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� October 15, 2006 - MORE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: Poll Tax Riot
19 Oct 2005
This article is thanks to the parallax - a different perspective. It is somewhat speculative towards the end but at least you have a different account of the poll tax riot of 31 March 1990 from somebody who was there.
From my perspective, the police are in charge at any and every demonstration. They have huge resources, certainly far better information on the overall picture. They have all the power of the state and they use it. It is worth noting that violence is used to discredit the demonstrators and that with the Metropolitan Police demonstrations that turn violent are demonstrations against government policy - the latest clear example that has been widely publicised being the fox-hunting demonstration in Parliament Square.
UK governments are not accountable to the UK population or electorate and regularly act against the population's interests. UK is not a tolerant, democratic society and unaccountable cliques have huge power without accountability. Corporations, the media and big business have power and the people are systematically deceived and only ever considered at election time.
Under Blair we have the next generation of Thatcherism, it is the same Neo-Liberal bullshit under yet another insane tyrrant because that is what the UK electoral system throws up - Neo-Liberal puppets sponsored by dark cliques. Back then we had the poll tax, weapons sales and support for South Africa's Apartheid regime. Today we have wars killing hundreds of thousands of ordinary, innocent people and associated lies and deceptions, savage attacks on human rights and civil liberties and huge authoritarian advances by the state so that there is no meaningful distinction between the police and the executive and they can do as they please without being held accountable.
The poll tax and the poll tax riot was back in 1990. There was huge popular opposition to the poll tax because it was an attack on the majority of the population by the rich and powerful, an abuse of democracy that treated the majority of UK's population with absolute contempt. It is comparable to the huge popular opposition displayed by the UK population against Bush and Bliar's illegal wars.
The crowd was similar to contemporary anti-war demonstrations - ordinary people of all ages and from all occupations but also a minority radical element. The vast majority of the crowd were not expecting any trouble - it was a legitimite well-organised protest. I was at the protest with probably about sixty to eighty people from my street, we caught the tube to the protest. We were a group of neighbours all known to each other but not an identifiable group because neighbours are a diverse group of different families, couples and individuals.
The radical element come out to defend ordinary people against the excesses of the state. They are often portreyed as anti-democratic when in many ways they are demanding accountability and integrity in the political process. They turn out in response to intolerable actions by government. Ordinary people in Scotland recognised fully well that the radicals were on their side. The radicals have something of an image problem because they are anti-fiction and spin and by definition, disorganised. One point where I differ from many of the radicals is that I vote although I can certainly appreciate their perspective.
Every person at that protest will have had a different experience and story to tell. I am going to draw on Wikipedia's account and highlight my own story in relation to it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poll_tax riot
The day itself
On March 31, 1990, people began gathering in Kennington Park, south of the River Thames, from 12pm to 1.30pm. Turnout was encouraged by the fine spring weather, and it soon became apparent that between 180,000 and 250,000 people were gathering. The official police report, issued a year after the riot, suggested that numbers were close to 200,000. A contributory factor to the size of the demonstration may also have been decision by the Labour Party to abandon plans to stage their own rally on the same day.
The march set off from Kennington Park at 1.30pm, and began moving faster than planned because some anarchists had forced open the main gates of the park, so people were not forced through the smaller side-gates. This meant that the march spilled over onto both sides of the road, and despite police and stewarding efforts, stayed that way for much of the route.
[I was not aware that the main gates were forced open.]
By 2.30pm Trafalgar Square, destination of the march and site of a planned rally, was nearing its capacity.
Unable to continue moving easily into Trafalgar Square, at about 3.00pm the huge march slowed down and eventually stopped in Whitehall. The police, feeling challenged and worried about a surge towards the newly installed security gates of Downing Street, blocked off the top and bottom of Whitehall. The section of the march which stopped opposite the Downing Street entrance happened to contain a large proportion of veteran anarchists and a group called Bikers Against The Poll Tax, all of whom became annoyed by several heavy-handed arrests, including one of a man in a wheelchair.
[Our group came to a halt on Whitehall in front of a grassed area that extended about 20 meteres from Whitehall and ended at a heavy wall about six foot high. Having consulted the A to Z it looks as though we were in front of the Ministry of Defence just north of Richmond Terrace and close to Downing Street.]
Meanwhile, the tail-end of the march had been diverted at the Parliament Square end of Whitehall. Again, quite by chance, a large Class War banner (and the anarchists it had attracted) was at the head of this diverted and unpoliced march. They led the march up the Embankment for a few hundred yards, then turned off up Richmond Terrace, bringing the diverted march out into Whitehall, directly opposite the entrance of Downing Street.
[I have no recollection of this happening.]
Mounted riot police were brought up, and from about 3.30pm police tried to clear people out of Whitehall, despite both retreat and advance being blocked by further lines of police. Fighting and scuffles broke out and the Whitehall section of the march eventually fought its way out into Trafalgar Square.
[Police lines were up the centre of Whitehall with protestors to the Embankment side. Police ordered the women and children to go to the grassed area. Then mounted police charged them. There was no warning and there was no provocation from the protestors.
The demonstrators did not respond violently. Instead we berated the police in front of us. deep and a neighbour took it in turns lecturing the police. What were they doing? There was no trouble. They were sending horses into women and children. There were pensionsers, doctors and children there. We did well. You may have noticed that deep can be very persuasive.
deep and a different neighbour managed to leave the area by walking down Great Scotland Yard. There were many police there but they just looked confident. They caught a tube and went home.]
From around 4.00pm, with the rally nearly officially over, published reports of events become confused and contradictory. It seems that the mounted riot police (those who had earlier attempted to clear Whitehall) charged out of a side street straight into the packed crowds in Trafalgar Square. Whether intentional or not, this was interpreted by many in the crowd as an unwarranted provocation, further fueling anger among crowds in the Square. At about 4.30pm, four shielded police riot vans drove directly into the crowd (a recognised police tactic in dealing with mass demonstrations, at the time) outside the South African Embassy, apparently attempting to force their way through to the entrance to Whitehall where police were re-grouping. The crowd vigorously attacked the vans with wooden staves, scaffolding poles, and other items to hand, all in an attempt to slow down the vans. The rioting escalated.
By about 4.30pm police had closed all the main Underground stations in the area and sealed the southern exits of Trafalgar Square, thus making it very difficult for people to disperse. Coaches had been parked south of the river, so many people's instincts was to try to move south. At this point, Militant ABF stewards were withdrawn on police orders. Sections of the crowd, apparently unemployed coal miners, climbed scaffolding and rained debris on the police below. Then, at about 5.00pm builders' portakabins below the scaffolding caught fire, followed by a room in the South African Embassy on the other side of the Square. The resulting smoke from the two fires caused near darkness in the Square and there followed a twenty minute lull in the rioting.
Between 6pm and 7pm the police opened the southern exits of the Square and slowly managed to force people out of Trafalgar Square. A large section was moved back down Northumberland Avenue and eventually allowed over the River Thames to find their way back to their coaches. Two other sections were pushed north into the West End, where looting and vandalism of shops and cars took place. Police ordered all pubs in the area to close which, together with apparently random police assaults on shoppers, onlookers and tourists, inevitably heightened tensions in the whole area by forcing drunken and disgruntled crowds onto the streets. Published and recorded accounts mention shop windows being broken, a few goods looted, and expensive cars being overturned in: Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Charing Cross Road, and Covent Garden.
The original demonstrators rapidly became mixed with drifters and young people. Scuffles between rioters and police continued until 3am. Rioters were selective in their choice of targets: The Body Shop, McDonalds, Barclays Bank, Tie Rack, Armani, Ratners, National Westminster Bank, and Liberty's. As well as such shops and banks, Stringfellow's nightclub, car showrooms, Covent Garden cafés, wine bars and expensive cars such as Porsches and Jaguars were overturned and set on fire. Other potential targets were left untouched: pubs, small shops, older cars and the offices of the Irish airline Aer Lingus. The mob clearly made a political choice in their targets.
It appears from both Wikipedia and my own account that protestors were denied an escape route from the area and that mounted police twice waded into protestors and provoked the rioting.
Here is the parallax. deep had shown that he had leadership qualities through berating the police. Then he disappeared. deep sometimes 'trolls' on the web and he has once trolled about turning cars on their heads. Have you noticed that the police always suspect the worse in people?
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