Home U.K. Anti Nazi
London 1/5/00 - After fully 3 hours of peaceful protest, when anti-capitalist demonstrators pulled up flagstones and planted flowers in London's business centre, the sudden sacking of a McDonalds restaurant by 20 vandals began a violent chain of events that marred an otherwise thoughtful day of protest. It is intresting but not that surprising that McDonalds, the essential symbol of global capitalism to the young of today, was the first target.
The attack lead to more vandalism during which the statue of British wartime prime minister Winston Churchill was defaced and the Cenotaph, monument to Britains war dead, was attacked. Again, Churchill, now considered a notorious rascist and bigot and one of the heroes of the British National Party, could be considered a valid target for today's dispossed. However, i don't think anything excuses the damage done to the cenotaph and this serves only to bipolarize and alienate the older generation from perfectly ethical arguments.
A spokesperson for one of the leading organisations "Reclaim the Streets" replied: "The stupidity of sending millions of men to their deaths in the trench es, dwarves the significance of any slogan on a statue". Harsh.
Despite the criticism they have received, by all accounts the police response was even-handed, unlike the unbelievably aggressive response taken by police in Seattle a few weeks earlie r, and by Swiss police, who tear-gassed protesters after windows were broken in Zurich. Both countries supposedly "democratic states"
May Day unfortunately saw the rallying of an estimated 3000 neo-nazis around Germany, with a Fascist rally of 1200 in Berlin alone. Fascists from France's Far-right National Front marched to the Paris Opera House behind a woman dressed as Joan of Arc. Joan D'Arc has been adopted as a figurehead for the French Nazi's anti-immigration stance. Once again we witness the pollution of history by Nazi ideology.
Marches in Glasgow and Edinburgh passed off with little trouble, bless 'em.