LE HARVE IT LARGE

Some 7,000 anti-globalisation activists converged on the French city of Le Havre last Saturday, effectively closing its commercial district, to kick off protests against this week's G8 summit of rich nations in nearby Deauville, Normandy. "G8 get lost, people first, not finance," declared the main banner, as security forces took a hands-off approach to the big recognised NGO / lefty / union / human rights groups-arranged march – content merely to use checkpoints on roads coming into the city and doing some identity-checking searches in order to intimidate incoming demonstrators.  The 12,000 military and police personnel drafted in were obviously saving themselves.

This week has seen swift and heavy police action to stop or kettle attempted protests in Paris and Caen. Twenty members of 'No G8 2011' were nicked in Northern Paris for drum-banging  and sloganeering but 30 other protesters managed to get inside the offices of finance rating agency Standard & Poor – where they rearranged furniture and sat on a specially mocked up monopoly-style board while throwing fake money around. Fifty others planning to head to a "symbolic site of finance and capitalism" were kettled, forcibly searched and detained before being able to start their action.

More protests are planned in Paris, but protesters will have to get a little more, er, enterprising to avoid les flics.

At Deauville itself there was the now obligatory military style lockdown with activists left with little to do but wave banners on the beach in Le Havre. While World Leaders inside chew over topics such as what to do about the Arab Spring and Libya, global finance and restricting freedom of the internet, perhaps anti-G8 energies should be put into more Madrid-style protest, sooner rather than later...