Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 © Clive Bloom 2012 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–02935–5 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 CONTENTS List of Figures viii List of Plates ix Acknowledgements xii Permissions xiv 1 2000: Preface to Disorder in the Twenty-First Century 1 2 2010: Occupy Everything 17 3 2010 to 2012: The Constant Threat and the Distant Fear 29 4 2010: The Crisis and the Student Riots 54 5 2011: The Summer Riots – A Cold Wind in August 76 6 1668, 1780 and 1981: Contexts and Explanations 100 Appendix 1 1968: The Revolutionary Model Redefined 127 Appendix 2 Under this Sign Conquer: The Visible Republic of London 146 Appendix 3 A Little Riotous Chronology 159 Notes 163 Index 177 vii Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 1 2000: PREFACE TO DISORDER IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Since 2000 we have seen unprecedented levels of unrest in London. The capital has become the battleground for a host of new demands and new ideological standpoints, so much so that protesters and authority alike have had to invent new tactics to cope with the pressure of new demands. Once extra-parliamentary protest was relatively rare. There were exceptions, of course, in the Suffragette movement before the First World War, the rallies of fascists and their opponents during the 1930s, the Aldermaston Marches of the 1950s and 1960s, and the CND and anti-Vietnam protests. Each was a response to a specific crisis and each (excluding the Vietnam protests) ultimately recognised parlia- mentary action as the supreme goal. Nowadays, there is no con- fidence in Parliament or the perceived chiselling of its members, and the House of Lords seems merely to be a chamber packed with political appointees and technocrats; the police are still seen as the active agents of state repression. Since the millennium there have been growing political move- ments whose focus is no longer on parliamentary decisions, but instead is based upon direst action – the action of committed people disillusioned with the apparent collusion of politicians and fin- anciers. These new political activists have named themselves the spokespeople for the ‘99 per cent’ of the population that they per- ceive have no power and they have vowed to bring to account the one per cent who have it all. This movement, more anarchist-communal 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 2 RIOT CITY than Marxist-communist, has grown as perceived inequality has grown in the first ten years of the new century; the banking crisis of 2008 crystallised its demands for a fairer system. It is natural jus- tice that needs re-affirming, say protesters, and not laws that need changing. The old cry that the whole system is corrupt and needs demolishing rises once again; students in 2010 and the poor in 2011 knew why they were there. London is still Babylon, the ‘Great Wen’ of the radical William Cobbett, but in the belly of the beast some- thing rises: a new politics. What is this that is coming? The ghosts of old promises whisper in the atmosphere of new dreams. Lenin, in the midst of Bolshevik triumph, could confidently feel that the fact ‘that the socialist revo- lution in Europe must come, and will come, is beyond doubt. All our hopes for the final victory of socialism are founded on this certainty’.1 He was incorrect; there are no mathematical certainties in politics, but he was not wholly wrong. International political resistance is stronger than it has been for many years and there are new chal- lenges and new demands, but always the same corrupt system, ever the same authorities barring the way, but ever the same goal, ever the same promise of equality, liberty and justice; always on a distant horizon and always illusory, but always to be striven towards. Protest constantly changes in London, and in recent years much has changed. Not perhaps in quantity or in levels of violence, although violence has increased as much from the authorities as from protesters. What has come to prominence since the May Day and Guerrilla Gardening exploits at the turn of the millennium is a moral agenda defining but outside of the political sphere proper. When voters feel impotent or when protestors are ignored by Parliament, anger and frustration replace political debate with calls for natural justice and rightness – a moral agenda replaces political talk as people spill onto the street. The Iraq War, climate change, fox hunting legislation, the greed of world bankers and their bonuses, and politicians who are seen to be working the system whilst others are laid off infuriate and frustrate the public, who feel ignored by their representatives and who believe that they are treated with contempt by those who seem to be above the law and beyond legal redress. More importantly, the servants of the general public, the police, have increasingly been perceived as the instruments of the rul- ers, so much so that they themselves were forced to address the Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 2000: PREFACE TO DISORDER IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 3 issue of public confidence in a report produced by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in July 2009 called Adapting to Protest, which followed the G20 and other difficult protests that year.2 The essential message of the report was that the policing of public order events must be lawful, consensual and legal, not provocative and aggressive. The right way to live for protesters has become the right life- style to have: not a single-issue argument as in the old days, but a whole package of values, some anarchist, some libertarian, but just as often a rather old-fashioned Trotskyist socialism (usually unar- ticulated) in which anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-airport expansionism and anti-fat-cat-ism mix: a higgledy-piggledy com- position of the positive virtues of environmental concern, support for Palestine and a new world based on citizenship of ‘Planet Earth’. There is no one cause anymore, there are only a plurality of causes. It is this pluralism that will unite groups as disparate as Class War, Anonymous, Greenpeace, UK Uncut and the International Union of Sex Workers. To some extent, it is the old revolt of youth against age, of the powerless against those in power, of radicalism and alter- native lifestyle against the innate conservatism of those who rule. For the most part, all the usual suspects will turn up, the same folks who turn up for any anti-authority gig, whatever the actual cause. They number from a few hundred to a mere few thousand hardcore young people and students or those who were young in the days of the squatting movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The new counter culture is small and self-defining, keeping in contact through current media – the Internet, blogs, websites, streaming, texting, Twitter, MSN, BlackBerry – in many respects using com- munication systems only known to a relative few with media savvy and ironically thereby restricting the number of activists to a small group and effectively creating a virtual ghetto for their ideas, which do not then reach a wider public and are therefore subsequently fre- quently misunderstood. Even the language of protest often sounds like it was borrowed from the enemy’s latest corporate buzzwords. Thus, there is talk of ‘open sourcing’ and ‘working groups’, ‘break out’ sessions and other phrases glibly borrowed from an alien rhetoric to describe a situation of ‘open’ alliances and friendships. Nevertheless, through personal involvement and actual activity in real space and time, revolutionaries may rally many thousands and this may be helped Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 4 Coalition of Resistance flyer (courtesy of Coalition of Resistance) Figure 1.1 Figure Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–02935–5 2000: PREFACE TO DISORDER IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 5 by the simple reporting of newspapers and television as much as by personal electronic equipment.