London Mayday Report

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday May 02, 2002 15:56 by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

A report on parts of the sprawling and incoherent but enjoyable Mayday events in London.

After reading Andrew's report on Dublin Mayday, I thought I'd give a quick report on bits of the London Mayday activities. I say "bits" because there were too many things going on over too wide an area for anyone to have seen the whole thing.

The first event I attended was an early morning
protest at the headquarters of BAe organised by International Socialist Resistance, the English equivalent of Socialist Youth. The protest had about 35 people at it including groups from ISR and the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.

BAe, formerly British Aerospace, are one of the world's largest arms dealers. The protest was lively and angry, with homemade placards pointing out the rise in BAe share prices since the war on Afghanistan began. The chanting was loud and the police presence was heavy.

After the protest finished a group of us went on to some of the rest of the Mayday in Mayfair events while the rest of the protesters made their way towards Clerkenwell Green for the trade union march.

The first thing we came across was the large (300 plus cyclists) Critical Mass bike ride still slowly trundling its way across the city. It had been going since before 8 am and was being followed by an enormous line of police. The only benefit of the last part was that any crazed motorists would have had a hard time getting to the cyclists.

We hung around in Hyde Park for a while, chatting with other protestors before heading towards another protest, this time at the American embassy. After that we wandered around Mayday joining some of the various mini-protests and generally enjoying ourselves.

At about 2:30 we arrived at Trafalger Square, where the rally at the end of the Trade Union march had begun. There were a little under 10,000 there listening to a predictable if slightly more left wing than usual series of speeches and swapping leaflets.

Some notable points about the march were the smaller than usual presence of emigre Turkish and Kurdish Communists and the larger than usual number of young people. After the rally ended I went for a quick wander back around Mayfair before heading off home.

Later that evening, the Police cornered about 1000 protestors at a street party in Soho and held them in place for hours.

Other events I didn't see included a mass game of football in Hyde Park and a flying protest at a number of fur shops.

Some reflections on the days events:

The deliberately disorganised nature of the Mayday in Mayfair events had its good points and bad points.

The main point in its favour was that it prevented the police from imprisoning the protestors at a meeting point again, at least until the evening. The downside was its incredible elitism.

The sheer number of people, particularly those who had travelled from outside London who spent much of the day not having a clue what was going on was amazing. I was asked if I knew where one event or another was going on by dozens of people throughout the day.

An odd side issue was that the entire organised left, with the exceptions of some anarchist groups, the Socialist Party and ISR, ignored the Mayfair events entirely. It was impossible to count the number of protesters in Mayfair but it at least equalled the number on the Trade Union march.

The march itself was big enough to be respectable and was a lot livelier than in previous years but was much smaller than hoped for. The trade unions in particular failed to mobilise properly.