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Why Occupy? Denial of democracy

JOE GILL speaks to activists about how the government tried to crush the Occupy Democracy protests and what’s next

What do playing the flute, sharing an omelette and sitting on a tarpaulin all have in common - apart from being things you might do at a hippy picnic?

They're all reasons you could have been arrested at last week's Occupy Democracy protest in Parliament Square.

Hundreds came to Westminster to discuss how to take back our democracy from vested interests that are hell-bent on laying waste to public services and imposing endless austerity.

Unfortunately the authorities had decided not to allow such expressions of democratic dissent to take place within earshot of Parliament. After all, London is not Hong Kong.

The #tarpaulin revolution hashtag went viral after police decided to make laying tarpaulins an arrestable offence. In response the occupiers chanted at the police: "Who do you protect? Who do you serve?"

Labour's stalwart left Labour MPs - including Jeremy Corbyn, Michael Meacher and John McDonnell - came to offer solidarity. The PCS union and People's Assembly also expressed support for the occupiers.

"The revolution will not be confiscated," read the sign of the lone protester on the Churchill statue, who held out for two days leaning on the war leader's bronze coat.

Caroline Lucas almost notched up her second arrest as an MP when she went to down to offer solidarity to the protesters.

"I was threatened with arrest for offering him a Spanish omelette," Lucas tells me.

"I never knew a Spanish omelette could be such a threat to public order that offering it to someone could get you arrested."

Inside the Palace of Westminster, the lords expressed their satisfaction that, unlike in Hong Kong, demands for real democracy would not be tolerated by those in power, although some questioned whether roughing up peaceful protesters was a good use of police resources.

The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 was passed in part due to the outburst of protests by students and campaign groups like UK Uncut at the beginning of the coalition's unmandated attack on education and public services.

While the peaceful democratic protest was being kettled just yards from their lordships, Conservative Home Office Minister Lord Bates claimed in the Lords that "one of the reasons that the police are taking the actions they are, and why we passed the legislation that we did, was to ensure that Parliament Square is available for those who want to come to make a peaceful protest as part of a democratic society in which we want to live."

Labour's Lord West of Spithead described the presence of such protests as "unbearable," explaining that "they came and stood in front of the car and I managed to stop an incident because my Royal Marine driver said: 'Shall I re-educate them, sir?' and I said, 'Not today'."

The definition of peaceful protest seemed to be beyond their lordships. It looked very different from the point of view of those who came to take part in nine days of debate and peaceful assembly.

As protester Colby Smith explains: "There were 200 people gathered outside Parliament Square. The response of the mayor of London, the police, the state, was unbelievable. They kettled us - they surrounded us, they arrested people for sitting on chairs, sitting on tarpaulins, young women were dragged away by police using pressure points."

A day before the protests began, the police had erected a fence around the square.

"All of a sudden the grass needed maintenance," says Occupy activist and writer John Sinha.

"Then they implemented the bylaws on erecting tents brought in to stop another Brian Haw and protect the City of London."

Clearly, Occupy worries the political class in ways that the traditional protest march doesn't.

Sinha says: "The reason why movements like Occupy exist is because traditional forms of protest no longer work. The whole point of protest is to shake things up, but now our political class have so much contempt for us that they think they can ignore demonstrations - we saw that with the Iraq protest in 2003 - so we need to change our tactics."

Meanwhile the British media mostly ignored Occupy Democracy. The only major broadcasters who came to cover the occupation were Al-Jazeera, Russia Today and Iran's Press TV. The combination of police repression and a media blackout meant that the numbers who came were less than hoped for, although at its peak it attracted about 1,000 people to the square.

Nevertheless, nine days of discussion among hundreds of activists, campaigners and ordinary people who took time out from their lives to come down produced a more detailed set of demands that built on the work done since Occupy 1.0. These can be found on the Occupydemocracy.org.uk pages.

Its democratic demands include proportional representation, reform of party funding, closing the revolving door between Parliament and business, no second jobs or vested financial interests for MPs, democratic reform of the media and the holding of a citizens' convention for a real democracy.

Largely, these are things that "mainstream" voters agree with and want to see implemented to free democracy from corporate influence. But the Establishment parties won't contemplate these things, says Occupy activist George Barda - including Ukip in that bunch.

"We need to lay claim to the middle ground. On more hot-button issues like health, fracking and the TTIP corporate land grab, ironically we are the small 'c' conservatives. One of our slogans is 'This isn't about left or right, it's straightforward.'

"Don't trash things that people really value and care about and depend upon for their lives. Don't trash the NHS, don't frack up to 60 per cent of the British countryside, don't pass TTIP.

"It's about dealing with vested interests, dealing with banks, ending this giant protection racket. The corporatocracy is a form of institutionalised gangsterism with the 0.1 per cent getting a cut from everything that's going on when you visit the doctor, get on a train or turn on the tap."

Now that the protest is over, the next stage of the mobilisation is being planned.

"What we are trying to do going forward is to decentralise and diversify the movement, to take actions in localities in support of a return to democracy," says Barda.

"It's really important, I feel, to have the bar for engagement set as low as possible - a lot of people are not of a temperament to enter a contested public space, or some kind of engagement with police that will potentially put them off."

The protest, despite endless police provocation, stayed positive and peaceful, says Barda:

"Occupy Democracy maintained a positive 'peace and love' approach that made it much easier to point out the violence of the police and much harder to paint us as angry and shouty anarchists."

Colby confirms this. "It was beautiful, everyone had their voice heard. We didn't have leaders telling us how to think, we had consensus, we didn't have ideology, not left or right, it was right or wrong. It was a beautiful thing and the police couldn't break that."

Barda says this speaks to a wider difference between Occupy's spirit of co-operation and the neoliberal competitive norm.

"The power of neoliberalism is its ability to manipulate people into acting and thinking as self-regarding individuals and makes them ready to condemn the immigrant and benefit scrounger."

 

For Barda, changing the conversation and upturning traditional political language is a major part of the battle.

"We need to be framing this as getting to the sane, compassionate truth, rather than it coming from one political wing."

Can Occupy still be a lightning rod for change, even joining forces with the trade union movement under common demands to take back our democracy and build a new green economy?

As ever the difficulty lies in how to turn protest and popular mobilisation into new political weather, votes for parties who are signed up for change and ultimately political power to implement it.

"Without that link between mobilisation and voting, given the system we have, there is no way you can get the change," says Barda, who is considering standing for the Greens.

"You can have millions of people on the streets saying things need to be different, but unless there is a political party that can put them into practice, then it doesn't change.

"As soon as people have a choice - as we saw in Scotland - they go from being 'apathetic' to engaged."

Sinha says: "I think the trade union movement is potentially much more powerful than the Occupy movement. But they don't seem to be using it strategically. If health unions had said from the start that privatisation had no mandate and we are going to stop it, they would have killed it dead.

"You can't pass any law you like - this Health and Social Care Act was not in any manifesto. But the unions didn't do that - they simply go along with this game.

"We need to have a bit more of that Churchillian fighting spirit. They need to show some leadership."

 

Occupy Democracy's New Putney Debates continue at The Light, Friends House, 173 Euston Road NW1 2BJ until November 16. Visit occupydemocracy.org.uk for details.

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