G8 protests a success - big blockades cause chaos!

Even before the week of protest started the German state had made it clear how it would treat the protestors. The severe oppression of a demonstration in Hamburg a few days before the G8 demonstrations was a sign of things to come. The German state wanted to continue the work of Berlusconi in 2001 when the Italian capitalists used their thugs in the police fore to try and crush our movement. The size and the militancy of the protests in Germany are proof that they failed.

The G8 protests marked a real victory for the anti capitalist movement. Over 80,000 people attended a huge demonstration on Saturday 2nd June against the G8 and over ten thousands remained in and around Rostock through the week to take part in a series of actions against the G8 Meeting. The biggest ever pro immigration demonstration took place on Monday 4th and co-ordinated blockades and demonstrations disrupted the G8 summit later on in the week. Anti capitalist groups, socialists, trade unionists, environmentalists, pacifists and other demonstrators of all hues took to the streets to demonstrate and show the scale of the opposition to the rich and powerful G8 leaders. We demonstrated because we not only wanted to show solidarity with the impoverished billions across the world but because it the anti capitalist movement understands the nature of the G8 and the damage that it does, we wanted to shut it down and prevent it from organising more plunder and robbery.

The blockades of Wednesday and Thursday managed to disrupt the G8 summit as thousands of activists took to the roads around the red zone in Heiligendamm. The Financial Times in Britain said “Germany's reputation for organisation was tested on Wednesday as anti-globalisation protests tipped the G8 summit into logistical chaos”. Whilst the summit eventually went ahead as the attendees were flown in by helicopter or shuttled in by boat, the scale of the protests clearly shocked the police and organisers of the G8 meeting.

All of these successes took place in a tense political atmosphere. The German media has attempted for the last few months to demonise the anti G8 protesters. Tails of Molotov throwing anarchists and Clown Army members with acid in their water pistols were laced in the press in order to create a public consensus that would allow for the brutal repression of the demonstrations in order to ‘keep the peace’.

Sure enough the first Saturday demonstration ended in violence when the police attacked the demonstration with batons and water cannon. Revolution and its supporters in the League for the Fifth International took steps to defend the demonstration from the violence of the police. Whist we disagree with the tactics and methods of struggle employed by anarchist groups like the Black Block and the Autonoms it was the police and the security forces which were the cause of the violence on Saturday and throughout the rest of the week. We utterly condemn the police and the medias attempt to criminalise our legitimate protests and turn us into criminals.

However anti-globalisation group ATTAC were quick to blame the violence on a section of the movement instead of pointing clearly and without equivocation at the role that the police play in provoking confrontation and violence. Werner Raetz was quoted in the Independent as saying "There is no justification for these attacks… both the police and the protesters should try and get this emotional situation under control".
The Leadership of the new German organisation the Linkspartei also condemned the demonstrators, rather than showing solidarity with those attacked by the police their spokesperson said “We distance ourselves completely from the conflicts”. They repeated this argument by saying “This form of violence, no matter who caused it, we disown.”
The interventionist left, echoed the others by saying “The people who caused this clash on Saturday, we do not want them to be here.” With friends like these, who needs enemies!

The issues at the G8 this year focussed primarily around third world debt (again) and the environment, especially fighting climate change. What was the result of this meeting of the worlds most powerful politicians? All we got was some more empty promises, hidden behind a barrage of soundbites, press conferences and images on TV of burning cars. The failure to yet again produce any real progress on issues of debt and poverty in the global south was so transparent that even arch brown-noser Bob Geldof called the summit a ‘farce’ and ‘a grotesque failure’.

Oxfam also condemned the decisions reached at the gathering. They said "The hard and sad fact is that as leaders fly away from Germany they are still set to break their Gleneagles promise to the tune of $27bn. Creative accounting will not save lives - only delivering on promises will. G8 taxpayers are demanding more aid. Africa needs it. There are no excuses for what happened here in Heiligendamm.” The creative accounting they mentioned relates to a number of ‘aid packages’ for instance on combating HIV/AIDS. $60 billion was promised but most of this comes from already existing aid packages – in other words little new money, just less money for other projects.

As usual the media focussed on the groups that it likes to portray as the troublemakers – black block anarchists. One car was attacked and set fire to on Saturday and the next few days had pictures of this car relayed over our TV screens along with the broken paving stones and scattered debris across the roads. The Black Block were a tiny minority of the demonstration, and the violence of the police far outweighed anything that the Black Block or the German Autonom movement could accomplish. Many other photos also featured the clown army, a tiny group of activists who dress as clowns and walk near the police attempting to ‘ridicule them’.

The huge numbers of youth demonstrating show the crucial role that young people still play in this movement. Revolution is an anti capitalist, socialist youth group that fights to organise youth and provide a radical, revolutionary leadership for the movement. We will return to our countries, cities, schools, colleges and work places and use our experience of the police repression and the success of our mobilisations despite the odds to show that revolutionary politics is a necessary component in the anti capitalist movement.