at the fork in the road, and we had to steer them... they... we... it was like the Alamo." (Seems that the phrase "my ears pricked up" is sometimes literally true. A cop who I now know to be Inspector H of A Constabulary turns to me - "A well-read man?" Thinks: provoke.) "I do know about the Battle of Greasy Grass River... what the losers call Custer's Last Stand." He: "did you read ?illegible's history?" Me: "No, Vine Deloria Junior's". (He gives me a detailed summary of the tactical situation, spells G-a-l-l the name of the Native American who was the real tactical genius though Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull got the credit...)

We carry on discussing tactics. Why the habit of sealing off all the exits, I ask? "We have to keep control." Two grins. "I mean, we can't have a mediaeval fair going on in the middle of the city - I do look on it as a mediaeval fair... Are you with this lot?" "I've been following them around since four..."

"What I can't understand is, why you don't find a nice field somewhere, get permission, have your fayre - you could have an ox-roast. Why the Bull-ring?" "I was surprised at that. I expected to be directed off somewhere more... imaginative. But then it hit me that the Bull-Ring is the spiritual home of the motor car. There's Detroit, there's the Bull-ring, and there's that test-track on that roof in Milan.."

"Turin. But, you know, one day Reclaim the Streets may be celebrated as a movement. They'd get Mel Gibson to play the saviour-hero..." "Nah, the people here would sack the studio. The whole crowd gets hero billing, or no-one does. Equalitarian to a fault..."

"But these people will be retired by then."

22:10 And at that I staggered off to the train station. I hope everyone had a great party.