BAD IDEA At The Anti-Banker Protests

The anger at the recession has been brewing for months now, but now there’s some actual flesh-and-blood people to direct cathartic venom towards (i.e. Goodwin and “the bankers”), everyone took to the streets today to voice their disapproval at how the financial crisis has been handled. And at the war. And climate change. But sort of mainly the crisis. And we were there to see what went on.

The protests form a four-pronged descent upon the Bank of England, with one themed around climate change, one against the war(s), one against land enclosures, and one against “financial crimes” – we naturally chose to follow the latter. It starts at London Bridge and is led by Chris “turn the Bank of England into a brothel” Knight, looking a bit like that Nazi from Indiana Jones who gets his hand burned. It’s all a bit weak to begin with, but once a brass band complete with sousaphone start parping, the crowd snowballs as it makes its way across the bridge.

There’s a papier mache Fred Goodwin effigy with a photocopied face stretched around in an eerie rictus; a mannequin with “Eat The Bankers” across it (what happened to “Burn The Bankers”?); and placards with various legends including ”make love not leverage” and ”coked up and cooking the books”. Traffic grinds to a halt, and one taxi held up by the parade contains a man in a suit. The photographers quickly gather round to capture the heavy symbolism, but the crowd don’t really care – there’s no setting it on fire or even mild intimidation. High up above Monument a crowd of businesspeople look down on the underlings from their high castle, hands sassily on hips. “I’m not invisible any more”, gushes one plummy student. “Our generation is doing something”.

As we meander towards the Bank of England, the crowd’s got pretty big, and very vocal – the cheers that flow through the throng get cacophonous as we reach the Bank, where the four horses converge on the steps, creating a large and amorphous whole. Flares get popped by the anti-war end, prompting some mild police interference and lots of booing. The band plays on, for a fashion. Some guys get a megaphone out, but it’s too quiet and all we hear is some guff about “localised economies”. There seem to be more photographers than protestors, arguably augmenting the power of the protest by plastering it across the world’s media, but the feeling while you’re actually there is of a sterile, mediatised photo-op. We can’t get to the RBS branch that’s getting looted. We get bored and go for lunch.

It’s certainly not easy to have a march about the financial crisis. The opacity and intricacy of the system benefits it, as there’s nothing to rally around and fight against; there’s no banners urging a more stringent FSA. Sure, there’s the anti-banker rhetoric (though would the average anarchist be able to say what a “banker” even does?), but they’re small fry compared with the systemic errors perpetuated by an entire industry over years that have led us here. So the protests inevitably miss the mark, quite apart from the fact that anarchists and anti-capitalists don’t have any solutions of their own for sustainable wealth creation.

But it’s badly organised too. The four horsemen look great, but doom the march to failure – as they converge, the protest dissolves into a cacophony of different causes. “One currency, one country, one world” reads one banner; “No to world government” reads another. “Jacqui Smith: Zionist puppet” sits next to anti-nuclear slogans. ”People united will never be defeated” goes one chant – but united against what? The cheering must certainly be cathartic, but crucially it’s wordless.

Getting out of this ideological black hole proves tricky. A police wall stops us, so I explain I’ve got some work to do. ”Er…search his bags” is the kneejerk response; I blag my way out with a notebook and press credentials. But if I had something untoward on me, wouldn’t they have wanted me to take it out of the protest?

With their modular surveillance cameras, riot gear and wonky logic, the police make it harder on themselves than it should be. If they just rocked up in great numbers, and stayed immobile but allowed people out, the echo chamber they surrounded would soon have starved itself of oxygen; no-one really seemed to know what to do once they arrived at the Bank. As it was, our editor Dan was stuck in there for hours as the mood turned ugly and the police dogs came out. He might still be there for all we know. Good luck buddy!

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | April 1, 2009 4:59PM |