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...
