Anarchy in the U.K.?

Watching the news yesterday, it was easy to believe that London was just one big riot, with blood-covered police and protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks, crowds of people under signs that say "ABOLISH MONEY" and people smashing things just for the sake of smashing them.

This radio report paints a slightly different picture:

Protesters Converge On London's G-20 Summit : NPR (Morning Edition, April 2, 2009)

From this report, it sounds like police took what was a somewhat peaceful protest and turned it into a riot scene by forming a cordon around the protesters, refusing to let anyone out, and then tightening the cordon.

It's nothing new. I traveled to Ireland as the invasion of Iraq began in 2003, and when I came back I received first-hand accounts of how Washington, D.C. police had done the same thing - took a peaceful, properly-permitted protest and forced it into a no-escape situation, and then escalated tensions by drumming their clubs on their shields in a syncopated, aggressive, and threatening manner. Protesters were detained in this manner for hours, in violation of their previously-secured permits. Business as usual. Standard operating procedure.

Not to say that there weren't dangerous or potentially violent elements there - though protests in the U.S. don't attract violent anarchists the way protests in Europe do. I believe Jean-Paul Sartre in the play Dirty Hands said something along the lines that any damn fool can throw a grenade, but it takes some skill to build or create. Too often European anarchists, it seems to me, are doing what they do not out of any sort of conviction, but just because they are in love with chaos and violence and want to smash things up.

Soon the G-20 summit will end. The London police will pack away their riot gear, at least until the next soccer match. And the anarchists will go back to whatever comfortable lives they have whenever they're not making everybody else's lives miserable. Until next time.