G20 and the protest positioning
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 by Jon Clements
UPDATE #2: The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones blogs his thoughts on the use of social networks - or not - at the G20 protests.
UPDATE: Guardian Online photogallery captures the drama of today’s #G20 protests in London.
The G20 summit kicks off (so to speak) in London today and Sky News has reporters using that latest craze, Twitter - the future of Guardian newspaper publishing, ho ho - to send dispatches from the front line.
Apart from the frisson caused by French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, threatening - as the Mirror puts it - to “flounce” out of the summit if he doesn’t see tougher banking regulation, what have other protestors got lined up for the summit, and how will it sit with the armchair public not pitching tents or painting their faces in London today?
The G20 Meltdown group, whose leaders are described with lurid delight by the Daily Telegraph has positioned itself in a way reminiscent of the Poll Tax protest in 1990, with the call of “Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay” and “We’re taking to the streets”.The Poll Tax demo marked one of the most violent public demonstrations the capital had seen “for a century”, but the action undoubtedly hastened the demise of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and the abolition of the tax itself.
But will effigies of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, calls for “a very English revolution” in the spirit of 1649 and the “overthrow of capitalism” have a resonance today? As angry as people may be with bankers and politicians right now, do they want to hand over the reigns of power to an organisation which is trying, somehow, to combine the ethics of love and lynch mob?
The Campaign Against Climate Change is opting for the more quietly symbolic, marking “Fossil Fools Day” with a giant block of ice representing the melting polar ice caps while Stop the War Coalition is rallying tomorrow with protestors bringing “shoes, baby dolls, photos and other symbols of death and destruction”.
It’s a hearts and minds battle from both the politicians’ and protestors’ sides of the ramparts - but is the British public ready for revolution?
Follow the Twitterverse’s on the ground take on the #G20.
