“If you’re around at quarter past five tomorrow, drop me a line. It’s the Lord Mayor’s Banquet and we have a little stunt planned. I might get arrested in a pig mask and white tie,” he muttered. “Let’s keep this on the lowdown. I need one, maybe two more cameras.”

It was about how the 99% weren’t allowed in to feed at the trough of the 1%. Considering David Cameron, his wife and men in ermine and wigs were going to feasting on expensive dead things, I had a little idea.

We met at a wine bar. I then went on ahead. Some men in pig masks walked down the road and I made this:

OccupyLSX attempt to disrupt the Lord Mayor’s Banquet as it feeds the 1%. In white tie. Dressed as pigs.

I was. And, after a day and a half of shooting and editing, I came up with this:

Amnesty International UK organised a demo outside the Syrian Embassy in London to promote a new Syria report about expat Syrians being threatened by Syrian embassy officials, including in the UK.

The Syrian activists gathered to say “I am Not Afraid”. This was an opportunity to voice their defiance and to show that they are not intimidated by the threats made against them by embassy staff.

Show your solidarity and register your defiance at the actions of the Syrian authorities by adding your photo to our solidarity petition - http://www.protectthehuman.com/actions/stand-in-solidarity-with-syrian-activists

More about our campaign for human righs in Syria – http://www.amnesty.org.uk/syria

Clip filmed by Leah Borromeo

Better known as “Jonnie Marbles”, May-Bowles was also ordered to pay £250 costs and a £15 victim fine after pleading guilty to one count of common assault and another count of causing harassment, alarm or distress under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. Of those six weeks, Jonnie will serve three. District Judge Daphne Wickham, handing down his sentence said Jonnie “attended those proceedings with only one intention, to disrupt them”. She had taken into account the “fear” Mr Murdoch must have felt when he did not know the contents of the pie and that the foam “made contact…its greater impact was stopped by the actions of others.”

So here’s the rub. For crimes of comedy, Jonnie Marbles is to spend three weeks in Wandsworth prison. His lawyer, Tim Greaves, called the sentence “excessive” and said they would launch an appeal but that nothing is likely to move on that until after Jonnie has served his time.

Jonnie’s sentence was handed down by the same judge who gave policeman Marcus Ballard 150 hours unpaid work for pushing a teenager through a shop window. She also gave James Allen QC a 12-month suspension for beating his wife over an uncooked dinner. She let off TSG Sergeant Delroy Smellie over hitting G20 protester Nicola Fisher across the face and whacking her in the legs with a baton.

As argued by Jonnie’s lawyer in court “slapstick and pie throwing is a recognised form of protest.” No injury was caused — nor was there any intent to cause it — and there was limited damage to the suit. Jonnie viewed the Select Committee proceedings as a “farce” and he “intended to express his feelings that…Murdoch should be held accountable” for allowing and engendering a culture where News of the World journalists hacking dead girls’ phones was considered acceptable practise.

It’s worth noting that Rupert Murdoch has not supported his prosecution but the Crown Prosecution Service decided to push on anyway. He was initially charged with Section 5 of the Public Order Act, a charge with a maximum penalty of £1000 commensurate with income. Jonnie’s not rich. Shortly before his first court appearance he was dished up the charge of common assault largely on the basis of a single witness statement made by Trinity Mirror journalist Rachael Bletchley. A statement that also noted that, when she noticed her husband was being pied, Wendi Deng knocked over a woman in a grey suit and launched a physical attack on Jonnie that left him with a cut to his nose.

Jonnie’s sentence joins a recent list of deterrent punishments handed down to protestors — mostly for violent disorder. But what seemed to annoy Justice Wickham the most was that Jonnie deigned disrupt the “dignity” of proceedings that were of “huge importance” and that he did so in the Palace of Westminster.

Oh. Like that time in 2004 when two Fathers 4 Justice protestors hit then-Prime Minister Tony Blair with condoms filled with purple powder thrown from the public gallery — in the middle of Prime Minister’s Questions. They were charged with disorderly behaviour. Or when Plane Stupid protester Leila Deen poured green custard over Lord Mandelson’s face over a proposed third runway at Heathrow. She was cautioned.

Whether you agree with Jonnie’s actions on 19 July or not, the message sent at Westminster Magistrates Court was clear. Don’t do it. If you want to exercise your right to protest and take your dissent beyond the tapping grumble of the internet, consider the consequences of your actions. Just like those who cut public services to boost the private sector and hack voicemails to sell newspapers.

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This article was first published on the Index on Censorship, 03 August 2011.

“Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police.”

That was Sunday. The swell of internet-driven murmuring rage brought Project Griffin’s 33-word definition of anarchism and its appeal to dob in your Chomsky-reading neighbours to front page news on the Guardian.

Twitter tweeps retweeted shortened URLs prefixed with disbelief and Facebook folk guffawed about handing themselves in to Belgravia police station. Here was a document from the Metropolitan Police that, in one dinky box decorated with clip art, pushed McCarthyism to the local businesses and public institutions the newsletter went out to. The reds under your bed were back. But this time they wanted a smaller state. No state. A bigger society. A Big Societ…oh. Erm.

Queue the crash of arguments pointing out that the likes of Alan Greenspan, the American Tea Party and David Cameron are proponents of smaller states and stateless societies. Running alongside that is the Orwellian scenario of thought crime. Because you are an anarchist, you should be reported as dangerous. You are here being mentioned alongside Anders Breivik –– the bad man who killed all those people in Norway. You are here mentioned alongside terrorism. It says so. Right here.

Within 24 hours, police issued a climbdown blaming bad wording. “The Metropolitan Police service does not seek to stigmatise those people with legitimate political views. People purporting to be anarchists have caused criminal damage this year to business premises, and government buildings in Westminster. The message we were trying to convey was to gather information on criminal acts to help us prevent crime and bring offenders to justice.”

Here was a document that seemed to have copied and pasted its definition of anarchism from the first line of Wikipedia. Here was a document that, on the same page, asked people to report all sightings of a yellow dot topped with Arabic script as an Al-Qaeda symbol and misspelled “beach volleyball”. Like a badly designed school handout that’s gone a bit wild with a text box, it would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so serious.

Okay. It’s still laughable. But the subtext of their climbdown isn’t. It’s nose-on-face clear that policing priorities lie in the protection of commercial interests and business. Project Griffin is a “product” for raising “awareness of crime and terrorism issues within the business community”.

Opening a document by declaring the UK’s threat level from international terrorism as “substantial” in bold red letters and closing it with the mantra “if you suspect it, report it” in a bright red box cements paranoia. What the Counter Terrorist Focus Desk has done is equate anarchism with terrorism –– a calculation that criminalises a philosophy. By doing that, they have engendered fear. And to do that is an act of terrorism.

As threatening as the word seems, anarchy is rooted in unwavering optimism because it trusts individuals to come up with ethics and freedoms collectively. At the heart of the myriad of anarchist philosophies is a fundamental belief in fairness.

What Project Griffin has taught the wider public is that there is a section of the establishment with dangerously simplistic views of politics. It is the section concerned with running around the yard like a dog barking at anything that moves in the name of vigilance.

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This article was first published on the Index on Censorship, 02 August 2011

We never got kettled. Cramming thousands of kids on the streets of London could only lead to burning bus shelters and bad PR. Somebody in the polices thought that would be a stupid thing to do. Mebbe.

But Jonnie and I became companjeros. My camera and I were invited along to various guerilla stunts. This gig in Soho Square happened during the largest trade union march in recent memory.

Forgive the shaky cam action. This is a rough cut meant to form part of a larger piece of that event.

The day after any major demonstration always brings out the hungover “mostly peaceful, shame about the violent minority” mantra from the meeja-darling bloc. Whenever there’s an alternative popular movement that grips the national imagination, left-ish commentators and journalists fight whitened tooth and manicured nail for public alliance to this season’s worthy cause of resistance. Yet, when things become ever so spiky or unsightly, they are also the first to publicly sever connection with people who choose to vent their anger in more visceral ways.

The sight of burning barricades on the streets of London is too much for the press to resist and one of the biggest demonstrations since the Iraq war protest turns into riot porn for the newspaper columns and airwaves.

Many groups who organised actions at the March for the Alternative never take direct action beyond staging peaceful sit-ins. They challenge the norms of the A-to-B protest but never damage anything and always clean up after themselves.

Most of those who marched would never take their anger out on inanimate objects. Violence is an act of the few with an effect on the many. Regardless of where you stand on the “smash stuff up” divide, the spectacle is part of the whole. If anybody “ruined things for everybody”, it was the police with their wholesale arrests and wanton baton action.

Something out of the ordinary is happening – parts of Britain aren’t bothering to be so polite anymore. Sometimes, to make your voice heard, you have to speak softly and carry a big stick.

There are no “good” protesters and no “bad” protesters. The state sees anyone who publicly declares their dissent to its laws and policies as one thing – a threat. When a state is threatened, it sends its henchmen out to quell it. When 500,000 people take to the streets of London against public sector cuts that will affect each and every Briton, the henchmen are the police. And you – student or teacher, patient or nurse – are that threat. It matters little that you’re partying in Trafalgar square or throwing paint-filled eggs at Topshop on Oxford Street.

You can’t balance the violence of the oppressor with the violence of the oppressed. One leads to the other and violence isn’t always just a punch to the face or a brick through a window. When faced with the reality that each and every one of us will live more desperate lives, the smashed windows of a multinational or a hotel that can charge £4,000 a night matters little.

The coalition government sees no difference between a firefighter trying to hold on to his job and a student struggling to study. To try to make distinctions between a “peaceful” and a “violent” protester is inherently flawed. Dissent is a violent reaction. Saying “no” is resistance. To publicly condemn the “violent minority” is a betrayal of the cause you claim to fight for. David Cameron and NIck Clegg see no difference between protesters – and neither should you.

Westminster council say the damage to property is likely to total “tens of thousands” of pounds. More than 200 protesters were arrested, 149 have been charged and there were at least 50 reported injuries. Of the 4,500 police officers deployed on the 26 March demonstration, 31 were injured, with 11 officers requiring hospital treatment.

Although there are concerns that sporadic violence to property weakens strong arguments on the depth of spending cuts, we must remember that because cuts affect everybody, everybody is going to have a different reaction to them. Some may wish to fight back with local campaigns, others may wish to take more direct action. The point is to maintain a momentum, a united show of resistance, against a spectre that shadows us all.

The impunity with which this coalition is implementing cuts while bolstering the greed of the very businesses that got us into this mess is neither peaceful nor benign. So – many apologies to those who wish to distance themselves from the “violent minority”. But we’re in this together. You may not like having to share a boat, but it’s a lot better than drowning.
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This article was first published in the Guardian’s Comment is Free.