Some of the so-called tribes in the Soloman Island believe that given certain propriscious signs, like the coincidence of particular events with the rising of dead ancestors, the coming of a new age, a millenium, They believe that ships will appear in their harbours, bearing all the materials which the white settlers formerly owned, the materials from which they will make their new world. I don't know whether Daniel Read, Debacle in Grosvenor Square (Black Dwarf May 25th) is a Soloman Island Cargo Cultist, but he shares their perception of the world.
He imagines that the occurence of an alarming event in conjunction with the awakening of the spirits of past occasions, Cambodia plus the year of the Grosvenor Square battles and the Paris Uprising, were capable of giving rise to a vehement struggle comparable to the preconditions for building an "anti-imperialist movement. The revolution never simply follows a demonstration, and although it is true that we all spend the evenings after one in dispondency, we do so in the direct aftermath of the day, when subjective impressions of the event are closest to the surface, and before we analyse what has been going on. For Daniel Read to reproduce that demoralisation after having time to do some more constructive analysis simply adds his literary demoralisation to the general situation. The article is exactly what the doesn't want; 'in Vietnam the NLF continue to fight against imperialism' but we aren't the NLF, nor can their struggle be immediately mirrored here.
We need to start at the begining. A demonstration can be called for a number of purposes. It can be an act of solidarity with peoples elsewhere: it can be a means of exposing something, of making public theatre of some hidden or distorted fact; it can be a means to welding the participants closer together, a tiny element in a festival of the oppressed; it is very rarely that it is the last step in the seizure of state power. All these uses of demonstrations situate them as nothing more than tactics. Even the last is a tactic for taking the Party forward to the position of being the vanguard of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In that sense, we can only have certain limited ends in view from a demonstration, and they must be seen in terms of a more general policy, a long range strategy. In this country we seem always to be confusing the issue by making a tactic into a strategy.
So the real question comes to be what strategy we should be engaged in and then to see what role demonstrations can play in the. Under those curcumstances there is no possibility of having a de-politicised demonstration. In early 1968, in response to calls from the VSC, in Universities and other organisations up and down the country, small groups set about the recruitment of people REPLY DANIEL READ Demonstrations, the obession and vanity of the British Left, and its most miserable preoccupation. Every demo is an excuse for endless schemes of petty tactics, sweeping imperitives towards the masses voyerism. The demonstration against the American invasion of Cambodia was one of a long line. Triesman is right to point this out.
But he is wrong to suggest should not have been criticised. Nowhere does he defend the demonstration, it is true. He suggests instead that a critical analysis of it adds demoralisation to demoralisation, that only historical analysis and a practical alternative would justify our criticism This is salutary but still gets us nowhere. Of course the only decisive and effective criticism is to build the organisation and political direction that successful. demonstrations.
SCHOOL FREEDOM DEMONSTRATE 12th JULY We have received the following communication from the Action Union. It has the Black Dwarf's full support:
"The Action Union is at present engaged in campaign which is perhaps the most important campaign we have launched so far, and which is relevant to all school student unions, not just the SAU. The campaign could be called a "civil rights" campaign, for we are fighting for the rights which people outfor the demonstrations called for February and March The groups became tight-knit and relatively They maintained wide networks of contacts inside their Universities and between each other. Speakers got round will surely follow. the country to meetings which were organised, and the level of political discussions rose astronomically. That is to say, there were organisations in continual existence which were capable of recruitment, political education who wrote and organisation of the other people actively interested . With each demonstration, each being tougher than the last, more people were recruited and the discussions of what to do in a violent encounter became more concrete.
strategic decision to build revolutionary organisation throughout the country, /understanding many of the events of British campuses that year. The same people were in the forfront of the local organisation in many respects, and they used the same channels they had opened at the instigation of the VSC as the raison d'être for the groups became tactics which the groups used to consolidate, to show their political solidarity with the NLF and to punctuate the struggles in the places where they worked. Local work against the campus clowns of law and order was shown to be part of the national pattern. As a result of the potency of this conmovement frontation, the militants decided to concentrate on violent demonstrations, quite correctly, because a real head of steam was being built up guaranteed to lose their cool very early in the proceedings.
the added enthusiasm engendered by Paris that summer. There were probably more the nature of imperialism, before October than at any previous time. October found people ready for tough action with a high level of political militancy, but they were convinced by the VSC leadership, already quite apparently afraid of what the year had "march' of solidarity, impressive by virtue of numbers rather than politically motivated action, There are times when that sort of demonstration may be 'valid as tactics, but that October was never one of them. The myth of the Grosvenor sudden eclipsing virtue of Hyde Park, were the language of fear.
home, the groups of basic organisation broke up and the very thought of another Grosvenor Sauare was so remote as to be absurb. We wondered what the hell 1968 had been for and we were prepared to sleep off the depression under the anesthetisation of the Sunday Walk in October.
sive attempts of the British revolutionary left to hurl itself onto the stage of history. But the suggestion that criticism and indulgent for the most negative of all possibilities—a demoralised Left, silenced even from making public its dissatisfaction David with itself. What way forward is there from that?
that the demonstration battles in late '67 and early '68. However the debacle months after the political failure of the be uncovered in the period before the October march said so. It seemed to Geoff Turner, whose letter was pubwill ensure course a full analysis already have. Throughout their existence, SAU members have been victimised for merely trying to exercise their rights such as publishing magazines in which they are able to criticise the running their school, holding meetings on school premises to discuss the running of the school or on such issues as Viet nam or Cambodia, or for expressing their feelings against the dictatiorial authority of the headmaster (as the five members from Kingdale were doing)
Because of all these, it was felt to be imperative that we should fight for the following three demands: -1. The right to publish uncensored efficient.
That may have been a fortuitous gain in terms of the but the effect was crucial to Without our realising it, demonstrations which started demonstration; place during it.
In this and the police could be to stage insurrection, The whole build up worked through to October with meetings, more discussion of 1968, with is meant by the let loose, that a massive was appropriate. moralising.
Square "death-trap,' the It doesn't seem so surprising now that everyone went minute mile.
We thought we would have done better to get movement should give the tradition and background of the successtraight and simple only makes matters worse is a veneer David Triesman does make some telling points. The origins of the Grosvenor Square Demos go back to the VSC that he insists on is not to be found in the eighteen October march. The origins of that failure and its aftermath are to The Cambodian demonstration was a failure and we lished in the last issue of the Black Dwarf, that our criticism was that the demonstrators should have fought the this is not the case to the laws of libel, obscenity etc 2. The right to organise student meetings school during school hours, during breaks and after school without staff interference 3. The right to join a student union and engage in political activity including the right to strike.
These may not seem very, revolutionary, but they are to the highly oppressed school student and to the authorities. But more important, they lead on to the running of the school being in the hands of an elec. ted school council representing teachers and all school staff, for it is only in this way that the headmaster will no longer be the sponsers and have made the walk for Oxfam. No one needs reminding that the crucial error of the left in this country was in the eighteen months that followed October 1968. Militants were active and desperately exposed in a few colleges, notably the LSE and Essex. Elsewhere there was so little happening that even those who claimed that what was needed was quiet work with Trade Unionists never claimed they were actually doing it It is amazing that Daniel Read didn't feel it necessary to link the word 'debacle' with the 18 months of real debacle. No one is simply going to reappear on the battle field after that long knowing exactly how to hold a Grey-Green Coach Company. Its almost a religious belief that it was vaguely possible. I thought it was very surprising, given the level of the speeches, that as much militancy as finally appeared took place. The horror of Cambodia and Vietnam, the GI dead, the Kent Four, can never substitute for our permanent organisation around the anti-imperialist fight. We nearly gave up the right to lead any such movement in the 18 months before the our revolutionary offences didn't take country there is little doubt that cultural traditions have always acted against violent demonstrations, the determined attempt at objectives. When we were on the way to over-coming that cultural hurdle, we were doing it by political means. To decide to fight, to use a petrol bomb and so on, right through to the decision are decisions based on level of political preparedness, not what we feel like on the day. We were moving on to better and better political levels in more anlysis and comprehension necessity for certain sorts of action. This process is what development of courage. Courage political; when we lack politics, we lack courage.
For the BD article to simply dismiss these problems in favour of having a look at one afternoon in May, is to lower the level of necessary discussion to straight-forward Like most moralists, Daniel Read demoralises. It is like an authoritarian parent taking his child out for the day, finding that he doesn't behave in the way the parent wants, and then beating him, irrespective of the whole past history of the child and his possible future. If our muscles are weak from lack of use, there's no point in self-flagellation because we can't run a fourWhat we must do is learn for the future. There is no way that can happen if we limit ourselves to weeping after each demonstration as though it ended the world. Building is a vitalising process and every conscious demoralization is a serious offence against this or any fuzz. Not necessarily-peaceful demonstrations can be very successful. The charge we levelled was -that the demonstration was not political. Some of the militants there were angry enough to fight the police, and in re sponse to the brazen escalation of imperialism, they had every right to be. But as a whole the demonstrators were aimless (with one exception, the IMG and VSC as we reported, deliberately took over the leadership of the march to lead it into the Square via North Audley Street). Apart from that the demonstrators shumbled into the square David Triesman says we should not have expected more. We demand more. Many of the demonstrators reject organisation and collective discipline, and still do. If they can rely on their political instincts, if the spontaneous response of the most militant section of the left is collective and combattive-then that might be a stronger and more flexible weapon than full scale organisation. But -is it?
These demands are being publi cised in a number of different ways, firstly in Vanguard, the national magazine of the SAU, and secondly through a demonstration which will be taking place on Sunday 12th July at 2.00p.m. starting at Camperwell Open Space, of the Old Kent Rd, and going to County Hall. Please help us by being on the demonstration and by fighting for the rights of all school For more information and copies of Vanguard at 6d each, please con tact SCHOOLS ACTION UNION 160, North Gower St., London. N.W.1.
Black Dwarf July 7 1970 page 15 UNIQUE
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'political demonstration' at three days notice, how to break police lines, where to attack police buses or the