The day started well enough. The TV stations were abuzz with potential violence at the G20 protests, with an emphasis on girly slap fights between protestors and police. Some idiots drove in via a fake armoured car. The BBC was there to report on it - and anything else to make the protests look like epic battles or demonstrations of stupidity rather than, well, protests.
Two Jehovah's Witnesses then knocked on the door. They were a pair of old women - one who did all the talking, and an older woman in a wheelchair. Having had dealings with the Watchtower people before, I assume they always travel in pairs to protect themselves, but how these two could deal with some of the arseholes round where I live is anyone's guess.
The spokeswoman was friendly. "We're having a ceremony to remember Jesus' Death", she said, handing me a flier. "It would be nice to see you there!" What can you say? You don't believe but you don't really want to hurt their feelings. So I took the flier and said thank you. Why not? She then asked permission to pick up one of their 'tracts', which had blown out of her hand and onto the lawn. I said "yes - please don't worry!" and gave my goodbyes, closing the door. At least they're polite, I thought.
It seems like a doomed cause. Trying to spread faith in the blasted no-man's land between East London and Essex (aka Dagenham, Romford and Barking) is a fool's errand. Perhaps the point was in the trying rather than the success rate. But I wondered whether the death of Jesus was the point - surely it was his life and resurrection that really counted. Then again, that was my vague, slack-arsed Church of England perspective speaking there. What would Thor and Queztacoatl make of it?
I decided to go out to the British Library. Riots or no riots, I would push forward, without fear... As to be expected, it turned out to be an anti-climax. There were no riots outside of the main areas under such scrutiny. I spotted at most two people in keffiyehs (the patterned scarves first worn by noted peace-loving vegetarian feminists Hezbollah and the PLO). But it's pretty common these days and they may well have been just commuters like the rest of us.
The police were nonetheless out in force. There were two on the train in - big bastards in hi-vis vests, helmets and stab-proofs. They talked about the day's events like gossiping old women.
At Liverpool Street itself there were scores of Met Police, British Transport Police, City of London Police and Community Support Officers, all working in pairs or the occasional trio. It was a decisive show of fluorescent yellow, checkerboard patterning and glittering steel on black. They all looked bored.
Still, as I waited for the tube to take me to King's Cross, a tannoy boomed ominously that the Waterloo & City Line was closed after a request from no less than... "THE POLICE." (This line links up Bank station, where the protests were mostly happening, to the potential escape route of Waterloo Station.) Later, I heard from another tannoy that Bank itself was closed.
En route, I found myself sitting over the way from a man with one eye. He looked Somalian or North African, and his right eye had been replaced by scar tissue and skin, while his remaining eye was closed. He was asleep. As I got off the train, I saw him alight too, with a guide stick. I avoided him and pretended not to look.
The British Library itself is not an impressive building. It looks like Wood Green Shopping Centre minus the personality and aesthetic charm. It won't be loved or accepted and they will knock it down in 30 years at most.
I saw the statue of Urizen, stooped and unaware of the city around him. There was no room for Barrack Obama, AIG, Lehman's or even Anarchism in his purview. There was only the pursuit of knowledge.
I renewed my membership, had a piss and then travelled back to Liverpool Street. It remained peaceful. Shockingly so. I was within walking distance of the demonstrations and I could hear nothing. Everyone around me acted as though it was business as usual. A screamer on an Evening Standard booth outside King's Cross squealed 'RIOT POLICE FIGHT ANARCHY IN CITY'!!! Yet it was hard not to think of disappointed spikies, riot cops and aggro-loving city workers all surveying the relatively urbane scene and thinking 'is this it?'
When I got back to Liverpool Street, only one or two obvious protesters in lurid clothes could be spotted. When I bought a Standard, though, three young men - all punks - were crowded around the booth reading the headlines. One of the punks, who had black spiky hair and a leather jacket upon which an 'Exploited' band patch was sewn on the back, bought a copy and then stormed off with his friends in tow. "They said it started peacefully and then turned violent! Bollocks!!!" he said, aflame with indignance at the mendacious press.
A friend of mine then took me to one of the demonstrations, which was in the southern half of Bishopsgate at this point. The crowd was loud and rowdy, but harmless, and the police were relaxed. But my friend pointed out the riot vans she had spotted down the side roads nearby and how she had seen a few plain clothes cops talking into their walkie talkies, standing about like they owned the place. And above, constantly, there was the never-ending wail of police helicopters looking down from above.
My friend asked if we should mingle with the crowd. "Sod that!" I said. "What if the spikies and the rozzers kicked off?" "Hmph! Well, I think you'll find it's actually a minority that causes all the problems" she growled. "It's rogue elements, not the protesters!"
We walked off, dodging the trail of piss leaking out a doorway that was being used by some of the protesters as an ad hoc latrine. It was in a sense the official G20 urinal, but taking a photo of it just seemed too weird for some reason...
There was little in the way of actual violence, then, but lots of fear. The employees of the big firms in the area were taking no chances. No one we saw come out of the offices were wearing suits - they were all in street clothes instead. They were, ironically, as much in disguise as those protesters who wore hoods and masks. You had to wonder whether the more colorfully dressed protestors were only wearing their clothes for that day too, and would wash out the hair dye and undo their dreadlocks when they got home.
Still, the anxiety was all around. We went to a Starbucks that overlooks the courtyard at one end of Liverpool Street. There were no customers and all the tables, chairs and bins had been removed. We sat nearby, but the area seemed half deserted while people all walked past quickly, not wanting to tempt fate. A woman some distance away started having a panic attack - we left when the first aiders from a nearby office ran up to help her. Was it the protests she was afraid of, or some terrible crisis in her life? We left quickly - nothing is more frightening than seeing fear itself.
We went to Tesco's. They had banned alcohol sales, but the few protestors in there were well-behaved and relaxed. The LCD screens were all broadcasting BBC and Sky footage of the protests, making skirmishes and squabbles, minor injuries and a few arrests all look like a Violence-Jack-With-PMT bloodbath. Despite the anti-consumerist doggerel down the road, we all shopped as if nothing had happened. And in a sense it hadn't. Nothing had really changed.
As we walked out, another punk was in front of us. His hooded top had the Crass logo on the back, with the legend - "Jesus Died For His Sins, Not Mine". What would the Jehovah’s Witnesses make of that, I wondered? What they and the protesters had in common, though, was this: a desire to change minds, remake the world, and bring about their own vision for the future.
We went to a pub for a drink. Again: no protesters, but plenty of city workers, all lairy, shouting and arm wrestling alpha males to a man. It was just another evening for them. We then went home. My friend wondered if we shouldn't go to the next protest in May. Why not? It might not change anything, but it wouldn't do any harm either - despite the media's efforts to make it seem otherwise.
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