Anti-capitalist protesters have a field day

By Thomas Abraham

LONDON, MAY. 2. Winston Churchill's statue was turned into a punk with a fringe of green adorning his head and cars and shops were attacked as anti-capitalist demonstrators held a day of protest in central London. Police clashed with demonstrators and around 100 people were reported to have been arrested after small groups of protestors rampaged through Whitehall, the location of many government offices, including the Prime Minister's official residence.

Protestors vandalised the base of a statue of Sir Winston Churchill with graffiti and then draped a tuft of grass on the statue, making the war-time leader look like a young anarchist. The Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair reacted with uncharacteristic anger at the defacement of the statue, as well as of the Cenotaph, a memorial to the war dead. He described the protestors as ``mindless thugs'', and said, ``It is only because of the courage and bravery of the war dead that these idiots can live in a free country at all.''

The day began peacefully enough with a ``guerilla gardening'' campaign by environmentalists who want to return London's concrete jungle to nature. Protestors dug up the grass in Parliament Square opposite the Houses of Parliament and scattered seeds and manure. Later, they moved towards the government buildings on Whitehall and began defacing statues along the route. A statue of Gen. Smuts, the South African leader, had a mask draped over the head to protest against pollution while Winston Churchill's statue was dabbed with red paint. The police, who had been on alert, intervened after protestors attacked a McDonald's restaurant and other shops and began attacking passing cars.

The rioting was on a far smaller scale than what had been witnessed in Seattle and Washington recently, or even in London last year, when rioters rampaged through the financial district causing damages worth œ2 million.

Violent demonstrations

Reuters reports from Berlin:

The world yesterday marked May Day with demonstrations and scattered violence while trade unionists in strife-hit Zimbabwe rallied against the Government, ignoring calls to stay at home.

Demonstrations turned violent in several parts of Europe and hundreds of protesters took to the streets in U.S. financial centres. Leftists briefly clashed with hundreds of neo- Nazis in Berlin and later fought pitched battles with police. About 50 persons were injured in separate clashes in the port city of Hamburg. Hundreds of leftist and anarchist demonstrators fought police armed with water cannon, clubs, tear gas and riot shields in Berlin's Kreuzberg district on Monday night in what has become a May Day tradition.

In Russia, where for decades May Day was marked by colossal workers' marches choreographed by the communist State, tens of thousands joined rallies. But protests were smaller than previous post-Soviet gatherings.

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