Occupy London Takes a Stand Against Shell and the Corporatisation of Everything

The Occupy Energy, Equity and Environment (EEE) working group organised Saturday’s general assembly to tie in with 350.org’s action for climate justice. After a slow start due to rain, we drew in a crowd with our climate poets, interesting speakers, and tour of the climate criminals in central London. Following the general assembly we wanted to show a film, Taking on Tarmageddon, at the Tate Modern, which receives blood money from BP (BP, a climate criminal, responsible for the Deepwater Horizon tragedy which wiped out marine ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico and killed 11 workers, is also profiting from the tar sands). Tarmageddon is a film about the tar sands – aka the most environmentally devastating project on Earth. Unfortunately because the police had heard that there was a big Occupy London event organised outside St Paul’s, they came in numbers to St Paul’s and stalked us everywhere we went, calling ahead to the Tate and every other corporate whose land we tried to settle on to show our film.

Tired of being shoved on from every place we went, we finally settled under a dirty bridge opposite Waterloo Station called Sutton Walk. Assuming this was public land, we set up our film and began screening. After a few minutes some Shell security guards turned up, telling us that Shell owned the land and that we had to leave. It was a surprise to us to learn that Shell owned the land – are there any genuinely public spaces in London anymore? It seems not, in fact in most places you only have a permission to be there provided that you shut up and be a good consumer and don’t challenge the corporates and the insane economic system that results in the destruction of our planet for profit.

We decided to carry on with the film, we were not disturbing anyone and interested members of the public had stopped to watch the film. Quickly more police showed up by the van load, including the notoriously violent TSG police and FIT cameramen.

Towards the end of this short-lived and relatively minor act of civil disobedience, there were about a dozen police and a dozen Shell security guards, which far outnumbered us. Once Shell security backed up by police force started confiscating our stuff we decided to leave so as not to bring violence on our group – particularly with the TSG squad lurking in the background. We told the crowd: ‘When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty’ – Thomas Jefferson, and we pointed out, though they could see it for themselves, that this is more like a corporatocracy than a democracy. In this city, in which the real crimes of money laundering, human trafficking and organised drug dealing is taking place as you read this – how can the authorities justify such use of police time?  People need to know that the police are political and they police politically.

We learnt from this episode that the Establishment is very worried about the challenge posed by the Occupy London movement. They don’t like us because we tell the truth and are a powerful voice of dissent which many right minded and decent people agree with. The police received orders from above to stalk us, to film us, to put us off dissent, to intimidate us. It probably works to put off the mothers and children that accompanied us. The police collude with corporates to shut down free speech, at least free speech that has the potential to overthrow this corrupt system. Yesterday we got members of the public on side. We drew a crowd, our speeches drew applause. We are a movement for justice, democracy, equality and freedom. We occupy out of love for people and planet who are suffering. That is political too.

By Melanie Strickland