A picnic area was set up in the park and Nato dished out some lovely cucumber sandwiches. A bottle of Cava was opened, and the police who had been arriving by the vanload came in to lay down the law. Obviously it had been fine to let everyone drink in the park until us nasty capitalists had turned up. Soon everyone in the park had been told to drink up and go. The police by this point had been gradually blocking all of the exits, so by the time our pinstriped procession headed for the exit we were told we were going nowhere.
Weary of having the whole group hemmed in a couple of us managed to leave via another exit and walk around behind the largest group of police. Eventually after realising the pettiness of the situation the police decided to let our 'March for Capitalism' go ahead.
We set off along Canal St, through the series of bars, and past a very confused looking public. We had a massive Police escort consisting of several motorbikes, a large number of walking policemen and a van following up the rear. Chants of "stop looking at us and keep spending" or "War, what is it good for? The Economy!" were cheered out. The police guided us around through a series of back streets desperately trying to keep us away from the public. This was met with chants of "More police control, More CCTV" etc.
Eventually we made our way into the shopping area, although by this time police numbers had doubled and we had also gained two horse riding police. We stopped up in a square with a McDonalds, Starbucks and a variety of chain stores. The guy in the three headed contraption was shouting through the megaphone for people to keep shopping "after all we have a war on terror to be fighting!" The police had obviously had enough by this point and made an announcement that we had five minutes to disperse.
Lots of very bemused shoppers were looking on at a group of suits with a massive
police escort chanting for capitalism, shopping, war, cars and sweatshop labour.
The police started to close in so we all dispersed, in the same direction as
each other, and so the march continued.
Numbers gradually began to dwindle and so our friendly police escort walked
us out of Manchester and towards Hume. I tried to drop out of the merry procession
only to be told by a bobby that I was not allowed to. It took a bit of a skillful
car-dodging maneuver but I eventually skipped off, and into the crowds of tourists.
I headed back to Agitate and walked into town with a couple of others to see if we could catch the Fanclub action, but they were nowhere to be seen. Heading back to the exhibition I said my good-byes to everyone and strolled down to the station and back to London.
All in all, I think the Agitate show and Blitz festival was a really interesting, timely, well placed and well planned thing. Nato have absolutely got themselves sorted out, and I hope they carry on doing what they do. Nice one.
Agent Priestley.