Stop The City '83

STOP THE CITY '83

The total disregard for life by those in authority was underlined on September 1st of 1983 when a Korean civilian airliner en route from New York to Seoul via Alaska was shot down by Russian jet fighters, killing all 269 passengers and crew. After initially denying all knowledge of the incident, Russia soon admitted responsibility, claiming that the plane had been on a spying mission. Whether this was true or if the airliner had simply strayed into Soviet airspace by accident was beside the point because the bottom line of it was that hundreds of entirely innocent men, women and children had been murdered for absolutely no reason at all.

For the next few weeks the drums of war beat louder than ever before as anti-Soviet sentiment escalated and Cold War paranoia grew ever more starker. Exactly how close was the world at that moment to all out war? Who knew? Precisely how many minutes were there to midnight on the nuclear clock? How could anyone tell? For those who had been on board Korean Flight 007, World War Three had arrived already whilst all that the rest of the world could do was to watch and hold its breath as the two great super powers squared-up to each other in a frightening game of propaganda and pro-nuclear weapons rhetoric.

As identified by Crass, in general but particularly under such circumstances as these, marching from one point to another in a CND demo was clearly not sufficient but what else could be done? How could any impact be made upon the power games that the ruling elite indulged? In fact, how could any protest against anything at all be bettered and made more effective?

By setting up permanent camp outside the missile base, the women of Greenham Common had already pointed to a way that went beyond the confines of an orthodox protest march, proving to be hugely effective in raising awareness as well as being a constant thorn in the government's side. Restricting the camp to women only had been a shrewd political ploy and whenever calling out for support of an action there had always been a good, positive response.

The Cruise missiles, however, were still on their way and now as passenger planes were being blown out of the sky it was obvious that something more needed to be done not to replace existing methods of protest but to add to and if possible to move them forward.

It was around this time that leaflets and posters started to appear advertising a 'Carnival Against War, Oppression and Exploitation' to be held in the financial centre of London. Produced by a small anarchist/peace activist group called London Greenpeace and distributed via anarchist, peace and animal rights networks, the leaflets declared September the 29th the day to Stop The City.

For such a simple yet inspired idea, it was hard to understand why it had never been thought of and attempted before? The City, after all, was where the profit from and investment into war was calculated and collated. It was the base of the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England, and practically every major financial institution in Britain and according to one of the leaflets was 'where the arms race starts, oppression is financed and exploitation organised'.

Standing in proud isolation from the rest of London, the City had its own mayor, its own unique electoral system and even its own bespoke territorial police force. In effect, it was a state within a state from where real power was operated.

On being distributed, the leaflets immediately set the cat amongst the pigeons, eliciting a complete retreat away from the idea by the CND leadership. Apart from having their own national demonstration due to take place the following month and not wishing anything to deflect from that, the decision to advise their members not to attend the Stop The City carnival underlined an awful truth: The CND leadership were more concerned about their public image and how they might be depicted in the Right-wing press than in trying to move the boundaries of the peace movement forward. They still believed that the government would listen to reason, particularly if they acted responsibly and presented themselves as reasonable people.

Because Stop The City was going to be unregulated and without any clearly defined structure the CND leadership felt it would be too unpredictable, potentially leading to a clash with the police. To have a protest take place in the heart of the financial district of London might also lead to antagonism, not only from the police but also from those who worked there as any disruption to 'business as usual' could have significant impact on the diverse range of business interests located there...

So would anyone take heed of the call out to come to the City on the 29th or would everyone simply follow the edicts of the CND leadership and wait for the upcoming national demo where they could once again be herded from one place to another? Come the day, over 1500 people responded in the positive, descending upon the City like a tribe of ancient Celts emerging from the wilds of Britain to lay siege to the Roman fortress. In stark contrast to the pinstriped suited orderliness of the City workers, these barbarian invaders dressed in their Punk rags and jumble sale hand-me-downs radiated an unrepentant unruliness, signalling that something highly unusual was taking place.

For as long as anyone could care to remember, the City had always been there, viewed as a great British institution and a central and essential engine room of the economy. Few people, however, had any real understanding of how it actually functioned, most only ever seeing about it when the rising and falling of stocks and shares values was being reported on the news. The Financial Times newspaper was perceived as being 'serious' and held an important position in the world of media though the only people who ever seemed to buy it were those directly involved in finance themselves. The City, then, was a self-contained world that was never queried and certainly never challenged, not by the wider public nor by those employed there in any capacity.

The workings of the City were just part and parcel of consensus normality along with the business of war and arms manufacturing, the slaughter of Argentinian conscripts, Third World hunger, pollution, vivisection, and so on. It was in the City that the profit from these 'tenets of normality' was calculated and managed; meaning that behind all the ills of the world sat gangs of usually white, rich, public school-educated, middle-aged men in suits benefiting from the suffering and misery of others and not giving a fuck.

A year earlier, those very same people had played host to the Falklands war victory parade but now they were having visited upon them a reality entirely at odds with their own. The City of London was now encountering what was in effect a section of the Crass audience. Having last congregated in a show of force at the Zig Zag squat gig, that same audience along with other fellow ideological travellers had once again gathered though this time not to celebrate, entertain or to be entertained but to put to test their collective power.

As the crowds of protesters gathered at the designated meeting points, an air of kinship and solidarity pervaded. Everyone knew that the other people around them were all there for the same reason, that being to stop the City. The city gents on the other hand were all somewhat disconcerted because after all, they were only trying to earn an honest day's pay for an honest day's work and what possible objection could anyone have to that?

The police, meanwhile, were totally confused and running around like headless chickens. If this was a demonstration that was taking place, should there not have been a start and end point to it all? Should there not have been a route to follow with some sort of rally at the end where speeches were given? Ideally somewhere out of the way such as in Hyde Park?

At the same time, the protesters found themselves in a strangely surprising position. By simply abandoning the normal mode of demonstrating they had suddenly entered a previously uncharted arena of autonomy and new possibilities. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the streets of the City appeared to be theirs for the reclaiming.

Like swarms of angry bees, large sections of the protesters started to spontaneously break away from the main gatherings and to charge through the streets, halting traffic and spreading general mayhem. Unable to decide whether to remain watching over the main crowds or to follow and try to keep up with the breakaway groups, the police were left floundering.

Mass chants of "1, 2, 3, 4 - we don't want your fucking war!" and "Human freedom, animal rights, one struggle, one fight!" echoed through the streets as anarchist black flags were raised and Union Jack flags burnt. Slogans were daubed onto walls and pavements as restaurants, banks and fur shops were stink-bombed. Under cover of the confusion, individual protesters set about glueing locks and damaging property whilst more openly, leaflets explaining the reasons behind the protest were handed out to the City workers. Large numbers headed to the Guildhall where the preparations for the election of the City's new mayor were taking place, causing disruption to the proceedings. Drums were banged, whistles blown, songs sung, paint bombs thrown, alarms set off and offices invaded. Organised chaos was the order of the day.

As the day wore on, even larger numbers made their way to the Stock Exchange in a bid to blockade the whole building although by this time the police had called in substantial reinforcements and were in no mood for further cat and mouse games. Throughout the day they had been dispensing regular punches and kicks upon the protesters, dragging them down and holding them in near strangleholds but at the Stock Exchange they fully let rip, riding their horses into the crowds whilst pushing and shoving violently. In the end these methods served them well, eventually forcing the protesters to scatter and thus disperse, bringing to a stumbling conclusion the day's events.

It was apparent that something very significant had occurred that day. Something pivotal not only in regard to the meaning of Punk (and Anarcho Punk in particular) but to the whole subject of power, control and political protest. It was the day that a definitive break was made from Punk being a musical genre grounded in image, attitude, drugs and rhetoric to a genuinely physical street level political presence, able and willing to engage in direct confrontation with those behind the levers of global economic control.

Despite the reservations Crass had about the state of Punk as described on Yes Sir I Will, Punk had in fact always been a furious womb, birthing all kinds of bawling, kicking, screaming, malformed, even stillborn offspring and now thanks in no small part to the efforts of Crass, Punk had come of age and had proved itself worthy.

Could Crass ever have envisaged when first bashing out practice versions of Owe Us A Living in their shed that it would lead to them being part and parcel of a street protest action like Stop The City? Likewise, when the Pistols called Bill Grundy a "fucking rotter" or when Joe Strummer in his squat penned White Riot, could they have imagined that it might years later lead to an attempted blockade of the London Stock Exchange? Hardly. Not that it was likely that come the day Rotten and Strummer et al were even aware of Stop The City though that didn't really matter because the lineage was there and they had already played their part even if they didn't know it.

In a similar fashion, it's unlikely that when London Greenpeace first floated the idea of Stop The City that they could have anticipated it would in the main be a horde of Punk rockers including the like of Disorder from Bristol with their 'Make Homebrew Not War' banner who would respond to the call.

Within the context of Punk, Stop The City was a high watermark but within the context of political protest it was equally significant. By simply rejecting and stepping outside of prescribed avenues of protest the Stop The City demonstrators had thrown off the shackles of conformity and touched a hitherto unrecognised freedom. No-one had imagined how easy it would be to confound the police, leaving them scrambling to regain control whilst the streets of the City were rampaged through. The freedom touched was that of acting without permission. To be out of control. A freedom that could not be asked for or given but only taken.

Permission hadn't been sought to hold a carnival against war, oppression and exploitation in the City because, of course, it would never have been granted, if only for the fact that it might incur the rights of the City workers to go about their daily business. For a large number of those workers, however, their daily business was in fucking up the world so in the end it came down to whose rights and whose freedom should prevail? The freedom touched by the protesters, then, was not a universal freedom but like all freedoms was one to be fought over.

At the end of the day, through use of sheer force the police saved the Stock Exchange from being blockaded and prevented the City being stopped though that's not to say that victory was all theirs. On perhaps a more significant level, the Stop The City demonstrators had thrown open a door and revealed a whole new realm where power and control could not only be effectively challenged but potentially overturned.

Behind that door lay a series of other doors and Stop The City was but the first tentative steps along a path that like the urban riots of 1981 could potentially lead to.... Where? Insurrection? Revolution? Anarchy in the UK? Who knew? Who could say? Though wherever it was, it was a place that those in authority wished to prevent people from reaching but where people again and again would keep on trying to get to...