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Mondays MayDay demonstration in London nearly brought about the collapse of the British way of life. Apparently. In the morning landscape gardeners arrived for a spot of planting at Parliament Square. Bananas and magic mushrooms popped up amongst the pansies and spinach, while large banners declared The Worms Will Turn!, Let London Sprout, and Capitalism is Pants. The cops had helpfully flooded the square the night before, making it easier to roll up the turf and start laying it over the road. Up went a Maypole and the celebrations began. As Big Ben chimed, SchNEWS wondered how long it was since such traffic-free revelry had happened in front of the Houses of Parliament. Further up the road a McDonalds was getting the customary trashing, before riot police moved in, splitting the crowd in two and trapping hundreds of people in Trafalgar Square for hours. As one person from Reclaim The Streets commented, ‘The police made sure that everybody knew they were planning the biggest operation for 30 years. Just to keep some gardeners in fancy dress under control.’ The police and press hyped the event, and eventually they got what they wanted. A few smashed windows, some graffiti, some people throwing beer cans and hey presto! MAYDAY BLOODBATH ORGY – END OF CIVILISATION AS WE KNOW IT – HALF CHEWED BABIES RIPPED APART BY ANARCHISTS FROTHING AT THE MOUTH. SchNEWS reckons the public is ripe to accept that no more anti-capitalist protests will be allowed to happen again. For more thoughts on the day check out www.indymedia.org.uk One pleasing improvement to Parliament Sq on Mayday was the green turf mohican and painted communist hammer and sickle on the statue of that racist old bigot Winston Churchill. He once described communists as “swarms of typhus-bearing vermin” and held similar views about everyone else who wasnt rich, reactionary and British like himself. Justifying the slaughter of indigenous peoples, he wrote “I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia by the fact that a stronger race has come in and taken their place”. It wasnt that different at home – he was against women getting the vote. He believed dole money “should never be enjoyed as a right and tried to withdraw relief from striking miners families in the 20s, sending in the army who killed two of the welsh miners. TIKB, the initials of a Turkish communist group, were written on the statue – a fact perhaps connected with Churchills actions against the peoples of that region. As Foreign Secretary in the 1930s, Churchill ordered the use of mustard gas against Kurdish villages, saying “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using gases against uncivilised tribes”. Not just a racist, but a mass murderer too. Unfortunately, the British governments attitude to the Kurds has not changed much in the last 70 years. Blairs lot are strongly backing the Ilisu Dam project in Turkey (see SchNEWS 244) that will displace 16,000 Kurdish people, flood 52 villages and 15 towns and destroy Hasankeyef, a 3,000 year old city that is the heartland of Kurdish culture. We know the media couldnt give a toss about people in poor countries (as long as they dont come here) but they do seem to have suddenly developed a full-on concern for monuments. So why not ring up one of their hotlines to shop Tony Blair and his sidekick Stephen Byers for their planned destruction of one of the most ancient cities in the world – criminal damage that goes slightly beyond an easily removable lick of paint. * Contributions are wanted for Reflections on MayDay. Send them to [email protected] To find out about Schnews or to subscribe to the free newsletter visit www.schnews.org.uk |