Taking Aim at the Energy Barons: The Big Six Energy Bash

I strode towards St Pauls’ Cathedral, wearing a small green paper hat, green tights, and clutching a cardboard bow and arrow. A call went up from somewhere in the small crowd of similarly-dressed people around me: “Robin Hood!”, followed by the mass response “Oo-de-lally!”. The overall Sherwoodian effect was only slightly marred by the raincoats, umbrellas and waterproof jackets that most of us were wielding against the steady drizzle.

It was Thursday May 3^rd 2012, and this was the beginning of the latest – and so far, the largest – piece of direct action protest from the Climate Justice Collective (CJC). This new action network was formed in 2011, after the Camp for Climate Action decided to fold up its tents. The CJC aims to highlight the links between the financial crisis and the climate crisis using direct action, and to strengthen the bonds between the environmental and economic justice movements. Thursday’s event – the Big Six Energy Bash – brought together climate campaigners, local energy cooperatives, anti-cuts activists, economic justice groups and anti-nuclear crusaders in an unprecedented joint action against the six corporate energy behemoths (E.ON, EDF, SSE, Scottish Power, Centrica/British Gas and RWE npower) that control 99% of our domestic power supply.

Our band of Merry Humans walked past the cathedral and on towards our target – the Grange Hotel, venue for the UK Energy Summit. This was where CEOs from several of the Big Six were meeting with senior politicians and the heads of BP and Shell, in a £1000-per-head conference to maintain their stitch-up of the UK’s energy supply and distribution. The profit-driven energy system they aim to maintain is one that traps millions of people in fuel poverty whilst also locking us all into a fossil-fuel powered future. As the CJC’s press release put it, this was “the wrong people asking the wrong questions and proposing the wrong solutions”.

We were just one of four themed “blocs” who were all converging on the hotel that morning. Before long, our green-garbed gang was joined by the Housing Bloc (demanding warm, sustainable homes for all), and the Dirty Energy bloc (exposing the Big Six’s use of dirty fuels like coal, shale gas, biofuels and nuclear power, with the help of some strikingly white boiler suits). As we caught sight of our compatriots, we raised our voices in a ragged but energetic chorus:

Robin Hood, Robin Hood

Striding through the town

Robin Hood, Robin Hood

To bring the Big Six down

We think energy

Democracy

Would be good

Robin Hood, Robin Hood

The mood was one that I recognised from past large-scale climate actions – humourous and light-hearted, yet backed up by a steely determination. Sure enough, as our throng (now well over a hundred people, with more arriving all the time) approached the hotel, some people at the front spotted a side door with only a handful of cops outside. Without missing a beat, they ran straight at the door and attempted to squeeze inside, and it took the combined strength of several police and security to force them back out again. Soon afterwards, we were joined by the family-friendly Fossil-Free Futures bloc (complete with dancing dinosaur) and, now around three hundred strong, we found ourselves outside the front entrance of the hotel. Once again, a number of bolder souls tried (rather optimistically) to rush their way into the building past a line of police, but were forcefully repelled. Around them, the mood was cheerful and chatty, with bike-powered sound systems pumping and lively conversations springing up between friends old and new. I was struck once again by the atmosphere here, so reminiscent of the Climate Camps of old – it was confrontational without being aggressive, friendly without being acquiescent.

The next few hours were a cheerful, slightly chaotic swirl. Some people played cat-and-mouse with the police and tried to get into the hotel, while others kept up a presence on the streets outside, caught up with friends, chatted with passers-by and danced to the music. Others still were finalising a programme of talks and workshops – we were going to have our own Energy Summit on the streets outside the official conference, to educate each other about the problems with the Big Six and to talk about the real solutions of community-owned energy, properly efficient homes and democratically controlled renewables. Before any sessions could get started, however, a police kettle suddenly formed around the main bulk of the crowd, effectively trapping them…just outside the main entrance of the hotel. With two sound systems thumping away inside the kettle. Quite how this was meant to reduce the impact of the protest on the conference is still not entirely clear.

The kettle lasted for a couple of hours, and then people were free to make their way home. There were some sporadic bursts of police violence, and six arrests – although no charges have been brought against at least five of those people. It also seems that the summit opened with the chair (the BBC’s Roger Harrabin) asking the organisers why we, the protesters, weren’t allowed inside the conference! The organisers replied that the programme would be changed to include fuel poverty and that we’d be invited to speak next year. While it’s nice to know that we clearly had an impact, this invitation spectacularly misses the point – ideally, there shouldn’t be a conference like this next year. Having a token “protester” on the stage alongside the energy barons wouldn’t magically make the event democratic or fair, or produce the solutions we really need. Instead, we need to see the Big Six Bash as another stepping stone towards building the powerful grassroots movement for social change that will steer us away from climate meltdown and into a safer, fairer future.

• The next Climate Justice Collective meeting will be on June 2^nd in Manchester – check climatejusticecollective.org for more details and to sign up to the email list!

• The Big Six Energy Bash was supported by UK Uncut, Occupy London, Disabled People Against the Cuts, Global Women’s Strike, Kick Nuclear, London Coaltion Against Poverty, UK Tar Sands Network, Campaign Against Climate Change, Biofuelwatch, Bristol Energy Cooperative, Stop Nuclear Power Network, London Rising Tide, and Fuel Poverty Action.

By Tony Moore