05.05.2010

Agitprop anarchism

Nick Rogers witnesses mock executions and maypole dancing

Several hundred metres away from the May Day rally in Trafalgar Square a series of agitprop events were being staged by a group called Election Meltdown in Parliament Square.

In a markedly different atmosphere several hundred mostly young people sat on the grass enjoying the mid-afternoon sun. The road between the green and the Houses of Parliament became a temporary pedestrianised zone. A couple of young men stripped naked up in a tree but in a display of belated modesty held their clothing tightly in front of them.

Despite promises in Socialist Worker, very few members of the SWP had made their way down Whitehall. I spotted only one newspaper seller from that organisation.

Meanwhile, a gallows was erected and, with Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group acting as master of ceremonies, effigies of the leaders of the three political parties and Nick Griffin were ‘executed’ and thrown to the ‘mob’. The four horsemen of the apocalypse (black, red, green and silver) stood to one side. They had served their purpose by dragging the politicians either along with the route of the main TUC march (in the case of the black horseman and Nick Griffin) or from the headquarters of the political parties.

Having dispatched the leading representatives of the political class, it was time to raise a maypole and dance around it, while a model of a dragon wove in and out of the dancers.

A ‘people’s assembly’ was then convened and Chris Knight, again in the leading role, read out a series of proclamations on behalf of the revolutionary ‘Labour government’: the abolition of all banks (with a people’s bank in their place), borders, private property, war and the 24-hour clock (to be replaced by ‘slow time’ based on the lunar rhythm). Unfortunately, a poor sound system and a high-volume police helicopter overhead conspired to limit the numbers of those who could hear what was happening to the few dozen closest to the proceedings.

Later a half-hearted confrontation developed, as police tried to clear the blocked road - their principal tactic was to direct traffic into the crowd. The police soon backed down and had to ask the trapped vehicles to turn around. Twenty minutes later, as some of the demonstrators prepared to camp out overnight, a heavy downpour succeeded in clearing the street anyway.

The overwhelming mood in Parliament Square was anarchist. The only concrete political action advocated was a boycott of the election. One handout invited readers to burn their ballot papers and provided a match to get them started. I had no difficulty distributing a leaflet promoting a communist forum on ‘Is this what democracy looks like?’ The image of celebratory and besuited pigs in front of Big Ben appealed to the general anti-politician attitude.

A couple of members of the Election Meltdown team were less complimentary about the Weekly Worker cover. Indeed, the newsletter Chris and his supporters had distributed (‘The militia: official organ of the armed wing of the Labour Party’) purportedly carried May Day greetings from the CPGB with the tag, “Putting theory before practice”, so the criticism is not restricted to the most recent issue of the Weekly Worker.

The headline in question announced, “Transform voting: from an instrument of deception into an instrument of emancipation”. Apparently, this was not “agitational” enough. Comrade Knight thought the cover tricky to “decipher”, expressive of “parliamentary cretinism” and believed Lenin would have given it the thumbs-down.

I countered that campaigning for democracy was central to the task of communists. Furthermore, the role of the Weekly Worker is not to provide easy or trite answers to the activist left, but to encourage the thinking that is essential if we are to move from demonstrations and agitprop to challenging for political power.

For me, the event served as a pleasant and relaxing end to a day of marching and newspaper selling. The hard political questions facing the working class remain to be answered.