Report from Edinburgh. posted by Richard Seymour

We checked into the campsite (the GR Train bringing the first big group to the city) on Friday night. There was so far about 40 or 50 tents set up. We saw our mini marquee, and pitched up around it. “You can’t camp here” we were told by a security guard, “this is an ‘autonomous’ space” he announced with all the conviction of a Seattle veteran. Apparently the small line of plastic tape we’d walked over to get to our marquee was the borderline between the campsite (ordinary) and the campsite (autonomous). Some Autonomists had organised a non-hierarchical meeting, in an anti-authoritarian style, and called the security guards to move us on. After staggering about under this intense thunderclap of irony, we moved. No point in not getting on with the neighbours, and autonomous spaces are notorious for their containing noise polluters when you most want sleep.
The camp is in Niddrie, for anyone who doesn’t know Edinburgh, this place is the poorest area in town. On a bus stop outside is a leaflet calling for a public meeting to stop the camp from happening (failed, obviously). The media had made much of potential tension between locals and protesters, but we were greeted by a good bunch of people from the estate. Next to the field is a couple of tower blocks that were featured in Trainspotting, and the field we are pitched in was the one from the film where they shoot the dog up it’s arse. Lovely. The council had announced they were to charge people £5 per night, but it’s been made free after pressure from campers and organisers.
Getting down to the MPH march the next day, we were again amazed, this time by
Oxfam ineptitude. Make Poverty History? More like spread it around a bit. The food concessions on site were having a laugh at our expense. Expensive crappy food, making London look cheap. And not a deep fried Mars Bar in sight, bollocks. Oxfam themselves were joining in the game. £20 for a souvenir t-shirt, non-ethically produced, made our lovely INSURGENT shirts on organic hemp, loving weaved by well paid workers in the shade at £15 seem the bargain of the century.
But most inept was the protest itself. Whren you’re trying to build a movement, you do have to consider the experience of people coming along to the protests. MPH treated everyone like white band fodder, a series of pens and stewards made progress very slow. We waited to get on the road for over 3 hours with no one coming to tell us what was happening. In fact I sat the march out, exhausted by the previous work in the run up to the event. I staffed the stall and spent the best part of the afternoon getting the shit kicked out of me by two 7 year olds, who found it funny.
The Stop the War stage hosted the radical speakers (W Bello, T Ngwane, G
Galloway, C Lucas, S Ritter, D Brutus, L German, G Monbiot, J Corbyn and J Rees and loads more), with George bringing the whole thing to a hollering climax. The rally repeatedly had the connection between poverty and war rammed across. The hypocrisy of the G8 over corruption was highlighted and Bonio and Gandalf came in for a fair slap of derision.
The evening had most bars in town packed with people staying for a little longer than just the Saturday. Howls of anguish emanated from every bar you walked past as the Live 8 coverage blocked all else from reports.
As Walden Bello said from the stage at the Usher Hall yesterday (Sunday) the mood has changed from meek to militant. No longer dominated by people who want to plead, the activist community here is now ready to expose the G8 for who they are and where their interests stand. And the police and authorities are looking for every chance to drive home the message that “If they’re still here, they must be up to bad shit”. Corralled the Stop the War march last night, briefly, the filming and surveillance has increased. People in Edinburgh have been warned of the Carnival and Clown actions today being potentially violent, to dress down if working and generally be scared like a good citizen until next weekend.
The protest to Gleneagles on wednesday is going ahead, the tickets for the coaches are being sold like hotcakes. The Herald today is trying to exacerbate potential friction in the movement by playing the dissent (blockaders) off against the G8Alternatives (marchers). I can’t see any problems we can’t overcome. There are lines of communication and despite a few instances which might suggest otherwise, there’s been a cordial relationship going on.
The Rally at the end of the G8Alternatives counter summit yesterday was a stormer. Haidi Guiliani (Mother of Carlo), Caroline Lucas, Vittorio Agnoletto, Galloway, Ngwane, Bianca Jagger (fantastic attack on Bono & Geldof) and a Scottish Socialist MEP (crow barred on to the stage, no one outside of Scotland had heard of her). George ended the thing, whipped up an atmosphere, and tickets for Wednesday were flying out to everyone. Two people who had come up from London with us announced they weren’t going home now, but would stay until Thursday.
As I write the foolhardy (?) who woke at 4am are getting dragged off the road at Faslane. I couldn’t make it, have ‘things to organise’ in Edinburgh, and fancied more than 2 hours sleep. I also really don’t want to get arrested before Wednesday, thus jeopardising the Gleneagles demo.
Anyway, more later I hope.
GuyT