A Bridge Too Far: Strasbourg - Kehl 04/04/09

An eyewitness account of some invisible events

The Anti-NATO demonstration at Strasbourg - Kehl is disrupted by the strategic intervention of the police, but the attempt by the state to hide this strategy is in turn disrupted by the Black Block youth. This game is conducted at the level of the symbol.

The official rhetoric of the event on the Rhine, which was staged on the 60th anniversary of NATO (as part of the process of normalisation of militarisation in the public imagination), was that the French and German leaders would meet to join hands on the Passarelle des Deux Rives which crosses the Rhine between Strasbourg an Kehl, and re-enact the rapprochment which followed the ending of the Second World War and subsequent founding of NATO in April 1949. The benign supervision of the American president would echo the liberal interventionist role of the US in 1945 (this narrative has erased the crucial significance of Stalin's Red Army in the defeat of Naziism). The symbolism of the bridge is anodyne yet powerful, as fake and as pervasive as the 'generic' bridges which decorate Euro banknotes (the Euro of course, like NATO, was another liberal US intervention).

500 metres downstream however another bridge story was being played out. Hundreds of German police formed a barricade across the Pont d'Europe, in order to prevent anti-NATO protestors from moving between Germany and France (several thousand protestors had gathered on each side). This was part of an official strategy which included the suspension for the duration of the summit of the Schengen Agreement , which allows the free movement of people between certain member states. To celebrate Free Europe, Europe would have to be made temporarily somewhat less free.

March organiser Tobias Pflueger of Die Linke argued with the police for the bridge to be opened, to allow protestors from both sides to join hands in a symbolic display of unity. Unfortunately while this discussion was going on a group of black-clad youths had made another barricade on the French side of the bridge and set fire to it. The police were then able to point to the burning barricade as a sensible reason for not allowing peace protestors (or indeed anyone) to cross the bridge. The action of the black-clad youths had seemed reckless and self-defeating, and the organisers of the protest were exasperated. I helped one of them to try to dismantle the barricade but it had become impossible. Had the black-clad youths ruined it for everyone?

The answer must be emphatically No. The black-clad youths had made the deepest (maybe instinctual) reading of the day's events. Had the bridge been opened and another five of seven thousand demonstrators from Germany been allowed to join the demonstration, so what? When Tony Blair was asked to respond to the February 15 2003 march, he said 'This is why we're going to Baghdad, so that people there can protest too'. You realised then that the only difference between Saddam and Blair on this point was that Saddam was making a saving on cleaning up the litter. The fact is that liberal democracy wants to be seen as a place where people have a right to protest, but is not a place where protests need have any effect on policy. For this reason it was important for the authorities in Strasbourg on Saturday to be seen to allow the demonstration, while in fact keeping it under tight control.

The skirmishes with stone-throwing black-clad youth served to distract from the fact that the march had been confined to a small area around the docks. The setting fire to the Ibis Hotel and other structures and the vandalism of certain marchers was widely regretted by the 'majority of peaceful demonstrators'. However the barricade on the bridge created a powerful counter-symbol to that of the Passarelle des Deux Rives. It reinforced, made concrete and drew attention (with a plume of black smoke) to the reality of Strasbourg -Kehl on 4th April 2009, which is also the reality of Europe: Europe is united only at the level of official discourse. This is a unity which asks everyone to join together to defeat 'the common enemy'. This is a union of state-corporate interests in which the people are invited in as spectators of staged symbolic events. The well-meaning 'peaceful protestors' are mistaken if they think that the audience participation in this theatre will have any effect on the plot. The Black Block element understand the need to claim an autonomous narrative.