Eyewitness: the London Anti-Cuts March

After such a dramatic-sounding title, and the images that are all over today's newspapers and TV reports, I have to say that I was on the anti-cuts demo yesterday, and enjoyed a noisy, but good natured, slow walk through central London. With friends, I arrived at the Embankment tube station at exactly 11.00am, and we reached Hyde Park at about 4.00pm. The only anxiety of the day for us came when my friend's wife became separated from us for a short while, only to rejoin us happily, having been following a very lively steel band. I hadn't been on a demo for years, and it was exhilarating to walk down Whitehall in the company of thousands (no-one knows exactly how many). It took some time to pass through Trafalgar Square, but we were entertained by one marcher who climbed one of the statues and put a Unison jacket on the rider of  a horse.
In Piccadilly, we saw the signs of the violence that the media is focussing upon today. Bad as it was, and as frightening as it must have been at the time of the violence, many marchers walked by without seeming to notice. Apart from the damage to the Ritz, which was considerable, the rest seemed to amount to no mare than a few splashes of paint on walls. The action was over long before we got there. We arrived at Hyde Park at about 4pm, only to find that all the speakers had spoken and gone home. This was a flat end to what had been a lively day. It was quite a disappointment - and a missed opportunity for the Labour Party. Had Labour politicians appeared at staggered intervals, they would have got their message across far better.
As for the Anarchists and the subsequent evening violence, I can only say that I saw it coming. Without their acts of "propaganda by deed" (PBD), no-one would notice them, and it was obvious that they were not going to miss this opportunity. Near Temple Underground Station, I saw some of them wearing facemasks and carrying Anarcho-Syndicalist flags (the Anarchist flag is black) as we waited to join the main march, and wondered when they would kick off into action. I watched for them all along the route of the demo, but they never seemed to have enough troops to attack anywhere. I'm no psychic, but I guessed that they'd start something serious later - possibly after the main march dispersed. It looks as if I was right.

Sky News last night gave extensive coverage to the violence - more or less non-stop, all evening. Today's papers are showing lurid pictures of the action and no doubt have printed equally lurid articles. All I can say - and so will most of us who marched in London yesterday - is that we must not be tarred with the red and  black anarchist brush.

Private Eye, Posterity and the Verdict of History

When History pronounces its verdict upon Colonel Gaddafi, it will have a bewildering assortment of comments about him to choose from. One US President (Ronald Reagan, 1986) described him as "flaky" (ie, mad), while others have described him as "..a great guy believing in God" (Mohammed al-Fayed). Private Eye recently pointed out that in 2009, the UK sent an SAS team to train the Libyan armed forces. The Foreign Office (FO) said that this was: "...ongoing co-operation with Libya in the field of defence". Two years later, the government sent SAS teams to rescue UK citizens from what the FO calls: "...human rights violations by the Libyan authorities".
All this, of course, is as a result of trying to win the Colonel over to "our" side. This is the man whose regime supplied the IRA with arms, blew up an aircraft over Scotland and whose embassy staff shot dead a London policewoman in broad daylight. All pretty sickening, really.
Anyway, now it looks as if the UK and other countries are riding to the rescue of the Libyan rebels. While the concern of western governments for the fate of the Libyan people may be seen (not least by themselves) as commendable, one does wonder why no such military support has been given to the people of Zimbabwe. It is also remarkable that no support, moral or material, has been given to the protesting people of Bahrain, Syria or Yemen.
One TV pundit said today that Al-Qaeda has been strangely quiet throughout the recent events in the Middle East. I do not find it strange. I'm no expert, but I believe that Al-Qaeda will be watching the Libyan situation very carefully. They are probably waiting for the victory of one side or the other. When the outcome is decided, they will join in - on the side of the losers. If Gaddafi loses, he has said that he is prepared to ally with Al-Qaeda; if he wins, they will exploit the bitterness and anger of the anti-Gaddafi rebels against the West, who will be seen as having abandoned them.
Gaddafi has been panned for saying that Al-Qaeda is behind the Libyan Uprising, but there are some facts here that are worth considering. It is not generally known, but Libya was the first country to ask for an Interpol arrest warrant to arrest Osama Bin Laden - in 1998. Yet, according to Mark Curtis in "Secret Affairs", US and UK intelligence "buried the arrest warrant". It seems that this was because MI6 had been involved in a failed plot to assassinate Gaddafi with an Al-Qaeda affiliate group called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Five months after the arrest warrant was issued, Al-Qaeda bombed US embassies in Africa.
Posterity, like John Osborne and Oasis, will look back in anger - and much disgust.

Gaddafi, Hague, and an Unthinkable Conversation

The Libyan Civil War is starting to resemble the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) in a number of significant ways. Both started with a popular uprising which seemed to promise a people's victory. Both saw untrained militias going bravely into action against a better armed and militarily experienced enemy. We all know what happened to the Spanish Republicans and it looks as if the Libyan rebels are starting to face a similar fate. The superior weaponry and tactics of Gaddafi's forces are beginning to tell.
If The Mad Colonel ( as "Private Eye" calls him) is victorious in this conflict, he will doubtless come to resemble Franco in the treatment of his defeated enemies. I don't often agree with John Major, the ex-PM, but Major is right when he says that Gaddafi will exact a savage revenge on every former enemy that he can capture alive.
If Gaddafi wins, there will also be a lot of fence-mending (ie. grovelling) by western politicians who have supported the uprising and condemned The Mad Colonel. A fly on the wall at a (hopefully unthinkable!) meeting between Gaddafi and William Hague might hear this:
Hague:" Er, well, Colonel, I must apologise for my somewhat intemperate comments during the recent difficulties...."
Gaddafi: "Let bygones be bygones. The training you gave our military and the weapons you sold us were a great help".
Hague: "Speaking of which, Your Excellency, I do have a catalogue of our most up to date riot control vehicles..."
Gaddafi: "Thankyou. Business as usual, then?"
Even a fly on a wall would be sickened at this!

Mervyn King and the Internationale

Well, the top people are beginning to take a more realistic view of our present economic ills. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has said:
"The price of the financial crisis is being borne by people who did absolutely nothing to cause it."
The people referred to here, which is most of us, have known this for some time, but I suppose it's better late than never. He even went on to say that he was:
  "...surprised that the degree of public anger has not been greater than it has".
Mr King should not be surprised; the real cuts have not been implemented yet. Those of us who work in the public sector are bracing ourselves for the massive cuts that are promised at the start of the new fiscal year. This melancholy event is only a few weeks away.
The magazine "Money Week", which claims to have seen the credit crunch coming, says that 2011 will see a further fall in house prices and, following the rise in interest rates, a corresponding increase in repossessions and homelessness. It advises all its readers with money invested in property to buy gold instead. As very few of us are in that happy position, we could well see the explosion in public anger that Mervyn King speaks about. The tuition fees riots that we have already seen show that people still are capable of anger at the failings of the system. Worse could be on the way.
I have forgotten the words of "The Internationale"; I really must look for them...