Protests at the G20 summit in Toronto continued a trend of demonstrations against capitalism, inequality and corporate excess. But the protest movement is going through a change

It has become a ritual. Wherever leaders meet for a G7/G8/G20 summit, or in another forum such as the World Trade Organisation, protesters also congregate. While the presidents and prime ministers seek to convince everyone else that they have the world’s problems under control, the protesters draw attention to the failings of the global system.

At the June 26-27 G20 summit in Toronto, an extension to the ritual was played out. A group of protestors employing the “black bloc” tactic – seeking anonymity by covering their heads and bodies in black clothing – set police cars ablaze and vandalised buildings, with brands such as Nike and Starbucks being prominent targets. Politicians including Toronto mayor David Miller employed standardised denunciations of the vandals, calling them “violent criminals” and “thugs”.

Disorder gets top news billing, and this can overshadow the broader protest movement, which is concerned with corporate behaviour, poverty, environmental destruction and the direction of globalisation. Over time the focus has shifted, from anti-globalisation in the 1990s – though many activists feel “anti-globalisation” is misleading and prefer the French term altermondialisme, or alternative globalisation – to a new wave of environmental concern in the past decade. This has coincided with revived anti-war feeling, prompted by US and British actions in Iraq.

Austerity action

Now, says James O’Nions, co-editor of radical magazine Red Pepper, another shift in focus is happening. Activists are starting to get to grips with the ramifications of the global financial crisis, and the austerity measures being promised by governments.

There is a feeling that the situation “has been turned round into a crisis of the public sector” and “the banks have got away almost scot-free”, O’Nions says. In the UK, David Cameron’s coalition government has made an “ideological choice” that people and public services, rather than banks and corporations, should foot the bill for the excess of the good times, he says.

A similar analysis is taking root across Europe. Jan Willem Goudriaan of the European Federation of Public Service Unions says many public workers have “a big sense of anger” because of the feeling that their governments have turned on them. There have been strikes in Greece, Portugal, Romania and elsewhere. In late September there will be a “European Day of Action: no to austerity”, and general strikes in countries such as Spain.

Goudriaan says the interests of anti-poverty and environmental campaigners dovetail with concerns about the direction that austerity plans are taking. Public spending cuts will have a negative impact on the most vulnerable in society, and potentially also on environmental protection. It is all about choices, he says. The world’s problems must be addressed but “it doesn’t necessarily have to be the way it is”, with austerity imposed from above and wealth distributed unfairly.

O’Nions says that in this context altermondialisme remains valid as an international critique. Protesters are not against globalisation, but they want “globalisation from below, globalisation that works for people not for corporations”.

But for now, protests at international summits may be of secondary importance because “people are engaged in fighting the austerity in their own countries”. Only as austerity measures really start to bite will the new shape and direction of the protest movement start to become clear.