- The Miracle of Threadneedle Street – or how we got out of the kettle.
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comradekaff- April 5th, 2009
Taking a bicycle on a demo isn’t the best idea I’ve ever had, but then perhaps from a security point of view, neither was going to the demo in the first place. At least Wednesday was my usual day off work, and I hadn’t had to take a holiday on purpose. For indeed, Bunty and I had taken an off-peak train to London to swell the ranks of the Anti-Capitalists at the Bank of England on April 1st 2009, Financial Fool’s Day. I’d reassured Ma that it’d all be ok, and that I’d slip away if I felt there was going to be trouble.
At first it was all ok, and when I did decide to slip away, there hadn’t been any trouble at all that I’d seen, just lots of yelling, cheering, klaxons, photography and sunshine. At the height of the heady noise and buzz, the feeling was magnificent and I was pleased to have made the effort to be there. I did also notice with pleasure, that the police had disappeared from the large area of road in front of Wellington’s statue, their oppressive, scowling presence wasn’t missed.
What was I there for? For what cause? To shout against the System of course. I know the media have criticized the demonstrators for having a heterogynous, confused agenda, and they are right. But then so are the demonstrators. This famous crunch from which we’re all still reeling, has basically raised crucial questions about the way the world runs; from the rampant exploitation of the planet’s resources feeding a mad policy of increasing growth, to banking and multinational sectors that answer to shady shareholders rather than to the huge majority of people who live in this world.
Grr!!!
Instead of facing such questions, the G20 meeting in London would be fiddling with superficial trivia, and looking to perpetuate the same race to economic ruin. So if Anti-capitalists have a varied range of concerns, well my dears, so did the delegations of the 20 nations taking part in the summit. The Chinese were most concerned that in exchange for offering more money to the IMF, it would have a larger influence on the world stage, and that they would prevent French efforts to make the Hong Kong and Macau tax havens transparent. The French with their mistrust (well placed) of globalisation and free markets, and the Germans with their systemic prudence, were seeking to tame and train rampant Anglo-Saxon capitalism. The Russians were seeking to establish a new reserve currency and had concerns about saving money on their military budget, and the UK wanted to get more money for more bailouts, and to preserve free trade and other shady things pretty much as they were before. I could go on.
I was sort of hoping that I’d get to explain that to one of the many cameras wandering around. In the end a South American TV reporter asked me if Brown and Obama were going to help the poor of the Third World. I said that they’d make a nice-looking gesture, but the Third World would be left to suffer while the West looked after itself first. I expect I was right about that, and they seemed satisfied.
At about 12h45 I thought I’d move on from the Bank of England and visit (if I could find it) the Climate Camp, before meeting my pal Philip for a late lunch over the river near Tooley Street. So once there was a slight easing of the crowd around me, I laboriously turned Bunty round, bashing a few shins as I did so, and set off towards Queen Victoria Street, but a large mass of people was blocking it, so I turned us laboriously around again, this time towards King William Street. As we slowly made our way, off to my right through many heads and over many shoulders bright in fluorescent yellow, I saw a barrage of smirking policemen blocking off Cripplegate alley. It was an uneasy confrontation of aggressive and insincere smiles from police and demonstrators alike. Oh well, I thought.
Seeing a clearing in the throng, I moved us to the end of King William Street, and saw another bank of unyielding yellow, with police riot vans parked behind them. A woman joined some friends of hers next to me and I heard her say that they wouldn’t let her out. Could this be right? Pah! I’d see about that. I negotiated Bunty up to the police line and asked if I could go through.
“No! no one’s getting out!” the policeman’s face was cracking with a supercilious smile.
“Oh, when can we go then?” I tried.
“I don’t know!” he laughed mockingly.
“That’s pretty stupid!” I chortled, and I was joined by two people with face-paint who chortled incredulously with me. “What are we supposed to do then?” I asked, more or less rhetorically to the air.
“Huhuhuh!” the policeman chortled in his turn.
“Are we supposed to—evaporate???” My voice went shrill.
“Huhuhuh!” the policeman agreed. He was loving it.
There we all were, yet more people smiling aggressively and insincerely at each other.
As the news that we were imprisoned sank in and spread around the square, the festive atmosphere deflated to a hum of irritation and frustration. More and more people sat down and started chatting, playing cards, reading papers, dozing, twiddling fingers. To some badly distorted but jolly music, a rota of people danced on top of the brown tube entry thing in front of the Nat West bank (now RBS, so perhaps the one that got attacked). The jiggling about looked like a well-lit scene from a nightclub. Rather them than me, although it was good of them to provide such entertainment.
Later on, a hooded scoundrel very skilfully scaled the façade of the Bank of England between the wall and a column, and after some perilous and impressive hanging on by his fingertips and gripping with his thighs, he secured two banners to the top of the Composite columns of the Bank - Stop trading with our futures U morons! Said one banner, and the other one said something like After years of struggle against capitalism, it ends all by itself! I couldn’t read all the second one as he didn’t manage to hang it out taught enough.
When the big, bored crowd below noticed him up there, they let out a roar of cheering, clapping and blaring horns. At that the forces of Authority on the lower roof of the Bank suddenly bristled and stiffened, and craned over the parapet to try and see what everyone was looking at on their building. Apart from the tied-on banners, at street level, there was some scrawling, spidery graffiti on the walls. I saw later that this ‘vandalism’ got reported with outrage in the press, except the reporter omitted to say that the graffiti was all done in chalk.
I was starting to get bored, Still, I had time to reconnoitre the area and determine where to seek refuge (with a bicycle!) should the police start to riot. In fact I couldn’t decide what would constitute a good place, it looked like I had a choice of getting crushed either against a wall, a pillar, crowd control barriers or on the road on top of Bunty. If they were to use tear gas, I wondered if I’d be able to cycle back to Paddington with streaming eyes, nose and throat, or what ever tear gas does.
I checked my watch at 13h50 and rang Philip to say I wouldn’t be over to see him for lunch. The Police won’t let us go did sound like such a limping, improbable excuse, but it was true! I decided not to call Ma about any of this, so I sent a text to Mellie (in France) instead. Her reply was excited and expressed much solidarity for me, but then she’s French and having trouble in a demo is a badge of honour and what all good French citizens do. To say Police in France is to spit.
One of the helicopters over head must have gone away, I noticed this, as the now singular one descended lower, its rapid, droning whump-whump was highly intrusive and oppressive, I’m sure that was done on purpose.
I must say here, that the last time I had made myself ‘comfortable’ was on the train after Slough station at about 10h00. By now at 14h30 I started to wonder if I would perhaps possibly soon need a piddle. I had wisely drunk the water I’d brought so as not to dehydrate, and nothing beyond that, but even so, the knowledge of my filling bladder was starting to parasite my appreciation of what was happening. Whump-whump went the helicopter. I started to think I’d have to end up pissing on the Bank of England, which seemed like a good, symbolic gesture if I had to do it anywhere…
I looked at my watch again, it was 14h30, and at 15h48 our train was due to leave Paddington, and Bunty’s reserved space with it. How powerless I felt.
For a change of scenery, I wheeled Bunty up Threadneedle street where there was a dense, agitated concentration of people, all facing further on up the road. I leaned Bunty against the stone wall next to the last column of the Bank of England, and decided this is where I’d ‘go’ if needs be, although I wasn’t ready for that gesture yet.
The demonstrators further up the road were very loud, and from my slightly elevated position, I could see they had a line of cavalry facing them, and behind the mounted police the road was jammed full of riot vans. Some of the police on top of the Mansion House steps now wore riot gear. One of them was using a sophisticated video camera, and strangely was filming the rabble beneath him with his helmet visor down… how odd, it gave an impression of incompetence, as if he’d left the lens cap on.
The noise the demonstrators made here was more of a primal sea roar, and had no more humour about it. But I decided to stay and watch at my safe-ish distance, as I was at least in the shade, which was a relief as I had on my warm cycling fleece over another warm cycling fleece. There was nothing else to do anyway, except to watch. My mean refuge was rudely invaded when a man elbowed past me right up to the wall and made ready to piss through Bunty’s front wheel.
“Hold on,” I said rapidly, “I’ll move my bike first.”
“I’ve got to go, there aren’t any public toilets,” he whimpered, struggling with his crotch.
Having cut his élan, I guiltily moved away, while he waited ages willing things to happen.
By the time he flitted off, I no longer fancied lingering around there despite a future option to pee, so I wandered back down the road towards Prince’s Street. Now, this was interesting, the crowds here had thinned considerably, as if people had either left or moved on, and sure enough, there was a large gathering of people further down Queen Victoria Street, and some at the entry of Poultry. I wheeled Bunty briskly on, the road was now so clear I could have blithely scooted along standing on a pedal, but didn’t because you never know with the police these days. I started plucking off my militant badges, so as to pass as a normal, supine couch person with no politico/socio conscience.
A moment later, I passed a large, recently built boom-before-bust building, conceived of curves and stripes of dark pink and sandy stones. At its base was a pedestrian underpass, the entry was dark as Hades but with a flash of promising daylight at its other end. A diverse range of people were going in and coming out, and looking quite unperturbed, so Bunty and I went in. On either side of the dark and curvy corridor, were shops full of extravagantly vulgar things one would only buy with loads of money and no breeding or taste. But right now being a cultural bitch didn’t interest me, I sauntered nonchalantly past two nervous, fluorescent policemen, and out into the daylight of Poultry. My heart soared as off to my left, to the west, the road was clear, all the way into the distance, I was looking at my freedom and could have cried out with the elation of release. It was fantastic, and we stood a chance of getting our train! All the same, the road was lined with police vans full of large policemen (I hope they opened their windows from time to time) so I saved the victory fist until the end of the road.
With my little legs spinning, we shot off to Paddington and made it there in 25 minutes, which considering all the red traffic lights we stopped at, was very good going.
One amusing thing happened on our way back along Cheapside. We were behind four Police motorbikes and a following police SUV. They were going so slowly, that we joined them and carried on in a convoy. After a set of lights, they slowed and stopped (so did I) and the lead biker asked directions of a City of London PC. The convoy started a U turn, and as I passed the PC, I couldn’t resist calling out “Always ask a Policeman!” he laughed back, which was a pleasant way for me to end the day.
