{"id":18857,"date":"2026-05-01T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T08:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=18857"},"modified":"2026-04-28T11:23:37","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T10:23:37","slug":"may-day-2000-anti-capitalist-celebrations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=18857","title":{"rendered":"May Day 2000 – Anti-capitalist celebrations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

May Day 2000 – Anti-capitalist celebrations<\/strong>: May Day has been celebrated in Europe since ancient times as the beginning of Summer, with festivities, dancing and more, but also became International Workers’ Day following the 1889 International Workers Congress, the date marking the start of a general strike in the USA in 1886 which lead to the Haymarket affair three days later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

May 1st is a public holiday in many countries, but only occasionally in the UK when the first Monday in May happens to be on 1st May. The Labour government that eventually brought in the early May Bank Holiday in 1978 chickened out from making it actually May Day. So one of the many advantages of leaving full-time teaching to become a freelance writer and photographer was that I was for the first time able to able to go every year to the May Day events in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As it happens, the first May Day after that was Monday May 1st 2000 and the big London event on that day was an anti-capitalist celebration that combined elements of both the traditional events and International Workers Day, beginning with partying and ‘guerrilla gardening’ in the sun in Parliament Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I went with the protesters up Whitehall towards Trafalgar Square, and was outside McDonald’s when a handful of protesters began smashing the windows there. Most of the people at the protest stood back and watched. I was a few yards away and the crowd was too dense for me to get close enough to take pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Police clearly made no effort to protect the McDonald’s though it was an obvious target, but stood waiting around the corner until after the damage took place before charging into the protest, herding them into Trafalgar Square where they were kettled for some hours and around 95 people were arrested. It looked as if police had they had planned to let protesters attack the fast-food outlet to justify the use of violence against the large crowd of peaceful protesters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The BBC report<\/a><\/em> began “Hundreds of demonstrators have been fighting running battles with police during anti-capitalist protests in London<\/em>” but failed to say that these ‘battles’ were the result of police attacks on largely peaceful protesters – and they also wrongly said the McDonald’s was “in The Strand<\/em>“. They used the term “defaced<\/em>‘ for the decoration of Churchill’s statue with a turf ‘Mohican’ which considerably overstated the event, but was also the main preoccupation of the rest of the media. Reading their account I very much get the impression that it was written by someone not there when things were happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As you can see from my account at the time below, I was there until I saw the riot police charging the protesters, batoning clearly peaceful protesters offering them flowers, before deciding to go home rather than face possible police violence and detention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"May<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

May Day 2000 – Anti-capitalist Celebrations<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

May in London must mean May Day, and we made the most of this one, dancing around Parliament Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was more or less next to Macdonalds on Whitehall when demonstrators started to break windows and generally smash it up. It was obvious it was going to happen some time before, and the police made no attempt to prevent it, standing back and letting things happen, although they were massed down a nearby side-street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I could only conclude they wanted some damage to be able to justify their actions that were to follow, as well as the dire warnings their superior officers had spent some time giving on the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The damage could easily have been prevented; action by a handful of police would have been enough to have led the demonstrators on into Trafalgar Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A woman harangues demonstrator’s from behind police lines<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When I saw they were letting it happen, I drew back, making my way through the police lines as they prepared for a massive charge. I watched the first few waves go in and belatedly take up positions. They were hyped up for action and one or two stepped out of line to attack a demonstrator who was offering them flowers with their sticks, knocking him flying and leaving blood pouring from his head. I was just too far away on the wrong side of the charging police to get the picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One or two photographers who got close to the police received similar treatment. At this point I decided to leave the scene before I was trapped in by the police or assaulted – I had other things I needed to do that evening. If I had left it a few minutes later I would have been among the several thousand confined for hours for little reason in Trafalgar Square. Perhaps I would have got more pictures, but equally likely I would have suffered gratuitous violence. I wasn’t commissioned to be there and decided not to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are just a few more pictures on My London Diary<\/a> but quite a few more that I’ve never posted on-line, both black and white and colour. I hope to digitise more later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flickr<\/a> – Facebook<\/a> – My London Diary<\/a> – Hull Photos<\/a> – Lea Valley<\/a> – Paris<\/a>
London’s Industrial Heritage<\/a> – London Photos<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All photographs on this page are copyright \u00a9 Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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May Day 2000 – Anti-capitalist celebrations: May Day has been celebrated in Europe since ancient times as the beginning of Summer, with festivities, dancing and more, but also became International Workers’ Day following the 1889 International Workers Congress, the date marking the start of a general strike in the USA in 1886 which lead to … Continue reading May Day 2000 – Anti-capitalist celebrations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[24133,24128,1976,15585,681,956,24130,488,24137,8313,24127,24129,17,716,24134,7751,24131,5863,231,697,1170,83,24135,2984,16,24136,1514,24132,303],"class_list":["post-18857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues","tag-anti-capitalist-celebrations","tag-anti-capitalist-protest-police-attacks","tag-anticapitalist","tag-batons","tag-carnival","tag-celebration","tag-churchills-statue","tag-dancing","tag-gratuitous-violence","tag-green-man","tag-guerrilla-gardening","tag-largely-peaceful","tag-london","tag-may-day","tag-may-day-2000","tag-mcdonalds","tag-mohican","tag-music","tag-parliament-square","tag-party","tag-peaceful-protest","tag-peter-marshall","tag-police-charges","tag-police-violence","tag-protest","tag-riot-shields","tag-trafalgar-square","tag-turf-mohican","tag-whitehall"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18863,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18857\/revisions\/18863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}