Occupy London to Dale Farm

As I watch the two hundred riot police, armed with batons, shields and tasers, come crashing down the hill towards dale farm on Wednesday morning, I’m finding it hard to believe that this multi-million pound operation is not a drugs bust or an anti-terrorism operation. No, this military style assault has been commissioned because of a simple planning permission violation. The fight for this scrap of land, that’s far away from residential areas and almost impossible to access on foot from the nearby town, has somehow taken on a national importance for which it is hard to find parallels.

My fluorescent jacket, giving me legal observer status and a weak claim to immunity between the two sides, began to look pretty useless as the Met’s riot squad began breaking through the sites back fence. It was less than thirty seconds after they entered that a flashing red dot began darting around everyone’s faces. It wasn’t until I noticed a man try and run backwards before falling lifeless to the floor that I realized the flashing light was a taser. This sent everyone, including myself, darting behind the shelter of the first barricade. The one person to try and remain, a small blond girl trying to take notes in her legal observer’s booklet, was immediately threatened with the taser herself. The situation was a surprise to everyone; it was assumed that the bailiff’s would enter the front gate to be backed up later by the police. The twenty police vans that were parked a few hundred meters from the back of the camp weren’t noticed until the raid had already begun.

From then on it was clear that the travelers were fighting a losing battle; the makeshift propellants were no match for the numbers and equipment that this experienced group of officers brought with them. One improvised barricade after another fell until the travelers and their supporters were pushed back beyond the scaffolding that made up the sites entrance. The clashes were not one sided by any means; both sides came there with the expectation that there would be violence. But throughout the morning it became clear that some of the officers went beyond what can be called reasonable force in taking control of the site. The tactics that should have been reserved for those actively involved in the clashes were used against those who had no means of getting out of the way or defending themselves.

The first such incident occurred as the police pushed past the first barricade entering one of the few lawful plots that dotted the Dale Farm site. As officers tried to push through the barricade the decision was made to demolish the garden walls of the plot to sidestep the crowd of people keeping police from advancing. As this was taking place a middle aged woman named Nora, who lived on this plot, came out and began shouting at the officers to stop what they were doing. It appeared the police and the council were made aware that this particular structure did have planning permission and wasn’t to be touched; however this didn’t stop Nora taking a baton to the neck from one particularly zealous officer. As Nora fell to the ground she landed on one of the loose bricks from the demolished wall and had to be dragged to a safer area. She eventually had to be stretchered from the site and was unable to walk upon reaching hospital.

It took less than an hour for the police to push back the travelers and activists beyond their defenses, and to reach the scaffolding that marked the front entrance. It was here that a standoff ensued, and in what looked like a last resort one person locked themselves onto the barricade that separated the riot police from the rest of the residential area. As officers crowded forward they were warned that if they proceeded they would break the young man’s arm, which seemed to deter police from pushing forward in the way they had done already.

As I moved forward to stay close to police’s front line, a caravan had been moved into the road and was starting to go up in flames. This was despite an agreement in a camp meeting the night before that fire was not to be used; perhaps the unexpected riot tactics and the heavy force being used had thrown of all this out the window and such tactics were now considered fair game. Soon after this first caravan began to burn out, a second one went up just behind it. This created an effective barricade that made it almost impossible for anyone to move past. Both sides were locked into a standoff that looked like it would hold for the remainder of the day. The travelers and activists would find it impossible to push back against the riot police, who by now had swelled to over two hundred in number, and the police would be unable to push through to the residential areas without the use of extreme force; an unlikely possibility due to the now heavy presence of broadcast media around the front entrance.

By this time it was just gone eight am, and I was approached by two women claiming that the officer who had hit Nora nearly forty minutes ago was at the front of the police lines. As I called the officer over, I noticed that the front of his helmet was obscuring his identification number making it impossible for me to identify him. Once I had made it clear that he had been seen injuring a woman on one of the legal plots, I was met with a very curt denial and a request to leave him alone. After exchanging a few snide words with the women who identified him he disappeared into the sea of riot police, still avoiding my requests to adjust his helmet and take down his identification number.

After this incident I noticed a woman being treated by a volunteer medic, looking be in her fifties or sixties, who was unable to talk properly and having some trouble breathing. Her name was Mary, and earlier in the morning she had been put into a chokehold by an officer leaving her with a bruised voice box and being unable to talk in anything more than a faint rasping gasp. While I didn’t manage to catch what had sparked this confrontation, as talking more than a few words at a time was extremely difficult for Mary, it’s difficult to imagine anything a woman of her age could do that’s threatening enough to justify such a dangerous tactic.

Things remained largely peaceful after this point; with the only major obstacle to police and bailiffs taking full control being the dozen people occupying the large scaffolding tower at the sites entrance. Considering the hundreds of police and bailiffs that surrounded the tower this seemed like nothing more than a symbolic gesture to delay the inevitable; a final fuck you from Dale Farm to their enemies of the last ten years.

The first thing the police did was to send up the professional climbing team to try and reach the top of the scaffolding. Whether the intention was to negotiate or simply try and force them down is unclear but those in the tower looked like they were planning to hold their position for the long term. Ropes were quickly pulled up and ladders retracted, which prevented the climbers from reaching the towers summit. While this first push was initially unsuccessful, the climbers started the controversial process of weakening the structure by loosening different areas of the scaffolding. It wasn’t clear why they started to do this, as it looked like a dangerous move to the travelers and activists still occupying the tower as well as to the climbing teams that were strapped on to the scaffolding. The decision to start weakening seemed like a reckless tactic considering the amount of travelers, activists, and police that were going to be on the tower for most of the day.

The rest of the day was largely the drawn out process of removing those who had locked themselves to the base of the tower and trying to remove those locked on to the top. After the unsuccessful first attempt, a platform attached to a crane, dubbed the ‘cherry picker’, was used over several hours to lower officers down. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that police started cutting away at the harnesses keeping people attached to the scaffolding. The travelers and activists were not willing to go down without some resistance; leading to the comical sight of several people slipping away from police and climbing up and down the scaffolding trying to evade capture and extending this last ditch effort to hold on to the site. This quickly changed as police tried to remove a young girl who had attached herself to the towers middle; for a community that doesn’t seem to want to give too much away to outsiders, her screams and cries to be allowed to stay on the only home she could remember were a fitting reflection of the events of the day.

It’s still not clear whether this is the end of the Dale Farm story; some travelers have clearly stated they are willing to move back on to the site once this process has come to an end. Regardless, the reaction to this eviction has revealed an attitude amongst the public towards that I find very worrying. The empathy that’s normally shown to communities facing similar challenges has turned into scorn, and a belief that this group of Irish travelers ‘deserves what they get’.
It’s worth considering whether the upheaval and pain this eviction has caused, not to mention the astronomical bill for the council, is something that we as a supposedly civilized and empathetic society should stand for.  Putting aside of the legality of the site, these people need somewhere to call home. If there was a legal alternative that kept this community together, Wednesday’s evictions would have some claim to legitimacy. However the ninety percent rejection rate in applications for new traveler’s sites demonstrates these alternatives are simply not there. To borrow the phrase scrawled a fence in Dale Farm; “if not on a scrap yard, then where?”

The Beginnings of Occupy London

“The current system is unsustainable”. This is the opening line of Occupy London’s statement to the world, and it represents the desire of the worldwide movement for an alternative to the system that has been given to them. What remains to be seen is if this occupation, by now looking more like a small village than a campsite, can prove to be sustainable over the coming weeks and months.

As the clock chimed midday on Saturday morning, several hundred people had gathered around the church’s steps. At this point the largest visible presence was the Socialist Workers party; a regular fixture at these types of events and an early warning that this movement may be the same old faces and lack the wide support enjoyed by Occupy Wall Street.

However this early lull was soon to put to rest. Cut to twenty minutes later and the crowd had easily doubled with hundreds more filtering in from the four roads that lead into the cathedral.

The police presence was easily visible and the faint humming of a chopper above reminded everyone that while there is strength in numbers, there’s a lot more of it in truncheons and horses. Both of which had started to gather at the entrance to the Stock Exchange north of the cathedral. While an army of journalists were crowding around the opening speeches of Saint Pauls, many decided to jump the gun and make a push to break police lines guarding Paternoster Square. Things were getting tense; hundreds began chanting “shame on you!” as lines of officers blocked off every entrance. The appearance of some vicious looking dogs being held on standby made it clear that the decision to try and enter the exchange by force could easily go wrong. I was reminded of the G20 in 2009; a minority decide it’s a great idea to smash a window and moments later noses will start getting broken.

By two that afternoon the bulk of people had defaulted back to the original meeting place; Saint Pauls square. This was to be the first test of the ‘horizontal democracy’ that has become the hallmark of the occupy movements. The process was surprisingly successful; although there was a vocal minority intent on keeping pressure on the police and even marching on Canary Wharf the majority were adamant that staying put was the best course of action. While there were many veterans of direct action among the crowd, few seemed to be experienced in occupation. Most activists are very good at turning up, making a loud noise, and then going home, but when it comes to the nuts and bolts of decision making there are some here who have much room for improvement.

The arrival of Julian Assange during the general Assembly, flanked by two heavies looking suspiciously like Agent Smith from the Matrix, was an immediate disruption. Cheers erupted from the back of the square and followed as Julian climbed the stairs as journalists were running from all corners to swamp the front of the stairs.

The Assange speech was much as you would expect. He told the crowd we face a “systemized destruction of the rule of law” and complained at how difficult it was for him to get here. Whether that was just due to his house arrest was unclear, but there were reports from other demonstrators that Assange was very close to being arrested while trying to pass the police.

By three o clock the police line, initially twenty or thirty metres from the boundaries of Saint Pauls, was gradually inching forward up the boundaries of the square. Up to a thousand were behind the police lines being denied entry, and from the viewpoint of the steps of St Pauls were becoming far more agitated than the occupiers themselves.

This situation continued for a couple of hours until more police began to arrive at five in the afternoon. The Territorial Support Group, kitted out in trademark blue hats and attitude problem, were present, as well the Met in riot gear. I asked an officer whether they considered this operation a Kettle and it turns out there is a new distinction being made. As people were technically free to leave this was “containment” rather than a kettling. I’m sure this distinction good for the police’s public relations but practically it doesn’t make much of a difference.

At this point the police line moved from the road and into the square and reached the beyond the statues and small conflicts began to break out as officers ripped tents out of their path. It seemed that tensions were rising across the square with many occupiers certain that police were preparing to clear the area. Throughout the day there were more than one reports that an eviction was imminent, all of which turned out to be baseless. The Assembly was also taking the rising police presence seriously. By early evening cards were being passed around with a specialist solicitors contact details and advice was given by a young lawyer on about what to do if arrested.

As half seven approached the message came through that the Met wanted occupiers to leave the church stairs, claiming there was a risk of damage to the church’s columns. This claim was met with scepticism by those who have assumed a leadership role over the day, with the fear being that the police wanted to claim the higher ground to make eviction easier. I suspect both claims had some degree of truth to them; however it should be noted that the stairs were more or less spotless at this point. The only groups with a presence by the columns were Anonymous UK and the Zeitgeist Movement, who had set up banners placed outside the church doors.

It turned out the police were very serious about wanting to take back the steps. A flood of TSG and riot officers pushed through the crowd and began to forcibly remove occupiers from the steps, leading to some punches and kicks being exchanged on the south side of the stairs. It wasn’t clear who started this; the police were adamant they were responding to threats from occupiers and many occupiers were equally adamant it was the police threatening them. What was clear was that there were a minority of officers who were repeatedly accused of heave handed tactics. In particular, I witnessed an “officer 229” being reported to legal observers by several people. The presence of legal observers led to a strange exchange with the police, who were complaining that the legal observers were biased against the Met. The TSG officer shouted at one; “you’re quite happy to write down when we hit someone but not when people hit us!!” I feel this somewhat overlooked the fact that the guys sitting on the stairs weren’t carrying truncheons, making and conflict a bit one sided.

By quarter to nine the confrontations had spread to behind the police lines on Canon Street, where several hundred people have gathered in the road and were stopping busses passing. From the top of the church stairs, it looked as if people were chanting and banging on the bus windows which created two fronts for the police to monitor.

By this point, perhaps in response to the trouble on Canon Street, people were let through the containment in small numbers. The police policy on strictness of the containment was inconsistent throughout the day as different officers were giving different answers as to who can come and go. By this time there was an uneasy stalemate; occupiers were still linking arms on the steps and police were refusing to leave the area in front of the entrance. The samba band that has been playing throughout the day fired up, which was a relaxing break to the day’s events.

This situation continued until midnight when the riot police and TSG began to exit, leaving only a few regular Met officers around the perimeter of the square and at the top of the stairs. It’s not exactly clear what caused this fall back, but it was later found out the Giles Frasier, the Canon Chancellor of Saint Pauls, requested the police to leave the stairs and return to their position on the road as he felt they were infringing on the right to protest. The police did not do this until the next morning, and I can guess that this reduction in numbers was the compromise made by an unwilling police.

 

Overall, the first day was a success for the Occupy London crowd. Despite falling short on their aim of getting into the stock exchange, a functioning camp has been set up remarkably quickly. A successful assembly, kitchen, and media, and technology tent was set up in a matter of hours. Despite the difficulties between occupiers and police throughout the day, the two parties have come to an easy truce and can now be seen chatting freely throughout the site. I believe this has much to do with the Canon Chancellor and his support for the right to protest, which has largely prevented police from making any serious attempts to shut the occupation down. The camp looks set to become a successful mirror of the many other Occupy movements that have spreading across Europe and America, and now the occupiers have to get down to the hard part of this project; getting the world to take notice

 

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General Assembly & Block the Bill Protest

 

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