A few weeks before the 1997 General Election, the non-violent direct action group Reclaim the Streets organised a two day festival of resistance in London. The event coincided with a March for Social Justice in support of 500 sacked Liverpool dockers and strikers at Hillingdon Hospital and the furniture company Magnet. Reclaim the Streets distributed posters to advertise the protest and at the end of the march in Trafalgar Square they hung a huge banner from the front of the National Gallery which read 'Never Mind the Ballots. Reclaim the Streets. The slogan and name of the event embodied Reclaim the Streets strategy which called for direct action instead of elections to bring about change.

Reclaim the Streets was born out of anti-road protest camps in the early 1990s. Over the subsequent years members of the group changed their focus, instead campaigning against the root cause of the problem as they saw it, namely the capitalist system.