Reclaim The Streets - Mayday 2000

map | part one | two | three | home

More Graffiti. This says "Fuck Parliament". Which is nice.

Here we are outside Downing Street. The gates are closed and there's two lines of police behind them. Occasionally a missile goes over the gate and they duck and scatter but nothing much happens other than taunting. Strange to see the seat of power under siege by about 100 scruffy types.

Kids. Didn't see that many pubescents. These three had whistles and were having a laugh. Don't think they were with anyone.

Parliament Square, where it all started. Lots of people milling around here and very little police presence. Of course, this is where the notorious Churchill statue was defaced. I remember vividly thinking "that's done it" and imagining the field day the papers were going to have. And they did

The theme of this Reclaim The Streets protest was "guerrilla gardening" whereby people were encouraged to randomly plant seeds in urban places and make the city a nicer place to live in. In practice, the council had waterlogged Parliament Square the night before turning it into a mud bath, especially as the guerrilla gardeners got to work. Still, it looked pretty impressive - this previously sterile piece of lawn turned into a chaotic mess of creativity and mud.

Here's a pond. I guess it was the best thing to make in the circumstances.

Like I said, very little policing in this area. This row of police was all that stood between the mother of all parliaments and this hoard of anarchists.

A maypole. While the police were battling subversives at Trafalgar Square, the atmosphere at this end was much more like a carnival. You could perhaps pinpoint this moment as when the movement split between those who wanted peaceful protest through civil disobedience and those who wanted a ruck with the pigs.