Londomers caught in anti-capitalist protest
By FINN PRESSLY
London Correspondent
london
As central London dissolved into May Day protests Monday, the Notre Dame London Centre found itself on the brink of the chaos developing just yards away.
Though classes at the Notre Dame Centre were cancelled for Bank Holiday, the approximate British equivalent of Labor Day, many students were in the building using computer and library facilities when the protests occurred.
Protesters were initially focused at Parliament Square, about a mile away from the Notre Dame building, though the meleé eventually spread northward along Whitehall to encompass Trafalgar Square, just one block away from the Centre.
Police in riot gear formed a barricade outside the Notre Dame building, and eventually curious students ventured into the demonstration, which had proceeded relatively peacefully throughout the morning.
Junior Tom Ogorzalek witnessed one of the most violent incidents of the day, when a McDonald's restaurant on Whitehall was smashed and pillaged by anarchists protesting globalization.
"At 2 p.m., a bunch of masked ... individuals started to take chairs and bash in the windows of McDonald's," he said. "In about 15 or 20 minutes, it wasn't recognizable as a McDonald's anymore."
"They were throwing fries into the crowd and all of the change from the cash registers," he said, adding that municipal police were initially beaten back by the protesters, who were only dispersed by the arrival of riot police.
"Riot police started doing charges 10 yards at a time," Ogorzalek said. "After the third charge, there was just a line of people, myself included, taking pictures."
Because the crowd was composed of such diverse protesters, ranging from anarchists to environmentalists, Ogorzalek said the mood of the demonstration varied greatly.
"At times it was really ... violent, but at other times it was really peaceful," he said. "It was so interesting to see these things first hand."
Tom Herman also found himself in the middle of the action, this time on Parliament Square, where self-proclaimed "guerilla gardeners" were reclaiming urban spaces in the name of returning to more environmentally conscious society.
"All of Parliament Square had been uprooted, and all of the grass had been put into the road," said Herman. "Most of the statues had graffiti on them."
Though riot police tried to contain the demonstration to Parliament Square, Herman said that they eventually succeeded in breaking the line and began marching south along the Thames River.
Herman said the atmosphere in Parliament Square was relatively peaceful, compared with the vandalism in progress further up the road.
"Hippies, communists, anarchists, socialists — everyone was there," he said. "There was lots of drug use going on and lots of drinking."
As riot police began closing in on the protest, some students found themselves trapped in Trafalgar Square. Junior Laura Guest was among those who spent nearly three hours behind a police barricade.
Though she only spent 10 minutes in Trafalgar Square, Guest said that riot police refused to let her or any of the other protesters and tourists leave.
"They basically had everyone trapped. They kept pushing everyone in into a smaller and smaller area with no exit," she said. "People were yelling at the cops. I was scared. I thought violence would break out."
Guest said that before the exits were sealed, the mood had been non-violent. Once the police began closing in, the tension was heightened dramatically.
The reason for their three-hour internment was so that police could check the faces of those leaving Trafalgar Square against pictures taken during earlier incidents, namely the McDonald's riot, she explained.
Guest recalled a conversation she had with another person being detained in Trafalgar Square.
"This guy told us, `In America, you guys are citizens. Here, we're subjects.'"
Then he pointed toward Buckingham Palace and said, "And it's all because of her."
All News Stories for Tuesday, May 2, 2000
