blogorama

hello.

this is a blog about stuff that went on for me leading up to and during summer 2005. it culminates in me getting nicked at an action against the g8 in scotland in july.

it also takes in glastonbury festival and other uk underground diary dates/issues/stuff. start at the beginning and work your way back otherwise it won’t make sense. do this by clicking on the top line of the “archives” section and scroll down to the bottom.

if yr looking for hardcore political rants, forget it, (ok, maybe there are one or two but NOT THAT MANY!). this is a personal blog and i can’t be bothered to fill u in on why the g8 is a “bad thing.” click on the links to indymedia, schnews or cardiff anarchists if u want the cold facts. or check out the book arguments against the g8 edited by gil hubbard and david miller. if u can’t be fussed finding out about this and related social ills, then u are ignorant and foolish!

wicked deeds are being done in yr name! if u don’t stand up 4 something, u’ll fall for anything!

the opinions in this blog, like those above, are exactly that: my opinions. as such they are no more important than anyone else’s.

i should also point out that none of this is true. it’s all insidious propaganda by a screwed up politico who has a chip on his shoulder about the world and makes things up about himself to feel better.

best thing is, get out there and see for yourself. don’t believe the hype!

update 12/4/06

it’s been a while and lots has happened. a last post is in order!

my first case for breach of bail was up in edinburgh at the end of october 2005. bill, the guy i’d been nicked with, had been up the day before and the procurator fiscal had told him he needed to come back the following week.

when i arrived in court, my solicitor suggested that i write an account of what happened at my arrest. i did so, the procurator fiscal looked at it and the case was deserted.

this meant that it had been dropped, and although technically it could be picked up again at a later date, this was unlikely.

talk about random justice. bill had to go back and i got let off, all on the whim of a solicitor and the procurator fiscal. bunch of tossers.

i’m not sure what happened to bill’s case as he didn’t keep in touch.

next up…. the case for breach of the peace at edinburgh. the first time i went up for my pre-trial review in novemebr 2005, i hooked up with the rogues’ gallery of people i had been nicked with(!). we were like the naughty kids at school, goofing around in the huge courtroom as people’s charges were read out.

all of us had to come back a second time for the actual trial. in the end i got let off because the coppers who were supposed to give evidence never turned up. some others were in the same boat but they had to return the next week. total randomness again.

my solicitor told me that most of the cases would have been dropped but the press had been really angry about it, so the cases had gone ahead. i said, in other words, this is a show trial. he just laughed.

i also asked if i could sue for wrongful arrest under the european convention of human rights. he said this is scotland and up here the convention is “pish,” (his exact word).

on the positive side, many of us in the rogues gallery have become firm friends. josie, who i got nicked with, eventually relocated here to cardiff. i’ve spent time with edda and troy, the two autralians both here and in london. and of course, there’s debi, singer from drunk granny…. i ended up doing a benefit gig with her last month.

on the negative side, i wasted a lot of money toing a froing and missed days off work.

they don’t want to make this easy, this protesting lark. we managed to hold a benefit gig for people who couldn’t afford to spend money on transport, but i paid my fares myself.

the next time i put myself in this position i intend to find out a lot more about the legal side of things first. i’ll make sure i think through the possibilities of any direct action i take and their consequences. and also, making the time and space to follow through any legal action necessary is important. that has been really difficult in this case because of other concerns.

val, who i travelled to scotland with, has been studying an MA in law precisely for these reasons. recently, she was up for assaulting a copper at a demo. she sacked her lawyer during the trial and defended herself instead, and she ended up with an acquittal. howzat!

it is important not to cave into yr fear. then they’ve got u.

other developments….an ex-reuters journalists, patrick chalmers, got in touch with me shortly after my trial. he’s writing a book about democracy and globalisation, and he interviewed me about the g8 protests and my role in them. part of that interview now makes up the opening lines of the first chapter of his draft!

i’ve always been a showboating little prat.

finally bloke, flannel bassist and one of my closest friends and co-conspirators, died at the end of october 2005 in a tragic accident in france, where he’d moved with his family. the gigs i talked about in this blog were the last we ever did together. we still had so much passion and energy for the music we made together, even then.

after our last gig i wrote here: “something about the past seems resolved.” i wasn’t too sure what i was getting at, but for bloke’s sake and for all our sakes i’m glad i felt that way.

aftermath

it’s hard to describe the next few weeks. inside i am angry, frustrated and confused and yet outside life goes on as normal. it is hard to relate to people who have not been through the same experience. there seems to be a yawning chasm between me and the vast mass of humanity.

little things freak me out. like going away to a festival when someone has a blim and being convinced i am going to be searched and locked up. going abroad and feeling that i will be whisked away at security at the airport, interrogated and locked up. shuddering whenever i see a copper. completely irrational, but that is what happens in my head. drinking lots to get away from it all.

and the paranoia! sometimes i feel like the biggest, baddest activist in the universe and mi6 and the CIA are tuning into my every utterance.

other times i feel like a cretinous, negligable, useless tosser. oh well!

on the positive side, getting together with people who understand really helps. i have had big chats with people who were arrested at the g8 about what happened and how it has affected them. there’s been lots of support. we have talked very seriously about the politics that underlie what we do, sometimes for the first time. and finding out that it is useful to act big and hard sometimes, but it is also equally useful to admit to feeling scared and helpless as well.

i’ve also become more aware of the legal system and got a lot more tooled up on the law. like i said, i couldn’t believe how ignorant i was before i went to scotland.

the head games continue. at the moment, i am being told that i won’t get legal aid. so a bunch of gangsters meet up and make policies that condemn millions of people to their deaths, i end up in the dock and i have to pay money for the privilege.

in the end, it’s about standing up for yourself and for the things you believe in and fighting your corner.

and realising that despite it all, we’re supposed to be living in a democratic, wealthy “first world” country, and thinking about those at the sharp end of the system in other countries who are going through so much fucking worse.

that’s the point.

friday 8th july

after another night in the can, i am back in the sherriff’s court, this time in edinburgh.

over the way from me are cells containing tracksuited kids, not much older than school age. they have been nicked for various offences, from stoving cars into bus stops to armed robbery. none of them look that scarey, they’re just kids.

“hey pal, u got a smoke?” one of them asks

a guy i am in the cell with throws a lit one over and they chase it around the floor like a bunch of hungry wolves.

“you been done for the g8 stuff?” asks one.

as it happens, the three other blokes in my cell are all politicos. there’s an english guy who was arrested at edinburgh station at the same time as me, (and for the same reason), a greek anarchist who lives in london and a scottish guy called donny who works for the scottish socialist party

“aye,” donny says. “did you see any of the demos?”

“aye!” shout all the kids. they say that some of them were at the confrontation on tuesday in the centre of edinburgh. they couldn’t believe that people were standing up the the coppers in that way. “felt like getting stuck in myself!” one of them says.

we are all quite concerned in our cell because we could be held on remand till our trial dates. mine are in october and november and it’s only july. i am thinking, this is crazy, i have been peacefully protesting and if that happens, i’ll lose my job, my house the whole lot.

it’s the same for everyone else. again, we try to laugh and chat, and even have a juggling competition with used chip wrappers, but a lot of the time we’re spacing out in our own heads.

me and the english guy are moved to some cells nearer the court. one of the kids is moved with us. he’s sixteen and he was in a car that his mate stoved into a bus stop. “he’ll go down,” says the kid, ” but that’s cool, jail’s his second home. i’ll be ok, it’s my first offence.”

the english guy teaches him how to juggle. the lad seems impressed about us getting nicked for standing up for what we believe in. it turns out he left school and got some qualifications but hasn’t bothered to pick his certificates up. we try and persuade him to do it and go back to school.

eventually, after another quick session in front of the beak, we are told we are free to go. according to our lawyer, aamer anwar, (the man who took a scottish force to task and found them guilty of insitutional racism!!!), the coppers have been acting like “arseholes” by imposing impossible bail conditions on people.

so much so that there are apparently there is a big van full of metropolitan police waiting to nick us again for breaching bail, despite the fact that the conditions have changed to allow us to get out of scotland. he tells us he has arranged for us to be met by some people outside the court who will drive us wherever we need to go and make sure the police don’t nick us.

the overall effect of all this is that i now begin to feel what a police state might be like. i am reminded of a traveller friend of mine, bernie. she told me that during the 80s she used to park up with here mates in lay-bys right off the beaten track, and riot vans would turn up, coppers with no markings or numbers on would get out and beat them up and trash their vans.

they can do it if they really want.

outside the court, we are met by a group of people from the scottish socialist party, including an MSP, rosie kane. she has been suspended from the parliament along with the rest of the MSPs from her party for staging a protest in the parliament building against george bush.

it is good to see some people outside the can who know the score!

i am given a lift to the airport by one guy and he doesn’t leave my side till i am through into the departure lounge. nice one, geez!

all the way to the airport, i duck when i see cop vans or roadblocks. i think i am going a bit crazy. so much so that in departures i get a curry meal deal at the wetherspoons pub even though it costs about seven quid.

thursday 7th july

wanna know how messed up yr head can get after getting nicked at a protest?

there we are in the cell, me, the polish guy and the israeli guy, ready to be packed off in a van to go to court. we sit there and there is this vibe of what are we going to talk about?

certainly not politics. we’ve had a bloody skinful of that.

so what else can possibly unite four blokes from completely different cultures sitting in a police cell awaiting judgement? and then it happens. we start singing pink floyd songs. one after the other, all the old classics from the wall. mother, comfortably numb etc etc….

that’s it. i know now for sure i have lost it. and yet…..

all of us in the holding cells are being herded off to have a wash and scrub to make us presentable for court. ha fucking ha. most of us are wearing clothes we were wearing for days on end at the eco-village in stirling, and consequently we all stink like a savory collection of bogs.

we are given disposable soaps and toothbrushes which we have to chuck into a big black bin liner when we finish.

that’s it, more animal treatment for us, please. all part of the service.

then we are herded out to several group four security vans. they each have individual cells for us to sit in. it is a hot, sunny day and this is a good thing to see under the circumstances.

as we drive off to stirling sherriff’s court, one of the group four security men in my van, a young guy, puts on the radio and starts smoking and chatting to the driver. they seem to be laughing about something.

“that’s a messge to the leaders of the seven richest nations on earth – up yz!” he says in a thick scottish accent.

and then as we head through the centre of stirling in the traffic, i hear on the radio exactly what they are talking about. reports are coming through from london about several possible suicide bomb attacks there.

my head is going something like this:

oh my god my mum and my brother and his girlfriend and my girlfriend are all in london please god let them be safe…….

i have no way of knowing. i have no way of contacting them. this is a fucking nightmare. then what happens?

that feeling takes over that u hear so often about from people in a crisis. it’s like, this is so bad, and it may get better or it may get worse but either way some strength inside you comes out and u tell yourself u will get through it and it will be ok and u submit to whatever is happening.

and that’s it. i’m fine. i don’t think about anything except the immediate moment.

at the court, the group four people are hilarious. they are cracking on as they put us in the cells and i crack on with them.

“how come yr not miserable bastards like those coppers?” i ask.

“oh, it’s the uniform, makes u a bit funny.” one of them says laughing.

there are a bunch of us in a cell at the court, waiting to find out what the hell is going on. the nutty french guy is there from the night before at falkirk, as is the austrailian, who turns out to know the girls i was nicked with, and a few others.

after what seems ages, with different protesters coming in and out the cell, i am up before the beak solicitors babble in legalese, suited and booted, while i sit there in my minging clothes.

finally i free to go. it is about one o’clock in the afternoon. i am told to leave stirling and get back to cardiff to report to the police station there at midday the next day. only thing is, i can’t go via glasgow or edinburgh.

so how the hell am i supposed to do that?

i ask a copper, can i go via edinburgh cos otherwise i won’t get back in time. he says that will be fine. then i ring my family and friends in london and see if they’re ok.

everyone’s fine, thank god.

i make a short journey with an australian girl to the cop shop because we both found out our cameras were nicked by the police. so it’s a good job mine didn’t work then!!!! (see blog entry ‘photos and destiny’). we bump into the english girl from the queer block who we i was nicked with. she’s there for the same reason, i.e. camera stolen by cops. she gets invited in a room and suddenly we find out she has been nicked again.

“she’s breaking her bail conditions by being here, and so are we,” the australian girl says.

headfuck. i head off to stirling train station and book a flight out of edinburgh. i just want to get outta this nuthouse!

i ring some mates at the eco village. the cops have surrounded it and things are getting heavy. i tell them i’ll see them in cardiff. and yet somewhere inside i have the feeling this aint over yet.

at edinburgh station, i have to change trains. i get out and there are a load of coppers searching everyone who looks like they’ve been living in an eco village for days. and i mean everyone.

so i do something really stupid. i go up to one of them and hand him my passport and bail conditions and explain to him that i have a ticket out of the city. the cop says, ok, and talks to his boss.

his boss is a big, fat fuck of an englishman. big mason. big in the community. big rotary club tosser.

“you have blatantly breached your bail conditions,” he says. “you’re nicked.”

eh?

i start to argue the toss with him and his scottish side kick. the scottish side kick is a mean bastard, and he accuses me of lying and being a violent idiot.

at this point, i smack him in the face and pull out his revolver. i shoot him at point blank range in the head before anyone knows what’s going on. blood and brains (shock!) splattered all over the station concourse. then i turn on the other five or six coppers and blow their heads off one by one, singing a full three choruses of the harry roberts song. in fact, i’ve beaten harry roberts’ record of killing cops! i walk on down the platform, with all the coppers dead in pools of blood, the general public screaming and running in all directions and i get to the ticket barrier before anyone can re-arrest me.

actually, that last bit only happens when i replay these events in my head.

in actual fact, i get arrested, walked down the station concourse, handcuffed and in full view of the public, and bundled into a van. a zen-like calm comes over me as i realise things have just got a whole lot worse.

wed 6 july: nicked!!!!

“so what were u doing in the road?”

the riot cop seems polite, like he is wanting to make conversation. i am about a hundred yards down from the field i was nicked in. it is only about 10 am and it is still grey and cold.

“i’m not sure i want to answer that question,” i say.

“makes no difference to me,” he says. “i’m off duty after this.”

by “this,” he means the whole stupid nonsense his superiors have decide to put us through. i am standing in line with about fifteen protestors, each of us flanked by a riot cop on one side and a regular cop on the other. we are all being taken to a van, photographed, charged and locked up in meatwagons one at a time. everybody, coppers and protestors alike, is tired, hungry and pissed off.

the riot cop i’m talking to seems like a laugh, but the one in front of me is just a silly prick. he is talking to the protestor next to him, but the protester is giving nothing away. “no need to be like that, ” says the cop. “i’m just trying to make coversation.”

he isn’t. he is being a snooping, objectionable little prick. so i decide to have some fun.

“so what’s the name of that castle behind us?” i say.

“erm, not sure, ” says the copper up ahead.

“any idea?” i ask the coppers near me.

“ermm…i think it’s glamis castle,” one of them replies.

“oh, really? i say, “you get to see all the sites doing this protesting lark.”

“i’m sure you’ll see some sites today, son” the copper in front says narrowing his eyes.

“yes, i’m sure i will!” i say, smiling.

tosser.

after the joys of being charged and photographed flanked by the two coppers, i am slung in the back of the van. inside are two women from the queer block, one english and one finnish, and a young, disingenuous-looking israeli guy. what a motely crew of dangerous, international terrorists. hope they shoot us all.

i say the back of the van, but in reality it is a small cupboard in the back of a van. it is cramped and airless inside, despite a vent up above us. we all have been handcuffed behind our backs with the kind of cuffs that get tighter and tighter the more u struggle. so even if u feel uncomfortable and shift your hands about, the problem gets worse. the cuffs are lacerating my hands and they are starting to feel numb.

after a while we are taken to what turns out to be stirling police station. they park us round the back and keep us there for what seems an age.

inside, we all try to have a laugh but deep down we’re all scared and exhausted. the finnish girl seems worst, but the atmosphere is very supportive. none of us can figure why they are not taking us inside.

there is some laughter as we all have to ask each other if it is ok to shift around because it is so cramped. the english girl says “ok, i think all personal space issues can go out the window under the circumstances,” and we all crack up. but between the laughter, we all space out in our own little worlds. after a while, there is more space than laughter. like i say, we are tired. and things are getting a bit scarey.

and why the hell are they keeping us in the van?

we can hear the coppers outside talking and laughing. we all agree this is ridiculous. i explain to everyone in the van that i have asthma and that maybe i should get them to open the door so i can use my inhaler. we all agree that would be a good course of action.

so i bash my head against the door to attract their attention. nothing happens. i do it again and again but to no avail.

holy shit, this is getting serious.

so we talk again. i ask the israeli guy about what happens when u get nicked on demos in israel. he explains that compared to this, he has been treated a lot better.

in israel, where there’s a full-on civil war? the cops treat people better than in the uk where we’ve had sixty years of peace? so u learn something new everyday!

at this point the english girl suggests that we try again to get them to open the doors. in all honesty i am getting a bit breathless, so she bangs her head on the door and shouts out “this man has heath problems, he needs his medication!”

sure enough, at the sound of a woman’s voice, the two pigs outside open the door. they allow me my inhaler, then chuck me back in the van and lock the door again.

back to square one.

but i think the prospect of my imminent demise speeds things up and after about forty-five minutes in total in the van, we are let out one by one.

it turns out we are lucky. i find out later that some people were kept in vans for hours at a time.

inside i am taken into a room with the two pigs who were guarding the van earlier and a woman behind a desk starts asking me all these questions and taking all my stuff that they find in my pockets.

since my arrest i have been behaving in the most matter of fact way i can. it helps me to give the impression i am not intimidated and i think they’re not sure what to make of it. the woman behind the desk looks impressed when i tell her i am a lecturer at a college. not yr average criminal here, mate.

meanwhile both the pigs in the room put on rubber surgical gloves. one of the pigs, an older guy with grey hair, keeps pulling them up and letting them slap on this hands, as if to give the impression that he is going to strip search me and go searching right up my backside at any moment.

still i keep up the matter of fact bullshit. the pig has a smug little grin on his face. playing games like that at his age, what an impotent little fuck he is.

having relieved me of my shoelaces to ensure i don’t hang myself, (ooo how they flatter themselves), i am finally led to a cell. it has made of concrete and painted dark red with one toilet at the side that has no flusher. i find out later that u have to summon a guard in order for them to flush it for u, using a handle outside the door.

oh well, it’s been compost toilets all week. i guess this is what they call moving up in the world.

and finally i settle in to something i find to my joy is one of the few things i can do without any problem in the nick: sleep.

and boy do i do just that.

later on……

a knock at my cell door.

i have no idea what time of day or night it is or how long i have been there. some coppers at the door are telling me that CID is here and i have to answer their questions.

what the hell…..?

i am led into a room with two stern-looking suits who sit me down. i am bewildered, tired and confused. “i want a lawyer,” i explain.

they tell me i can’t have one. hang on a minute, this isn’t what happens in the bill. scottish law is not like english law, they tell me.

at a stroke i curse myself for not checking out more about scottish law before i went on this protest. how could i be so stupid?

i realise i am feeling like someone out of a kafka story. i have no idea what is going on, how long i am going to be held and what is going to happen to me.

and it’s all my own fault!

it soon becomes apparent that i am under no obligation to answer their questions. but i can hear myself babbling on to them. i realise i have been concocting explanations about my behaviour in my head for no reason while i was in the cell, and right now they are all dribbling out my mouth like i have no control over them.

i find out later that unlike in england, there is no police and criminal evidence act in scotland, which means what they were doing was perfectly legal.

rule one next protest: find out about the law before u go!!!!

i manage to get out before i started confessing to all of jack the ripper’s killings amd masterminding the 9/11 attacks.

headfuck!

back to the cell. and despite my ordeal, back to what i seem to do best in this situation: sleep.

later still…..

another knock at my cell door. it is later that night, i am sure, but again i have no idea of the time and no idea of what is going on.

i am told i am going to be moved along with some other prisoners to a holding station in falkirk.

eh?

i need to look lively. again i am knackered, even more confused and even more bewildered. this is just crazy.

franz kafka, u knows it, clart!

before i lnow it i am led out of the back of the police station and into the back of a van with a load of other male protestors who got nicked that day. it is the dead of night outside.

there is the israeli guy from before, a couple of polish guys and an australian. everyone is babbling away in the language most familiar to them. it is almost a relief just to be able to talk to friendly faces.

this time, we really are in the back of a van. but there is a small cubicle in the corner and suddenly the back door opens and a young man is stuck in the cubicle.

“how long till we go?” he asks in what appears to be a french accent.

“two minutes,” comes the reply.

of course well over two minutes go by and we are still in the stationary van. u get used to this constant wearing down in a funny way.

a bang comes from the little cubicle containing the french guy. “you said two minutes!” he shouts.

“well i was wrong,” came the voice of a pig outside the van.

“then u are fucking liars!” shouts the french guy and starts banging his head on the walls of the cubicle. this guy is taking no shit.

the rest of us in the van get talking to him. he is only 17 and it appears he is facing quite a serious charge. full respect to him and all the people who have come over here to protest and who put themselves in the firing line like this. if it was me in a foreign country with an unfamiliar language i think i would have well and truly cracked by now.

finally we are driven to falkirk and of course kept waiting for ages in the back of the van. then we are taken in and processed and put in three to a cell. i am with the israeli guy again, and one of the polish guys. we talk for a while, but again we find ourselves staring into space quite a lot as the exhaustion creeps in.

we are taken out one at a time and questioned by CID but by this time i am familiar with the routine so i say very little. i ask one of them what is going to happen to me as i have no idea of the law here. he explains that i will go to a magistrate’s court in the morning and should be let out after that, unless i break my bail conditions.

so that clears that up a bit, but i am so messed up in the head i’m not sure what i believe anymore.

back in the cells, the three of us fall asleep with the light in the cell shining down relentlessly on us.

it is only later that we find out we could have had it turned off.

wednesday 6th july

all through the night and into the early morning, different sets of demonstrators leave the site at stirling.

the idea is this. the g8 are meeting in gleneagles a few miles away. george bush, tony blair and all the bigwigs are going to be helicoptered in.

a large number of others, however, e.g. translators and support staff and the rest, are to be bussed in from around the locality.

so if all the roads in and out of gleneagles are blockaded, you have no g8 meeting. simple logic in theory, but in practice…..

some groups leaving stirling are large, others small. some leave late in the evening, others throughout the early morning. the thing is, no-one is sure how the police will react.

maybe they’ll let people out in dribs and drabs. maybe larger groups will be needed to go out and break cop lines before anything can happen. either way at some point the cops will probably shut the camp or at least make it difficult for people to leave.

it’s all about strategy, and if u think about it too much, yr head twists and turns and u end up doing nothing.

some groups apparently get out fine, and after a long old romp through the hills, end up at their destinations. another large group leaves early in the morning before sunrise. they get up to a road in an industrial estate and get stopped by a line of cops. the black block start amassing bricks and there is a lot of confusion. suddenly all hell breaks loose, the cops are pushed back by an assualt of missiles, and the nearby burger king and pizza hut get it. completely trashed.

apparently, the group battles its way through the rain down motorways, over hills, down lanes and into council estates before finally reaching the m9 motorway shortly after sunrise. braveheart again comes to mind.the road is blocked, much to the fury of drivers, with paving stones and trees and anything else to hand.

again, there is a lot of confusion as protestors who wanted to keep it fluffy get caught up in violence.

at about 8 am, i am in a medical van attending to people who have been assaulted or who are just exhausted from running around in the pissing rain trying to find roads. a group of riot cops stop us and it looks like we are about to be arrested. they seem freaked out and are ready for the kill. then they get called off elsewhere and abandon us to our own devices.

in actual fact, they seem really freaked out.

we drive around the roads around stirling as a gray, rainy day dawns and we come to a bridge where we can see a stretch of the m9 below us. there are no cars going in either direction.

the m9 has been completely blockaded.

up ahead there are protesters on the road with a huge pink and black banner saying “no more deportations.” there is a samba band slightly further down and people dancing in the middle of the road. on the radio, the early morning announcer tells us in her business-like way that drivers should avoid using the following roads…… we look at the map as she says the road names and it dawns on us that the impossible has happened.

the whole of central scotland has been brought to a standstill, not just the roads in and out of gleneagles. it is just before 9am. there is no way the g8 can meet.

it’s no good. i well up and get all emotional.

shortly afterwards, the police try to clear the m9 of protesters. they drive a load of vans at speed like a bunch of nutters down one of the lanes and force everyone off. i have never seen so many police vans in action!

at about 9.30 i am walking down a side road off the m9 with a large group of people who have been forced off the road when some meatwaggons pull up, a load of riot cops tooled up with shields and sexy extendable batons get out and start to chase us.

i am taking in information faster than i can process it….. this is like a film. quick!!! scatter to the hills! the baddies are coming!!!!

we leg it onto some farm land and a farmer comes out in his 4×4 and gives chase. what the hell!?! he’s completely lost the plot, gets out his motor and starts getting handy with a hammer. he must be having a laugh!

no, he isn’t. we’re running even faster now…

his wife is screaming and going mental to try and get him to chill out. two riot cops make it over to him and try to do the same. meanwhile, a herd of cows who have been completely disturbed by the surrounding events start charging and knock over a girl in the stampede. more coppers and protesters to the rescue. we’re on another side road by a castle. even more riot vans, even more coppers, even more sexy extendable batons.

run, run, run……

i am running up a field and there is a huge hill at the end of it. behind me, a whole mass of riot cops. this should be interesting. i feel a stab of pain in my ankle. “u!” a voice screams from behind me. “get down!”

to be honest, i need no second bidding. in fact, i was right down on the ground moments after i felt the sexy extendable baton engage with my leg. “ouch!”

i am on the ground. i look up and a riot cop in full gear lowers his shield and grabs me. “stand up!”

i stand up. he hits me again. “ouch!”

“get down!” i sit down. i’m not to sure if i like how this game is going.

fortunately, he stops. up ahead, there is a female riot cop who has grounded four or five women from the queer block. they, (the women, not the riot cop), are sitting in a circle holding hands. they ask me if i want to link hands with them.

i look over at them, an picture of defiant womanhood. then i picture myself sitting under this riot cop, a picture of cowering manhood. something about the contrast makes me laugh.

“thanks, i’ll be fine.”

for a few surreal moments, i feel that they are going to let us go off on our merry way, game over. but no. the whole charade of giving details and getting searched and formally charged starts right there in the field.

my extended anarchist holiday is over here, with reality rudely intruding. that’s it. done. nicked. busted.

tuesday 5th july

this is funny.

like i said, next to the eco camp at stirling, with its alternative living and anti-capitalist ethos, is a morrison’s supermarket. and i’m not talking about those little ones, i mean a huge, proper out of town superstore, well down on the environmentally-sound list.

of course, when it all gets a bit much, i’m down there for a fry up and a cup of tea, and along with a load of others, and take the opportunity to not have to relieve myself in a compost khazi.

oh, the joys.

today in morrison’s, there are papers in the newsagent section which scream out about the violence on the march and treat it generally like a football match, complete with photo finishes and highlights from the “game.”

what do the workers at morrison’s reckon when they see the “stars” of the riots yesterday floating about the place buying veggie sausages? who knows. they all seem very friendly and helpful.

but i suppose they would be, wouldn’t they?

one of the senior edinburgh coppers describes the violence as the product of a hardcore minority and a load of “hangers-on.”

which i suppose is a way of saying what we already know: some people are up for peaceful protest, some want to provoke clashes with the state and their representatives in the belief it will create some change, and some people are along for the ride.

politics makes strange bedfellows.

but the media love the violence. they positively jizz over it. it sells papers. it makes us protesters look either stupid, niave or violent. and best of all, mr and mrs normal and their 2.4 kids can look at the papers today and feel digust or envy or both, and they have another reason to feel safe and secure in their existence.

they can rest assured that the forces of law and order are defending their right to not give a shit, and to let people who do with economics what the nazis did with zyclon b run their lives for them.

whatever u do, don’t mention the debate. just the war.

at the camp in stirling, it is a day of meetings. lots of them. and meetings about meetings. plots and plans are hatched, and vows are made. i sit in a meeting about site sanitation and fall asleep.

but sleep is a good thing. it is going to be a long couple of days.

monday 4th july

ok, some of you have been asking when is the next installment and frankly the maddest thing about it all is i’m amazed anyone has actually been reading this.

hello.

u may well notice that there are discrepancies between the date at the top of the page and the title of the entry, and gaps between them.

well, this is getting written in retrospect so i suppose it serves as a way for me to come to terms with what has happened. and it’s quite hard to deal with and go back there in a lot of ways, so it’s taking time.

plus i was the one that blew up edinburgh castle with all those little children in it and ran away laughing and screaming: “this one is for osama bin laden and the global struggle against the infidel….erm, i mean global capitalism. erm, i mean the fox hunting bill or whatever….” so i don’t want to prejudice my case when it comes up.

did i just land myself in it? rent-a-cause, me.

back to the narrative…..

edinburgh is a beautiful city and i’ve spent many happy times here. only now i am running around the centre of town trying to work out what the hell is going on and why the place looks like a warzone. there is a demo scheduled. from what i understand it is to be a “carnival for full enjoyment,” an opporunity to cock a snook at the work-a-day world culture and press for more fullfilling alternatives.

only this looks like an excuse for a ruck.

the bizarre samba band i mentioned in a previous post, with its wailing vocals and sound effects and public enemy style military garb, has been hemmed in at the far end of princes street. several friends are caught in it and i keep texting them to find out how they are.

further down the other end, there are clashes with police and more people hemmed in.

at one point a single copper tries to stop a group of young polish kids from climbing over the fence onto a bench and escaping the cordon. the kids look contemptuously at the copper, surround the bench by linking arms and everyone gets away scot free.

power to the people! freedom for tooting!

the people not taking part in the demo look on bemused, angry, frightened or they don’t register it at all. some positively love the fact that the police look like they have been caught on the hop, and one or two of them look like they want to join in. surreally, i can walk a few minutes down the street and there are no signs of the rucks going on nearby. it all looks normal, with people shopping and going about their business.

the clown army need a mention here. they dress up like erm…. clowns and hang around in groups doing daft, child-like stuff. tourists and passers-by love and the coppers can’t help but laughing. they were getting on some peoples’ nerves by the end but they had a good thing going in my book, always acting and keeping it together well.

you would have hardly noticed that coppers and anarchists were locking horns only a few feet away. nice copper, nasty copper? what about nice activists, nasty activists?

i see a man in a huge robotic suit break off from a crowd and freak out the lines of police horses. there is nothing they can do about it.

at another point, i see a couple of black faces come out of the mainly white, european crowd. from there accents i would assume they are from the west indies. they are trying to get away from a stand-off between police and demonstrators in princes street. one of them is saying “africa doesn’t need this…..”

back at the ranch in stirling, an incredible hip-hop trio called suicide bomb posse do a set. one of the MCs, a girl, keeps up her rap after the beats stopped. she is screaming with such an incredible intensity words to the effect: “they are trying to divide us and keep us small, but we’re all here and we think the same way and they can’t do it….” top notch for all concerned. nicely articulated rage. if u know anything about this lot, please let me know. i can’t find them on the web.

at one point the electricity has to be turned off because but in one tent, people still want music. step forward riot folk, a collective of american folk musicians who specialise in unamplified, powerful, uplifting, anarchist songs. pretty soon they spellbind the audience with their tracks, including “the times they are not a-changing,” a shameless and poignant re-write of the dylan classic. u can downlaod their tunes for free at http://www.riotfolk.org.

the crowd goes mental and it sets the tone for the next few days. choppers fly by overhead and everyone takes stock. william wallace looks on in approval.

sunday 3rd july

after all the excitement, it’s back down to edinburgh in order to check out some meetings for info and action. there are several going on, each of them representing the broad disparities of views on the g8 and global justice.

the left-wing g8 alternatives meeting looks interesting with a whole range of speakers talking, but i’m carried along with the vibe of the people i’m hanging out with. to hell with g8 alternatives, u have to pay for it and anyway, the world development movement meeting is free and has a similar line up of speakers!

decision made!

i chat with a guy from cardiff about radical permaculture and the difficulty of owning land and developing it in a sustainable way in the uk. it’s the planning laws, people! it’s possible to pick up useful knowledge in these informal exchanges, sometimes more so than the big meetings.

as it happens i only hear one speaker. i didn’t catch his name but he was talking about “driving a stake through the heart of the world trade organisation.” he believed that only direct action to derail the wto on the scale of seattle in 1999 could actually bring about change.

now there’s a view u don’t hear on tv of a morning!

missed george monbiot, our great and mighty leader. actually, that’s an unfair jibe, i like his books, particularly age of consent.

i hear that at another meeting, ex-bbc journalist andrew gilligan – he who questioned the view that saddam hussein could attack britain within 45 minutes – walked into a room full of anarchists, despite their strict “no journalists” rule.

hardcore.

the place went ballistic, his bag and specs got snatched and he was bundled out the building. the size of the guy’s balls!

guess what i did next? i didn’t plan random acts of violence with a shadowy bunch of anarchist generals, i went to the pub. and got drunk. and hung out with my mates. and had a really good time.

all this when i should have been reflecting about the evils of capitalism and the injustice of global trade.

back at the camp there’s some classic hardcore punk courtesy of oi polloi. the place is pumping. by contrast there is some chilled out reggae happening in another field with planetman and the internationalz. from the land, angry spirits rise up along with fluffy mischievous ones.

or maybe it was the acid, crack and heroin cocktail i did after getting masked up, killing fifteen coppers and driving an syringe full of HIV into gordon brown’s temple. which is what anarchists do when they can’t find babies to impale on spikes.

wondering around the camp, i hear casual racism and casual classism. at an alternative gathering. this is bizarre. is this really no place to be middle class or american or both?

it is odd hearing american accents at meetings. i find myself flinching. i have to remind myself that it’s noam chomsky’s accent as well as george w.’s. racism is a cancer that strikes anywhere, anytime and in the strangest of situations.