Report on Anti-Capitalist Protest in Dublin - May 18th 2010

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Wednesday May 19, 2010 12:57 by WSM Newsroom

Scuffles and Speeches

The WSM and Semora Spraoi callout for the anti-capitalist bloc was reasonably successful - what looked like over 200 people showed up - including banners from the Revolutionary Anarcha-Feminist Group, Seomra Spraoi, Eirigi, the IRSP, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and a student solidarity group.

The WSM and Semora Spraoi callout for the anti-capitalist bloc was reasonably successful - what looked like over 200 people showed up - including banners from the Revolutionary Anarcha-Feminist Group, Seomra Spraoi, Eirigi, the IRSP, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and a student solidarity group.

The meeting up point had a heavy police presence which, unusually, included 4 officers on horseback and a helicopter hovering overhead. After a few speeches, the crowd started to form up to march to join the RTW protest. The route of the march was to be only a few hundred metres long - along Stephen's Green, down Dawson Street and onto Molesworth St - and was scheduled to stop on the way at Anglo Irish Bank's headquarters.

Bizarrely, the police made a concerted attempt to stop the march leaving. They formed a cordon of officers backed by horses along the corner of Stephen's Green and attempted to physically prevent the march from entering the road. Why they attempted to do this is a matter of conjecture - having attended hundreds of marches - some with less than 50 people, I have never seen the police attempt to block a march from using the road in Dublin.

Some of the marchers thought that it represented a provocation in the hope that the crowd would give the police an excuse to attack them, others thought that it represented an attempt to put the radicals in their place by imposing themselves upon them. Whatever their motivation, their execution proved inept. Within a couple of minutes the entire crowd had succeeded in pushing through them or walking around them and forming up as a march on the road.

The police were, for whatever reason, unwilling to escalate the violence to impose themselves in the face of the weight of numbers. They spent a few more minutes attempting to block the front of the march from advancing by pushing it backwards, which was just as difficult to understand and just as ineptly executed as their first attempt. Within a few minutes the march had walked through and around them and they gave up.

story continues at http://www.wsm.ie/c/anti-capitalist-protest-dublin-may-...-2010