Dazed & Confused Interview

Dazed & Confused contacted the OT to ask about Occupy in the UK one year on. Only half the answers we gave were used, so here they are in full.

There’s marches and protesting going on in NYC as I type – is there any activity in London?

There doesn’t seem to be anything happening today, but our anniversary isn’t for a few weeks. There are certainly things planned in the near future, and people involved in Occupy have been involved in a number of demonstrations recently.

A year on, is there any Occupation still ongoing in London? Rest of the world?

Right now, people are liberating Friern Barnet Library after the council closed down the service. To me this is progress. The original occupations performed a role by getting the movement noticed and providing a space for people to come together, as well as somewhere to do outreach with the general public, but occupations can offer a more direct and practical resistance to the consequences of the neoliberal ideology responsible for causing the problems Occupy has highlighted. Since the spectacle of the initial camps has faded, it is very important to create stronger and more practical links with communities, in the hope that groups can form and organise more closely together.

What do you think the movement has accomplished?

Occupy has networked a lot of otherwise disparate people with similar concerns, and inspired a lot of people to question our political system and take a stand against it for the first time. It’s also helped shift the media debate. For years leftists have struggled to get inequality to the heart of political debate, and I think we’ve seen that happen more recently and Occupy has played a part.

Was there any major surprises to you, in terms of support, resistance, attitude etc

I was genuinely surprised by the general warmth from members of the public. The vast majority of passers by at the camps shared a very similar feeling of dispossession and disempowerment.

So far what  have been your highlight throughout the Occupation movement?

For me the highlights have been things like the current occupation of the library in Barnet and the resistance in Leyton Marsh, where locals were opposing the construction of a basketball court as part of the Olympics. I think Occupy should be about supporting people in their struggles and helping to offer resistance, rather than just symbolic protest and platitudes. When they started to defend the homes of people threatened by foreclosure in the US it was a  really positive step. People are scared and need genuine help, I think seeing strangers helping people in their very real struggles is what inspires and builds solidarity.

And low point?

Various attempts at co-option. It’s something which always happens and needs to be guarded against. The commodification of protest has become a big issue as protest has become increasingly ‘trendy’. It was very upsetting to see so much of the work put in by some turned into something ugly, to be used to self promote.

It’s great that more people are being inspired to take action, but we need to guard against political demonstration being hollowed out and sold back to us as something symbolic but toothless by the very institutions we are fighting against. There are always people and organisations who want to divert energy and use movements to their own ends, and that’s always disappointing.

Do you think this is just the beginning? Is this the way we will protest from now on?

It depends how you look at it. It’s certainly too early to say Occupy is over as a global movement, but social movements often take years to fully mature, and tend to come in waves.

It might be that something even bigger happens in five years time under a different name, but Occupy and every other movement will have played its part in getting us to that point.

The socio-economic conditions in many countries around the world from the US, UK and Russia, to Portugal, Spain, Chile and Greece almost guarantee ongoing civil unrest in the immediate future. Greece is ripe for revolution, Spain could break up which is incredible, and here in the UK we’re yet to feel the bite of most of the cuts.

Things are due to get worse before they get better, and when that happens and more people feel immediate threat protests could become more militant and targeted. Occupy has helped to fertilise the ground for when that happens.

What’s next for you, what have you got planned?

There are very few concrete plans for Occupy London on the horizon. The winter has seen a lot of groups forming out of the occupation who are working on various projects. The Occupied Times continues to print monthly, with the group slowly expanding in numbers. The Process Working group have continued to spend time refining consensus decision making based on the skills picked up throughout the occupation. The Economics Working Group is attempting to produce simple literature explaining the complexities and vagaries of the Economic system to people who claim not to understand it. Some Occupiers are working on contributing to the Global Noise initiative, and as mentioned before, others are currently liberating a library in Barnet.

The hope is, to build a stronger network of communications and activities between these groups, to develop a more diverse and expandable set-up across London, UK and globally.