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| Europe | |
| Dublin: The chaotic politics of protest | |
| 2004-05-08 | |
| Ireland hosted the main celebrations for the accession of 10 new countries to the EU at the weekend - and it also saw the main protests, which threatened to hijack coverage of the event. I have never taken part in a protest march in my life - something I like to think of as a symptom of a high-minded form of neutralism, when of course, it could just be laziness. As a reporter, I have seen thousands of demos. Saving one sort of whales; improving language rights in the other sort; having the monarchy back in Russia; not having it back in Romania; shortening the working week for French train drivers; abolishing it altogether for staff at nuclear power stations. And so on. But I have never seen demonstrations quite like the ones in Dublin last weekend, where protesters took to the streets as the European Union celebrated the accession of 10 new member states. My modest role in all this was not to reflect on the extraordinary decade of upheaval in this troubled continent which saw three former Soviet republics joining the EU. It was rather to see if news coverage of the event would be hijacked by violent disorder on the streets, as has happened in the past at summits in Genoa and Seattle. This is the modern equivalent of being sent to cover the guillotining of the French royal family, and being asked by your editor to ignore the executions and provide a feature on the women who sat knitting along the route the tumbrils took. But unpicking the politics of the protest, and particularly the way in which it is reported proved a fascinating business. At one of the dozens of small demonstrations that were scattered across the weekend, I bumped into a reporter from Lithuania, once a highly reluctant part of the Soviet empire, now a new and enthusiastic member of the European Union. He had noticed that there were communists and socialist workers among the environmentalists and anarcho-syndicalists. "Was this," he wondered, "an expression of anger that the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Europe created in Potsdam and Yalta had propelled the Baltic republics and the states of Eastern Europe into the capitalist world?" As he was speaking, a young man carrying a placard that said "I am against everything" was marching past us. At the head of the crowd was a small group with a banner that read: "One must have chaos within order to give birth to a dancing star." No, I told him, I did not really feel that this was a post-cold war fit of pique from the hard left over Lithuania’s territorial status. Well then, he persisted, what was it? Post ideology? Post politics? And a string of other questions that made you feel that the Vilnius morning papers must be rather hard going. We sat in a coffee bar with a view of the parade and compared notes. He wondered what to make of anti-globalisation protesters who wandered through the streets swigging from bottles of Heineken and Coca-Cola, those champion lubricants of the wheels of international commerce. And I had been struck by the way in which four or 500 people, all committed to the eradication of poverty, had marched past a young man begging on the roadside without putting a single coin in the paper McDonald’s beaker he was holding out. They could have been punishing him for flaunting the hated golden arches, but I think they just did not notice the guy actually starving right in front of them. Although admittedly, when I gave him three euros he jumped up and headed straight into the pub he had been sitting outside. The largest single group in the demonstrations were anarchists, although the only manifestation of anarchy they managed was that every time their march approached a junction they told the escorting police they were going to turn right, and then actually turned left.
The point of all of this was of course to ensure that every time there is a gathering of Western leaders these days, there will be protesters seeking to ensure that they too get a share of the headlines. And it works, especially if you have a small hardcore of protesters who are prepared to engage in some futile, ritualistic confrontation with riot police guarding the summit venue. And so it proved in Dublin. An hour or so of posturing in front of the police lines and the resulting use of a water cannon produced headlines in the local papers the next morning talking of "mayhem" and appropriately enough, "chaos". The historic re-structuring over which Europe agonised for a decade was forced to share the front pages with about an hour of desultory stone-throwing. My Lithuanian colleague, when I bumped into him again in the lobby of the hotel where we were both staying, was puzzled. He went to light a cigarette as we stood chatting about it and was incredulous when he was told that because of Ireland’s new anti-smoking laws, he would have to go outside to light it. He smiled happily because at last he had a story that pulled it altogether. The old communist states of Eastern Europe he said had swapped an order in which you could smoke everywhere and not protest at all for a new order, in which the opposite rules now appeared to apply. It had, we agreed, the makings of a decent poster for the next gathering of the world’s anarchist protesters, wherever that might be. | |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #3 Am I the only one who wonders just where the portesters who show up at every single major economic and political conference come up with the cash to travel to these places. Could it be that in their spare moments they may be operating an unlicenced pharmacutical operation? |
| Posted by: cheaderhead 2004-05-08 5:06:27 PM |
| #2 Quote of the week: As he was speaking, a young man carrying a placard that said "I am against everything" was marching past us. Ah, yes |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2004-05-08 10:59:47 AM |
| #1 rite on! im tired of capitalist oppresor keepin me down ima await death by local harpi |
| Posted by: not halfempty 2004-05-08 10:28:43 AM |