The battle of Auchterarder has been fought and lost. More than 5,000 protesters achieved on 6 July 2005 what snow over Prestwick airport could have accomplished the G8 dignitaries arrived two hours late, but still in good time to meet Queen Elizabeth II.
But then, the battle was always going to be lost. It had to be waged, yet in the war for what is generally called justice, it was no more than a necessary sacrifice.
The victory of the G8 Alternatives march in Scotland on Wednesday was that it took place at all. At 10.30 am, it had been cancelled outright. Anarchists had descended on Stirling from the Dissent! rural convergence site and clashed with police forces already fraught after Mondays disturbances in Edinburgh.
Today and tomorrow, 7-8 July, Tom Burgis will be blogging live on openDemocracy from inside the G8 summit at Gleneagles.
Tom Burgis also reports from the G8 protests: Insider-outsider: the NGO fracture zone
The anarchists played into the hands of those determined to make the Live8 celebrity shindig at Murrayfield the days sole permitted protest. (That shindig featured an African campaigner thanking the G8 in advance for whatever it will do. She was not arrested.)
The Black Bloc, the Wombles and the other anarchist groups that demolished the front of Stirlings Burger King may have shown an anger that is sorely lacking elsewhere, but their motives are often dubious. Some in their ranks simply wouldnt know what to do with themselves if their goal of the states demise was attained and there was no one in authority left to goad. In terms of collective tactics, they have the acumen of plankton.
Wednesdays march, had it been co-ordinated, focussed, and broad enough to include the most radical elements, the untrousered peaceniks and the swathe of social resistance in between, could have made at least one G8 leader quake. But, as one disappointed activist from Pamplona observed: Its so disorganised. Theres no message to unite people.
A second victory was to overcome a calculated barrage of misinformation from the police. In ninety minutes around noon, I made four calls to the Tayside press office. The information was both inaccurate and at odds with what officers were saying on the ground. Given that the summit is being held on a golf course in the middle of (picturesque) nowhere, the efforts of the G8 Alternatives organisers were as savvy as they were calm. The clashes with riot police near the security fence around Gleneagles were as much the product of honest vexation as the work of any mischievous element.
Were not going to shut them down: theyve got American military everywhere, said Globalise Resistances Guy Taylor, whose coach was blockaded in Edinburgh for three hours. Were here to show theyre not a legitimate body to solve the worlds problems.
While Make Poverty Historys final push attempts to show that the G8 unelected, unaccountable and, seemingly, unstoppable is indeed Africas messiah, radicals are in for the long haul. The only thing that unites the G8 is that they are the richest nations in the world, said Taylor. Theyre there to retain that wealth and power. Poorer countries at least have some representation at the UN, the WTO and the World Bank.
Solace or subversion?
There is no such recourse at the G8. Not even Bob Geldof has a veto. There is no one inside the summit for the protesters to express solidarity with. That renders Make Poverty Historys efforts to harness the G8s power for the good of all mankind seem even more deluded. But with the Security Council omnipotent at the United Nations, and the World Banks one-dollar one-vote structure skewing its policy grotesquely, it has been at the World Trade Organisation that those poorer countries have been able to muster some collective clout. The most ominous part of the communiqué expected from the G8 on 8 July will be its recommendation for a daring round of development talks at the body whose doctrine was described by Ralph Nader as trade über alles.
Britain is part of a big push for the Doha [development round], says veteran Filipino activist and head of Focus on the Global South, Walden Bello. The December ministerial will be about the survival of the WTO, the engine of global misery, or whether it gets stopped for a third time. Bello, who laments British demonstrators mellow approach to protest, identifies the Achilles heel of the titan of global finance: the consensus required for the WTO to issue a communiqué.
In 1999, the WTO talks broke down for the first time since its foundation in 1995. In the streets, as police wiped the blood from their batons, something had happened, a child of many names had been born. Its general sobriquet is the global justice movement. Before Seattle, Bello argued, the globalisation of free trade was considered inevitable. After it, globalisation was something that could be resisted, partly through direct resistance to the WTO, G8 and the Bretton Woods institutions.
At Cancún in 2003, the WTO was dealt a massive blow. Emboldened by the mass protests on the Mexican streets, Africa united and new coalitions of developing countries the G20, G33 and G90 squared up to the big boys. Such was the resilience with which the Davids fronted up to the Goliaths ultra-liberal draft proposals, the ministerial was unable to issue a communiqué. They continue to coordinate resistance to the wests economic bulldozering at governmental level.
The network of insurgent solidarities goes wider. Where Richard Curtis offers solace to leaders who will lose no sleep as they condemn the global south to another cycle of privatisation and privation, radicals in the social justice movement have fostered links between civil society and those in developing countries determined to resist the pillage of their resources.
Others in Auchterarder, including George Monbiot and Trevor Ngwane, head of the South African Anti-Privatisation Forum, argue for more direct action. Monbiot recommends that the global south call Paul Wolfowitzs and Gordon Browns bluff on debt. If debtor countries simply refused en masse to service their debt, they would have the west by the bankrolls, says Monbiot: the total debt is $2.5 trillion; the global financial reserves are only $1.5 trillion. That would give poor countries real power.
Also in openDemocracy on the G8 summit and its protests:
Anthony Barnett, Me Tarzan. Me save Africa. Jeffrey Sachs, the G8, and poverty
Carolyn Tan, Auchterarder: a G8 summit visitors guide
Myles Allen, The ghost of Gleneagles
Robin Bell, Where is Auchterarder?
Tom Burgis, Emma Silverthorn, Sabrina Manville and others in our G8 blog
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Resisting the global carve-up
Within the protest establishment, that argument is barely countenanced. Were only asking the G8 to do what those eight countries can. We (also) challenge the way the express their power. We are not legitimising them, says Matt Phillips, one of the senior figures within Make Poverty History. We dont have time, frankly, to wait for a more legitimate entity to turn up. While were here today, 30,000 African children will die. We give the British government credit for pushing an ambitious agenda. I dont question Blair and Browns commitment what were bothered about is the outcome.
The furore over whether the G8 could turn benign if it is cuddled for long enough ignores the fundamental illegitimacy of this sacred group. It has no democratic mandate. Any attempt to challenge the misery the masters of the universe perpetuate must consider the fundamental question: where does its power come from? It comes from the entrenched, feudal privilege of corporate capital, expressed through structures either overtly or covertly unrepresentative of the planets population.
The Battle of Auchterarder was doomed from the outset. As the polyglot protesters left Gleneagles on Wednesday night, the mood was sombre. The carve-up will continue on the other side of the fence though thanks to Make Poverty History, the vocabulary will be different.
The next struggle will be for the will of those who have been politicised by Make Poverty Historys mass appeal those who scratch far enough below the surface of the G8 communiqué to see that the only slogan worth shouting is make the G8 history.
