On March 26^th, a vast number of people marched through London. Diverse groups of people, from Young Socialists to Pensioners’ Clubs, walked, unified by the TUC under the banner of anti-cuts. The demo was, for the most part, peaceful. But not all of it. One small element, easily identified by their all-black clothing, full face masks and anarchist flags, instead threaded through the side streets parallel to the main march as it advanced along Piccadilly. This was the Black Bloc, inspired by similar Continental groups which have had often spectacular direct involvement in large protests, and what they may have lacked in numbers on the ground on the day of the TUC rally (with a core of only maybe 150-200) they certainly made up for in column inches over the following days.

"Mindless idiots!” screamed the tabloids. “Violent anarchists!” “Vandals!” “Communists!” “Fascists!” – wild, arbitrary accusations backed up with spectacular photos, not unlike the ones shown here, of wanton Black Bloc violence.

But this hyperbole and spin surrounding the Black Bloc is nothing short of sensationalist. Not since the days of the great England football team adultery scandal have so many half-arsed, speculative statements been published and presented as incontrovertible fact by righteous newspapers. But the Black Bloc is not a political group. It isn’t an organisation, or a militant wing of something else, or even a team. It can’t be summed up as a single gang, with a shared political alignment or uniform modus operandi. It doesn’t have a leader, or hold meetings, or run its own website. This is because the Black Bloc instead, purely and simply, represents an ideal. The individuals who form it – and their specific opinions – are almost irrelevant. Unlike hierarchical unions, parties and lobby groups, the Black Bloc is simply a very loose catch-all term for a body of people which, during times of mass protest, consolidates to form a single entity. There is nobody to follow and nobody to lead. Masked, uniformly anonymous in black and at times spectacularly violent, this is not an organised group. It is an ideological concept, a concept that is only given life when represented and embodied by those who are a part of it.

As a result, the Black Bloc can never really fight for anything. With no strong unified beliefs or obvious common political stance, they offer no clue as to what sort of society they want to live in, or hope to build through their actions. Instead they fight against. Against government, against capitalism, against the police, against unethical business, indeed, against anything they want. One assumes that the vast majority of them probably hold extreme left-wing, anarcho-socialist beliefs, but that is an assumption based only on the flags some of them carry. As a result they do have a certain purity, unpolluted by the bickering and infighting so characteristic of various elements of the left who are generally unable to agree on the colour of an orange (it’s red, right?), much less agree on a functional model for society. The Black Bloc is political nihilism embodied – nebulous, destructive and transient. They don’t have all the answers, and they don’t pretend to. In fact, one senses that they don’t really have all the questions.

On Saturday, March 26^th, there was no central rallying point for the Black Bloc. There were anarchist rallying points, certainly, but as you will have surmised, ‘anarchist’ and ‘Black Bloc’ are not necessarily the same thing. Some BB marchers will be anarchists, and some anarchists will have been in the BB. But some BB marchers are probably also fishermen, students or underpants salesmen. So, on the 26^th, the Black Bloc formed almost through a process of unwitting gravitational attraction, like organic cells naturally pulling together and clumping up. Certainly in the morning, during which time I thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment courtesy of the Love Police and the Kindness Offensive, black-clad anarchists were very few in number – although even at this early hour, they set the tone for the day by sneering insults through megaphones at stone-faced policemen.

But like attracts like, and what were twos and threes of black hoodies became, over a couple of hours, tens or fifteens. By the time we’d returned from Charlie Veitch’s spontaneous ‘mission’ during which McDonalds, the Trocadero and Boots were playfully occupied (with varying levels of success), there was a palpable, slightly sinister fringe presence of masked, black-clad elements. They waved black/red anarcho-socialist flags, swaggering cock-sure, all blazing eyes and muffled aggression and contrasting strikingly with the cheerful LP and TKO activists. And when, as the LP and TKO marched to join the main TUC parade along Piccadilly with their pink-wigged brass brand leading the way, a sizeable Black Bloc contingent split away and headed off alone, I decided to follow.

What followed was an orgy of broken windows, splattered paint and political graffiti, producing the spectacular television footage and tabloid images. But look a little closer. I was with the Black Bloc for at least three hours on that day, during the time in which most of the damage was done (prior to the UkUncut occupation of Fortnum & Mason). The vast majority of what I witnessed was violence specifically targeting large, private corporations. Santander, Lloyds, De Beers, The Ritz… iconic capitalist success stories which stood proud on Piccadilly whilst 200,000 people marched past the front doors.

Action against the police was minimal, other than a few well-aimed paint bombs (and some not-so-well-aimed, causing the demise of a pair of my finest jeans) and some incredibly potent homemade bangers that made everyone flinch. This lack of street fighting, it must be said, was in no small way due to a noticeable effort of restraint on the part of the constabulary. But I saw no sign of the much-publicised ammonia-filled light bulbs or petrol bombs, nor any major pitched battles.

Perhaps the vitriol which followed was to be expected from what is a largely sensationalist UK media machine and a condescending government, but from the vast majority of the other protesters too? This I hadn’t expected. The main argument was that the Black Bloc had ‘hijacked’ the TUC protest. But, for most of the day, they avoided the main march route, preferring to splinter and disperse and regroup in the maze of Piccadilly back streets, only occasionally emerging into the main march to smash windows before melting away again. If they wanted to ‘hijack’ a protest and subvert its cause, they would surely want to look like anyone else, in order to discredit the whole demonstration. Why, then, go to the trouble of dressing all in black and distinguishing yourself from the main march? No, the Black Bloc has its own, separate agenda of violence, but as a small group, its members need the protection in numbers of large-scale civil mobilisation.

The Black Bloc is a relatively recent, but growing, presence on the British political landscape, at least in the numbers seen on March 26th. It embodies the frustration, anger and resentment that is rapidly building among an increasingly-politicised, disenfranchised British youth, who are battling rocketing unemployment, elitist education proposals and plunging standards of living. Nominally anarchist in ideology, it is actually nowhere near that easy to conclusively pigeonhole. Individual anarchists and extremist protesters will come and go, but the Black Bloc, as an entity, might well be here to stay. Ignoring it, attempting to marginalise it, or just arbitrarily condemning it, may not be a viable option for long.