Nothing heroic

The Paul Richards column

It is exactly 21 years to the day since around 200,000 demonstrators marched from Kennington to Trafalgar Square to protest against the introduction of the poll tax. A smaller breakaway group took direct action under the Class War banner, setting fire to expensive cars and buildings. MacDonalds, the Body Shop, Barclays and Stringfellows nightclub were attacked during several hours of disorder. Trafalgar Square burned. Over 330 people were arrested. Smaller disturbances in towns and cities across Britain created the backdrop to the Tories’ disarray over their ‘community charge’, which culminated to the defenestration of Margaret Thatcher in 1990.

Trafalgar Square is no stranger to riots. In 1886, unemployed workers rioted, and threw stones at the windows of the gentlemen’s clubs on Pall Mall, including the bastion of Liberalism, the Reform. On ‘Bloody Sunday’ in 1887, three demonstrators were killed by the police at an unemployed workers’ demonstration, attended by both William Morris and George Bernard Shaw. Morris used the experience to paint a picture of the revolution in News from Nowhere which leads to the socialist utopia.

This recent, and not so recent, history reminds us that most large-scale demonstrations inevitably contain smaller elements intent on direct action, be it setting fire to cars, paintballing the Ritz, or occupying Fortnum and Mason. I made the point in Progress the day before the March for the Alternative that:

‘There’s the inevitable breakaway marches, heading in the direction of Oxford Street, the City of London, or any other bastion of capitalism, where a dangerous cocktail of stupid, idealistic violence-junkies will meet a no-nonsense response from the Met.

That leads…complaints about the media coverage, when a few dozen anarchists, smashing stuff up, will dominate the TV pictures, while the thousands of nurses, teachers and families with children marching along the official route are ignored.’

It’s a constant thorn in the side of those organising such events, to see their months of planning upstaged by a few men in black armed with spray-paint and smoke-bombs. On the poll tax demonstration 21 years ago, organised by the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation (ABAPTF), the riot was pursued by Class War, and other, anarchist groups along with the Socialist Workers Party. The organisers condemned the violence. Students of the British far-left will immediately recall that the ABAPFT was a front for Militant Tendency, which put up its front-man Tommy Sheridan to denounce the rioters. Labour’s deputy leader Roy Hattersley called for mass arrests of the ring-leaders, and ‘exemplary sentences’ for those convicted.

The poll tax campaign was a difficult one for the Labour leadership at the time. The ‘can’t pay, won’t pay’ tactic, designed to clog up the courts and prisons with non-payers, was not supported by Neil Kinnock and the shadow cabinet. Partly this was because it was a classic ‘transitional demand’ designed by Militant, which Kinnock had just spent five years expelling from the party. But mostly it was because of the irresponsibility of a position which encouraged people to break the law, and then was unable to offer them a shred of support once they’d been arrested, sentenced and imprisoned. Kinnock’s rejection of ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay’ seemed to me then and now, to be most decent position to adopt, and Neil Kinnock is nothing if not a decent man.

I was reminded of the poll tax campaign on Saturday when UKUncut pushed its young troops in the direction of Fortnum and Mason. I was standing outside at the time. I know UKUncut is a loose affiliation, but it has leaders, decision-makers, and a structure of authority. Someone decided to encourage those young people through the doors of Fortnums. They knew there would be arrests, and charges brought.

The UKUncut website message to the people arrested afterwards says:

“You might be feeling pretty exhausted right now. Or worried. Or angry. Whatever you’re feeling, it’s important to know you’re not alone in it. We acted as a group inside the store and we are still a group now. And an amazing group at that: a group that stood up (or sat down!) for what we know is right. A group that made decisions together, who stayed together and who left together.”

The problem is that when one of those young people applies for a job in a decade’s time, and is turned down because of a criminal conviction for aggravated trespass, the posh kids behind UKUncut will be nowhere to be seen. Laurie Penny will probably be writing novels and presenting Front Row. I feel desperately sorry for those young people who will be up in court in coming weeks, and their poor parents. Their lives will have been irreparably damaged. And I feel nothing but contempt for the cowards who egged them on, glamorised their activities, offered fake solidarity, then ran a mile when the trouble started.

There’s nothing heroic about pushing teenagers studying their GCSEs into the firing line, then sheltering behind the anonymity of the internet.