| 7pm, July 6th: On the stewards bus on the way home to Glasgow. There's a guitar playing and singing in the back of our bus. Everyone is tired but in good form. We just had a great demo. Estimates of numbers vary between 5,000 and 10,000. Most of us stewards were at the front of the demo, just ahead of a range of prominent activists carrying the G8Alternatives banner, including Trevor Ngwane, Walden Bello, Rose Gentle, SSP MSPs, George Galloway MP, G8A organisers and others. |  |
Contrary to media reports, our biggest headache today was managing the media scrum. We had a real job stewarding them, and had to keep blocking them out, walking along a narrow road all the way. When we got to the barrier at the closest point we were permitted towards Gleneagles Hotel, we had to shove the press out of the way by pushing backwards into them, and it became momentarily confrontational between them and us. I have to confess I behaved in an unstewardly manner and swore at one female photographer who repeatedly tried to break through our human cordon.
However, finally, Rose Gentle was able to tie a peace symbol to the fence and we had a minute's silence followed by a whole lot of noise. The front of the demo didn't stop long at the access road to Gleneagles hotel. About 8 to 10 of us stewards were directed to stay behind at that point while the majority of stewards moved ahead at the front of the march.
The point we were at started to bottleneck quite quickly and our stewarding role evolved quickly as it became obvious everybody wanted to stop, for different reasons at this spot. Protestors dressed in black with scarves over their faces started congregating in front of us. They were not moving on. Loads of other demonstrators wanted their snap taken at the fence, and/or to snap the lines of police visible behind the fence. The media also congregated either side at this point of the road, waiting for some 'anarchist action' to photograph. To keep the march moving, we had to let the scarfed protestors and some of the press gather behind us at the fence, and formed a line in front of them, making a narrow space to let others past. For the most part the crowd slowly gathering behind us didn't engage with us. From some comments from the 'black bloc', it was obvious they saw the stewards as the enemy as well as the police. One woman argued that I was responsible for splitting the movement by getting people to move past their gathering point. My argument that everyone should have the choice to move on didn't seem to wash.
Eventually, as the last hundreds of the protestors were approaching our point, the predictable situation between the 'black bloc' and the riot police kicked off for a while. I found myself for a moment standing with the anarchists directly behind and the riot police in front, about to charge straight at them. To avoid being the jam in that sandwich, when the police started surging forwards, there was nowhere to go but jump over a hedge into a garden on the other side of the road. Others were scrambling the same way at the same time. A guy in a wheelchair was lifted over just before me and I had to twist as I jumped, to avoid landing on him. I noticed a small gash on my ankle at the time, but now my whole foot and a large section of lower leg is purple and swollen.
There were also protestors gathered in a field very nearby, having diverted from the march route. There was a bit of star wars type activity then, with squads of riot police appearing from a side road and surrounding the field. A chinook helicopter appeared above us - apparently the first time police have used this mode of transport in action. There's nothing more to say about this minor flashpoint. It's almost all of the coverage you will find of the demo in mainstream media. On reflection, there is something almost cosy about the three-way relationship between the 'black bloc', police and the media. It was so predictable. Each party knew how each of the others would react. It was all just a question of when. Result: no politics in the coverage. I'm a bit cranky about this because my ankle is knackered as a result.
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The vast majority of protestors returned to the rally in the park fairly steadily where a second wave of speakers, including many of those who had carried the G8A banner on the march, took the stage. This demonstration, the culmination of a week of major events, was a victory for the movement. So many hurdles were crossed to get it to happen, not least on the day itself, with deliberate disinformation widespread.
We heard as we arrived back in Glasgow that BBC Reporting Scotland had just reported Gleneagles as being overwhelmingly violent, implying that G8A broke the promise of a peaceful demo. They reported only the minority confrontational part of the demo. No surprises there. A BBC insider phones to tell us that the coverage was "hideously unbalanced," referring to the "awful pictures of the demonstration." We phone and complain. The later BBC programme Newsnight, which about 50 of us watch in the Counting House bar, just off George Square, gives balanced coverage of the demo, but has a smaller audience. Since Wednesday there hasn't been much time to read the papers but we hear bits and pieces of coverage through the egroup. We hear that after hundreds of protestors in Edinburgh were told by police that the demo had been cancelled, and were stopped from getting on their buses, they held an impromptu demo of their own in the city centre, and a number of arrests followed. The Dundee Courier gave amongst the best coverage. One of their reporters commented that it was hard to find a local resident of Auchterarder who had a bad word about the event. He also reported positive feedback from Perth and Kinross Council. Of course the G8 haven't signed up to the global justice movement, but a lot of other people have in Scotland this week. Many more have heard the arguments and taken a step in the left direction.
The momentum that has built over the past year will not be lost. La Lutta Continua |
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