: Whoa-so it all went very wrong again!! Such things ususally do. Not only were there only 4000 people, out of the envisioned 10,000. It appears many were paid £30 to attend! That seems rather bizarre - wage slavery? (although the usual conspiracy theories about police etc are always welcome)
Anyway breaking windows and wrecking offices simply turns people against such activists - and when they do this wrecking, with naive student union self righteousness and plain soccer hooligan thuggery, then turning your back on them is the right thing to do. The mentality is akin to a spoiled brat who would rather destroy other childrens toys than see someone other than themselves get the benefit. Egalitarian indeed.
The few genuine protesters must have been apalled, frustrated and ashamed to see it turn like this.
More over it seems like its one to statism and zero to to others (from yahoo news):
"Its supporters like to define anarchy as a harmonious condition of society, in which government is abolished as unnecessary,"
the Daily Telegraph said in an editorial.
"But yesterday's disorder in the City of London made clear why everyone else regards it as a synonym for chaos, violence and
the breakdown of law and order."
--
McSpotlight: Gee, I don't know where you got the idea that people were paid to attend. I didn't part with any money; neither did any of the people I know in other groups like RTS.
Furthermore, there were well over 7,000 people present; regardless of what the Powers That Be say; I counted around 7000 and I didn't see all of the people (and yes, I've been on enough marches to estimate the size of a crowd pretty successfully).
Furthermore; I saw absolutely no violence until after the police had run someone over; as I've said already; the crowd's mood changed at that point. If it was an accident, it was a basic-level mistake on the police's part; one they should have known would cause trouble. If it was deliberate; well, the police were out to cause trouble and some pissed eejits in the crowd obliged.
However, out of the people attending, there were a couple of hundred violent protestors at most; which, out of 7,000+ isn't a large proportion.
Furthermore, do you really regard the Torygraph as a reliable source of information?; particularly as their editor seems to be too ill-educated to discern between Anarchism and Anarchy...
For another eyewitness report on the protest, try visiting Urban 75; it tallies with my experience of the day pretty closely.
