UK, May Day Monopoly Game Guide to Anti-Capitalist Actions in London on Tuesday 1 May 2001

CONTENTS

1.1 GET OUT OF JAIL FREE
1.2 INTRODUCTION
1.3 COME TOGETHER - RIGHT NOW : PREPARING BEFORE THE GAME BEGINS
1.4 HOW TO PLAY SUBVERT THE GAME

TOUR OF THE BOARD

>From GO we advance to

2.1 OLD KENT ROAD

2.2 The RAIL STATIONS

2.3 The ELECTRIC COMPANY

2.4 FREE PARKING

2.5 WATER WORKS

2.6 DON'T GO TO JAIL

2.7 SUPER TAX

3.1 A WORLD WITHOUT MONEY

3.2 HOUSING

3.3 DON'T FORGET THE DICE!

3.4 GLOSSARY

1.1 GET OUT OF JAIL FREE

Despite what the cops and politicians think, the Terrorism Act did not abolish the right to protest.

Many people on previous actions have been identified by videos or photographs, so wear masks, hats, sunglasses etc if you do not want to be identified. You may also want a change of clothes. Remember you do not have to give the police a name and address unless you are arrested, so if you are stopped by the police say nothing.

The police may impose a section 60 order, as they did in Trafalgar Square last May Day. This allows them to search everyone in a given area for weapons. It does not allow the police to take photos and you do not have to give your name and address. It is really used to keep people penned in, to stop everyone leaving and to try to get everybody's details. The best response is for everyone to refuse to co-operate and demand to leave together. More information on s60 orders is on the website.

On the day bust cards will be circulated, so make sure that you get one. If you are organising an action you can download a bust card from the website.

If you are arrested you only have to give a name and address. Phone a solicitor who you have used before or from the bust card. Do not accept a duty solicitor. Say "no comment" to any questions until you have the chance to talk to the solicitor.

1.2 INTRODUCTION

After the expectation and the delays it's finally here - the Mayday Monopoly game guide. Welcome one and all! If you haven't guessed already, this initiative is based around the concept of celebrating Mayday 2001, on Tuesday 1st May, with numerous autonomous actions centred on locations around the Monopoly board.

Whilst each action may be small, the cumulative effect should be huge. For this to happen lots of groups need to be planning events in advance: occupations, sit-ins pickets, blockades, mobile actions, spectacles, street theatre, public speaking, banner drops, information points, music or in fact whatever it is that interests your friends, group, campaign or network. This booklet is designed to provide some initial information on the locations and perhaps provide some ideas. So what are you waiting for? Get plotting…

1.3 WHY MAYDAY? WHY MONOPOLY? …
WHY CAPITALISM?

The game of monopoly is one of accumulation, making it perfect for our times. The aim is for each player to make profits through the sale of a single commodity - land - and to expand their empire. In real life one single commodity generates all profits - our labour power. Since labour power cannot be separated from people, we are literally bought and sold in the market place. To prevent stagnation, capitalism must constantly expand. Thus we must also consume as well as produce.

Originally invented as The Landlord Game, to expose the parasitic role of landlords, it was repackaged as Monopoly in the USA at the height of the great depression, as a sop to be sold to those workers who were being laid off and losing their livelihoods, a distraction from the reality of capitalist poverty. Such distractions may have got more sophisticated - TV, the internet, holidays abroad, flashy cars etc - but our exploitation continues unchecked.

As capitalism is a social relation between classes its continuation requires the participation of both exploiters and exploited. By continuing the repetitive cycle of work and consumption we reproduce this alien mode of production. We are therefore our own jailers. However, since capitalism is opposed to human needs and desires, there is a constant struggle between those of us who produce and the bosses who reap the rewards.

Capitalism is a global system, with the rule of the market imposed everywhere, usually by force. Hence the destruction of indigenous cultures. Indeed, capitalism's twin is war. Barely a day passes without the death of humans at the hands of capitalist weapons. To give but one example, British and US forces carry out daily bombings of Iraq, whilst sanctions have killed more people than the despotic Iraqi state.

Mayday is the day above all others when we celebrate struggles against class society and demonstrate our internationalism. From its origins as a pagan festival, Mayday was a time to eat, drink, reject the control of our rulers and have fun. Our rulers responded by first trying to control and then banning the may fairs (see MAYFAIR). Later, Mayday was adopted by the workers movement as the day to celebrate the general strike led by the anarchist Haymarket martyrs, who were executed in Chicago in 1886. Last Mayday saw huge demonstrations and strikes in many countries, including India and Iraq.

Labour bosses responded in the way of all would be rulers and turned Mayday into a safe bank holiday for speachifying. In the last few years there have been attempts to reclaim Mayday as a day to celebrate our struggles. We hope that Mayday Monopoly will continue this process. As we celebrate this year, we should remember that by acting collectively we have the power to bring the whole game to an end!

1.4 COME TOGETHER - RIGHT NOW

So you want to change the world? Fight the forces of globalising darkness?
Not a bad ambition - but you'll need help.

Is there anybody out there?

Check out whether a nearby group already exists. Get a copy of the brilliant guide The Agitator c/o Haringey Solidarity Group, PO. Box 2474, London N8 (send £1) or on the net: http://home.clara.net/hsg/agitator/

Friends

If there's no group nearby, what then? First, try your friends; if you're into all this ‘smash the state' malarkey it is quite possible that your mates share some of your views. So ask around: "Fancy help getting a group together to fight for truth, justice, and the socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange?" If the answer's ‘no', keep looking. If ‘yes', still keep looking: you should guard against the group becoming merely a cider-drinking club (although this is a vitally important secondary function).

What were you doing again?

Who next? What sort of group do you want to have? Is it: Purist anarchist? Revolutionary communist? An anti-capitalist alliance? About a particular issue? If the last, there will be a number of national organisations to go to for help.

The Internet

Mayday Monopoly runs one of many radical mailing lists. Send out emails asking if anyone lives in your locality. It's a long shot – but it might just work. Even if not, some people might live near enough to come over and help you get started. Also see the links page for other groups with similar aims.

Think global, get local

Next, get in touch with others near you. Put up a notice in local bookshops, alternative pubs, record shops, student unions and anywhere else you might find likely-looking local characters. Keep it simple - like:

"New radical group seeks rebels, radical feminists, raving anarchists and reds. Get in touch with: <your mobile>"

You can probably think of better wording than that. People will almost certainly crawl out of the woodwork and want to join with you – but it might take them a while. So, in the meantime, get active.

Hey Ho Let's Go

What your group does is entirely up to you. But it probably shouldn't just be waiting to do something really big on Mayday. Warm up with smaller actions. The more active you are the more new people will want to get involved. What to do?

A local radical newsletter, like Worthing's Pork Bolter:
http://www.worthing.eco-action.org/porkbolter/, or
Leicester's GrassRoots:
http://radical.members.beeb.net/Grassroots.htm
Campaigns. Just standing in the street asking people to sign a petition about something will get you talking to people and the world will know you exist.
Talks and video showings. Politics is all about changing minds, so we all have to be radical educators.
Support other struggles. If a local trade union, or community campaign is fighting against the system, you should be beside them, asking them what they need.
Have fun. Entering a pub quiz or a football league with a team called "The Anti-Capitalists" will alert people to your presence.
Organise stunts and visual actions. If you have any theatrical or musical talent set up a bit of political street theatre.
Find allies. Build up a list of other radical, workplace, community and campaigning groups in your area. – you never know when you might share an aim.

You can probably think of better things to do. But do something – if you don't, no one else will do it for you. Your first try won't be perfect, so do it properly two weeks later. Let's get loads of groups together for Mayday – but let's keep them going afterwards too. If there was an autonomous organisation in every community in the country, Tony Blair would be shitting himself - a damn fine reason to do it.

Happy organising!

1.5 HOW TO SUBVERT THE GAME

Get your campaigning or affinity group together.
Pick an institution or aspect of capitalism to do an action against (this could be based on a ‘single issue' or on something that's happening where you live or work).
Research your target – this pamphlet is only the starting point. Information on companies and their directors can be obtained from Companies House, Tel 029 2038 0801.
Decide on the form of action or protest you are happy doing. For example it could be a picket, demonstration, occupation or some other stunt.
Don't forget the power of humour.
Produce a leaflet, make a banner, build some props, make costumes - the more colourful the better.
Let us know the theme, meeting point & time and your contact details and we'll publicise them.
Rules? There are no rules!

TAKE BACK YOUR LIFE AS YOU PASS GO

2.1 A TOUR OF THE BOARD

For sites that are * asterisked see section 3.7

Glossary

OLD KENT ROAD

Always a hotbed of religious and political ideas, the first noted event was that of Wat Tyler who was involved in the poll tax uprising in the 13th century. In the 16th century it was a major highway for pilgrims going to and coming from Canterbury. Always a working class area with industrial sites and factories, it was heavily bombed during the Second World War, which displaced people and whole neighbourhoods were torn apart. The road hasn't really recovered from that time in history. Local councils have tried to entice big business but have failed miserably meaning that on one side of the road it is gentrified and on the other side you run down and dilapidated. The same local councils have used racist housing policies to try and divide people, but recently there have been a number of struggles around this issue.

PROPERTIES

McDonalds* 518

British Road Federation & Movement for London

(& other regional road action groups) (Pillar House) 194-202

Lobbies for more and bigger roads throughout the UK. The BRF described the construction of the M11 link road as "the culmination of many years of campaigning by the Federation")

Tesco

A prominent member of the Freight Transport Association which lobbies for more road building. Encourages intensive monocrop agriculture, upsets eco-systems, forces 3rd world peasants to grow for exports, uses excessive packaging to the detriment of the environment

Dixons

B&Q . 520

WHITECHAPEL ROAD

Built in the 15th Century to house new trades, like metal working, considered too noisy for the City, for the last 200 years Whitechapel has bee the heart of some of London's immigrant communities. Jewish immigration following repression in Russia in the 1890's created a vibrant radical culture. German anarchist Rudolf Rocker, edited Der Arbeiter Fraint here and set up an anarchist social centre and library. Kropotkin spoke at the Mile End Waste and the Russian Social Democratic Party Congress was held here with Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin (now the site of McDonalds). In the 1930's the Jewish community was subject to the terror of Oswald Moseley's blackshirts. They fought back and the battle of Cable St saw the fascists routed.

It was also the centre of Sylvia Pankhurst's East London Suffragettes which, against the more bourgeois movement of her sisters, took up working class issues of low pay, healthcare and rights at work, developing revolutionary politics. Since the 1960's it has been home to the Bangladeshi Community. The late 70's saw racism and violence against Bangladeshis and a weekly NF paper sale on Brick Lane. The Altab Ali Park marks the spot where the young clothing worker was murdered by fascists. In the 1990's BNP members nearly beat Quddus Ali to death, but the youth tooled up, reclaimed the area driving the fascists of the streets through militant self-defence.

PROPERTIES

The Chronos building
A complex of Yuppie flats
Royal London Hospital
Those working in the rundown NHS are at the sharp end of public pay policies
Barclays Bank* 240
Sainsbury's 1 Cambridge Heath Road
McDonalds* 223
Jaguar
Citroen 100
P&O Nedlloyd Beagle House, Brahm St
Container shipping division of P&O
The Marsh Centre: The Conference Forum

2.2 The RAIL STATIONS

Railways were central to the development of capitalism. Built by private monopolies guaranteed by Acts of Parliament, they soon supplanted the canals for the distribution of commodities. Nationalisation after the war was a response to under investment, not an act of socialisation. These days however, roads have largely usurped the role of the railways (see FREE PARKING). Mainly a political decision, as rail workers had a reputation for militancy, it was thought that road transport was immune from industrial action (although the fuel protests have shown that this is not the case). The rail network was reduced to ferrying workers to work and all that was left to do was to sell it off.

The privatisation of the railways has literally been a deathly disaster, but even before the recent spate of tragic accidents rail privatisation was deeply unpopular, as delays mounted whilst the rail companies and their shareholders made billions in profits (largely from state money). To increase productivity, nearly 100,000 rail workers have been sacked since 1992. Those left have to work on average 45 hours hard labour a week, because the pay is so crap. Half the track is on its last legs, so speed restrictions are imposed, and the ATP system (which automatically stops trains going through red lights and saves lives) will not be fitted because the cost would reduce profits.

the underground

The tube suffers from the same problems as the mainline network. London Underground (LUL) is preparing for privatisation and over 100 sub-contractors now work on the tube. Government privatisation plans are for a Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme under which the tube will be run for private profit. In supposed opposition to this are Mayor Livingstone and ex-CIA boss Kiley. Kiley, also former anti-union boss of the New York Subway, and Livingstone want corporate bonds under which dividends would be paid to shareholders (i.e. another form of privatisation).

Real opposition to privatisation has come from workers and the anti-capitalist movement. In February 1999 tube workers staged a serious of 1-day strikes. Mayday 1999 was celebrated with a tube party. N30 at Euston was partly in opposition to rail and tube privatisation. This January there was a massive vote for strike action, but LUL took RMT to the courts and had the strike declared illegal on the grounds that RMT hadn't told the bosses where their members worked! (on the tube?). Tube workers went on strike any way. A new round of strikes involving both RMT and ASLEF workers is (at the time of writing) just beginning. Rail workers have also backed strike action to stop the fat cat controllers from removing the safety duties of guards on the mainline. Hopefully they will all be out on May Day.

USEFUL ADDRESSES

Railtrack see EUSTON ROAD
LUL, 55 Broadway, SW1
THE ANGEL, ISLINGTON

The area is named after the Angel coaching inn on the road out of London to the north and east of England. This inn was actually never in Islington but in Clerkenwell, to the south. Comrades of Wat Tyler and Jack Straw in the Peasants Revolt against the poll tax in 1381, camped on Clerkenwell Green and set fire to St. John's priory and destroyed the prior's house at Highbury. For many years, Islington was the last halting place for cattle being driven to Smithfield Market. Thomas Payne wrote the Rights of Man here and a monument stands in the Angel Complex. More recently in 1990 Islington was again the scene of protest and resistance to the attempted imposition of the poll tax, and in 1995 traffic was excluded from the area all day by a huge illegal Reclaim The Streets party in protest against car culture.

PROPERTIES

All in Angel Square complex:

Tertio Ltd
Balfour Beatty offices
Building the Ilisu dam in Turkey – see WATER WORKS
Financial Training Co.
Heery International
Islington Rent Officer Service
HM Customs and Excise (London Central Collection)
McNeece
Islington Town Hall Upper St
Job Centre Upper St
McDonalds* Chapel Market
Burger King* 31 Islington High St
Boots* 35 Islington High St
Body Shop* 7 Upper St
Pret A Manger* 27 High St
Starbucks*
Royal Bank of Scotland* 42 Islington High St
Lloyds TSB* 19 Upper St
HSBC bank* 25 Islington High St
Barclays bank* 38 Islington Green
NatWest bank* 2-3 Upper St

EUSTON ROAD

Euston Road runs from Kings Cross to Great Portland Street tube station, it was built as a main thoroughfare as part of the New Road, which included the modern Marylebone and Pentonville Roads, in 1756 and used to drive cattle to Smithfield Meat Market. It contains three of London's main railway stations: Euston, St Pancras and Kings Cross. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman in England to qualify in medicine, and opened a hospital where women could be treated by women. It was moved to its present site here in 1888. At Euston on November 30th 1999 anti-capitalist demonstrators and riot police clashed at a Reclaim the Streets event coinciding with protests in Seattle against the WTO.

PROPERTIES

Railtrack House 355
The headquarters of the privatised rail company – see STATIONS
Executive Agencies of the Dept. Social Security, Benefits Agency
Medical Services & Child Support Agency 196
Currently spending thousands on yet another anti-fraud campaign e.g. "fat
cats have got the money, why can't I have a bit more?"

National Insurance Contributions

War Pensions Agency

Wellcome Trust Gallery & Building 210

Notorious for vivisection, the company is currently trying to stop the use of cheap generic drugs in Africa for the treatment of AIDS and other illnesses

UCLH Healthcare plc 301-305

A major PFI project involves Balfour Beatty and AMEC, building a new privately financed and managed hospital. 600 NHS staff have already been transferred

Seeboard see ELECTRICITY 307-317

Fire Station

The London Fire Brigade faces major funding cuts but fire fighters are fighting back

Mirrors Restaurant

Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit 222

Euston Square Tube Station

Prudential Building 250

Euston Tower

Former M15 building

Inland Revenue Inquiry Centre 286

Starbucks*

Pret a Manger*

2 Triton Square a new office site

Regents Place office block site 350

British Land Company new office block building site 372

McDonalds* 13

Burger King*

HSBC*

Camden Town Hall

Brittania building society

Barclays Bank* 25 & 161

Unity House: RMT 205

Euro Car Parks

Volvo Showroom 373

PENTONVILLE ROAD

Built in 1786, linking the City with western suburbs. The road was patrolled at night to protect homeward bound theatregoers from Sadlers Wells. The area was a planned estate for the rich. A mansion house at no 166 was converted into the London Female Penitentiary in 1807, where "sincerely repentant fallen women were rehabilitated". In 1829 a pioneering bus service was started. During the late 19th century the area degenerated into a slum. From 1972 - 1990 the White Lion Free School, a libertarian school, was based in White Lion Street just around the corner. In 1972 dockers, acting on mass, released their militant rank and file leaders from Pentonville prison.

PROPERTIES

McDonalds* Corner of Pentonville Rd and Caledonian Rd

NatWest Bank offices (2 big offices) 200 – 234

Girobank offices 101 – 113

Scheme 2 20

‘effective stake holders and corporate benefits' (www.scheme2.com)

Whittles House 14

Home of British Railways Board & Strategic Rail Authority

BT Angel Centre 1

Mount Pleasant Sorting Office

Facing closure in the restructuring of the Post Office in preparation for privatisation

Pentonville Prison in Caledonian Rd

PALL MALL

The name is derived from the French paille maille, meaning ball and mallet, a similar game to croquet played in the 17th Century. St James Palace was built in 1532 on the site of a hospital for women with leprosy and became the London royal residence following the burning of Whitehall in 1697. The street is best known for gentleman's clubs, which flourished in the 18th century. They began as coffee shops where rich young aristocrats met to talk, drink and gamble. They had their high point as centres of power in Victorian England but the archaic rules and rituals remain; out of bounds for women and closed to the public. It was at the (Tory) Carlton Club that Margaret Thatcher had to be made an honorary man in order to join.

PROPERTIES

Institute of Directors 116 - 123

Athenaeum (gentleman's club) 107

Travellers Club (gentleman's club) 106

Reform Club (gentleman's club) 104 – 105

The Royal Automobile Club (gentleman's club) 89

P&O Ferries (see WHITECHAPEL ROAD) 78 – 79

St James Palace and Apartments

Royal British Legion 45

Army and Navy Club 41

Rothmans Showroom 65

Banco Sabbadell 120

Quebec House 59

Commonwealth Secretariat 55 – 58

Buckingham Management Services 18 – 19

Peninsula Petroleum 12

Reebok 12

Nigel Burns Yachts 12

2.3 The ELECTRIC COMPANY

The production of electricity is carried out for profit, with scant concern for the impact on the environment, our health or peoples' ability to pay. Pylons are linked to Leukaemia; those with key meters pay over the odds for their supply, whilst others face being cut off if they cannot pay.

Most of Britain's electricity is produced from fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal fired generating stations). The burning of fossil fuels is one of the main contributors to greenhouse gasses and to global warming, but the industry has resisted any moves towards renewable energy sources.

Nuclear power, which is the by-product of the arms industry, was sold as electricity that would be too cheap to meter and that it would be clean and safe! Three Mile Island, the renamed Sellafield and Chernobyl nailed that lie. The production continues to threaten our safety - a recent accident in Japan was in a processing plant bang in the middle of a housing estate. Radiation levels 15,000 times the normal rate were recorded within minutes across a 2km radius - kids were playing in a nearby school at the time. The disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste is also dangerous (nuclear trains run regularly along the North London railway line, whilst nuclear trains are stopped in Germany) and it poses a life-threatening danger for generations to come. Governments and private companies refuse to even tell us where and how it is stored, let alone veto their decisions. Nuclear fuel is also more expensive than fossil fuel. Now the government wants to sell off British Nuclear Fuels – a sure way to create a disaster.

Renewable energy - solar, wind, tidal and wave power and other biofuels – could easily provide more than enough electricity in Britain. Solar power alone could provide 85% of the current energy requirements. However there is massive under-investment, as this threatens the profits of the energy companies. Despite Labours' election promises (a massive 10% of green electricity by 2010!), there is not even a serious attempt to put filters on fossil fuel power plants.

WHITEHALL

A focal point of the English Civil War, culminating in the trial and public execution of Charles I in 1649 outside Banqueting House. During the 19th Century Whitehall became the administrative home of colonial England with the setting up of the India, Foreign and Colonial offices. It remains the public centre of the state with Parliament at one end, the Prime Ministers Residence at 10 Downing Street (although Blair lives at no. 11) and other state buildings. A key purpose of the state is to prepare and maintain the conditions under which capitalism can flourish. This is done by the passing and enforcement of laws, the use of the police, the provision of the welfare state, privatisation and the making of grants and other gifts to capitalist enterprises. The threat of force always looms large, but state administrators are also fearful of the mob - in 1990, worried about increasing demonstrations, Thatcher had large gates erected at the entrance to Downing Street.

PROPERTIES

Portcullis House

A new office block for MP's, which cost £285m

Downing Street

Official residence of the PM, Chancellor (Brown) and the party whips office

Cenotaph

Erected as a memorial to those who fought in the First Imperialist War, the unveiling led to rioting by former soldiers - although reading the press hysteria after last Mayday you may be forgiven for thinking it commemorated a fight against fascism

Ministry of Defence

Built in 1957 at the cost of £5m, it incorporates the former ‘War Office', a change of name which fools no one. The main entrance is on Horse Guards Parade

Foreign Office

Maintaining Britain's links with dodgy regimes throughout the world

Banqueting House

Charles 1st was executed here in 1649

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry 12

Corporate group representing 90% monopoly of drug supplies to NHS, conveniently positioned close to the ministries paying and protecting their wealth

NORTHUMBERLAND AVE

Built in 1876 on the site of Northumberland House, the London residence of the earls, later dukes of, guess where?, Northumberland. This short street connects Trafalgar Sq to the Embankment, and has one notable side street Great Scotland Yard named for the house given to King Kenneth III in 959. Best known for famous residents John Milton and Inigo Jones, the Headquarters of the Metropolitan police were here between 1829 and 1891, before being moved to New Scotland Yard.

PROPERTIES

Ministry of Defence Embankment end

Enterprise Oil

(see STRAND/TRAFALGAR SQ)

PBR Financial Services 16

An offshoot of Petroled Brasilero SA Petrobus with a $722M annual turnover

Nigeria House 9

The state is still providing troops to smash the Niger Delta; assisting Agrip and Cheria Oil against fierce local resistance from local communities; Shell is sniffing around the Ogoni land again

Bovis Lend Lease

Public Finance Initiative, i.e. privatisation of hospital buildings etc.

Virgin Bride- Wedding Shop The Grand Buildings

Arnold Hill Accountants 16

Royal Commonwealth Society (Club) 18

Citadines Hotel

BOW STREET

Organised policing in London was long resisted as many citizens felt it to be a threat to liberty. However, in the 1750s Henry Fielding set up London's first police office at Bow Street. The red-vested ‘Bow Street Runners' were in many instances corrupt and abusive, found to be receiving money and stolen goods, while ‘congregating with villains in taverns'. Robert Peel later established a centralised police force for London, based at Great Scotland Yard in Whitehall. Members of the police force were unpopular amongst many. They were considered to be attempting to arrest and control their own people. They were so unpopular that when in 1832 an unarmed police constable was stabbed to death near Clerkenwell Green, the jury recorded a verdict of ‘Justifiable Homicide'. In the course of their history the police have been known by various names, including, raw lobsters, runners, charleys, bogeys, rozzers, slops, creepers, crushers, coppers, peelers, bobbies, bluebottles, filth, flatties, narks, fuzz and pigs.

PROPERTIES

Bow Street Police Station

Bow Street Magistrates Court

Royal Opera House

In 1792 major alterations were made and the price of a 1-shilling gallery seat was doubled. Riots forced the price down again. In 1809, following a fire, a new Opera Hse opened. Seat prices were raised again, which sparked off "Old Price Riots" which continued for 61 nights until management gave in and dropped the prices! In 1995 it received £78.5 million lottery money for refurbishment. A night at the opera anyone?

Round the corner at 90 Longacre are the offices of Dow Jones International, Capital International, Scottish Equitable, Cable and Wireless, NTL and others.

Two minutes' walk away on Great Queens Street you will find Freemasons' Hall

MARLBOROUGH ST

Actually Great Marlborough Street, this short street has a number of chartered accountants and film production companies as well as a few other interesting names. Liszt (as in Brahms and ....) lived here in 1840 and Percy Bysshe Shelly lived in Poland Street (at the end of Great Marlborough St.) in 1811. In the 1960's MI5 counter-espionage operated from an office in Marlborough Street. They complained of having "to pick our way through the peep-shows, flower stalls and rotting vegetables of Soho Market to get to our top secret files." Marlboro cigarettes are so named because the original Philip Morris factory was on Marlborough St. Due to a Fenian bombing campaign against Whitehall in 1867 a special Irish branch (the Irish being dropped at a later date to include all terrorist activities) of the Met was set up and installed in Scotland Yard.

PROPERTIES

Marlborough Street magistrates court (closed and empty)

CNN Turner House

US propaganda around the world

Corus 15

Previously British Steel – has just sacked over 6,000 steelworkers

Sony 10-13

Freedom Recruitment & Freedom Hotels 49&50

Freedom through work - no we didn't make it up!

Research Defence Society 58-59

Dr Mark Matfield, Executive Director welcomed the last-minute reprieve for HLS

EBRA 58-59

European lobbyists for the use of animals in medical research and safety testing

Coffee Republic 37

Logica 53

Starbucks* 34

Marks & Spencer

Palladium (side entrance)

Carnaby Street

VINE STREET

There is nothing in Vine Street today, except for a now empty but once notorious police station, so we will use this space to examine one aspect of London's notorious police force - deaths in custody.

In the last decade 170 people have died whilst in the custody of the Metropolitan police (compared to 551 nationally). Nearly 20% of these people were black. Not surprisingly, the family and/or friends of many of the victims have organised worthwhile campaigns. Here we only have space for a few:

HARRY STANLEY

Harry was shot dead by armed police in Hackney in September 1999. He had just left a pub and was carrying a table leg in a bag, which the police claimed to mistake for a gun. No warning was given. He was shot in the back.

ROGER SYLVESTER

On 11th January 1999, Roger a 30 year old black man was restrained outside his home by 8 cops from Tottenham police station. He sustained numerous injuries and was pronounced dead 7 days later. The CPS has decided not to charge any of the officers involved.

IBRAHIMBA SEY

Ibrahimba was a Gambian asylum seeker who suffered from mental illness. In March 1996, at Ilford police station, he was sprayed with CS gas whilst handcuffed with his arms behind his back and after being forced to his knees. The inquest recorded a verdict of unlawful killing, but the CPS announced no charges would be brought.

BRIAN DOUGLAS

In May 1995 in Clapham, Brian was hit with the then new style US long handled batons. He vomited in the cell but was not taken to hospital for 12 hours. At the inquest the jury, which was largely drawn from Eltham (where Stephen Lawrence was later murdered by racists), returned a verdict of death by misadventure on this black mans' death.

SHIJI LAPITE

Using the detested "sus" laws (under which the cops can arbitrarily stop and search people) Shiji was detained in December 1994. He died from strangulation. The cops admitted kicking him in the head, biting him and placing him in a neck hold. The verdict was one of unlawful killing, but no charges were ever brought.

2.4 FREE PARKING

The ‘great car economy' began life with Ford mass producing family transport for the masses (at least the better off masses!), giving its name to a whole era of capitalist production, which included strikes, factory occupations and full on class war. In the 1950's the state decided to speed up the process, through the massacre of the railways by Beeching. Pretty soon the predictable (and predicted) results were overcrowded roads and pollution. Still the Government built more roads, people were sold more cars and public transport was run down.

This continued until another huge road building programme, primarily this time to oil the wheels of trans-european business, provoked a small resistance, which took shape and grew - Twyford Down, Claremont Road, Pollock, and Newbury to name but a few. Sometimes mass community resistance, sometimes increasingly isolated activists bought the road programme to a halt. The road budget was reduced from £23 billion to a pittance between 1992 and 1998 and 500 out of 600 schemes have been scrapped since 1989.

Out of this resistance, particularly Claremont Road, developed ‘Reclaim the Streets' and street parties (e.g. trees from Claremont Road were planted on the M41 among sound systems and 10,000 people dancing). Efforts that were repeated city to city, country to country, that grew to build links with the Liverpool Dockers, tube workers and hospital workers. Along side all this, ‘Critical Mass' mobile cycle blockades also took off. In the process, many people evolved from the specific anti-cars struggle into the broad anti-capitalist movement. Now Labour is putting the road building frenzy back into place (e.g. the Hastings bypass). It's the same destruction of the earth and communities for the benefit of globalising capital as it ever was. All part of the same package as the privatisation of "public" transport and fighting it is just as important as it ever was.

USEFUL ADDRESS: British Road Federation (see OLD KENT ROAD)

STRAND

An ancient road running from Trafalgar Square to the Law Courts, linking Westminster to the City. It was originally a bridle path, running along the river. By the 12th century it contained large mansions. In the 18th century it was renowned for its' coffee houses and was a favourite haunt of prostitutes and pickpockets. Previous residents have included the anarchist William Godwin, who lived at no. 191.

PROPERTIES

Armed Forces Careers Office 453-3

A thousand ways to kill

Coutts & Co 440

Bankers to the rich and Royalty – owned by Royal Bank of Scotland

Savoy Hotel

Where rich and famous scum stay

BBC World Service Bush Hse

propaganda to the world, has a shop

Inland Revenue Information Centre Bush Hse

If you have a tax enquiry! Taxes oiling the wheels of capitalism, subsidising ethnic cleansing and the arms trade.

RTZ, St James Sq

Uranium, coal and copper mines

Royal Courts of (In)Justice

Enterprise Oil 1-3

Europe, SE Asia, Khazakstan, Morocco, Greece, Albania and the opening of the Atlantic Frontier in the west of Scotland which is currently opposed by Greenpeace

Barclays Bank* 366

Bomber Harris statue, outside RAF Clement Danes Church

Massacre of civilians at Dresden and elsewhere

Citibank & Citigold* 336

Australia High Commission

Still people imprisoned from September 11

Kings College

War Studies Dept trained Indonesian Militias and chemical weapons team for attack on Iraq

Aroma* Wellington Hse

McDonalds* 35

Starbucks* 355

Reed Employment 402

Administers of workfare schemes, casual employer of Simon Jones who was killed on his first day at work on the docks, due to lack of safety procedures.

Manpower Employment Services 11

Involved in workfare schemes and provided security guards on road protests.

FLEET STREET

Once the home of all national newspapers, with printers who had some control over their working conditions. More wages and less productivity equals less profits for the bosses. Come Thatcher, Murdoch decided to smash effective trade unionism and moved the Sun and Times to Wapping. One of the central battles of the 1980's followed, with pitched battles outside "Fortress Wapping", the scab unionism of the EEPTU (now part of the AUEW), the threat to sequest SOGAT funds and secondary picketing. The workers lost and there are now no papers left in Fleet St, but, contrary to propaganda, the working class hasn't ceased to exist, nor ever will as long as there are bosses screwing profits out of those who do the work.

PROPERTIES

KPMG

Auditors and Financial Consultants, involved in carbon trading, privatisation and "strategic management of intellectual property". Recently worked with Alchemy to asset strip Rover. Members of Chemical Industries Assoc (with Huntington Life Sciences) and expanding into central and eastern Europe.

Barclays Bank* 19

Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer 65

Solicitors who have advised on evicting protesters in the UK (e.g. injunction against Ploughshares women) and also in South Africa.

Reuters 85

One of two main competitors (with Bloomberg) in the financial information market.

Goldman Sachs 130-133

Involved in various IMF "bailouts" (ie privatisation programmes) in Indonesia and Sth Korea. Closer to you, they run the consortium that owns nearly all Job Centres! Income about £2.6 billion per year. Directors include Peter Sutherland, who is also Chairman of BP and a former head of GATT, Sir John Brown, CEO of BP, and Gavin Davis a confident of Gordon Brown.

Odyssey Communications 146

"End to End" e business and online web conferencing

Ernst & Young Linklater Hse, 10 Noble St

Largest provider of tax avoidance expertise in US and globally. Close collaboration with Price Waterhouse. Assist Shell, Texaco, Saudi Aramco, defence and aerospace industries and life sciences (animal abuse)

Royal Bank of Scotland* 1

NEWSPAPERS

Associated Newspapers (Mail, Evening Standard, Star) 2 Derry St, W8

Express 245 Blackfriars Rd SE1

Guardian and Observer 119 Farringdon Rd, EC1

Mirror Group 1 Canada Sq, E14

News International (Sun, Times, News of the World, Sunday Times) 1 Virginia St, E1

Telegraph Canada Sq, Canary Wharf, E14

TRAFALGAR SQUARE

Traditionally the end point of demonstrations in London, many of which resulted in riots. The Chartists began their march here in 1848, that year of revolutionary uprisings throughout Europe. Notable demos included: against the bombing of Suez (1956); CND & Committee of 100 (a quarter of a million marching in the 1960's); and countless union demos. In the 1980's a non-stop picket opposing apartheid was held outside South Africa House and the hated poll tax was effectively killed off by 200,000 people rioting in 1990. In response the police built a new police station in the old Charing Cross hospital and last year succeeded in stopping part of the Mayday demonstration reaching the Square, imprisoning many people in the process. Remember this is their territory, the place they want us!

PROPERTIES

Drummonds Bankers 49 Charing Cross

Opened by the Royal Bank of Scotland, now under supervision of Coutts to create a separate banking system for the super rich.

Canada House

(Canada is a major supporter of free trade agreements, e.g. preventing the labelling of food, the use of asbestos, of which they are the worlds major producer)

Enterprise Oil, Grand Buildings

Oils interests everywhere from Albania to Khazakstan. Opening up the Western Frontier (West of Scotland) and drilling the Western Siberian Basin, the Brent Sea, a new gas deal with Iran …

Plus a statue of Charles 1st (beheaded in the English Revolution)

LEICESTER SQUARE

The garden in Leicester Square was originally common land for people to dry clothes and pasture cattle. Much later it became a centre of entertainment where people would gather. Also a place where homeless people would go to pass the time and possibly sleep if they could. As part of Westminster council's drive to rid their borough of rough sleepers (without, of course, providing any housing) the garden is now locked up each night. Now the Government's Rough Sleepers Unit (RSU) has spent a small fortune on an advertising campaign telling us to stop giving money to beggars (phone the RSU on 0845 6061623 to discuss this). Leicester Square is also the home of the main cinemas, but don't expect anything but the standard Hollywood fare.

PROPERTIES

Cinemas: – Empire, Odeon & Odeon West End

Empire is owned by UCI, who are destroying Crystal Palace park to build a multiplex

Pizza Hut

Chiquito Resturant & Bar 20

Bella Pasta

Capital Radio 30

Radisson Hampshire Hotel 31

Haagen Dazs

Angus Steak House

Swiss Centre on Wardour Street

Public face of a state famous for secret banking, protecting the rich & powerful

Aberdeen Steak House

COVENTRY STREET

Built in 1681 it has always been known as a place of entertainment, although as early as 1846 it was noted that it was a place of "bad character". In keeping with this sentiment, the street is probably best known for the Fashion Café and Planet Hollywood. The Fashion Cafe was a bizarre concept, owned by supermodels including Naomi Campbell. As supermodels are not generally known for their appreciation of food it is not surprising that the venture failed and the building is now empty. Planet Hollywood is owned by Hollywood filmstars Arnold Swarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone. The idea being that the public can feel as if they are rubbing shoulders with the stars (whilst lining the stars pockets of course). After eating the food and drinking the drink, customers can complete the experience by buying the T-shirt (and the hat, the bag, the jacket.....etc.)

PROPERTIES

KFC

Fashion Café (now closed and empty)

Aldwych Theatre

Planet Hollywood (in Trocadero Centre)

TGI Fridays

Trocadero Centre

Aberdeen Steak Hse 21

HMV records (in Trocadero Centre)

2.5 WATER WORKS

The control and sale of water has become a key issue in this class divided world, proving the old adage that we would have to buy the air if it could be bottled.

British Water was privatised in 1989, by the Tory Government following the logic of neo-liberalism. Water is now charged for by the litre, huge profits are made by the few and large numbers of people, being unable to pay their bills, have their water supplies cut off and are thus unable to have a drink or flush the loo.

In Ireland in the 1990's the Government introduced a much-detested tax on water. There was mass opposition to this and resistance was organised in a similar way to the anti-poll tax campaign here. The success of this showed again the power of collective action.

In other parts of the world it is the building of dams, which in turn lead to large areas being flooded and people losing their homes and livelihoods, which has led to public protest. In China the damming of the Yantzee river will destroy a whole region.

In Turkey the Ilisu dam will flood and area occupied by the minority Kurdish community, who already suffer daily repression. Whilst the protection of the Kurds in Iraq is used as the pretext for Anglo-American bombing raids, in Turkey the British Government are underwriting part of the costs and Balfour Beatty are the main contractors (see ANGEL). The dam is not designed to improve the water supplies of local people but simply to serve industry. Not only will Kurdish homelands be destroyed but the Turkish State will also be able to control the water supply of neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

Water is big business and this liquid, which is so essential to life, is simply another commodity in this topsy turvey world.

USEFUL ADDRESS Thames Water plc 14 Cavendish Place, London W1.

PICCADILLY

The name Piccadilly stems from a 17th century dressmaker who created a fashionable frilled collar called a "piccadil". Piccadilly Circus, originally built in 1819, lost its circular form in 1886 when the slums of Soho and St Giles were knocked down to build Shaftesbury Avenue. Since 1910 electric adverts at Piccadilly have been exhorting us to consume, helped along in 1923 when the giant electric billboards were erected on the facade of the London Pavilion. In 1823, roller skates were patented by Robert John Tyers, a local fruiterer, "for the purpose of travelling or pleasure." The 1893 bronze fountain topped by a figure of a winged archer is popularly called Eros, but was actually supposed to be a symbol of Christian charity, built as a memorial to the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.

PROPERTIES

Criterion Restaurant 224

Run by Marco Pierre White for the rich only

The Money Corporation 18

Bureau de change with a great name

Fortnum & Mason 181

Food for the obscenely rich

Caviar House (Restaurant & shop) 161

Ritz Hotel

Tea anyone?

Saab showroom 77

Mercedes Benz showroom 75

Korean Air 67

At the sharp end of capitalist restructuring, workers opposing mass sackings face state brutality, but have fought back on the streets

The former home of Lord Palmerston, now empty 94

Japanese Embassy

The G8 summit held on the island of Okinawa in July 2000 cost £500m, just so protesters could be kept away)

Virgin Megastore 225-229

(Recently revealed plans to take plastic payment only)

Lillywhites Sports Store

Largest sports shop - purveyors of trainers made by children

Tower Records

NatWest bank* 207

Waterstones 206

Lloyds TSB* 39

Time Computer Systems 193

The Orange Shop (Mobile ‘phones) 192

Hatchards Bookshop

Aroma*

Pret A Manger* 41 & 163

HSBC bank* 79

Starbucks

Heidriek & Struggles International Inc

Burlington & Piccadilly Arcades

2.6 DON'T GO TO JAIL

London has no less than 8 prisons, two of which are also used to lock up asylum seekers, who have fled persecution in their own lands.

9 prisons in England and Wales are privately run - 4 by Group 4 (see MAYFAIR).

Around 44% of men and 15% of women are convicted of a criminal offence at some time in their lives.

Black people are 7 times more likely to be imprisoned and they receive longer sentences.

Between 1982 and 1998 the figures for suicides in prison more than doubled. In '98 there were 82 suicides (average prison population 64,744). Of these 40 were remand prisoners (i.e. not yet convicted).

Over 63% of remand prisoners do not receive a prison sentence. Many prisoners are locked up 23 hours a day and occupy overcrowded cells.

The life sentence prison population is growing at an even faster rate than the overall prison population (currently there are approx. 4,500 lifers)

The number of women in prison has doubled since 1993 to 3,400 in 1999. Most are in prison for debt.

In 1995 20,742 people were sent to prison for non-payment of fines. Labour and the Tories are agreed on the need to send more people to prison. This requires more prisons, which will be privately designed, built, managed and financed.

Convicted prisoners may be required to do ‘useful work' for up to 10 hours a day. The average wage is £7 per week. Useful work includes making prison uniforms!

ADDRESSES (Do not pass GO, do not collect £200)

Belmarsh Western Way, Thamesmead SE28

Brixton Jebb Avenue, SW2

Feltham (Young offenders) Bedfont Road, Feltham

Holloway (female adult & young offenders) Parkhurst Road, N7

Latchmere House Church Road, Richmond, TW10

Pentonville (see PENTONVILLE ROAD)

Wandsworth Heathfield Road, SW18

Wormwood Scrubs DuCane Road, W12

REGENT STREET

The road was built to provide a link from Regents Park to central London, to make profitable the development of new lands and to try and improve the down-at-heel Pall Mall (see PALL MALL). Around 1890 it became the centre of fashion and lots of expensive clothes and shoe shops remain.

PROPERTIES

Benetton (Head Office) 255

Mappin and Webb, Pravins, Boodle and Dunthorpe (all jewellers)

Gap and Gap Kids* 146

Liberty

William Morris rip-offs

Barclays* 27 & 212

Na West* 250

HSBC* 133

Lloyds TSB* 132

Disney Store 140

Recently sacked 1,145 workers in Thailand, replacing them with cheaper sub-contracted labour, 10% of which are children. The CEO, Michael Eisner, earns over $300m per year.

Starbucks* 76

Angus Steakhouse 74

Purveyors of BSE & Foot & Mouth

Cafe Royal 68

Where posh folk have their parties

OXFORD STREET

In 1886, the coldest winter England had seen for thirty years, 20,000 unemployed dock and building workers took to the street following a rally in Trafalgar Square. Looting and ransacking shops they robbed and terrorised the rich in their clubs and carriages. This was to be repeated over 100 years later after 1990's 200,000 strong Poll Tax riot.

Oxford Street is now the jugular vein of consumerism capitalism in central London and an epicentre of exploitation. Burger King, for example, make workers clock off when they are not busy, though forcing them to stay. Pizza Hut offered a Spanish women a job without pay to ‘help' her English. But the biggest the rip off happens in the third world. Adidas pays its workers 6p per hour in Burma, where the military keep discipline. Gap employs children as young as 12 in its Cambodian factories. Nike pays children 20 cents per hour in China and gets them jailed when the form a trade union.

PROPERTIES

Gap & Gap Kids* 44-48, 192, 194, 319, 376, 471-475 & 513

Niketown 236

Aroma* 73

Starbucks* 57

Car Phone Warehouse 407

Sells Ericcson, who make riot shields for the cops, and Vodaphone, aggressive marketers and key players in pushing for the construction of The Newbury by-pass

Office Angels 25-27

Full enjoyment, not full employment

Whittards 53

Rightist, economic neo imperialist plantation enterprise

McDonalds 8, 185, 291B & 341-349

HSBC* 52

Cheque Point 55

NatWest bank* 79

Woolwich 95

Barclays bank* 109

Bureau De Change 295

Ernest Jones Jewellers 271

The jewel and precious metal trade is notoriously exploitative of workers

J.D Sports 275

Sellers of sweatshop labour produced garments and footwear

BT Shop 351

Close ally of the secret state in terms of bugging and screening telecommunications and emails

Acme Appointments 315-319

New Look 309

Many garments sourced in sweatshop labour factories in third world, industrial polluter, major use of chemically treated synthetics

Marks & Spencer 169 & 470

JJB Sports 128 & 301-309

Sweatshop and child labour brokers

Mappin and Webb Jewellers 409

Lloyds TSB* 399

West One Shopping Centre – home to McDonalds*, Boots* and Pret A Manger*

Footlocker 363

Yet more child produced trainers

Abbey National 475

Phones For You 449

MacKenzies Jewellers 447

HSBC* 196 & 431

Bureau De Change 453, 483

Dixons 491-497

Brokers of intensive, exploited labour produced electronic goods

H&M 505-507

Bureau De Change 546, 544, 536

KFC 542

First Sport 163 & 526-528

Superdrug 536

Pharmaceutical industry cheerleader

H Samuel 167, 250 & 474

Selfridges 400

Plenty of sweatshop labour produced extortionate garments and goods

Body Shop* 66, 268 & 374

Disney Store 360-366

(see REGENT STREET)

Easy Everything Café and Nescafe 356

Nescafe is part of The Nestle Corp. currently aggressively marketing its powdered milk in Africa as substitute for breast milk. Responsible for infant deaths.

Debenhams 346

Citibank* 306

House Of Fraser

John Lewis 278

Gadget Shop 266

Useless outsourced commodity fetishism. Many produced in third world.

H&M 240-246

Burger King* 142-144

Plaza Shopping Centre- containing McDonalds* and other enterprises engaged in wage labour and ecological exploitation.

Boots* 80, 138-141, 285-289, 389, 439-441 & 490

Bureau De Change 70, 40

Halifax Building Society 60

Costa Coffee 50

Third world labour force and land exploiter

Lloyds TSB 34

Tesco Metro (see OLD KENT RD) 311

BOND STREET

Bond street was named after Sir Thomas Bond who was the financial controller of the Queen's household at the court of King Charles I. In the early part of the 17th century the area was swampy, uninhabited and near a plague pit, an area where highwaymen preyed on passers-by and noblemen fought duels. Later in the century Bond street contained large houses which were sought after by the rich. By the 1850s both Old and New Bond street were filled with fashionable shops, and by the turn of the century the Bond streets were renowned for their art galleries.

PROPERTIES

Sotheby's Auctioneers 34 New Bond St

The Fine Art Society 148 New Bond St

Benson & Hedges Ltd 13 Old Bond St

Calvin Klein 53-55 New Bond St

Louis Vuitton 17 New Bond St

Remember Posh Spice's luggage, sadly stolen at the airport?

Cartier 175 New Bond St

Chanel 26 Old Bond St & 173 New Bond St

Versace 33 Old Bond St

Fashion victim no 1

Armani 43 New Bond St

Ralph Lauren 6 & 143 New Bond St

Rolex 29 Old Bond St

Tiffany & Co 25 Old Bond St

Yves Saint Laurent 135/137 New Bond St

PARK LANE

Park Lane has been one of the most fashionable streets in London since the 1820's - all of its residents being rich and many of them titled. Now it mainly consists of hotels for the rich and super-rich and places where they buy their toys (note the number of car showrooms). In the early sixties Park Lane was converted into a dual carriageway by sacrificing a part of Hyde Park.

PROPERTIES

London Hilton hotel

Dorchester Hotel & Club

Cooper/Lexus car showrooms 59

McLaren car showrooms 61

Porsche car showrooms 64

BMW car showrooms 68

Grosvenor House Hotel and Business Centre

Angolan Embassy 98

Jaguar & Aston Martin car showrooms 113

Park Lane Apartments Estate Agents 121

Bargain of the week – semi-detached house £895,000!

Mercedes-Benz car showrooms 127

Hotel Intercontinental

Metropolitan Hotel

2.7 SUPERTAX

'Protection' is the key word in the Garment Center racket. The process is as follows: One day you receive a visit from a gentleman who kindly offers to protect you. If you are really naïve, you ask, "Protection against what?" Groueff & Lapierre, The Gangsters of New York.

Any discussion of tax - income tax, sales tax, business tax, carbon taxes, even supertaxes - misses more fundamental questions: Why is it that we work for money? Why do the products of human labour take on the form of commodities? Why is production carried out by separate business enterprises? Why is human life outside the personal sphere of friends and family organised as economic buying and selling or as state bureaucratic activity? In capitalism, separated from each other and from the means of producing our lives we must sell - alienate - our activity as a commodity in order to get money to buy the things we need in order to live. Commodities and money are values, the representation of labour under capitalism. Value is thus not neutral but the capitalist form of wealth, the expression of a world where humans relate through things and to each other as things. The state is not separate to this.

In a society of commodity production and exploitation the state has taken on roles whether repressive or apparently ‘benevolent' as has been felt necessary to maintain social cohesion, i.e. to maintain class society and prevent human community. Even when it meets certain needs it only does so in bureaucratic forms that replicate the forms of value. Whether organising violence or ‘welfare', the state is not a neutral form but an expression of alienated labour.

Tax is fundamentally a category of relating to how a portion of value already produced is redistributed. The task humanity faces is to abolish the production of value itself. To abolish value is also to abolish the state. Tax has nothing to do with it.

MAYFAIR

The most expensive square on the board and still the most expensive area of London, Mayfair is bounded by Oxford St, Regent St, Piccadilly and Park Lane. It takes its name from the fair, which was transferred here from Haymarket in 1686, held here annually from May 1st for 15 days. Soon this event became notorious for riotous and disorderly behaviour and in 1708 it was abolished, only to be revived again with similar results. In the end the only way to permanently suppress the fair was to build on the site. Perhaps a tradition that needs reinventing!

PROPERTIES

Berkeley Square

Royal & Sun Alliance 30

Mortons Restaurant 28

Cadbury Schweppes 25

Mount City Group of Companies 24

Bank of Ireland 20

Rolls Royce & Bentley Car Showrooms 18 & 19

Audi Car Showrooms 15-17

Lloyds TSB* 14

Allied Irish Bank 10

Pret A Manger* 7

Nat West* 5

Starbucks* corner of Berkeley Sq & Lansdown Row

Maggs Bros Ltd (rare books, manuscripts etc) 50

Scotia Bank Europe plc 48

HSBC* 47

Cluttons chartered surveyors 45

Clermont Club 44

Nicky Clarke hairdressers - corner of Berkeley Sq & Mount Street

where the rich & stupid pay £loads for a cut & blow-dry

Mount Street

Various galleries and art places

Allens (butchers) Ltd 117

Purveyors of bourgeois delicacies like foie gras

Carlos Place

Connaught Hotel & Restaurant - where a portion of caviar cost £120

Grosvenor Square

US Embassy

Grosvenor Street

Killik & Co Stockbrokers 46

Investcorp International Ltd 48

Canadian High Commission (see TRAFALGAR SQUARE) 38

European Credit Management Ltd 34

Klesch & Co Ltd 51

Argyll Investment Management Ltd 58

Barclays Private Bank* 59

Frank Usher 66

posh frock designer

Vidal Sassoon 19 & 20

Pirelli 15

Famous for their hideous sexist calendars

Estee Lauder 73

The "face" of Estee Lauder is scab actress Liz Hurley

Hillier, Parker, May & Rowden 78

Worldwide property services

Starbucks* corner of Avery Road

South Audley Street

Oronti Antiques 37

Mayfair Gallery 39

Purdey - Gun & Rifle Manufacturers 57-58

Spy Shop 59

Counter Spy Shop 62

Sir Brian Moffat, Accountant, has Mayfair office head of Corus the privatised steel industry comprised of British Steel and Dutch Hoogovens, mass redundancies in Jan 01

Group 4 HQ 7 Carlos Place

2nd largest security services operator in the world: security & surveillance, runs private prisons & detention centres for asylum seekers, transportation of prisoners.

Qatar National Bank* 1 Mount St W1

Embassy of Qatar * 1 South Audley St

Embassy of Qatar (military section)* 21 Hertford St

Mexican embassy 42 Hertford St

As the EZLN marched on Mexico City, one woman said "we are all indigenous now"

3.1 A WORLD WITHOUT MONEY

In the game of monopoly, without money you lose. In capitalist society money is the God at whose feet we are all required to worship. It is not a neutral instrument of measurement, it is the commodity (thing) in which all other commodities are reflected. Without money you starve.

The negation of capitalism (i.e. its overthrow and replacement by another form of society) has been called anarchism, socialism, communism or post-capitalism, but whatever term we prefer, it requires the abolition of money. In place of a world based on the wages system and commodities must come into being a world where human activity will never again take the form of wage slavery and where the products of such activity will no longer be objects of commerce. We do not need another measure of value as ‘value' will be meaningless. Money will disappear.

The end of property

The abolition of money requires the abolition of all property, not just the land and buildings represented on the Monopoly board, not just the means of production, but all property. It is not a question of transferring property titles but of the simple disappearance of property. In revolutionary society no one will be able to 'use and abuse' a good because they are its owner. There will be no exceptions to this. Things will no longer belong to anyone; rather they will belong to everybody. The very idea of property will rapidly be considered absurd.

The usual objection is that if property were abolished anyone would be able to take my clothes off my back or take bread from out of my mouth just because I would no longer be the owner of my clothes or my food. In fact the opposite is true. In place of the insecurity of capitalism (where only the rich really have property rights) each person's material and emotional security will be strengthened. However, it will not be property rights which will be invoked as a protection, but the direct interest of the person concerned. The right and the sentiment of property will die out because scarcity will disappear. People will no longer have to cling to an object for fear of not being able to enjoy it any more if they let go of it for a single instant.

There is no magic about this. We will be able to make abundance appear because it is already here under our feet. It is not a question of creating it but simply of liberating it. It is not that we are suddenly going to produce abundance but rather that capitalism artificially maintains scarcity.

In this new-world goods will be freely available and free of charge. The organisation of society to its very foundations will be without money.

3.2 HOUSING

All over London, from the Old Kent Road to Mayfair, buildings lie empty whilst people are homeless or living in overcrowded conditions. The rich stay in the Savoy, whilst homeless people and asylum seekers are dumped in grotty bed and breakfasts, whilst landlords make huge profits. Rents are rising and renting privately means putting up with poor conditions, scummy landlords and insecurity. Buying somewhere to live means signing up for a lifetimes debt to some bank or building society and living in fear of unemployment and repossession. Either way homelessness is only a few missed payments away.

Having lasted barely a century Labour (which largely created it) has now embarked on the final sell off of all council housing within the next ten years – if they can get away with it. Although a statist top down project, it still gave millions decent housing for the first time. The Tories in the late 1970's tapped into some tenants discontent with their lack of direct control and started their heavily subsidised right to buy at the same time that the then version of market reform – ‘fair' rents – was pushing council rents relentlessly higher. Councils weren't allowed to use the proceeds from sales to build more housing. Now you can watch Labour scrambling to handover their estates to housing associations.

Housing associations are run like businesses, with market rents and constant talk of surpluses (‘profit' it seems is a dirty word). Housing association bosses are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of the privatisation of council housing; after all they have the most to gain as they take over estates and build their empires.

However, tenants are fighting back. Many ballots went against privatisation, so ballots are to be abolished. Now the real struggle begins and tenants in Camden, Lambeth and Southwark have organised against privatisation. At the same time, squatters continue to take back buildings from those who control our lives. Thousands of people have, for many years, made empty flats and houses their own homes.

Ordinary people have been steadily forced out of Central London but in many parts have resisted, from Covent Garden and Waterloo to Tolmers Square in Euston squatters played their part and some victories were won. And buildings are not only for housing. Just as developers take swimming pools and turn them into loft living opportunities we take their empty buildings and put them to our own uses. In Hackney the council closed a nursery down to sell it to developers, local activists squatted it and turned it back to community use. Pubs are closed down then squatted and reopened as social space. The possibilities are as endless as the lists of empties.

Squatting is still legal. To strengthen the squatting movement we need to support our networks and resources, defend our homes and centres and spread our ideas and our threat of a bad example.

Further info on squatting: Advisory Service for Squatters 2 St Pauls Road N1 2QN. Tel 0207 359 8814

3.3 DON'T FORGET THE DICE!

The Dice reflect the myth of the "free market" within the Monopoly system. The myth that every ‘free individual' has an equal opportunity for success in the ‘game'. But this is an obvious lie; the Dice are loaded from the start. The unequal distribution of resources and opportunity is a crucial feature of capitalism.

The Dice also represents the myth of the ‘invisible hand', the notion that a laissez faire economy is self-regulating and follows a natural order. The truth is that, despite all attempts to rig the ‘game', this is never totally successful and capitalism is still about risk and gambling. Not wrong in itself, but the stakes in this ‘game' are our lives and wellbeing not just those of the gamblers and, with the disastrous effects of capitalism on both a fractured society and a poisoned environment, the stakes are high.

A more subtle idea associated with using the Dice in the Monopoly Game is the discontinuity of the players. Their movements are disconnected by the randomness, they are no longer related by anything. In this game, as in its real equivalent, the ‘free' atomic individual rules, as disconnected from their neighbours as the dots on the Dice.

But the Dice can be reclaimed; they aren't bad in themselves. The great irony of capitalism is that whilst it clothes itself in the mantle of freedom and dons the mask of justice it is in fact based on neither of these. Capitalist society requires a specific social structure and a precise form of ‘individual'. A whole culture machine is geared to create such a set up. Modern society is based on control, discipline and imposed order. Not only of the world it seeks to exploit but, just as significantly, of those who make it up and are supposed to benefit from it. Our lives are monitored, analysed and regulated today as never before, as the ethos of the prison seeps out into everyday life. But resistance to this Panopticism is still possible; life can still be made spontaneous and free of instrumental control. We can start by following our desires, but in a world were our desires themselves are packaged and sold back to us we need something more. It is here that the Dice are a liberational tool. Living in the domain of Fortuna can open up new vistas of freedom when combined with a collective intention and creative will to emancipation. On Mayday the Dionysian Underground (the post-situ anarcho-surrealist network) intend to reclaim the Dice and ‘roll it' on the streets of London. Join us if you will, or better still reclaim the Dice for yourself and subvert the ‘game'.

3.4 GLOSSARY

Aroma

Subsidiary of human, land and animal rights violating multinational McDonalds.

Barclays Bank

Investor in arms trade and human rights abusing dictatorships. Think oil in Burma, Indonesia, China, think Monsanto, think …

Body Shop

Violator of workers rights. Owner Anita Roddick does not allow her workers to unionise.

Boots

Pharmaceutical giant engaged in selling potentially cancerous dioxin infested products.

Burger King

McDonalds' prettier ugly sister, i.e. same politics, practices etc regarding labour and farming.

Citibank, Citigold & Citicorp

Biggest lender of student loans in USA and Latin America. Helped the previous Nigerian dictatorship to remove £452m - £60m was delivered in suitcases!

Gap

employs children as young as 12 in its Cambodian factories. Uses child and adult sweat shop labour in Third World Free Trade Zones to produce it's clothing.

HSBC (Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation)

Invests in military dictatorships, nuclear arms etc.

Lloyds TSB

loan sharks with unethical investments - all banks steal.

McDonalds

Low wages, exploitative of live stock, forests and land; major industrial polluter, engaged in aggressive marketing in particular towards children, selling unhealthy food etc.

NatWest bank

One time investor in Huntingdon Life Sciences, plus the usual genocidal dictatorships and arms (see Royal Bank of Scotland).

Pret A Manger

Now part owned by McDonalds.

Qatar

The next venue for the WTO meeting, in November 2001. Held here to make it difficult to attend.

Royal Bank of Scotland

Owners of Coutts and NatWest bank as well as Direct Line Insurance. Currently being investigated for having a monopoly in the banking sector as they are trying to buy Abbey National.

Starbucks

Exploiters of third world coffee growers, also responsible for promoting earth degrading mono-crop farming. Obscene profit margins and mean attitude toward staff- all store tape players are set at particular speed which prevents any worker bringing in and playing own music. Currently teaming up with Microsoft in USA.