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Kamikaze dreams: Black Bloc in Stirling during the G8 summit 2005
This is a personal account of some events that I was a part of during the morning of Wednesday the 6th of July in 2005 during the G8 summit in Scotland. Because of the intensity of the events described here, numbers and time could be pretty wrong, but I hope that my recollection of the spectacle as a whole will prove useful.
My affinity group arrived for the G8 summit a few days before any events. Our first experience was the whitewash known as the ‘Make Poverty History’ march, a spectacle that really was a complete hijacking of even the most reformist of anti-globalisation protests. This completely pacifying experience was followed by the ‘Carnival/kettle of full enjoyment’ on the Monday, a day of action that many thought would be confrontational, but actually ended up being badly co-ordinated and frustrating.
When we arrived at the eco camp in Stirling we were surprised by the small numbers of people and the high percentage of hippies. As time passed we grew increasingly frustrated by the tactics that were presented to us for the direct action day. The most common one was for people to break out in small affinity groups and head though woods for the A9 highway. Some of us thought that this was risky because there was a lot of energy trying to get somewhere where it seemed easy to be controlled. There were also actions in Edinburgh, but we were unsure about what these because of lack of information. After meetings and arguments we decided to stay with the completely suicidal group who were just going to leave in one group in the night and head for the closest highway, the M9 and close it down. No one expected to get to the M9 but we figured that we would be in a group and therefor had more possibility to be militant in our efforts. Also, causing trouble would take police forces away from the other smaller and more decentralised groups.
That night it rained and I woke up to the chanting of hundreds of people, seeming mostly to be internationals. It was the darkest night I remember during the summit, and there was a black mass melting into the darkness of the trees leading out of the camp. It took us a long time to gather the members of our affinity group and the mass left without us. We ran out of the gates looking but the people seemed to be gone. The police were moving in the area, but we searched freely for the bloc. After some confusion we found a line of police vans and thought that the protestors were penned in. Soon we realised that they were on our side of the police line but it was so black we had not noticed them. All of a sudden, a Black Bloc of 500 people appeared in front of us out of the black asphalt.
After that came a period of chaos as the police tried to control us but were surprised and paralysed by no one really having it. Barricades were built and police were pushed back. Then for a while there were no police, just lots of people in black, disorientated and angry. So the car dealerships, Pizza Hut, B&Q and the Burger King were used for target practice and spray painted as shopping trolleys were liberated from Morrisons to become moving barricades and stone transports. All this seemed pretty stupid as we were right next to the camp but as soon we were on a road leading to the highway and everything came in very handy.
The first police line was the funniest. Police in yellow fluorescent jackets lined up behind shields with their batons drawn as they tried to stop the bloc entering a roundabout. Many protestors slowed down but the mass still moved towards the police line. Many were looking for different routes, but there were none. I think that the police thought that their bright jackets and shields would somehow stop us but no one really slowed down much. Some protestors had inflated rubber tubes in a row behind a banner. They pushed into the police line and the police struggled to get a hold of the tires. Since this did not break the police line, the rows of shopping trolleys were put in front of the police lines to keep the batons at safe distance and then the rocks started flying though the air. It was surprising how many joined in, and those who didn’t kept refilling the supplies of stones that were being transported in a shopping trolley.
The police line started moving backwards pretty quickly but it was also broken and some police ended up split from the others and they were hit pretty hard with rocks and fists. I heard later that this was the police intelligence/camera crew. As people realised that they could get though the lines, many went forward and the police retreated completely as they rushed past. Next we found ourselves walking quite far on empty country roads heading towards the M9. There was hardly any traffic and the only spectators were cattle, as a black bloc carrying barricade materials and pushing a shopping trolley full of stones moved though the Scottish countryside.
The next time we met the police it definitely seemed that the game was over. We were moving up a hill and noticed that there was a pretty big police barricade up ahead. There were lines of riot police behind which there were several large police vans. As we looked down the direction we had come from we realised that we were cut off. The police lines behind us were smaller but they were backed up by vans and it seemed pretty solid. Many ran into a field as people looked at both sides of the road that were lined with heavy vegetation that made it hard to figure out which way to go. At this point many people were lost. Many who had been fighting a lot instead chose to attack the smaller police line. This was absurd at first and I believe the police were surprised. It felt like we were completely surrounded by a huge police presence, yet a group of 10-20 people with a shopping trolley of stones fought back and an escape route was found. The police never really fought back and a small path was found into a residential area.
Somehow we managed to find ourselves in a small town square, consisting of a few shops and a bank. There was a lot of confusion about where we were going but it does seem that some people knew quite well. A police line appeared again. They looked more fierce and ready for a fight. They were completely in black and jumped out of their vans quickly making a line. At this time the shopping trolley with the rocks had fallen behind. The police line moved determined towards us and it looked like maybe this was the end of the luck of the group. The police looked determined but they could not see the shopping trolley around the corner pushed by a couple of punks racing towards us. The shopping trolley suddenly popped out between the Black Bloc and the police line and the rocks showered the police yet again. Just as before, the police line was split and a few police were separated and received extra attention.
After this, police started arriving from all directions and we were split and some people were arrested. Most managed to re-group though and as the majority of us moved into a residential area the police eventually disappeared. Barricades were built out of road repair barriers, but nothing was broken in the residential area. We ended up crossing a golf course and then some fields after some guidance by medics who gave us fresh water supplies. All of a sudden we found ourselves climbing up the banks of the M9 and when I reached the highway barricades were already being built and the traffic had been stopped.
By the time this group had reached the highway, the original body of people had been split many times. It seems that the group that I was in managed to stop traffic in both directions, which meant that many other groups reached the M9 to find it empty. Due to this they could build barricades that lasted longer. Holding the M9 was difficult because there were many car and truck drivers and some were hostile. After about 20 minutes the police arrived and we eventually abandoned the barricades and spread out and walked north. When someone suggested that we should march to Gleneagles, the group I was in decided that we could not possibly have any more luck and that it was time to lave. At this time we had 3 police helicopters above us, at least 50 police behind us, it was fully light and the M9 was standing still. We split into groups and walked down small streets and crossed train tracks and fields to make it back to the camp. Once back at the camp we turned on the radio and listened to the traffic news that said more than the normal news. A huge part of the road network was shut down and it felt that we had been part of something that had been much more successful than we could have hoped. Also, we were all pretty surprised to have made it.