This is an excerpt from a much longer article. The full piece can be viewed on the Aufheben website.
By leafleting the national demonstrations and encouraging people to come to parties afterwards, the No M11 Link Campaign was able to draw significant numbers to the showdown at Claremont Road. By the time the law was passed in late October, the campaign was centred on defending this squatted street from the Department of Transport. In preparation for the eviction, rooftop towers and walkways were constructed, along with tree houses and street barricades cleverly disguised as works of art and thus blending in with the explosion of colour and creativity which made this car-free street such an island in the grey sea of east London.
The urban setting of this campaign, dealing with the impact of road building on daily life (housing, health and the human environment) meant that it became relatively unplagued by the Donga-style mysticism which so afflicted the Twyford Down campaign. The resistance to the eviction of Claremont Road was easily the high point of the anti-roads movement to date. It took the state 4 days to retake the street in an operation which cost £2 million and involved over 700 police with dozens of bailiffs and security guards. The tactics of withdrawing to rooftops or 'locking on' in vulnerable positions are not without limits, however. Whilst the whole eviction may have taken 4 days, the police managed to retake the actual tarmac and pavement in little over an hour. This left people cut off inside squats, in tree houses and on the main tower in siege conditions, many with insufficient food and water or warm clothing and, after a while, no electricity. Such conditions breed the martyrdom syndrome, with divisions and recriminations as a result.
While the eviction of Claremont Road was not actually prevented, the effects of the resistance - on top of more than a year of direct action against the building of the link road - need to be judged in the wider context of the government's roads programme as a whole. The costs of this eviction, and of the security as a whole over the past year (reported to be £6 million), will have a bearing on future road building schemes. Projections to be fed into the Department of Transport's cost-benefit analyses and contractors' bids will be affected, and schemes where the economic advantages are at present marginal could therefore be shelved.
But the most important point, for this article anyway, is the fact that the state was unwilling to use those provisions of the CJ&POA which were explicitly drafted with road protesters in mind. None of the 'aggravated trespassers' were even arrested let alone charged under the act; neither was the new offence of trespassory assembly evoked. The scale of the resistance, in combination with its timing, occurring so soon after the Hyde Park riot, seems to have produced a recognition that using the CJ&POA could have created more problems than it was designed to solve.
But this raises the question as to who actually made this decision; simply referring to a retreat by the state glosses over the fact that, despite cross-party support in parliament, the state is far from united over the act. The police, and screws for that matter, hate 'their boss' Michael Howard. Indeed, there are a number of reasons for this division opening up within the state between the police and parliament. Firstly, by making previously civil offences into criminal ones, the workload of the police could be significantly increased; this, at a time when many forces are facing Treasury driven cutbacks, means an unwelcome intensification of work. Secondly, and particularly following the Hyde Park riot, the police recognize that the legislation could force them into more situations of conflict, both exposing them to more risks and increasing resentment of them. In short, the police see much of this legislation as serving the self-interests of the government whilst leaving them to pay the price. Given this, it may be more accurate to say that it was police discretion which meant that the law was not used at Claremont Road.
In the last issue of Aufheben, we devoted considerable attention to the contradiction between the class struggle against roads and the liberal ideology held by many of its participants. Although some of the most active elements in the No M11 Link Campaign did have a critique of capitalism and democracy, for many in the campaign a recognition of the objective basis of the campaign was still sorely lacking. It is vital to recognize how ideas and practice are related, however, in order to grasp how the development of an anti-capitalist perspective may emerge. There was a degree of local support for the No M11 Campaign, especially at certain times when the struggle was in Wanstead, less so as it shifted into Leytonstone. But more often than not, protesters would invade construction sites to find themselves outnumbered by potentially violent security guards. In this situation of numerical disadvantage, notions of class solidarity count for little. Playing the game of non-violence and hoping the rules are respected by the opposition seemed the best way of escaping a good kicking. The appeal for police to 'do their job even handedly' by protecting your 'right to protest', is at least in part a result of the weakness of the movement in relation to the violence of the road builders' protectors. Unfortunately the tactic of non-violence tends to encourage the adoption of a principled pacifism, to the detriment of an analysis in terms of class warfare.
This relation with security guards is becoming inverted in the campaign against the proposed M77 through Pollok Park in Glasgow. An unprecedented degree of local opposition to the scheme, and support for the 'outside' protesters, whose ranks are regularly swelled by local kids bunking off school, has meant that conditions no longer lend themselves so easily to appealing for the unwritten rules of non-violence to be observed on each side. Pictures of security guards have menacingly been posted up around the local estate, and they have been warned in no uncertain terms that there will be severe repercussions if they beat up any protesters. In the face of this intimidation, finding the boot on the other foot for a change, and being charged with siding with the yuppies against their own class, many security guards have quit, including 24 on one day alone. In these circumstances, the limitations of non-violence as a principle should be more clearly exposed, and the development of an anti-capitalist perspective may be encouraged. The recent spate of arson attacks in other parts of Glasgow on the show homes of the main contractors, Wimpey, is a sign that things could be moving in the right direction.
The CJ&POA, far from crushing the anti-roads movement, has swelled its ranks. Not only has involvement in the anti-CJB movement led to a degree of further politicization, as anti-roads protesters have faced new questions and arguments arising from events like the Hyde Park riot, but the conditions for this movement becoming conscious of itself as class struggle are becoming more fertile as well. As it begins to do so, it prefigures the day when transport will no longer serve the requirements of the circulation of commodities, and people as commodities, but will be a function of enriched human needs and desires.
This article was originally published in Aufheben.
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