These notes are available at http://www.poptel.org.uk/nuj/mike/rts1.htm

Written 13 April 1997; revised 14 April

Gallery closed due to art

Anatomy of a mostly virtual riot

Great picture. "Guarding the gates of Hell," said later editions of the Observer, "sorry, Downing Street". "Police on guard at Downing Street were pelted with exploding distress flares and bottles by militant road protesters who hijacked a demonstration yesterday," said the Sunday Times. The Observer had much the same line on who did what.

Great picture, with orange smoke billowing from that poky little close off Whitehall. A day for the snappers, so much so that the blunts' brains seem to have gone home early. (In the Fleet Street of old, to the snappers and inkies I was a blunt.)

It's wonderful that the Liverpool dockers and their supporters were thus converted into sympathetic (law-abiding) figures. But that was an interesting side-effect of myth-making, of the blunt's accepting the police line that road protesters are scruffy anarchist oiks so any riot around must be down to them. Let's have a few facts. Who did what?

The event was largely organised for the dockers by individuals associated with Reclaim the Streets.

"The 500 rioters broke away from the otherwise peaceful march," continued the Sunday Times. There may have been as many as 500 standing around watching the riot at one time. But I didn't see more than 30 people picking a fight with the cops at any time. Maybe more followed -- or joined -- the skirmish out of the square at 8pm; but if you're going to count the audience as "rioters" you might as well count the police too.

In mid-afternoon a plummy-voiced passer-by -- or was she a naice road protester from Tunbridge Wells? -- asked a middle-ranking copper who'd been causing the bother down Whitehall. "Oh, rent-a- mob," he said, in his best "everyone knows that" tone. I think I'm right that the boys with the bottles had nothing to do with road protests, and I think the Met know I'm right from the brass down to the plod. It would be interesting to see what happened if the Met dished out accurate intelligence to lazy and/or over- worked blunts. Or to their own officers: this one said with laid-back conviction that petrol bombs had been thrown at Downing Street.

I didn't see anyone among the boys with bottles that I recognised as a road protester. I think I saw -- though of course I couldn't make a positive identification, ossifer -- people who were rattling the gates of Downing Street at the last Criminal Justice Bill demo in '94, and slinging bottles around at the Poll Tax demo in '89. Even if I'm wrong about the number, there certainly aren't very many of them. They're the parasites of protest.

This is not, perr-lease, to suggest a conspiracy. One Reclaim the Streets member did, it is true, tell the Daily Telegraph that a boy with a bottle had said he was from "Red Action" -- a grouplet which the Socialist Workers' Party insists it expelled for advocating violence. But I doubt that many know each other. I remember the masked figure at the June 1994 Criminal Justice Bill protest, threatening a road protester with a collection bucket, because he'd come out without any change for the telephone. Organised?

If the Tories organise a march up Whitehall protesting Labour's European policy, I'm prepared to bet the same people will be there, dramatising their powerlessness by rattling the gates. An interesting one for the blunts: "500 militant Eurosceptics yesterday hi-jacked a Conservative Party march..." perhaps?

If the remnants of the Trotskyite Left had organised a march in support of the dockers, there would very likely have been a full- scale riot.

Why? One of the more interesting features of the day was the way that 3000 or more people simply walked away because they had better things to do -- twice.

"They wanna fight. We wanna dance": that banner said a lot. All it takes is a dozen or three piss-artists to give them their wish and to give the blunts their lazy headlines.

"This is the kind of thing that you think you'll only see in drug-induced dreams," said road protester A -- who would have been an organiser if he hadn't been doing Finals at Oxford. But it was real -- though only those who were there would know.

The National Gallery was closed, due to art.

More than 3000 people were having a party on and around the Gallery. "Reclaim your environment" said the banner someone hung off Canada House, and they had reclaimed not just a street, not just the centre of the city, but the heart of the old Empire. It was a great party. It was a most excellent place for a party -- where else has a chill-out space with two fountains? The Square was, for three hours, reclaimed for dance and for joy.

The biggest problem with reporting, apart from lazy blunts, is that a riot, however small, is a more dramatic story than 3000 people (or even 300,000: see Notting Hill) having a whale of a time.

Already, the 3000 people had walked away from the bottle- throwers. Outside Downing Street, the Reclaim the Streets flags stopped. "Uh-oh," I thought safely on the other side of the street, "deja vu...". From the press I learn that they were handing in a Declaration. There were a dozen or two people with masked faces mingling with them. Then the flags had moved off, the drummers had arrived and swept right past, and there had been a little knot left tangling with the police horses. Now, the road protesters were in the Square surrounded by riot police -- and doing possibly the most irritating thing of all, which was totally to ignore them. They wanna dance.

The Met were not, this time, clearly setting up a real riot. (At the Poll Tax demo the commanders were either very stupid, very frightened, or very successfully setting up a riot.) The force as a whole probably did as well as it could to keep things cool, without getting into deep political trouble. They had surrounded Trafalgar Square to stop more people coming in and turning the event into a New-Year's-style crush. They kept reasonably far back. In front of St Martin's-in-the-Fields church, however, the only place where they could block the entrance to the Square, without closing half Soho, was in view of the dancers. And that was where the boys with bottles re-gathered for their ritual stand-off because they were in view, where the snatch-squads went in for them, and where the riot barely happened.

The Met did set up a "virtual riot" in briefing the press, though. "Police... said they believed that environmental protesters would 'hijack' the march," the Guardian reported: their Duncan Campbell confirms that this was an advance briefing. Setting up the road protesters, or what?

And what about the suggestion that six people were being questioned over conspiracy to murder, after the sound-system truck was allegedly driven at police? That suggestion lasted just long enough to colour the broadcast reports, and was dropped between midnight and 3am: spin-doctoring at its most powerful.

Full marks to Hugh Muir and Simon Midgely in the Daily Telegraph for scepticism, and for tracking down Reclaim the Streets people for their views.

Without police permission the marchers began playing loud music from the back of a lorry parked in the northern half of the square and started a street party. The mood remained festive until the early evening when mounted police blocked the exit to St Martins Place. Most of the crowd continued to enjoy the party but a group of predominantly young men in the north east corner of the square began throwing bottles, sticks and paving stones.

These reporters were among the few to spot the significance of the fact that the man widely reported to have been arrested for carrying a three-foot broadsword was Arthur Pendragon.

I don't know how the reported clashes between Trafalgar Square and the South Bank happened. I am certain that Reclaim the Streets' involvement minimised injury to people: they, quite consciously, try to prevent violence, putting on events which are more interesting than rioting.

What more could have been done by the organisers? Individuals put themselves between the boys with bottles and the boys in blue. One woman satirized the whole thing by baring her breasts at both sides. Another pleaded with and physically obstructed the piss- artists as bottles -- three or four dozen in all, mind -- flew over her.

Road protester B, who would have been an organiser if she weren't doing Finals, was watching in deep gloom. "If I tried to organise something now... those people just aren't having it." But what would happen "if a 20-foot green rabbit appeared between them?" "But where are we going to get one of those at this time on a Saturday?" Memo for next time...

I'm submitting versions of this to various print media -- don't tell them it's on the Web already! This version is © copyright 1997 Mike Holderness; moral rights are asserted.

For the bizarre and highly political police decision to announce on Saturday night that they were questioning six people, and then one woman associated with the sound system, for conspiracy to murder, see Urban75's report. All, contrary to some press reports, were released without charge and without bail restrictions at 3am on Sunday.