It was a grand idea for a demo, a marriage of guerrilla theater and slick ad-agency wit. On May Day--a week before Prime Minister Tony Blair officially launched his re-election campaign--London was transformed into a virtual Monopoly board to spotlight the destructive power of capital. There was a rally against Third World debt outside the World Bank in the Haymarket, cardboard hotels to protest homelessness on Park Lane, free veggie burgers outside McDonald's at King's Cross and plans for a Sale of the Century in the consumer canyon of Oxford Street--all squares in the British version of the game. Facts about world trade were printed on Monopoly money; legal advice was dispensed on cards marked "Get Out of Jail Free."

Despite the advance hysteria about armies of brick-throwing anarchists, most of the demonstrators seemed "fluffy" to the point of marshmallowdom. Overthrow Capitalism and Replace It With Something Nicer, one banner suggested politely. A man dressed as Mary Poppins defied a mayoral order by feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square; cyclists in sparkly wigs protested the reign of the car. But after last year's riot, in which shop windows were smashed and Winston Churchill's statue got a green mohawk makeover, the police were taking no chances. They herded the demonstrators to Oxford Circus, where 6,000 officers in riot gear kept 5,000 people trapped for seven hours with nothing to drink but the rain. By late afternoon, to no one's surprise, the predicted violence had materialized.

Without the police cordons holding it together, the demonstration could easily have slipped from pluralism to total fragmentation. Some groups came out to share the work they do all year; others seemed interested only in a good protest party. There were no unions, no community associations, few pressure groups of any kind. This splintering of purpose is partly a reflection of disfranchisement. According to a Channel 4 poll, most people in Britain agree that multinational corporations have more control over their lives than Tony Blair's government, and that those corporations care only about their profits. None of the mainstream parties address these concerns. Last year's May Day protesters dug up Parliament Square; this year the action had moved to the true symbols of power: the banks, McDonald's, Niketown.

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