Workers Solidarity Movement

In December protests were held at the EU summit in Copenhagen. Ian Lynch attended the demonstrations and tells Workers Solidarity a little about it.

On the morning of the 13th, while up to 50 'Politi' raided the offices of the service provider for many left-wing alternative websites in Denmark there was a march, called by 'global rodder'(global roots) of about 1000 on 'bellacenteret', the appointed place for the summit talks. After this another march had an anti-racist/Fortress Europe theme and saw a few thousand march from the west of the city, past boarded up McDonalds, Burger-Kings, to the centre of the city.

The morning of the 15th saw the biggest manifestation of the weekend, with 10,000 people from many diverse groups marching in opposition to not just the policies, but the very existence of the European union. During the demonstration, many undercover police tried to join the march, however their disguises were so ridiculous, that they were easily spotted and surrounded in a doorway, a thrown bottle cutting one of them on the side of the face, before they made a hasty retreat

It must be said that before the weekend, most of the groups taking part in the protests had signed an agreement with the police, agreeing that no one within their ranks would take part in any 'violence'. They had planned on having a meeting after this march, on the subject of 'violent protestors', thus succumbing to the hysterical media clichés, concerning violent/non-violent protestors, and ignoring the issue of police provocation/brutality. In response the Anarchist Federation called a protest, whilst this meeting was taking place, against 'police state Europe', which marched on the prison 'Vestrefaengsel'. On the way back into the centre, the march (which remained peaceful throughout) was completely surrounded by riot police, who tried to provoke (unsuccessfully) and snatch protestors out of the crowd. As the demo was reaching its destination, it was reported that the police had managed to arrest one of their own (undercover), much to the amusement of the crowd.

This page is from the print version of the Irish Anarchist paper 'Workers Solidarity'.

Print out the PDF file of WS74
This edition is No74 published in Feb 2003