Saturday 8th December 2007
We’re half-way through the UN's climate talks in Bali and, as a result, there was a global day of protest. I went to the London one with my girlfriend, her mum and a friend of theirs.
Last weekend, using an unusual combination of serendipity, forward planning and a charity shop, we’d managed to grab some extremely bright orange fabric and some silvery material for letters, and created a banner reading ‘GLOBAL WARMING / GLOBAL ACTION’. It was a message we pondered for a while; the obvious one would have been ‘your holiday is killing African children’, but we decided that since the protests were calling for international collaboration and not personal action that an anti-aviation message directed at individuals was not the right tack to take. I felt that the march, timed during the UN talks and finishing in Grosvenor Square, outside the US Embassy, should have focussed on multilateralism and politics, not the nitty-gritty of how individual nations will balance their carbon books.
That didn’t stop most of the many disparate groups bringing along banners advertising all kinds of causes; everything from various local pressure groups against airport expansion to posters suggesting veganism as the answer to climate change.
One of the disparate groups was a bunch of socialists which we spent much of the march stuck behind. Leading them was someone dressed as the Grim Reaper holding the planet Earth impaled on the blade of a scythe marked ‘CAPITALISM’. I’m not sure if I understood the metaphor correctly, but I think it was something to do with capitalism being bad or something. They seemed intent on stopping every ten paces to chant moronically, usually along the lines of ‘You've got COMPLEX PROBLEMS! We’ve got SIMPLISTIC SLOGANS!’ Most of the shouting was in this format, pitting ‘your’ climate change against ‘our’ system change, ‘your’ privatise against ‘our’ nationalise and, somewhat unintelligibly, ‘you say “cut back”, we say “fight back”!’ I am not sure what kind of cuts they were protesting against, but it sounded like an anti-environmentalist slogan to me…surely us greenies are pro cuts of most kinds?
The socialists, who I'm informed muscle in on pretty much all demonstrations, are also surely the most prolific political minority when it comes to written material. You could barely breathe but to have a socialist newspaper, magazine or pamphlet proffered at you and, most surprising, was that there was very little duplication. There were admittedly a lot of Socialist Workers, but pretty much every publication shoved in your face was different from the last. I think ‘one solution: revolution’ is probably the pithiest epithet the socialists are likely to manage (even if you concede that there might be solutions other than revolution, you have to admit it’s quite a punchy little rhyme) and so they should stop now. Perhaps the socialists are going for the huge number of monkeys and typewriters approach to literature and hoping that, if they write enough garbage, they’ll happen across the magic phrase which will convince people. Though I confess I didn’t look that closely. Every pamphlet, magazine and newspaper might just have said ‘one solution: revolution’ over and over again underneath the inflammatory headlines.
I spent most of the march dashing to and fro taking photos. It’s quite good fun with a largish camera and a big lens, because people tend to assume you’re a press photographer and you can walk where you please. Whereas a protestor would be jostled back inside the route-marking cones by police or organisers, a ‘photographer’ can roam as he pleases, stand on barriers and command demonstrators to smile and show their banners with a simple raising of the camera. At the polite request of a chap I assume was an organiser of some kind, you can see a few of my better pictures in a gallery at the Global Climate Change Campaign website.
The protest eventually ground to a halt in Grosvenor Square, but when I returned from taking photos of the first few speakers, I found that everyone else had retreated to a café. My girlfriend and I eventually caught up with the other two in a nearby Starbucks. They had already bought a coffee, and so we walked in and attempted to take a seat.
The manager took one look at us, one look at our 2.4 m poles, now wrapped in orange material, and told us to leave. We explained that we had been at the climate change demo, and had already bought some coffee. He reiterated that he was not going to allow the banner in the store. We told him that this was ridiculous. It seemed to shut him up.
Five minutes later, we realised why he had gone so quiet: he had rung someone else to do his dirty work for him. Four Metropolitan Police officers marched into the establishment. The manager frantically pointed at us. Four Metropolitan Police officers walked over and asked us to leave. One each. Four Metropolitan Police officers to deal with two Oxford PhD students and two mums.
I’ve never been escorted from the premises by the long arm of the law before. It wasn’t quite as exciting as you might expect. The police officer who walked me out (I was holding the banner at the time, so they threw me out first) was quite young, and a bit serious, and didn’t take too kindly to my suggestion that we unfurl the banner.
And so it was, crushed by the system like true revolutionaries, that we got on the Tube and went home. Our banner went out in a blaze of glory unfurled through Uxbridge. Had we changed the World? Maybe a little bit.
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Patel says (15:22 11/12/2007) ¶
It would have been interesting to have established the point of law on which they decided you were persona non grata.
On what basis did they ask you to leave ? Trespass ? Behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace? Attempting to drink coffee whilst in possession of an orange banner ? Presumably the banner, because I guess if you'd left it outside, the manager wouldn't have had any cause for concern (unless you'd stumbled in chanting "one solution, revolution! What do we want ? Coffee! When do we want it? Now!")
Statto says (15:37 11/12/2007) ¶
I think it was probably trespass…isn’t it the manager’s prerogative if he wants to chuck us out, even for no reason whatsoever, because it’s his Starbucks?
It’s that or a capitalist conspiracy. I think probably the latter.
Matel says (19:01 11/12/2007) ¶
It must be a very difficult job deciding if someone is a nuttter, don't you think?
Tom F says (07:43 12/12/2007) ¶
Did you and your girlfriend buy coffee? If you didn't, then maybe they could kick you out for loitering? Otherwise, it's just because you may have been a terrorist threat, and no-one has any right to complain about what the police do anymore. Good job you weren't wearing a backpack.
I hope the anti-capitalists didn't see you go into Starbucks. They may have formed a new splinter (-ed glass) group with the classic phrase "stick it to the Man, brick the cafe."