practically insurgent

Today was the Climate Camp Day of Mass Action. As breathless reports on Indymedia inform us, protesters attempted to storm the camp by land, air (?) and sea. Four of them actually made it inside the camp, and managed to hang a banner!

Christ, the British state must be quaking in its boots, they can't even shut the thing down for one day. E.On boasted that the site was running perfectly fine for the duration. Which is strange because they were promising to shut the thing down for good, like permanently.

Is this charade really going to be repeated year on year, in the hope that it's somehow having an effect on government policy? This year with ever more lurid promises not to fulfil? Will there never be any attempt to actually think coherently about exactly what activists do with their limited resources?

Judging by some of self-congratulatory crap quoted on the BBC about this being a success, I'd guess they'll be back next year in slightly diminished numbers. Personally I can't see any single way in which you could describe climate camp as having an obvious benefit to the world. Inconvenience to the government? None, besides paying for the police.

Just by way of banging my head against the same brick wall, a few things to note:

1) DIRECT ACTION IS COERCION

Not everything that involves doing stuff rather than just saying stuff is 'Direct Action'. Direct Action is when the things that you do (or threaten to do, or don't do) causes such inconvenience to your opponents that they are forced to agree to your demands (in part or in full). Hanging a banner is not Direct Action, it is a publicity stunt, you are hoping that through increased exposure the justice of your cause will be apparent and change will follow. It has a place in politics, but it is not Direct Action. If you are convinced that the powerful will do whatever they like regardless of morality or what the public wants, then it would be wise to learn the difference between these things, and think about how much effort you want to put into gaining publicity for your cause, as opposed to finding other ways to change things.

2) CAMPING ACTIONS ARE EASY TO SUPPRESS

The police fucking love camping actions, they have free reign to harass hippies and earn loads of overtime for doing something of very little actual danger to themselves. They wait around for a few days, their informants tell them what's gonna happen (and there will always be informants), then they stop it. Or they just watch you all with a helicopter, then stop it. Either way, they will stop it before you can do anything seriously naughty. Set-pieces are what the state does best, if you march everybody out into a field and tell them you'll do something big on Saturday they will be ready, just like they are every May Day. That's why the "get all the activists together and do something" model is such shit, because they lack organic connections it has to be essentially a leisure activity rather than part of their everyday lives, so continuity can't exist, none of these campaigns lay down any actual roots, so all they do is square off to the police and go home again.

3) DO A COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS FIRST

Next time whoever it is that gets together to decide these things gets together I want you to work something out for me. I want you to think about the number of people you expect to come and the total number of hours they will probably be engaged in activism over the whole period of the camp. Then I want you to add up all the money you will spend on publicity, equipment, legal fees when people get busted and all the rest. Then think about what kind of bang for your buck you get from these camps, how many column inches, how much the debate will change what you want to change. Then think what else you could do with those resources, what things you could build, what you could buy with the money, and consider whether camp is really the best use of those resources that you can imagine. If the answer is "I can think of lots of ways of better using those resources, but I still thought climate camp was great", I want you to think about what exactly is your motivation for doing these things. Have a think. Could it be that you prefer sitting around with your mates in a field whilst feeling heroic about your commitment to environmental justice, and all the alternatives are a kinda boring and lame.

4) THINK ABOUT WINNING

When I say 'think about winning', I don't mean think about how four of you might be able to breach the site and hang a banner, because frankly if a small group of you thought about it together and didn't tell anyone you could probably do that more easily without the camp and all the police extra-specially brought in from Wales for the week. What I mean is think about a successful outcome that your actions could have in practical terms and then put together a plan to make it happen. Remember to set achievable, realistic goals that go towards achieving what you want to achieve. Vague bullshit about "raising awareness" or "symbolic victories" does not count. You may discover that these new goals change the type of activism that you need to engage in and will mean no more poncing about in fields.

So I suppose I mean we need to stop playing at activism and put the skills that are obviously on display at Kingsnorth (into which went a lot of good organisation, hard work) and think about what else you could do with it. Because we're supposed to be in the business of conflict, not theatre.