Canary Wharf demo : Wasted Anger

A critical look at the Canary Wharf demo and at the Anger that is beeing wasted on shouting at the police.

"Dance on the grave of capitalism" - the demo was presented as a street party, a pagan event and as an anti-capitalist demonstration. Various groups seemed to have called to go - from some student anarchist group to the radical anthropoligst groups via the trotskist Socialist Workers Party.

The mix of people on the day refelected this : there was street theatre, people selling socialist newspapers, samba drummers, pagans and anarchist flags. The anti-capitalist theme was present all across - the unifying theme. But beyond that, there seemed to be general confusion as to what people were doing there. The drummers and the pagans had a pretty good idea : they were there to make music, dance and have haloween related anti-capitalist rituals. But the rest of the crowd didn't really seem to know what they were doing there.

In the abscence of any purpose or target, the crowd did what comes naturally : had a go at the police. It's a well known fact that this is one of the police's role : to absorb the anger, to redirect it away from legitimate targets onto themselves. People were there in the heart of capitalism, the streets were full bankers, the fascist capitalist buildings were looking us down. The scale of it is difficult to deal with - so instead people fell back on a human-size target they could understand : the police.

So there we had, in the middle of the place, the drumers and the pagans dancing, as they had come to do. And all around the crowd would run from one police line to another. Those in that crowd didn't try to adress bankers, they didn't try to filter out in the Wharf, they didn't try to out-maoeuvre the police - quite the opposite, they went where the police lines were, because that's the only thing they could identify as a target.

When used properly, Anger can be a constructive force. But unless we ask oursevles what our targets are, and what it is we want to achieve then we'll just end up wasting our anger on the police. When people push the police lines during Smash EDO demos, or go on tripods when blockading Aldermaston, they are achieving something ; they have a target and an aim. When people gather at Canary Wharf without knowing why they are going, they just end up being contained by the police, and frustrated at the fact they can't do anything. The people who came knowing what their aim was and who wanted to achieve something were those who were dancing.