I am not yet practiced at the fast reporter interview. I could have done better when the guy interviewed me with his tape recorder as we were milling about the edge of Grosvenor Square beside the concrete and police barricades. The triumphant statue of some American warlord was shrouded and boarded up to protect it from damage; they knew exactly what we stood against. But I blathered incoherently, as you do. On the other side of the argument, the state, corporations and government elite, they publish properly drafted press statements with authority. All we get to supply are a few incoherent words from the street while we are in the thick of things.
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"Why have you come out on the street on a day like this?" the reported asked me.
I couldn't stay at home. Democracy isn't working. I know there is an election tomorrow but I'm going to have to scrawl "Stop The War" across the ballot paper because it's nothing but an irrelevant multiple choice test that deliberately mocks my strong convictions. I have to come out on the streets because otherwise my views do not exist.
"But aren't you worried about the violence? Your views will be discredited by association with the violence that always happens on a day like today?"
I am non-violent. My friends here are non-violent. If someone beside me was acting violently I would do what I could to stop them.
I did not respond so cogently to his questions, particularly when tricked me into defending the fact that last year people were throwing glass bottles at the police at the end of the day. Now, later, I am in a better position to deconstruct his accusation.
Here is the vignette the reporter was looking for:
"There was a large crowd of discontented people. A small element within the crowd acted violently, and the violence spread."
The moral of this story is that responsible people should stay at home and not swell these crowds because it gives a greater volume in which the violence can spread or hide. That's why this reporter informed me that I should have stayed at home.
The trap is to miss the ending of the story and spout out: "Well, it's not us who starts the violence. It's the police."
This may or may not be true but it is immaterial to the story. People can argue about the cause of the violence and come to the proper conclusion that, in spite of being armed to the teeth, fully organized and knowing from experience that they can get away with it, the police are never excessively violent. And even when they appear to be, there's always a good sound reason for it which we are not qualified to understand. Arguing against this point of view is futile because it is deductive and cannot be disproved.
An improved deconstruction of this vignette requires one to speak only for oneself. To the reporter, say:
"Are you accusing me of being violent?"
"Are you accusing me of one to whom the violence may spread?"
"Are you accusing me of being one who will stand by and allow violence to happen which I am able to stop?"
Conclusion: this protest is will be less violent with me here than it would be without me, so you have no business suggesting that I should not be here unless you are in favour of violence.
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The reporter, if he wants violence, can be reminded of where he can find it. The nearest weapons export manufacturer, or yesterday's pedestrian car crash that would not have happened had there not been so many cars on the roads, a direct consequence of many years of pro-car policies whose end game is to eliminate all pedestrian casualties by eliminating all pedestrian movement and placing them in cars.
This type of specific reply requires a modicum of desk research to supply, which is why the side that makes properly prepared statements with selected book-facts to back up their views will have the advantage.
Anarchists and anti-capitalists have made ample well-reasoned statements to the press, who then often refuse to read, digest and publish them, favouring always some quick, unprofessional words from the street. The police and other bodies of state, on the other hand, exist in a big structure and know how to defer all awkward (ie unprepared for) questions directly up their hierarchy for a properly worded statement. Often these statements -- particularly when given by the higher authorities -- take on the ludicrous form: "I'm sorry, but I can't comment on that individual case. It might compromise a future inquiry."
Justice is supposed to eventually come from the legal system which takes a long time to trundle and is allegedly so weak at discovering the facts that the slightest whiff of an apology (the lack of which is a major source of humiliation to the many victims of authority, be it from doctors or direct agents of government) can throw the investigative process way off. So they conveniently claim, being as they are totally unwilling to do anything about the problem.
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Words do not change facts! It should not bloody matter what anyone says before an official investigation (a court case) -- the only proper avenue by which authority permits itself to be challenged. Non-violent direct action (NVDA) is an alternative means of confronting authority. (Example 1: Chaining self to train that is to carry nuclear waste through city when authority has satisfied itself by a secret and questionable procedure that the risk to life is within acceptable levels. Example 2: Practicing homosexuality before the law changed to make it legal.)
The fixation on the official investigation, to which all questions can be deferred when no level of authority is prepared to give an answer, is pathological. It pushes real problems, real solutions, out of the way, into the future, sometimes by years, long after the damage has been done. There are numerous instances where this process of deferment (sometimes known as denial) begins before the crisis has ended. So convinced of the bias of any future investigation, authority can not refuse to issue life-saving information on time, even though authority ultimately controls the process of investigation and could redesign it to factor out the effect of false alarms, which people would rather have than fry like flies.
When that nuclear waste container leaks or derails in London (and why not, given how few people are actually on hand scrutinizing this secret, expensive, risky, partly privatised and therefore profitable process), you know they won't tell you at the time it happens. They have to first make sure it's going to be so bad they can't cover it up. No one involved will be "authorized" to speak to the public about the disaster in the middle of the night. One who does is called a whistleblower, and shunned. You might hear about it in the morning when it is too obvious that something has gone wrong and guys in NBC suits are wandering around trying to clean up the mess before people become alarmed and do silly things like gather their families together and get the hell out of town. That type of disorderly response is antisocial because it clogs up the roads, spreads fear and breaks down the forces of law and order that have served us so well. You must first give time for the network of people in authority, ministers, executives and police chiefs to hear about it through their informal elite community contacts and get a head start to the bunkers before they get trapped among the rabble. Only people high in the authority structure are mature enough to be trusted with this sensitive information. They are wise at heart and strong enough to take hard decisions about whom in the country to sacrifice in the event of a disaster -- anyone but themselves.
Crimes happen in the present. That is the only time you can do something about it. The present is the time over which authority asserts absolute control. You can have your past, you can have your promises for the future, but the power is in the now. The past is irrelevant because it has already happened. For any problems now, please refer to the future for when there is a judgement of law and the present is the past and therefore irrelevant. Authority is the power to cheat and break promises with no immediate comeback. If it didn't do that, it wouldn't be necessary. The whole point of power is to make people do what they don't want to do, otherwise it wouldn't exist.
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I was at the front of the anarchist mob May day, 2002. I missed the famous riots of the year before, which the police took no responsibility in causing. This year they used different tactics and let the mob wander like a flock of lambs without penning them in as before. Then they took credit for the fact there was no violence. Isn't it nice how they get to choose exactly what they are and are not responsible for?
I would have liked to have stayed with the mob the whole time, but Bill and Martin, unable to perceive the beauty of the experience, were getting impatient and bored with the aimlessness of it. I couldn't tell them what would happen next, if anything. I told them if they wanted to see a proper show they could check themselves into the nearest cinema and watch a movie.
They said they wanted to see the TUC demo which was scheduled for Trafalgar Square in the afternoon, and we cycled over there and tried to trace its route back up where there was going to be to see the predictable spectacle of people marching between police lines with banners and chanting. At least it would be a proper, organized show for them. We chose the wrong road and couldn't find it.
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I managed to steer us back towards the anarchists. They took a bit of finding because they were all clustered in one group instead of spread throughout Mayfair as originally "planned". Also, we had to obey traffic the traffic laws, avoid dangerous lorries and steer round heaving crowds of shoppers. When we rejoined the mob, traffic lights and road restrictions no longer applied. Cars were kept out of our way by the police. If you were at the front of the crowd you saw shops slam and bolt their doors because here was a group of people coming down the street not intending to buy anything. It was the exact negation of the pre-Christmas Saturday afternoon shopping spree. It was boring because the entire ground surface had been given entirely over to the activity of shopping. Some of the shops had taken on the anti-capitalist spirit and decorated their premises with plywood by boarding up their windows. Who here does not think that a McDonalds presented in this way is not more attractive? Children, to whom their regular decor is aimed, are notoriously tasteless; corporations marketing to them should not be allowed to get away with such tackiness everywhere.
The anarchists were funnelled down to Trafalgar square where they fizzled out due to ear strain attempting to hear the boring speeches over the sounds of the helicopters above. Briefly, the police formed a barrier across one of the roads for the Wombles to push against, but there was nothing on the other side to break through to that you couldn't reach by walking round the block and mingling with the other half of the crowd. The police have studied this game before and have learnt to exploit people's natural tendencies as well as the lay of the land.
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Wombling has got to be the way forward. One should be totally allowed to use any defensive measure you like, wherever you are. Wearing fluffy coated motorcycle helmets, safety goggles, cardboard boxes, seat cushions and other soft apparel is eminently reasonable when the police are wondering around with their jackets tucked behind their truncheons so as to smack you one in the spit of a moment. The police, of course, will say that they only hit people in "self-defence", but this is trying to broaden the word to breaking point. They think I am stupid. If they can get me to accept weapons such as truncheons, tear gas, tanks and nuclear missiles into the category known as "defence", then shit will reign. They will state that the Wombles use defensive measures and force us to conclude that they use violence, because the meaning of the word "defence" has been polluted by violence so that there is no word or credibility for the category formally known as non-violence.
Anarchists are not violent. If the police put down their sticks, sniper rifles and implied threat of unlimited escalation violence where "necessary", they will not be attacked. This isn't some sort of prison regime where you have to take the guards hostage to get anything done. Anarchists attack authority but love people. When the guards and police say they fear violence, it is not the violence of the anarchists they fear, it's those higher up in the chain of authority who make them tremble.
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A guard at the door of an army recruitment centre (without which the state could not obtain its ready supply of pliable cannon fodder to send on adventures in foreign lands where they massacre our brothers and sisters) does not have to stand in the way of an angry mob attacking the office. He is free to let them in to trash the room. There is zero chance he would get hurt. The reason he doesn't do this is he fears violence from his boss. Whilst this violence is deferred, it is far more painful and would involve verbal violence, ritual humiliation called disciplining, deductions in pay, possible sacking and unemployability due to harmful job references. The economic system would do the rest of the work by foreclosing his mortgage, repossessing his house, making him homeless which often creates stress in families, conflict, breakups and deep depression. As an alternative, I'd rather have my arms ripped off by the mob.
Anarchists don't like any violence, including social violence which is of a type that can't be so easily captured on a camera except as a tearful face. But the guard has an alternative. He can collaborate. If he asked to be tied to a chair during the raid so that he an claim to his boss that he was overpowered by the mob, the anarchists are sure to oblige and will do it with care and love so as not to cut off circulation or cause pain. Of course, he might still lose his job because, in his boss's eyes, he ought to have resorted to violence sooner, for example by using his gun. However, most people -- except the ruling class -- would regard his standing aside as honorable; people should not risk or be threatened with death in an argument over mere office property. Perhaps the social respect within the community (if one exists that has not been deliberately decimated by the policies of the elite) may mitigate some of the worst ravages of the economic system by giving him anarchist values. These destructive forces, however, are so awfully strong and hard to resist.
Martin drove down from Cambridge with me in the car, although I didn't approve. While we were in a jam he was distracted by the topic of conversation (a radio program we both heard earlier where an Elvis fan had in his memorabilia collection one of The King's warts removed from his finger when he went into army service), he mistook the brake for the clutch and tapped a van in front on the bumper causing no detectable damage whatsoever. In spite of this, we stayed in the middle of the road for a long time while the van driver made calls and took details. The van was hire-leased by the employer of the driver (presumably for reasons of corporate efficiency) so there was double the number of people to notify, paperwork to fill out, and Martin was probably going to get billed for the time of some pointless professional assessment to determine that there had been no damage at all. The tedious wheels of bureaucracy must be cranked in motion. No one was in the position to ask whether it was really worth it.
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I consoled Martin with my usual ramble about the psychophysical likelihood of traffic accidents and how surprising it is they don't happen all the time. To err is human. We are biological machines. The reliability demanded of us when we are drivers is beyond what we expect of most complex mechanical machines, but we take it for granted. At frequent critical moments, an incorrect response for as little as half a second can result in multiple road death. I am astounded at how we get it consistently right for hours at a stretch. It's not like we are even alert while we drive. The closest condition I know which requires such immediate raw image processing power and hand-eye coordination is sprinting, for example, through a forest without colliding with any trees. But that's high activity. That's burn out. It does not last for long. Minutes? The pattern of required-response-else-death while in a relaxed and seated posture with normal heart rate is not natural in our evolution. Yet we routinely endure this incredible state of being for hours per day without fear or measurable stress.
In the morning we got up, cycled down the dangerous streets to the Critical Mass and arrived on time (early). We were hemmed in on the pavement by the road railing, unintentionally crowding out the pedestrians who were trying to get in and out of the train station. There was a helicopter overhead in the blue, blue sky making a racket. Reporters wandered around looking for trouble. Legal observers were passing out bust cards. Forty minutes of waiting and I asked somebody, "When do we, like, move off?"
"When we reach critical mass."
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In time, four hundred cyclists took over the road and the police moved the cars out of the way. They had obviously decided that it is much easier to facilitate this event and let us get on with it than to enforce the law and obstruct it. Occasionally we did get held up at junctions and all piled into a massive tailback blocking all the ways to the side until they worked out how to let us through. We had all day. Cars chugged motionless with their engines on and the drivers were handed leaflets requesting them to consider one of the alternative, less antisocial modes of transport. At every hour of every day on every road, we're always giving way to that unceasing flow of dangerous sewage called traffic. It poisons, deafens and kills us. We cannot accept that we have no right to claim some living space back, once in a while. During the morning we reclaimed a small number of square metres of the road for people to live and breathe.
There are some people who take the view that we should be more responsible and not go around exacerbating the traffic and getting on drivers' nerves like this. We should cycle down the street, single file, obeying all the rules of the road so that car drivers, if they notice, think, "There's a few more cycles around today. I must try not to squash them as I pass on my way to where I'm going."
Properly civilized citizens are educated enough to understand that this is no way to obtain one's rights in society. You don't just take what you want, you must ask for rights to be given and you must always promise to use them "responsibly". There are supposed to be regular political channels called voting and writing letters to your democratically elected representative. Direct action achieves nothing but to annoy people. It makes them more entrenched in their views and less likely to compromise.
Those are the facts they would prefer us to believe, and you can be fooled into believing it if you like. But if you are a woman you must be sure to forget what the Suffragettes had to do to get you this vote.
Nowadays the world is more sophisticated and anyone can see that all expressive power and control over policy has been systematically removed from act of the vote. You only get a multiple choice of people not policies. The votes is almost always between an incumbent and several alternative candidates, so that the veto vote is split to ensure continuity of service. The timing of the vote is set by the state. It is impossible for the people to raise a vote of "no-confidence" with their government mid-term when some real damage is being wrought. They hope we don't notice. Shut up and wait for the next election to complain.
In the evening, I was very tired and we went out for a curry, missing all the fun that was happening in Soho. We got in the car early the next morning and Martin drove us back to work.
Out on the freeway we experienced a horrorshow just ahead of us as the driver of a small truck in front seemingly fell asleep for a few seconds, drifted to the edge of the tarmac at 60 mph, mounted the corner of the crash barrier and barrel-rolled back across the carriageway, throwing metal debris and his body out along the way. Had I had any sense, I would have ducked in case any of this junk flew through the windscreen and nailed the glass to my face for life, but I just watched it through the window as if it were a movie scene. In my life I must have watched so much senseless car violence on the big screen that this event didn't seem out of the ordinary.
The road was blocked for everyone behind. The road cleared in front as drivers sped away. Martin parked and went back to check if there was anything he could do in the aftermath. The guy was lying slightly conscious on the road in one piece. His head had hit something hard and there was blood in his mouth, which is not a good sign. You can get brain haemorrhaging, clots and terminal swelling within half an hour of impact. People can sometimes walk around and phone the ambulance in the time period after a head injury and before they drop down and die.
Many people called the "emergency services" and we waited for the state to intervene. The police, fire and helicopter ambulance duly arrived. They closed the road completely in both directions and were surveying the site with a theodolite, also searching for skidmark evidence by the time I left. Martin got a lift in his car driven by one policeman. I walked with another for a mile back along the road jammed with cars to their secluded police station beneath the previous junction. There we spend a few hours making witness statements and having cups of tea. In the TV lounge all the magazines on the table were about Formula One racing cars.
The witness statement is written by the policeman in long-hand on sheets of paper to be typed up later, rather than typed in the first place on the computer by his desk. It is written in the form of a story in first person as though I was the one telling it. In a sense, we co-author this account. I don't get a copy and I wondered who got the copyright. When everyone's stories disagree (as they tend to do), how do they choose which of the facts they believe and which they do not? You can get entirely different accounts depending on how you arbitrarily pick it.
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This experience has had strikingly little emotional effect on me, given that I believe that the guy died. I must be sick. It is not important that he died, or even that he crashed at all. What matters was that he may have been driving while dangerously tired. The rest is a matter of blind probability. A matter of luck, not intention, whether his decision to drive results in a disaster or he "gets away with it".
Consequently, the law just misses the point. Its focus is too narrow. If someone falls asleep and wipes out, loses his car, mobility or life, the law might pin the blame on him and increase his burden of suffering. If the possibility of crashing and dying is not a deterrent to driving tired, then additional legal consequences piled onto him after the event has happened won't make a difference. There is no point to it. What would actually be effective would be holding the policymakers who encouraged traffic to grow to this volume to account for these disasters. But they are adept at shirking all responsibility, even while obstructing grass-roots efforts to cut it down.
In the police station I chatted with a supermarket lorry driver who had also been witness to the "accident". He had been finishing his night shift, delivering produce great distances across the country to supply the huge supermarkets that we have everywhere now. This activity has grown massively in the last few decades, vastly increasing the number of miles our food travels from where it is grown to where it is consumed. This is totally unnecessary, inefficient and has been encouraged for capitalistic reasons by way of breaking the monopoly of local supply and replacing it by a global monopoly of supermarket distribution, which is much more profitable.
Most people with a brain in their heads would by now have leanrnt that profits have absolutely nothing to do with "efficiency". In the real world they are a measure of power. Power can be acquired by pursuing policies of destruction and inefficiency, as we have often seen.
This truck driver, who had been driving back from his overnight delivery, had been on duty for 15 hours (not all of it driving, since the truck has to be unloaded). He didn't mind hanging around the police station at this time because he was getting his wage. But he would have to be back on duty in 9 hours time. So you are going to bed now? I asked. No, he said. I have to drive home, have my dinner, and drive back to work, which takes an hour each way. I'd be lucky to get five or six hours in bed, he said.
The truck driving laws in Britain are complex and supposedly quite tight. The trucks have tachographs (routinely cheated until they become electronic) to monitor the hours because it is well known that driving fucks you up. If people are being paid for it they are willing to drive until they drop. The employers don't mind this because they can get away with blaming the driver and replacing him with another driver the next day. Ignoring, for example, those extra hours of driving outside of work cannot be justified on any grounds whatever, but that is how the law stands. It's designed to cover the problem of road safety, not do anything to eliminate it.
Our policymakers are planning for traffic to increase by another 22% in ten years because it historically keeps in line with GDP growth (which must be good). Neither the country nor the population is growing at this rate, so the grown must necessarily come out of a greater proportion of land area and resources devoted to cars, and more man-hours driving them. No matter what the economists demand in terms of necessary growth, we cannot cut into sleep, life and productive working time any further in order to service the insane need to drive cars for longer. Behind these dry figures lies a social catastrophe. In America they have increased gas consumption by manufacturing the most fuel inefficient vehicles ever known. In England, we have run out of space. But the GDP must go up. There is no projected level where it will stop. What are they trying to do to us?
The next time an economist raves about how growth can go on unlimited, and uses the the computer industry as a benchmark example for miniaturization where you seem to get more for less each year, remind him of the example of transport which deteriorates year on year and kills more people than ever before. Haul him out into the real world and show him what we've lost.