Internet - Lilian Pizzichini discovers an orgy of organised agitprop
Since pre-Christian times, the festival of May Day has been celebrated by various groups with their various agendas. Back in ye olde days, English villagers would have been awoken by youths bearing garlands and singing carols. "Jack-in-the-Green", enshrouded in a portable bower of fresh greenery, would lead his followers to the nearest wood. Trees would be cut down, and their trunks would be erected as maypoles. The dancing would begin, enacting the triumph of spring over winter torpor. In 1889, as every good socialist knows, the first congress of the Second International was held on this auspicious day. Since then, European workers have appropriated the festival to commemorate the glory days of socialism.
In order to take part in 21st-century May Day festivities, you must have a fast modem connection and, preferably, a Pentium III processor. This year, the International Lobster Party, J18 activists and webmasters behind www.reclaimthestreets.net ensured that 1 May was a strange hybrid of political and horticultural influences. And, as their websites predicted, it was vigorous. Try the Lobster Party: its motto "May our resistance be as global as their economy" comes swimming on to your screen, one word at a time. There is colour-coding, too: green for "Beltane, the ancient fire and fertility festival"; red for "international workers' day" (of course); and black for "the anarchists executed for their part in trying to bring about a shorter working day with enormous strikes on May Day 1886". Those radicals - they think of everything.
But it is Reclaim the Streets that must win the prize for the most professionally conceived and designed anarchist's website. For a self-styled "non-hierarchical, leaderless" and essentially spontaneous grouping of "self-directed people", its site is a masterpiece of consummately organised agitprop. The home page provides an orgy of links that cover every eventuality. For example, should a stray French user log on, an "en francais" link has been thoughtfully provided, which leads into "Plan pour une Revolution".
Being an active sort of surfer, and keen to express my disaffection with the powers that be, I clicked on to "How to Sort a Street Party". I must provide jugglers, clowns, prophets and a DJ, I was told, and invite campaign groups to set up their stall in the middle of my road. Should the police wish to have a word, I found instructions on how to construct a barricade. Simply mount a scaffold tripod over an up-turned car, and suspend a "person" from the top. Jack-in-the-Green is back, I marvelled, and he's militating! At this point in the gaily coloured text page, a hypertext link directed me to Release.org.uk, which told me my rights on arrest.
My enthusiasm thus dimmed, I decided to take a more supportive role in the grass-roots activities that were taking place. According to the MD2k briefing, there was going to be lots to do. But the flyer text insisted that action would take place not just in London, but around the UK and across the planet. It's a truism to say that there's something for everyone on the net, but this site takes the biscuit for democracy. And, for those who are wary of its workings, there is a special "paranoid" button to press which guarantees bug-proof confidentiality. As for me, I bravely surfed the options of joining the Critical Mass bike ride, or I could have sown the seeds of discontent by tipping a sack of manure outside Buckingham Palace. "Resistance is fertile" (the puns kept on coming); and "guerrilla gardening" has to be more fun than a day out at B&Q.
For the theory behind the action, you must look beyond the grass verge that frames the home page and park on the yellow line that intersects it. Like the yellow brick road, it will lead you on a journey of philosophical hyperlinks. First stop: "The street", where power must be dissolved and turned into "the domain where daily life is enjoyed, created and nourished". That sounded suspiciously happy-clappy to me, but I persisted. Next stop: the "car system" - they're bad news, but I knew that already. Then the familiar mantras of "the privatisation of public space" and "the pollution of capitalism". More original was "the people unite to overturn cars", a phrase that acts as a hypertext link back to direct action, and the thesis behind guerrilla gardening.
If hypertext fosters the illusion of access to an infinite variety of websites that will keep you rooted to your monitor for the rest of your days, this site's loaded buttons take you back in time to the "evevenements [sic] of Paris 1968". "Sous les paves, la plage" was the legend now emblazoned on my screen. But, unlike its Parisian forebears, RTS claims to have no ideology and no rules. As for FAQs, "Who's in charge?" is the obvious one; and the answer triumphantly, if disingenuously, followed: "We all are!"
But then, and this is where it comes in handy, there is no accountability on the net.
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