Dry tinder waits for a spark

There is something about an occupation, however configured and directed, that suggests a challenge to the existing way of doing things.

What that challenge might be and where it leads are other matters.

These are questions much discussed as the "Occupy" movement spreads around the world after starting in New York less than two months ago.

The Occupy The London Stock Exchange tent protest at St Paul's in London has got massive media coverage.

Just minutes from my London office I have had an opportunity to join it at first hand and see the exciting mix of ideas and strategies that it throws up on a daily basis.

Anyone active on the left might be tempted to judge it and find it wanting in any effort to challenge capitalism, but that would be to miss the point.

Understanding what it represents not judging it is the essential task.

Here an historical framework can help and several models come to mind, the first of which is the symbolic occupation of space.

The authorities have spent much time and energy in "enclosing" public space down the centuries.

Initially this was around removing common rights to agricultural land in battles well documented by EP Thompson and others.

As Britain became an industrial power, the focus moved on to containing the possibility of protests by fencing off and declaring "private" areas where people might gather.

Both devices are currently in use at Paternoster Square where the HQ of the Stock Exchange is situated.

But the activities of the authorities have not gone without challenge.

The Chartists fought for the right to protest from the 1830s. One well-documented and currently relevant example was the visit of female Chartists to the church of the Reverend Close in Cheltenham which they occupied.

They sought to dispute the readings of the Bible that the vicar gave in his church. We don't have their words but we do have the Reverend's sermon in response.

He condemned the "hydra" of socialists and Chartists who were challenging the word of God and the existing order.

Other well-known meeting places for demonstrations in our own times have been the sites of serious struggles to win the right to occupy the space.

A Reform League demonstration for the vote in May 1867 saw protesters rip down railings in order to rally in Hyde Park while the army stood ready.

Similarly Trafalgar Square has been the subject of periods of official bans on demonstrations since its construction in the 1840s.

Peace protests have been a key source of efforts to occupy spaces that the authorities would rather they did not.

The CND sit-down protesters arrested at Trafalgar Square in September 1960 are one example.

The Greenham Common anti-cruise missile camp of the 1980s and the ongoing efforts of anti-war protesters to have a presence in Parliament Square are others.

All these instances are about winning the right to protest in certain spaces and that is certainly what has happened at St Paul's in recent weeks.

Another way of seeing the Occupy movement though is as the stormy petrel that heralds a wave of, in this case, anti-capitalist revolt against the impact of the world financial crisis that hit in 2008.

The most well-known example historically is the protest led by the police spy Father Gapon to the tsar in 1905 that led to the Russian revolution of that year.

Gapon did not have revolutionary events in mind and probably neither did most of those who marched with him.

But the reaction of the tsarist authorities provided a spark to ignite some very dry tinder.