G8 Report

Edinburgh’s been abuzz for months with plans around the G8, and it’s all come to a climax this week. Here are some bits and pieces from my experience….

Week of 26th June – 2nd July: Setting up Hori-zone, the ecovillage encampment near Stirling. I helped build some greywater systems in kitchen areas.

Wednesday 29th June: Royal Scottish Country Dance Society held a press conference to announce they’d be trying to break the world record for largest organized dance – the eightsome reel, now the G8-some. Going round in circles until we were dizzy, we demonstrated the dance several times for the cameras…. And on Saturday when they made the record attempt, 5000 people joined in. Not sure if they broke the record, but it was a nice example people working together in groups of eight to do something positive.

Saturday 2nd July: Make Poverty History & Live 8. The Meadows park in Edinburgh was full of people dressed in white (ironic, eh?) waiting for their turn to join the march that looped around the city. Estimates range from 100,000 – 500,000. I stood in the queue for two hours before going to listen to the live music. When the Live 8 concerts began, they stopped the music on the stages so everyone could watch giant TV screens, which was incredibly surreal. Several scattered groups kept playing, though, including the Beltane Fire Society processional drummers, the Infernal Noise Brigade, and several other samba bands. The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) promoted the festival mood, and aside from some hippies and some newspaper-peddling Socialists, it was mostly families and fashionable young people (I later learned that the anti-war coalition feeder march was not allowed to join the main crowd, and an anarchist bloc was also turned away). The whole event was very commercialized, with dozens of stands selling chips, merchandise, and coca-cola. Most people seemed to miss the connection between our consumption and other people’s poverty, and I got the general sense that many thought they were “doing their bit.” The newspapers harped on about the “good protesters” with side images of the black bloc folks who were barred from attending, captions reading “some people arrived just to cause trouble.”

Sunday 3rd July: Alternative Summits. We were spoiled for choice with dozens of workshops, summits, and discussions to go to, on everything from climate change to militarism to corporate misconduct. I went to one of the closing panels and heard David Rovics play a few songs. Also Carlo Giulliani’s mother was speaking – she’s incredibly humble and clear in her message, it was an inspiration to hear her, even in translation.

Monday 4th July: Blockade of Faslane Naval Base (subs with nuclear warheads) north of Glasgow and Carnival for Full Enjoyment (anti-capitalist street carnival) in Edinburgh. The former was very effective with minimal drama, while the latter was targeted by police. Protesters were penned in and provoked, then attacked by riot police. The newspapers showed images of the dozen people who struck back, but didn’t show the hundreds peacefully blockading Faslane. Trying to drive a wedge between “good protesters” and “bad anarchists.”

Tuesday 5th July: Demonstration at Dungavel Detention Centre (refugee solidarity). Wasn’t there, didn’t hear much about it.

Wednesday 6th July: various blockades & March at Gleneagles. Early in the morning, people effectively blockaded roads leading to Gleneagles and several groups were attacked by the police. The ecovillage was surrounded by riot cops at 3:30 AM and people were only allowed to leave in twos and threes after full searches. In Stirling, some windows were smashed by people who had been provoked by the police, and this “violence” was used as an excuse to “cancel” the peaceful march in Gleneagles (echoes of an authoritarian schoolteacher punishing the whole class for the misbehavior of one student, again, efforts to divide and control).

While people were gathering to get busses to Gleneagles from Edinburgh, police blocked off the road with vans and surrounded the busses. I counted about fifty cops around our bus, and they held us on the busses for about half an hour before coming onboard to tell us the march had been cancelled. They said we were free to go, but that we were doing so at our own risk. In other words, it was our own fault if we got our heads beat in. I was surprised how aggressive the folks on my own bus became, shouting and complaining, after only half an hour’s confinement. Fear is a powerful weapon.

Eventually we managed to get out of the city, but several thousand people were prevented from attending the march. They held an impromptu rally in Edinburgh, which was attacked by the cops. On the other hand, folks trying to get to Gleneagles (usually an hour away) were stuck on our three double-decker city busses for over four hours, driving around the Scottish countryside and not being allowed to stop anywhere (our bus was particularly torturous, with an intensely annoying woman on board who insisted on singing off-key with terrible rhythm the entire way). By the time we got into Auchterarder, the march was back on, and we joined the crowd snaking through the streets towards Gleneagles. The route was lined by cops who seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. Many were taking photos and video.

However, there were several samba bands, as well as a mobile bicycle-powered sound system playing techno music, so the mood was festive. The rebel clowns were lightening things up, tickling the cops’ helmets with feather dusters, singing silly songs, dancing and promoting general merriment. Where cops were protecting big houses, clowns stood between them and adopted exaggerated stern poses. The cops seemed to appreciate the absurdity of the situation, often playing along with the clowns a bit.

As we got closer to Gleneagles, a bottleneck began to form. The road got narrower and turned sharply to the right, but people were stopping where they thought they were closest to the hotel. Others continued to pour in, and we at the front started to get crushed. My friends and I managed to squeeze my way out, and eventually people figured out that they could get even *closer* to the hotel by going over a little farmer’s fence and into a nearby field. The police didn’t stop them, and soon there were about 500 people who had broken away from the main march to stand along the next perimeter fence. A few dozen managed to break through the flimsy fence, move past police on horseback, and start making their way towards the next fence. We stood and watched for awhile, but when the riot cops showed up, we started heading back to the park for the rally. From what I heard later, they ushered the first half of the march into the park, and cut off the second half to make them turn back, isolating the people in the field. Then they brought in several hundred riot cops on a Chinook helicopter (we saw it circle ominously four or five times before landing), surrounded the people in the field, and attacked them. About a hundred were arrested, and the rest allowed to go to the rally.

After many miscommunications about the location of our bus, we finally made it back to Edinburgh in one piece. It was sad but not surprising to see the TV news reports of “violent protests” when 99% of the demonstrators were completely peaceful, and the others were only reacting to police provocation. More divide and conquer tactics, but it was good to be part of something historical.