Anti-gentrification protesters who targeted a breakfast cereal cafe on Saturday amid chaotic scenes in east London are planning another protest this weekend, aimed at a controversial museum in the same area.
The demonstration outside the Cereal Killer cafe in Brick Lane was the third such event under the Fuck Parade banner, but the first to attract attention beyond local or alternative media.
A fourth event is now planned next Sunday, again in east London, on Cable Street in Whitechapel. It will target a museum originally billed as celebrating the role of women in London but which ended up focusing on the crimes of Jack the Ripper.
Next action 4 @Classwar2015 is opposing the vile Jack The Ripper Museum. Meet 2pm Sunday 4th October 12 Cable Street pic.twitter.com/suc84gBtFG
— Fuck Parade (@FuckParadeLDN) September 27, 2015
The owners of Cereal Killer said the incident, in which the word “scum” was daubed on the building, left customers including children “terrified for their lives”. Gary Keery, 33, who founded the cafe with his twin brother, Alan, called the incident “senseless violence”.
There has been no formal comment from the organisers of the event, beyond some celebratory tweets and an explanation of the protest on its Facebook page.
Borrowing a name from an annual techno music-based event in Berlin, organised as a less commercial alternative to the city’s famous Love Parade, London’s Fuck Parade has been publicly active since early 2015.
The first event was organised for 1 May outside a new block of luxury flats in Shoreditch, east London, and passed with very little attention. The second incarnation, in July, took place in Camden, in the north of the capital, and gathered more coverage, not least after some protesters scuffled with a group of far-right Polish nationals, in the area for a music gig.
The event on Saturday, aimed at highlighting the rapid pace of gentrification in the Brick Lane area, was more widely publicised in advance, including a new Twitter account for the protest organisers, and attracted a noticeably bigger crowd.
While no one involved in organising the events has been willing to comment, Fuck Parade is widely reported as being closely linked to Class War, an anarchist group that has existed since 1983.
Class War, set up primarily as a newspaper by Ian Bone, an anarchist campaigner, all but vanished in recent years but gained new life ahead of the May general election, where for the first time it put up candidates, standing in six seats.
With a programme including the doubling of benefits and pensions and the abolition of private education and the monarchy, the Class War election slogan was “Because all the other candidates are scum”.
Bone, who gave a rare newspaper interview ahead of the election, was identified by some participants as attending Saturday’s protest, and appears to have been pictured standing next to a Class War banner.
Class War has previously organised protests at the Jack the Ripper museum, though not under the Fuck Parade banner.
