Mayor fears another violent May Day protest

The agenda will be the same this year as last year

The agenda will be the same this year as last year. Thousands of demonstrators will converge on central London calling for the cancellation of Third World debt and poverty, joined by families and individuals protesting against environmental pollution and capitalism.

The May Day protest takes place in less than two weeks and the actions of demonstrators will be watched more closely than ever after members of a provocative, some say extremist anti-capitalist group, Reclaim the Streets, hijacked the event last year.

Few will forget the demonstrators who defaced Churchill's statue in Parliament Square, topping off the British icon with a grass Mohican and graffiti. Within a few minutes, the Mayday Reclaim the Streets demonstrators removed the grass outside the Houses of Parliament and smashed up a local McDonalds.

This year the MayDay Monopoly group, made up of a similar group of people, intends to make another forceful anti-capitalist statement.

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With the power of the Internet behind it, the MayDay Monopoly website calls on individuals to join in sit-down protests and marches on May 1st against capitalist and imperialist targets such as Railtrack, Tesco and Prince Charles's official residence at St James's Palace.

The group has organised itself around the Monopoly boardgame since, according to the website, "the game of Monopoly is one of accumulation, making it perfect for our times", and visitors are told how to "play the game" and also how to "subvert" it.

The protest will celebrate "struggles against the class society and demonstrates our internationalism. It should be the start of an ongoing career of activism, agitation and generally making a nuisance of yourself."

The website also offers legal advice to demonstrators. If a police officer asks to see a form of identification, the website says the demonstrator should "ask to speak to a senior cop, PCs know nothing anyway" and points out that the right to protest is protected in law.

It also helpfully provides translations of its leaflets in Dutch, French, Spanish and Turkish and says that members of the Legal Defence and Monitoring Group will attend the protests to monitor police behaviour.

The problem with last year's demonstrations - and it is a problem that many peaceful protesters fear will be repeated this year - is that people with a genuine protest to make about capitalism were linked with the violence of an extremist minority.

Writing in the Guardian after last year's protest, the columnist John Vidal condemned peaceful members of Reclaim the Streets for refusing to condemn the violence. They had "played only into the hands of the thugs", he said, by allowing the agenda of the few to dominate the perception of the many.

It is a concern that is growing again this year. With London's tourist industry beginning to feel the pinch of the foot-and-mouth crisis, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, is concerned that the capital's major tourism and shopping areas should not be turned into "economic targets" by the protesters.

"The problem with next month's protests is that violence is not incidental," Livingstone wrote in the British Independent this week. "No attempt has been made to organise the protests to minimise conflict with the police or to maximise peaceful participation. There is no central point of contact for the police to negotiate with, and the protesters' chosen image of masks and uniforms of boiler suits padded to protect them from the police is both provocative and deliberately designed to minimise participation from ordinary people."

The secretive leadership structure of the MayDay Monopoly group lends itself to accusations of a subversive, confrontational agenda. Its website can be found with little difficulty, so there is little secrecy about the anti-capitalist agenda. But the tone of the website gives rise to the fear that aggression is a legitimate form of protest.

It is impossible to predict to what extent the call to "subvert" will be followed through by some of the demonstrators but peaceful protesters must hope their legitimate message is not consumed by violence.