[thechat] Bush visit update

[John Handelaar]

% -----Original Message-----
% From: thechat-admin at lists.evolt.org
% [mailto:thechat-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Erika Meyer
% Sent: 23 August 2002 21:48
% To: thechat at lists.evolt.org
% Subject: [thechat] Bush visit update
%
% Something changed, and I think it was the Seattle WTO protests that
% changed it.  There were lots of demonstrations in the 80s,
% anti-nuclear demonstrations.  It wasn't like this.
%
% Erika

 From where I'm standing (London), the reason's fairly
straightforward.  We (anti-nuclear demos from 82 onwards)
weren't so dumb as to arrange for thousands of people
to come into the City, *and then make a point of refusing
to deal with the police*.

God, I spent weeks of my life over the years sitting in
an office at West End Central or Cannon Row nick, having
cups of tea and negotiating routes, numbers of stewards
and police.  They even helped us keep the Trots away
from the front section of the marches.  Then on the day
one of them was with our comms centre and vice versa.

The point of all this was to make absolutely drop-dead
certain that neither they nor us would ever be in a
position where we didn't know what each other were doing.
It worked:  in that whole time (including one bizarre
day in 1986 when 475,000 people turned up), we never had
anything more than the occasional Socialist Worker
getting arrested for disorderly conduct.  [They never
usually got charged, either.]

If you leave the whole show to a bunch of coppers who
don't know what the hell is going on, they'll assume the
demonstrators are hostile (a safety procedure used by
pretty much every police force here), and all bloody
hell breaks loose.   I'd never take a child anywhere
near one of *those*.

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John Handelaar

T +44 20 8933 1494       M +44 7930 681789
F +44 870 169 7657   E john at userfrenzy.com
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