The cardboard terrorists

As May Day is celebrated across the globe, the authorities in the Western democracies are having a sense of humour failure. Faiza Rady asks why
Traditional May Day celebrations featuring orderly workers' marches and speeches by top labour leaders, soberly delivered but fiery in content, have long gone. At least in the capitals of the developed world. Today's May Day celebrations are modelled on last year's London protests that were organised by notorious anarchist groups sporting eclectic labels like the "revolutionary gardeners" and the "urban guerrillas." Last year, the "gardeners," who define themselves as environmentalists with a mission, eagerly went about "reclaiming the streets." Defamed by the security forces as "armed and dangerous", the "gardeners" indeed viciously challenged law and order: by planting trees.
Mocking national and economic totems, the urban guerrillas confronted the capitalist establishment head-first; literally. Armed with spray-paint, the "dangerous guerrillas" coloured in a statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament square before thoughtfully hiding the doughty leader's receding hairline with a green, spray-on mohican. Hand-wringing pundits darkly warned that red is a menacing revolutionary colour, "reminiscent of the cold war."
The guerrillas had more sinister targets too. One was McDonald's, a universal symbol of sprawling globalisation, US-style. Armed with sticks and stones, the activists destroyed the golden arches of a London outlet of McDonald's. The police arrested a few of the dangerous underclass criminals involved. One turned out to be a schoolboy from Eton, the famous private school, then attended by Prince William. Following the melee, the police described the action as "criminal damage and assault". Indeed it was: street-sweepers complained bitterly at the trails of shattered cardboard they had to clear up the following day.
This year's London May Day events will be even more ominous according to the mainstream media and the police. Even Ken Livingstone (also known as "red Ken") London's socialist mayor, has joined the chorus. Accused of encouraging last year's mayhem, Livingstone alienated his leftist constituency this year by politically distancing himself from any show of social dissent come May Day. While proclaiming solidarity with the anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist protest movement, Livingstone firmly called would-be protesters to stay off the streets, and refrain from engaging in "dangerous" and "counterproductive" militant demonstrations.
Ken was right to warn them. The WOMBLES, a newly-founded group named after a popular children's TV muppet show (the acronym is too bizarre to write in full), will wreak havoc on London, the world's financial centre. Dubbed the most hard-core terrorists among the new organisations, the WOMBLES will terrorise riot police with their heavy arsenal of "water pistols, inflatable rubber hammers and a 50ft Uncle Bulgaria," the group warns in their leaflets. Uncle Bulgaria is the popular doyen of the Wombles in the TV show. His favourite pastime is talking to flowers.
"This will not stand," the authorities say. According to their Web site, the London Metropolitan Public Order "strategic objectives" include "disruption, dispersal, isolation and containment" of all protest activities, with a special focus on "the international anti-globalisation theme." Also high on the police "containment" and "disruption" agenda is the Critical Mass Cycle Rides, a potentially revolutionary anti-globalisation bike tour. The riders could foment social unrest as they pedal their way about the city. There is worse. One of the most flagrantly seditious activities involves arts and crafts: activists plan to build a cardboard hotel in the upmarket Mayfair district. Snotty residents presumably fear a fall in house prices should riff-raff neighbours move in.
Some of this is serious. Since the days of the 1999 Seattle demonstration, which was instrumental in closing down a World Trade Organisation meeting, the anti-globalisation movement has gained momentum, becoming truly international and outgrowing narrow regional issues. A spectre haunting and disrupting all major trade organisation meetings, the protest movement has expressed the refusal of the world's poor to submit to the ever-growing exploitation of transnational capital. The strength of their complaint has induced the footsoldiers of capital to muzzle and disenfranchise them by any means. Fuelled by a subservient press, broadcasting misinformation, and brutally suppressed by the security forces, the anti-globalisation movement is being denied the democratic right to protest.
This May Day, the anti-protest rhetoric yielded results. In England many admitted that the media's relentless propaganda campaign, coupled with the police's bizarre threats of "zero tolerance" and hints that "jobs are on the line," convinced them to stay uninvolved. At stake is whether dissent in a democracy is to be criminalised. This has already happened under Tony Blair's Labour government. A draconian Terrorism Act effectively outlaws any form of protest against government policies or corporate malpractice by sweeping dissent under the all-encompassing "terrorist" designation. Authoritarianism, with undertones of yesteryears' fascism, is on the rise. In the words of political analyst Murray Dobbin: "Western democracies are marching towards a place no one should want to go."
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