London Bombs, G8-Politics and other Terrorist Acts

During the anti-G8 protests we were mostly in Edinburgh and spend a bit of time at the Stirling camp. The practical organisation and co-ordination was flawless. Smooth ride from the train to the bus to the campsite. The convergence space was excellent, the meetings well facilitated, the Stirling camp was an example of anarchism in action with co-operation, autonomy, harmony and functionality. We, the movement, have chosen to focus on and priorities the practicalities of our own organising and communicating with each other. However, this may be at the expense of more rigorous political questioning and debating amongst ourselves and also serious attempts to connect with those outside of our movement.
The G8 in Edinburgh/Gleneagles confirmed the post-Genoa trend of the ‘anti-summit-actions’: the direct-action and radical wing is shrinking in numbers, the reformist wing officially dissociates itself from the ‘anarchist’ and the police are more or less able to counter the direct actions. Following some general observations from the summit:
a) The radical counter-summit was smaller and less international. Most of the direct-action folks came from Great Britain, Skandinavia and Germany, only very few Italians and Spanish, hardly any French. The ‘black bloc’ was often referred to as the ‘Germans’, which was probably right. On the big ‘Make Poverty History’ march the police managed to encircle and isolated the ‘black bloc’ within few minutes, in total may be 600 people.
b) The reformist-wing was much less political than at other anti-summit mobilisations. Most of the infra-structure and official orientation of the ‘reformist’ activities were dominated by the big NGOs, such as Oxfam and Christian Aid as well as the media/ pop-star circus. They managed to enforce a ‘wearing white’ dress-code on the big demo. The demo had an atmosphere of ‘we are all against poverty’ and of demonstrated individual/bourgeois humanism, which matches more or less the official line of the Labour Party ‘drop the debt’ policy. There were much less unions, migrant organisations, left-wing parties than e.g. in Genoa.
c) The split between ‘direct actions’ and ‘politics’ deepened. There was hardly any political statements concerning global politics, the UK governmental position on Africa or other general developments from the ‘direct action’ scene. Hardly any political leaflets and on the work-shop-day only very few debates. The main discussions and talks were organised within the trots/ lefty ‘G8 Alternative’ conference. There was an attempt to have a political discussion about ‘precarity, work, unemployment’ around ‘Carnival of Full Enjoyment’, but unfortunately only few people turned up. Also after the bombs in London there was no ‘collective’ statement from the ‘revolutionary movement’. It was also disappointing how little recent international struggles were present and/or discussed within the radical counter-summit, e.g. the school occupations in France, the events in Bolivia, the pension struggles in Rusia etc. The recent european movements coming out of the direct action scene such as social centres or the precarity discussion was also absent. There were few links made between the actions in Scotland and our activities back where we live.
d) The police couldn’t handle their superior position. On the big march the police managed to isolate the ‘direct action’ people. On the ‘Carnival of Full Enjoyment’ and on other smaller events in Edinburgh their strategy of out-numbering the activists turned against them. They managed to contain the ‘Carnival’ which was meant to visit the job center and some bigger companies, but they encircled thousands of passers-by and spectators which lead to a situation were the spectators turned into activists. A lot of conflicts between ‘local people’ and the police evolved. Later in the evening about 400 younger Edinburgh proles had fights with the cops, shouting ‘Who’s streets - Our streets’. During the day of the decentralised blockades the cops didn’t managed to prevent any actions beforehand, but could react to the blockades quite quickly. The legal support groups speak about the biggest police intervention in the UK ever, about 700 people got arrested during the summit.
e) Conclusions: The G8-summit proved once more that the ‘movement’ is very able to organise itself (huge indymedia space, camping sites, decentralised coordinated actions etc.), but particularly after the bombs it became ever more obvious that some street blockades and parties don’t provide an answer to the situation.

Spontaneous leaflet distributed on a spontaneous gathering in front of Edinburgh train station

London Bombs and G8-Politics - Terrorist Acts of a System in Crisis
From the gigantic police cordon know as Edinburgh: In the last days the development of this society has been symbolised and accelerated in the streets of Edinburgh and London: the political leaders of the world’s ruling nations hide away in the Scottish countryside, planning future terrorist attacks such as extension of their wars, privatisations, welfare and wage cuts, while their police forces turn the region into a gigantic police cordon and the media applauds the repression of all protests which are not toothless marching. Then the bombs in London, a terrorist answer to the terrorist politics of the G8 nations by those who are only other rulers-in-waiting...

The Crashing Sound of a System in Crisis
The ‘drop the debt’-show can’t disguise the reality of the last decade: extension of mass poverty from Capetown to Novosibirsk, longer working hours, lower wages and redundancies (lately at IBM, GM, Rover...). The EU countries continually announce breaches of the stability pact, which results in a deep political crisis (e.g. the constitution debacle), governments in Germany, France and Italy are finished without being beaten by a parliamentary opposition. In Latin America the neo-liberalist / free-market model is in a deadlock situation, not least due to social unrest in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil. The USA and Russia try to export their internal crisis by prolonged bloody warfare in Chechenia and Iraq, but can’t win these wars on either a military or political level. All in all, the abyss between the potentials that we have to create a better world (the material wealth, increased social knowledge, communication, productivity) and the actual use of these potentials (production for profits instead of needs, war, impoverishment) is widening rapidly and noisily...
 
Terrorism - Warfare of the Unrecognised Statesmen
The crisis causes political disintegration of many states (Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan etc.), political power has to be reinstalled, borders re-defined. The creation and maintenance of nation-states has always been a bloody business of war and repression. The difference between an official army and ‘terrorist groups’ is their official recognition, but they have in common means (bombs, fear and social repression) and goals (control over the resources and work-force of their territory). Mandela and Arafat were brandished as ‘terrorist’ before they became accepted as statesmen, western governments supported all kind of ‘terrorists’, the BinLaden-Clan and the Bush-family have been business partners behind the stage of their military conflicts. With the increasing impoverishment both can count on recruitment from the economically devastated areas, suicide bombers from Gaza strip or freshly drafted young people from the Ghettos of US cities. For the exploited and their struggle for a better life the most dangerous aspect of ‘terrorism’ at the moment is it’s counterpart, the state’s anti-terrorism.

‘War on Terror’ on the Deathbed of Social Partnership
In Europe and the USA the profit squeeze crushed the possibility of appeasing social conflicts by offering something in exchange for increased exploitation. In the 90s all ‘Labour’ Parties in Europe used their social credibility in order to enforce unprecedented cuts in the welfare system and workers rights. They lost their credibility. The unions have only been able to negotiate how bad the wage cuts and dismissals will be. Tied to their weak position at negotiation table they lost the trust of many workers, in many recent conflicts they even turned against them (e.g. the wildcat strike at GM in Germany). People realised that their mass protest is pointless, as long as it is only appealing to the ‘democratic rules of majority’: the mass protests against the Iraq war, the East-German marches against welfare cuts didn’t stop the state acting against the wish of the majority, as the recent marches against poverty won’t change things as long as they don’t hurt the interests of the rich materially. In this social situation politicians and capitalists try to refine their repressive machinery to deal with future conflicts. The ‘war on terror’ is their main pretext at the moment: they increase the atmosphere of fear, so people turn towards the state; they introduce stricter laws and controls, which effects possible protests and workers actions (strikes, occupations etc.); they shift their spending from welfare towards the military sector; they try to deepen divisions within the working class by anti-immigrant propaganda.

Proletarian Movement against the State of Fear
After the bombings in Madrid people in Spain took the streets in order to show that the terrorist attacks won’t isolate them in fear and that they are pissed off about the lies of the conservative government, it’s participation in the Iraq war and it’s labour reform. The future workers movements for a better life will have to get out of the catch 22: being in fear due to terrorists who respond to the terrorist politics of a state. A state we are then told to expect safety from while at the same time it is attacking our living standards. We will have to develop trust in our own ability to organise ourselves, because the established bureaucratic organisations won’t do it anymore. We will have to overcome the illusion that it is enough to petition the rulers or that we could impress them by our mere mass. Our future struggles will have to confront the legal boundaries, which are tightening on a daily basis. We have to refuse the state’s ‘war on terror’ because any of our (strike) actions which are more than symbolic, any workplace occupation, any effective demonstrations will be denounced as ‘violent anarchism’ and possibly ‘terrorist’...

Proletarian Movement for a Better Life - Against Bus Bombs and Capitalist Attacks!

[prol-position news #3, 8/2005]