The fair-weather ‘revolutionaries’ of Youth Demand

‘Won’t you take me to… Funkytown!’ At around 10 p.m., in a bar under a railway arch in south London, members of a group called Youth Demand are doing the conga to 1970s disco music. They are celebrating a week of good protesting. ‘I’m sooo ketty!’ shouts a girl on the dance floor. (‘I’ve taken a drug called ketamine,’ is what she means.) Youth Demand want Britain to stop selling weapons to Israel. Earlier this month they put toddlers’ shoes outside Keir Starmer’s house, and a day later threw red paint on the Ministry of Defence. Their actions got lots of press coverage, so they’re having a party.

Youth Demand copy the shock tactics used by groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, who in the past few years have blocked roads, chucked soup at the Mona Lisa and glued themselves to the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons. Last year, the government passed laws to shut down the ‘disruptive’ demonstrations of these campaigns. The groups say that they’re inspired by the 20th-century civil rights and gay-rights movements. They’re simply operating in the noble tradition of dissent! It’s true: not much of Youth Demand is original. It’s a recent creation, but it attracts tired minds.

Outside the railway arch bar, away from the conga, a couple of young drunk communists are discussing the preconditions for revolution at a wooden picnic bench. They’re selling a newspaper called the Communist – ‘first grade theoretical material and razor-sharp Marxist analysis’, according to its website. The pair postulate: ‘Obviously we can’t have a revolution with the parliamentary system… The USSR grew despite the bureaucracy… Well, in 1917… You know they made abortion free?’ Next to the poundshop politburo, two revolutionaries kiss across the tabletop.