Daily photos no 26: OUT OUT OUT

I love a good demonstration. I've been on scores, perhaps hundreds of them. I don't think I've ever been on one that's achieved its aim - racism is still very prevalent, my working conditions, pay and pension have been repeatedly cut, the environment has been destroyed, the Tories are very much un-smashed, illegal wars were fought roads have been bulldozed through and even the local hunt carries on, despite us winning that one. But still: I enjoy strolling through the streets with like-minded people, making a point and making a noise. My first proper demo was in 1994, one of the huge anti-racism ones in London called to protest the rise of the BNP. The scale, the noise, the incredible police aggression were exhilarating, scary and educational. It also taught me to be very cautious of sectarian groupuscules: the 50,000-strong demo against racism was being picketed by the Revolutionary Communist Party, which held that protesting racism detracted from the class struggle. Those people became genocide deniers Living Marxism then Spiked, the Institute of Ideas and eventually spread out into the mainstream under various personal and collective pseudonyms to argue against socialism, the environment, democracy, and for corporate interests, particularly oil and tobacco. But back then they looked like a sparky bunch of controversialists. However, I do have a soft spot for the multiple other revolutionary cadres: the language, the newspapers, the certainty, the total impotence… I collect the flyers and newspapers, and always take pictures of the banners.

This demo was the TUC/NUS/UCU Rally for Youth in Manchester, 2011, attempting to resist the latest wave of austerity-driven cuts to young people's education maintenance allowance (RIP) and to further and higher education provision. We lost, of course. But there was a particular good collection of leftwing news-sheets, old Trotskyists, young hooligans, wannabe-revolutionaries, provocateurs and a massively disproportionate police presence. One little Trot stepped in front of us to encourage us to 'smash the trades union bureaucracy', to which my distinguished colleague replied that when he might be a little more grateful for the aforesaid bureaucrats when he needed a caseworker to represent him in workplace disputes. She also whacked me with her walking stick for pointing out that her group of 6 Communist Party of Great Britain demonstrators constituted the entire membership.

Harry Potter and the Difficult Adolescence

I particularly liked this one. She followed the cops around all day with it. 

My esteemed colleague

A fine selection of Trotskyist, Stalinist and Spartacist publications

Masks made in China, for added irony

This hipster made me momentarily yearn for the days of compulsory national service.