G20 Summit, London, G20 London, G20 Protests, G20 Demonstrations

 

For great photographs and the low down on the G20 Summit, Protests and Demonstrations visit www.ravishlondon.com/g20

 

The world faces a problem: recession and a spiraling fall in trade. The Economist puts it like this, “Trade is contracting again, at a rate unmatched in the post-war period. This week the World Trade Organisation (WTO) predicted that the volume of global merchandise trade would shrink by 9% this year. This will be the first fall in trade flows since 1982. Between 1990 and 2006 trade volumes grew by more than 6% a year, easily outstripping the growth rate of world output, which was about 3% (see chart 1). Now the global economic machine has gone into reverse: output is declining and trade is tumbling at a faster pace. The turmoil has shaken commerce in goods of all sorts, bought and sold by rich and poor countries alike.” According to the Economist, “The immediate cause of shrinking trade is plain: global recession means a collapse in demand. The credit crunch adds an additional squeeze, thanks to an estimated shortfall of $100 billion in trade finance, which lubricates 90% of world trade.”

According to the Guardian, “On Thursday 2 April Gordon Brown is going to host the G20 summit in London. Leaders from 22 countries will be at the summit. The G20 is an organisation for finance ministers and central bankers, who in the past met once a year to discuss international cooperation in finance. There are 19 countries who are members: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The 20th member is the European Union, which is represented by whichever country holds the EU presidency (currently, it's the Czech Republic). These countries represent 90% of global GDP, 80% of world trade and two thirds of the world's population. The IMF and the World Bank also attend G20 meetings, although technically the London event isn't a normal G20 meeting.”

This G20 meeting will be for the leaders of all G20 countries. According to the Guardian the policy agenda developed by the last G20 meeting “did not in fact go much beyond pre-existing international initiatives that had recently been developed in more technocratic international bodies.” According to the Guardian, “On the London summit website, the British government has explained what it hopes to achieve. At the summit, countries need to come together to enhance global coordination in order to help restore global economic growth. World leaders must make three commitments:

• First, to take whatever action is necessary to stabilise financial markets and enable families and businesses to get through the recession.

• Second, to reform and strengthen the global financial and economic system to restore confidence and trust.

• Third, to put the global economy on track for sustainable growth.

Gordon Brown has argued that the world must avoid protectionism. According to the Economist, “The World Bank says that, since the G20 leaders last met in November in Washington, DC, 17 of their countries have restricted trade. Some have raised tariffs, as Russia did on second-hand cars and India did on steel. Citing safety, China has banned imports of Irish pork and Italian brandy. Across the world, there has been a surge in actions against “dumping”—the sale of exports, supposedly at a loss, in order to undermine the competition. Governments everywhere are favouring locally made goods.” The Economist also says, “Kei-Mu Yi, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, argues that trade has fallen so fast and so uniformly around the world largely because of the rise of “vertical specialisation”, or global supply chains. This contributed to trade’s rapid expansion in recent decades. Now it is adding to the rate of shrinkage. When David Ricardo argued in the early 19th century that comparative advantage was the basis of trade, he conceived of countries specialising in products, like wine or cloth. But Mr Yi points out that countries now specialise not so much in final products as in steps in the process of production.”

Protectionism in itself sounds bad – but it is a policy option available and used in all political economies – including the most liberal. Protectionism can also lead to a more self-sustainable economy, and can lead to the internal development of an economy, which means the economy is less reliant and dependent on external sources of finance. Development will be slower, but it can be more secure and sustainable. It is likely that if countries do operate protectionist policies it will be a short-term opportunist and populist response to workers and unions, but it could be seen as an alternative economic model of development. It worked in Brazil and Argentina during the 1960s and 1970s for a while, until a more neo-liberal and external finance model was preferred.

The Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was reported on Channel 4 News to have told Mr Brown the crisis was caused by "white blue eyed people". This overtly racist remark has been noted, but there has been no visible backlash. It is interesting how the whole agenda about racism never applies to the dominant one, i.e. you can racially slur white people, and white people with blue eyes without anyone batting an eye lid, whereas if you racially slur other ethnic groups you can find yourself battered. I find this state of affairs deeply offensive to the human race in general, and very patronizing to those groups who don’t come from the dominant ethnic group (i.e. its almost to say the whole anti-racist thing is a way of patting you on the head and saying there, there – because when it comes to racism we don’t really give a shit – see the way we couldn’t give a f*** if you slur our own dominant white ethnic group).

The reality is that the summit will represent a reshuffling of position, support and dependencies between the world’s twenty richest countries. Spectators are expecting China to come out feeling puffed up and proud, given that China has faired relatively in recent years, or so we are led to believe. Meanwhile national demonstrations seem to be focusing our attention to the fact that a different way of working is needed. In fact it will be work as usual – the question is who will come out on top.

In anticipation of the G20 summit a demonstration was held in London. 10,000 were predicted to attend the demonstrations. The police reported 35,000. I was there at the demonstration and I don’t believe I saw 35,000 people walk past Big Ben – and I saw it from start to finish. As one commentator, on the Guardian observed, “Apart from the small contingent of student SWP calling 'One solution, Revolution' and about 20 anarchists making noise the spirit was generally depressed and lacking any anger or sense of direction.” Cognitator joked, “Perhaps the police were adding their number to the protesters. As opposed to taking them away as per usual.”

According to the Guardian, “The Put People First march yesterday was organised by a collaboration of more than 100 trade unions, church groups and charities including ActionAid, Save the Children and Friends of the Earth. The theme was "jobs, justice and climate" and the message was aimed at the world leaders who will be gathering for the G20 summit here this week.”

The march started on the Embankment. When I arrived there I walked around desperately finding somewhere where I could have a piss for free. I tried Starbucks and Costa Cofee, but they seemed to have no toilets, I even tried the stamp collectors fayre a subterranean culture of badly dressed old people, with poor eyesight and even worse posture, which was momentary distraction from my full bladder, but which did not provide the answer to my pressing problem as the toilet door was locked and for staff only. Stephen Moss writing for the Guardian said, “Westminster is not a great place for someone like me, who has a weak bladder, to go on a march. The public loos there cost an outrageous 50p a go. The Socialist Worker magazine-seller next to Embankment tube station is on to this in a flash. "50p to have a piss – a lesson in capitalism," he is soon shouting. Later, I'm pleased to see someone has punched a hole in the wooden sign advertising the price.” In the end I walked all the way to the National Portrait Gallery where you can always be assured a good quality toilet seat.

The Guardian continued, “The marchers, estimated at 35,000 by police, accompanied by brass bands and drummers and a colourful assortment of banners and flags, walked the four miles from Embankment to Hyde Park, where speeches from comedian Mark Thomas and environmental campaigner Tony Juniper, and music from the Kooks, made for a party-like atmosphere.”

The Guardian reported, “A group of fewer than 200 anarchists joined the march and were kept isolated and surrounded by police. Chants of "Burn the bankers!" were the closest anyone came to any show of aggression.’ Yes I witnessed this, it was clear that the anarchists, dressed in black, some of them with scarves covering their faces, generally looked cool as fuck, like some post-nuclear vigilante gang, their black signifying the dark depressing reality from which humanity starts, and the point from which they wish to depart. Whether the police presence was heavy is debatable but they certainly had a line of police accompanying them, whereas no other group were honored with such a presence. Of the anarchists Stephen Moss says, “I fall in with some anarchists halfway through the march – a delightful young Greek called Alex and an Italian, who is happy to talk about Bakunin, but is, I sense, a little suspicious of me. The anarchists march together – with the police flanking them in a way they don't with the rest of the march – and I am intrigued that they never shout slogans or bang drums. Their mission is a serious one.” Moss goes on, “Alex tells me a reporter from the Sunday Times has already approached him to ask why anarchists wear masks. "Work it out for yourself – you're a journalist," he'd told him. "People always ask why we wear masks; they never ask about our ideology," he complains. In essence, that ideology is: power corrupts; all elites will be corrupt; so government should be by the people, for the people – a mass movement of the type they claim is emerging in South America. Hezbollah is also mentioned favourably, a movement they see as developing organically. "Organic" is a key word for anarchists, and it would save a lot of aggro and bad press if they were called organicists rather than anarchists.” Good point. But who wants to be called an organicist? And in any case everything is organic really – its just that some organisms develop in a way we or anarchists done like and some do. To call anarchists, organic is to miss the point, anarachists are like Christian, they dream of a reality which transcends human nature as it is and known. Structure, corruption, self-interest and greed underpin all human activity – the question is not how we can do away with it, but how can we manage it in a fair way.

Stephen Moss wrote about the variety of organizations on the march. He said, “Socialist Worker has a three-point strategy: "Seize their wealth," "Stamp out poverty," "End all wars." Sounds good, but I can't work out exactly who "their" refers to. The Socialist party is hot on slogans, colder on the mechanism by which they are put into practice. The likely outcome to the current crisis still appears to be government by Etonians.” Most of these movements are nothing to do with instituting political change. The people involved in them do not want to genuinely change things. Instead what these groups function as is self-help groups for people, for whatever reason, feel that they have been wronged in life, probably at a personal level, and feeling quite hopeless about their personal wrongs, they want to transpose their personal woe on to a faceless, unintelligible other – the government, the state, the capitalist, the rich and the greedy. Its not so much that socialist workers and anarchists want to change things, they know they are completely ineffectual, and too screwed up and traumatized, too aggressive, unintelligent and incapable of engaging people into a different way of organizing; they just want to shout out to people ‘we hurt’. Fair enough.

The TUC don’t seem to be turning up to do anything more than saying ‘there there’ to threatened workers, and stating the downright bloody obvious to the government. Their message is “The importance of this summit cannot be underestimated. Unemployment and deprivation will grow massively over the next two years unless governments work together. People need to know that there is an international solution to this crisis. If the summit suggests that there is not, many will turn to nationalist and protectionist politics with all that implies for the global economy and world peace.” Mind you they do go on to say that, “But while the immediate response to the crisis will be at the forefront of the leaders' minds, the unprecedented Put People First coalition shows there is a huge appetite for a new economic direction. Thirty years of the increasing dominance of the neo-liberal agenda has got us into this mess. The summit must show that the next 30 years need to be about a renewed era of economic growth based on a much fairer share of the proceeds. One that is environmentally sustainable and one that does not end in the burst of yet another financial bubble.” But what are they really saying? Nothing much.

There is of course something about how all of this is just about having a laugh, getting a kick, getting an emotional fix. There’s something very similar to the way that some of the more violent groups get ready for a rumble with the police and football hooliganism. Football hooligans are much more honest about the emotional kick they get from fighting. The protestors pretend that they are doing it for the people. Whatever the so called reasons, it is clear that a lot of protestors enjoy confrontation. They are much more focused on the enemy and combating the enemy than they are on creating peaceful societies. So Stephen Moss makes the interesting observation, “When the march eventually gets to Hyde Park, the anarchists refuse to join the "TUC bureaucrats" for the official rally and hold their own open-platform meeting at Speakers' Corner, dominated by elderly men in hats who talk less about Bakunin than about beating up the BNP and confronting the police on the streets of Whitechapel. It's all a bit depressing (and expletive-filled – I take serious exception to the denunciation of "Oxbridge cunts"), though I like the fact that the elderly men refuse even to use a megaphone – only the ordinary human voice is organic enough.” The media and police have both hyped the April 2009 marches as like the possible end of the British way of life, of democracy, of capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth, but its like we all want to will it to happen – we all are looking for excitement – war may be bad but peace is fucking boring – I once read.

The Guardian also reported, “Thomas told the Observer he believed the protest marked "the start of a grassroots movement". He added: "This is a moment. This is the first time people have had a chance to come out on to the streets in a big way." But this is nonsense. This was just an opportunity for a plethora of groups, amongst whom there are more differences, and the only thing that can unite them is a general concern for jobs, justice and climate, which incidentally are three themes that unite most of the country, and all the main political parties, to catch the government at a weak moment, and hope to build up support for whatever cause they have, on the back of the anger and desperation amongst people at this time.

The protest ended up in Hyde Park. I didn’t go, it was too cold and rainy, and although I did aim to walk there via a short-cut through Victoria, I ended up taking refuge in Westminster Cathedral, where I saw another procession, of Catholic priests and altar boys, who were holding a service for the Union of Catholic Mothers. I listened to the Catholic priests, they sounded much more happy and at peace with themselves and their surroundings, than the rankerous socialist bile spitting leaders.

People are blaming the bankers, but there is in actual fact no-one to blame for this. The this needs to be qualified too. The ‘this’ is the fact that people are loosing their jobs, consumption will have to be reduced. It is ironic that it is precisely that people are facing the prospect of lower consumption that they are out on the streets protesting against greedy bankers, it is not so much the greed of the bankers that people resent, so much as the increased consuming power of the bankers that they are envious of. The bankers are not to blame for working within a system, which promoted risky investments, a system which was encouraged and deregulated by politicians who realized that whilst the bubble was growing there were huge financial gains to be made from encouraging bankers to reap the rewards both for themselves but through the state through taxation, and politicians who were encouraged by the people who voted them in, who probably formed the majority of people marching in demonstration and protest today, who voted in the governments believing the deregulation of banks not to be a serious enough issue to vote against a government for, and realizing that even if it was a risk, whilst the bubble was growing, they were happy enough to see their elected government ensuring that the country got a share of the pie. We all contributed to this fucking mess – if you can call it a mess – its only a mess for those who no longer have jobs and cannot consume so much – by voting in the government, who deregulated the banks and encouraged the lending of our money several times over to riskier and riskier ventures which in actual fact were not producing anything of material benefit, but were instead relying on house prices going up and up, as more people poured their money into it. Now we are in deep shit, because Gordon Brown has poured what little remaining money we have, and we have on credit into the black hole – it has simply disappeared.

There are some people who are saying the bankers should pay for the crisis they created. It doesn’t work like that – it works by people putting their money into a bank – and entrusting the bank to invest it wisely. Where the bank looses the money – the original investor looses the money. This creates a motivation on behalf of the investor to invest wisely, e.g. on the basis of what we know right now investing in Barclays rather than Lloyds TSB or the Royal Bank of Scotland. However reality begins to change once one’s livelihood is threatened – now it is solely the banker’s responsibility to have invested the money wisely, the public who invest their money into the banks are seen to be helpless, powerless twits, whose securities should have been looked after by a paternalistic and caring banking sector. So for example, according to Fox New, “Berlin police estimated that around 10,000 people gathered in front of the capital's city hall and more than 1,000 in Frankfurt, Germany's banking capital, for similar demonstrations under the slogan: "We won't pay for your crisis." Its not a crisis – its just that there are now lots of personal crises – the public didn’t bother to check whether their banks were investing their money properly or wisely and now they are paying for it. But the banks aren’t responsible for this – they really aren’t.

We have two problems. The first was created by the fact that banks lent out our money several times over – so we thought the country was several times as wealthy as it actually was. This led to inflationary pressures especially in the housing market – where the same money was lent to several different people – all investing in housing leading to unrealistic housing prices. We now realize we have a fraction of the wealth we thought we had. This creates deflationary pressures – i.e. where everyone has less money prices are reduced. This problem can be solved by creating a soft deflationary landing to a level where the price of labor and goods reflects the value of the money we have not the value of the money we have and we loaned. This means everyone has to accept lower wages – we can either do this peacefully based around a consensus and agreement between corporations, banks, trade unions or governments – or we can do it aggressively – letting perfectly good companies whose workers refuse to take pay cuts go to the wall – and then watch as millions of unemployed people try to reform and reorganize new companies and enterprises.

 

The second problem is that banks are no longer making such risky investments – so they are not looking to lend their money on to others – which means there is less money to be lent to people – which means less activity and less economy. We have to get used to less activity – but at least the activity will be invested in activities which are genuinely producing material benefit for people – not leading to an apparent generation of wealth – which is the artificial effect of lending x amount of money to people ten times, making it seem that we are ten times as rich as previously – when actual fact we are equally as wealthy – but with prices ten times as high. We should have also let the banks go to the wall – and started again with a heavily regulated banking sector – which was not allowed to lend out peoples’ money irresponsibly. No-one wants to have to feel the pain from this – i.e. the rich bankers who keep their pensions and bonuses, the people who have banked with them who want to keep their savings, and the businesses who are funded by the banks who want to hang on to their business and jobs. So what Gordon Brown is doing, is in the name of the people, funneling money into the banking system, paying for the debts, and thus, keeping the bankers sweet, keeping the investors sweet, keeping the businesses sweet. Who looses out? All of us – the poor! They never really had anything to loose in the first place, however whilst Gordon Brown borrows money to give to the banks so they can lend to businesses and pay bankers bonuses and salaries, we move a step closer to becoming bankrupt – i.e. not being able to borrow any more money because no-one believes we can pay it back. Once we become bankrupt, social services and welfare will be cut.

According to Gaby Hinsliff, “Many economists believe a recovery now requires bursting that artificial bubble and rebalancing the economy so that Chinese consumers are encouraged spend a little more - reducing America's trade deficit - and Americans a little less. Malloch Brown suggests Britons, too, will need to relearn the art of saving.”

According to the Guardian, “But Scotland Yard is expecting a greater challenge on Wednesday 1 April, dubbed "Financial Fools Day", with a series of protests aiming to cause disruption in the Square Mile and elsewhere.” The Guardian says, “On 1 April an alliance of anti-capitalist groups called G20 Meltdown is organising a carnival headed by "Four Horsefolk of the Apocalypse", which will converge in front of the Bank of England. Anarchists are planning to target the second day of the summit at ExCel. Other groups mounting demonstrations include Climate Camp, the Stop the War Coalition, and Government of the Dead. An alternative summit will be held a few hundred yards from the ExCel centre at the University of East London.”

The alternative G20 summit website provides the following manifesto: Can we oust the bankers from power? Can we get rid of the corrupt politicians in their pay? Can we guarantee everyone a job, a home, a future? Can we establish government by the people, for the people, of the people? Can we abolish all borders and be patriots for our planet? Can we all live sustainably and stop climate chaos? Can we make capitalism history? YES WE CAN!

According to the Daily Telegraph, “The G20 conference will lead to a London "lockdown" next week, with parks, roads and businesses closed to keep world leaders safe, Government officials are warning.” The media are really building this up, as an attempt to build readership and sell advertising. Its interesting how a force created by the desire to advertise and promote consumption causes papers to distort and promote a threat and confrontation to the very system upon which it is built. The Daily Telegraph article continues, “Protesters with armed with buckets and spades are among several thousand people who are planning to bring chaos to the heart of central London.Last night it emerged that City workers were being advised to "dress down" next week to avoid drawing attention to themselves.”

To anyone really wanting revolution bear in mind these words from Stephen Moss, “Changing society is hard, and usually starts with a split in the elite. The English civil war and the French revolution both began with a fissure in the governing classes; their falling-out created the space for populist movements to develop. For a grassroots movement to effect change is enormously difficult. It was only possible in Russia in 1917 because of the devastation wrought by war.”

The reality of the demo was perhaps best summer up by ‘one789’ who said, “My experience of the demo, in talking to people and observing, is that no one had any real clue of why they were there. They recognise 'blame the bankers' to be futile and a distraction, think capitalism 'is rubbish' and 'want change', but say nothing beyond that.I at least expected a high degree of frustration and anger, but more than anything what came across was disillusionment and confusion. But then, that's what you get I suppose from such a middle-class yummy-mummy bleeding-heart rally.”

As rabbit95 said, “Be glad we live in a society free enough to protest and where, apart from the police possibly taping your presence at such a demo, there will be no comeback.”

www.g20.org/

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For great photographs and the low down on the G20 Summit, Protests and Demonstrations visit www.ravishlondon.com/g20

 

 

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