FIVE

I didn't go up today, was jamming in Hackney, but yesterday I went to a meeting run by the legal observers. There is a lot online about legal observers being hassled at Kings North, but apparently they have had a meeting with the cops and are recieving some sort of status recognition though it remains to be seen what will happen when this lot next take action of course.

They are advising everyone not to give their details to the Police as a policy and are all wearing T shirts with this message on them. There was some fainlty alarming stuff about data bases and Police questions. Its all a bit late for that for me as all the FIT posse know who I am. As I have said before I don't really care. I can totally justify what I am doing and I am of such disposition that if I started down the path of worrying about information, databases and "the state" I would drive myself more nuts than I am already. Again this was another meeting preparing fresh new people to become thorns in the side of the worst extremists of Capitalism by all non violent means necessary, including the law.

For a festival of between six hundred and a thousand people, maybe more at any one time there is nothing quite like it. Logistically the camp is split up into groups who are expected to, and intend to be responsible for various workings of the whole. I live close by so I can come and go but I am beginning to see how the intensity of things on site could become a bit cultish if you were camping up there, especially for people from outside London this sort of meet up must mean a hell of a lot. Me? I ain't joining any cult anytime soon. In a cliquey place like this city I am sure it is much easier if you fit into a group. I've had a foot in all sorts of camps over my time in London but never felt truly part of any of them. For a while now I have retreated into music. When and if Atilla is let out of jail there is a possibility I might make one film, apart from that I can't really see my focus changing.

comment by
John Q. Publican on Liberal Conspiracy-

...The job for this generation is to consolidate (what you describe as “becoming main-stream”): to get people to accept that they’re not going away, and that they know what they’re doing. One way you do that is photos of your people being butchered on the evening news while holding their hands up and chanting “This is not a riot”. It worked for Gandhi. It worked for CC.

The movement learned a lot from the crushing, and subsequent media treatment, of the Gleneagles protest. They learned that the only way to win that fight is through letting the forces of reaction show their colours and getting it on video-tape. They’ve implemented that knowledge, honed it across several violent assaults by police in the last 8 years, and on Bishopsgate the government handed them the chance they needed.

So now the task is to build on that. They’re at the table with the Met, finally, after 5 years of trying to get a useful response. They’ll be at the table with the GLA fairly soon, given how many members are interested. Ask me again in 11 years...
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