I didn’t have much to do with Occupy Brighton. On the day that Occupy London began I travelled up to London to be part of that instead. On twitter the talk was alive with what was about to happen in London. The boast that Block the Bridge had been a warning shot but that ‘they’ had seen nothing yet now seems more of a promise than some idle and ambitious tweet. There were Brighton twitterers chatting away. Most seemed on their way to London, having arranged to travel together already. Not knowing them, I travelled alone. There was some talk of setting up a Brighton camp but it wasn’t very enthusiastic.
A couple of weeks later, on 29th October 2011, a people’s general assembly was held in Victoria Gardens in central Brighton. The assembly decided to set up camp and Occupy Brighton was born. This branch of the international movement had a particularly easy ride because Brighton & Hove City Council is the only one in the country run by the Green Party. The Greens declared themselves supportive of the Occupy movement. Consequently, this camp faced no eviction threat, so long as they remained peaceful. The entire Occupy movement espouses peaceful direct action. The local thieving Tory bastards were outraged that something like this could be allowed to happen and issued press releases accordingly. The camp carried on, welcoming visitors and holding debates. I kept meaning to go but the few times I have been in central Brighton over the last two months, I was on my way back to Occupy London, so I didn’t become involved.
On 9th November 2011, Occupy Brighton released its initial statement. Here it is, for the record:
- This is an Initial Statement but may be subject to change. It has been discussed at open meetings and consensus has been reached on each point.
- We need an alternative to the current system which is unsustainable, undemocratic and unjust.
- We are all unique people living on this planet. We stand together with occupations all over the world.
- Abolish the interest charges on the money creation process.
- We do not accept the cuts as either necessary or inevitable.
- We seek an alternative to global tax injustice and our democracy representing corporations instead of the people.
- We want regulators and watchdogs to be genuinely independent of the industries they regulate.
- We support all actions to defend our services, welfare, education and employment, and to stop wars and arms dealing.
- We want structural change towards authentic global equality. The world’s resources must be protected and only go towards caring for people and the planet.
- We demand an end to the unjust wars and oppression supported by our government.
- We demand an end to the police and military brutality both here and in other countries.
- This is what democracy looks like. Come and join us!
This statement is actually quite a lot bolder than the initial statement of the biggest encampment in the UK, Occupy London Stock Exchange. It specifically calls for the abolition of interest charges. Occupy London’s initial statement ended with the same words, the general invitation to join in. Whereas in London a large number of all sorts of people did join in, in Brighton most of the joiners were local people with severe drug and alcohol problems. Many of them were homeless. They had, after all, been invited to a camp where food, shelter and companionship was offered. Over time, the numbers of these completely disenfranchised people overwhelmed those who had actually set the camp up.
Eventually I did find myself passing, on 3rd December 2011. I had intended just to take a gentle stroll around and then go home but their general assembly was in progress and a friend from Occupy London spotted me. At that assembly there was a fundamental schism. Essentially the Occupation divided into two parts that evening. On one side there were the genuine activists who wanted to keep the camp a purely political affair by banning the public consumption of drugs and alcohol. On the other side were those who thought nothing of sitting around all day getting wasted and calling that a political protest. Occupy London has had similar debates. In London the general assembly’s decision was clear: drinking and drug taking would be banned but unfortunately no decision was taken as to how to enforce the ban. That evening in Brighton was the watershed moment, when the active got up and went to set up an occupation somewhere else. I never heard where they went. I’ve had a look but they are currently nowhere to be found. It looks like they just got up and left to do something else.
They left the camp in the charge of the wasted and it muddled through, with its protest signs but not really organising itself, until a big storm hit Brighton. It wrecked the camp and broke the spirit of the remaining Occupants, which was hardly surprising since their organisational strength was restricted to tending to their own personal proclivities. Local council workers turned up on 14th December 2011 to clear the debris away. Some of camp’s Occupants helped with the clear up. Unfortunately some of the others set fire to the debris. The fire brigade attended to put the fire out and someone assaulted a fire fighter, pushing him to the ground! The assailant ran off. The violence triggered a change in the local council’s policy on the Occupy encampment, with the council leader Bill Randall declaring that consequently Brighton & Hove City Council would not tolerate another similar camp being set up again. This was pretty much exactly what was predicted by the activists at the general assembly I attended.
The central problem at Occupy Brighton was the failure to exclude anyone. Occupy London has precisely the same problem. A key component of the Occupy movement is that no-one is excluded. This is what distinguishes it from a political party. All over the world, the Occupy movement has boasted that its particular take on direct democracy, using consensus as the method for decision making, is what democracy looks like. In fact, this is not true at all. Democracy requires a defined citizenry. All ancient systems of democracy involved knowing exactly who could vote and who could not. Most of these ancient regimes severely restricted who could vote. Modern democracies allow pretty much anyone to vote but even then there is always a clearly understood mechanism for registering to vote. The universal franchise works because registered voters cast votes for representatives to make informed choices after they’ve had their varying degrees of rational debates.
The current problem with our political democracies is that they are apparently restricted to decision making on purely political and social matters. We have lost control of our economies. That is where the Occupy movement stepped in: the central complaint has been that we have no democratic control of the way in which our economy is run. That was why the first camp was set up close to Wall Street. That was why Occupy London wanted to set up in Paternoster Square, the home of the London Stock Exchange, and settled (rather than fight the police) for St Paul’s Churchyard instead, which is immediately next door. Occupy wants to extend democracy from the purely political sphere to the economic one. Occupy recognises that the financial institutions which run the planet all have headquarters. The key idea that Occupy brought to the political debate was that we should physically protest in the land around these financial powerhouses, rather than outside the political vacuum filled only by politicians arguing about education policy and other issues of little interest to the bankers.
The particular method that Occupy uses for decision taking – consensus – is brilliant for generating cohesion amongst a disparate group of people drawn from many backgrounds but rubbish for taking tough decisions. Decisions taken by consensus are only agreed when everyone either agrees or everyone agrees and no-one vetoes (or blocks, to use the jargon) the decision. If someone blocks the decision, the discussion continues. This system can be wonderfully effective for generating individual responsibility within a precise society organised by consensus. Witness Christiania, the self-proclaimed autonomous neighbourhood of about 850 residents in Copenhagen which has run on consensus for over 40 years. The political meetings there are said to be very long winded and tedious but the community has held together precisely because everyone has agreed with everything decided. Another by-product of this political system, is that very few decisions of any sort get made. Christiania is the paradigmatic example again: after four decades, there are still only no more than a dozen rules, each of which has arisen to deal with a specific problem. To the outsider this might appear wonderfully simple but in reality, there are many rulers instead. For example, to join Christiania and build a house to live in there, you must obtain the consent of everyone. Consequently, there is much unused land, for the Christianians to meditate in.
Whether this is fair or not must remain a matter for debate. Whether it is the best way to run a country the size of the UK must be severely doubted. The fact is that all large scale democracies require some type of majority voting system. The system must respect minority rights but that does not need to extend to winning their agreement to everything. Although Christiania’s policy making meetings are very much larger than all but a few of Occupy London’s, they do have a defined citizenry. In other words, they do not just allow anyone to wander in and block decisions.
Occupy London has been successful because of its location, its scale and the urgency of the problems visited on the world by the London Stock Exchange, which have triggered an ambition not hitherto seen amongst the UK’s foremost political activists. The movement in London has been neither short of energy nor commitment from some extremely capable people. Together we have generated one of the biggest challenges to the economic hegemony seen in my lifetime. We have created a community space in which genuine debate and conversation has occurred between all the key players. However, despite all that, the movement has to recognise its failings and learn from them, if it doesn’t want to endlessly suffer them. Occupy Brighton’s problems are much the same as Occupy London’s. The longevity of both camps will be decided by external factors because using consensus without a defined citizenry means that no decision to scatter the camp could ever get taken – there would always be someone whose best home was right there. Both camps are being consumed by those whose immediate problems are well below the political and economic barricades; dealing with them exhausts the activists’ resources.
Occupy cannot continue forever. None of the original activists intended it to. There has been much talk of the Spanish camps, which did pack up and leave, but no serious proposals to leave have been made in London. In Brighton, the genuine activists realised that they could not exclude those that they had invited and left themselves. The departure rate of genuine activists in Occupy London has remained a trickle for some time. To some extent the departed have been replaced by newcomers but with the British winter coming, the trickle will turn into a torrent. Occupy London needs to set an end date so that it can hold the politically moral high ground. The trial of the eviction case begins on Monday 19th December 2011. It looks set to continue for longer than the Judge’s time estimate of three to four days. There are two litigants in person who have joined the proceedings, doubtless they will slow the proceedings considerably. However, this extra time does not auger well for Occupy London because of the difficulty of taking decisions according to the chaos of whoever turns up to talk.
As with the camp in Brighton, the London activists need to realise that they are facing a stark choice: to either quit while they are ahead, recoup over the winter and come back in the spring or to get violently evicted. There’s no honour in the violence. Without honour, there can be no real political persuasion.
We already know that various violent groups are planning to join in ‘to defend’ the camp they have not been part of. There will be undercover police officers doing much the same thing. The result of this is that all the people who didn’t join an Occupy camp will see ‘us’ apparently resorting to violence as a last, futile gesture. There is nothing to be gained by sleepwalking into that situation. With the trial about to begin, Occupy London will be praying for a violent storm instead of a stormy eviction.
I think this is a really thoughtful and interesting post.
There is something unique about these outdoor urban protests where activists have to not just deal with vulnerable/homeless/addicts in a way they don’t normally have to but that they unknowingly take responsibility for them – which they are generally not qualified to do, although from what I’ve seen they’ve made admirable attempts.
The last general assembly I went to at LSX there were two homeless (?) guys play fighting right next to me making it a) difficult to follow what was happening and b) was quite intimidating.
I think we need to give serious consideration to these issues because, frankly, the 99% don’t tend to hang out in soup kitchens for people with profound social problems. They sympathise with them but don’t want to introduce them to their kids.
This makes the camps quite alien from most people’ day to day lived experience. In some good ways but also some bad – and it certainly doesn’t always feel safe which I think is a fatal flaw.
You’re right – there have been some very admirable attempts to deal with the vulnerable adults directed to the camp, largely by the Metropolitan Police as it happens. Unfortunately many of these attempts have floundered because the people making them haven’t learnt the lessons of decades of learning built up by specialist agencies. Consequently, the problems have not been addressed properly and the problems visited on the camp have got worse.
You make a very good point about the fact that us activists have unwittingly allowed these people with their particularly extreme problems to degenerate the camp as a whole, with the result that we are increasingly preaching only to the converted. Witness Jesse Jackson turning up the other day – even many of our most committed activists were not there to greet him.
It is definitely time for the movement to make a tactical retreat, to reassess its weaknesses. No sensible people camp out in Britain over the winter for extended periods of time. This is the time to take stock and, hopefully, bounce back in the spring with fresh energy and new strategies. These strategies must include taking a different approach to who gets included in the movement or else it will flounder again.
Well, what more can anyone add to your blog this week Duncan? I’ll tell you:- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Once again you have hit the activist nail squarely on its head, with a mighty thump!
The GA process at LOSX has, sadly, broken down due to the very process it respects, and uses. The inclusion of non occupiers in these meetings have lead to violent insurrection at said meetings over the last two weeks. A lead definitely needs to be taken from the actions of the Brighton group.
Well done ScrapperDuncan ;-{)
It seems to me that either our good people – by which I mean the organised, capable and committed activists – demand the camp shuts up shop in order to retain the moral high ground or they squander the gains in consciousness achieved so far. The fact is that this process needs to happen very quickly if it is to happen at all.
If a decision isn’t taken as to the end date of the camp in the very near future, it isn’t going to get taken. If the decision is taken, our good people can set about removing the camp so that we can leave in good order and with our heads held high, knowing that we have once again surprised our critics and retained the persuasive edge. If the decision isn’t taken, we hand over our successes to the Murdochs of this world to endlessly show film of a nasty eviction.
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An interesting post. I have visited OccupyLSX twice and vowed never to set foot in the place again.
Firstly, a legitimate protest against the corrupt financial system was hijacked within days by activists from other movements for pure media gain. UKUncut effectively moved in and took over the agenda – alienating those who felt something new was happening. Secondly, handing out free food and shelter in the middle of a large city might be the ideal socialist paradise you all dream of, but it ended up mirroring what we have seen happen in society after 13 years of Socialism. Everybody wants, no one gives. The age of entitlement personified, if you will.
And in a strange paradox, Occupylsx is now faced with the cold hard fact that the scroungers and layabouts have become the majority, demanding money from the Finance team for their own vested interests without a clue what the original aim of the protest was. You have become the very thing I despise. The benevolent “State”, bankrupting yourself because no one has the balls to say “no more”.
Having said that, I thank you for your efforts because you have shown in a tiny micro bubble experiment what happens when Socialism is adopted as the model for a society. All the grafters end up leaving and the society becomes a pool of feckless wasters turning up for the free food.
Might I suggest you impose exit visas on those who actually do contribute and refuse to let them leave the camp without permission? Certainly worked for the USSR
Hello Old Holborn,
Am unsure which 13 years you mean when mention “Socialism”?
Hi Duncan,
I’ve never been able to see how the general assemblies could work on a larger scale, so I won’t say anything about the main thrust of your piece; but I thought I’d comment on a peripheral point:
“The current problem with our political democracies is that they are apparently restricted to decision making on purely political and social matters. [....] Occupy wants to extend democracy from the purely political sphere to the economic one.”
I’d say it’s not that the economic sphere lies outside democratic control, it’s more that the nature of money, as it developed historically, denies us any means of properly controlling it: essentially, the fact that the medium of exchange (in its basic form) can be taken out of circulation by anyone who has a surplus, has the effect of enabling the rich to charge everybody else for the privilege of using it. This is the underlying reason why interest exists …. and it’s one of the primary causes of inequality.
I wrote a blog post a few months back on this problem and its relationship with the tax system (and the possibility of manufacturing a dispute in order to try and bring about reform through the courts); it’s at http://uncivilisation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-root-of-much-evil if you’re interested.
Money existed before fiat currency. Interest existed before the modern banking system. I see what you’re saying but your proposed solution – to trigger a court case over the issue – will get you nowhere because you don’t have a legitimate cause of action. All that would happen is that your local authority would issue a claim against you for a money debt, you’d present your stated defence, you’d lose because the argument has no basis in law, and then you’d owe the council some extra money for its legal bill.
Thanks for the reply, Duncan, but I’m surprised you feel able to say that an argument you haven’t heard has no basis in law. Though in fact, the point would not be to win the case, it would be to get the courts to issue a declaration of incompatibility.
Yes, indeed, money existed before fiat currency; and interest existed before the modern banking system. What of it? In your post you seemed to think that the goal of abolishing ‘the interest charges on the money creation process’ was important; but that kind of demand isn’t going to be taken seriously if you’ve no understanding of why interest exists at all. It’s not something which can be abolished by fiat.
As far as I’m concerned, the root causes of social injustice lie in the foundations our society is built on, and the foundations are where we’ll have to make changes for a genuinely just society to come about. If your goal is more superficial reform, that’s fine with me. I wish you luck with it.
Dear Mr Ramsay,
You pointed me to a blog post which contained the argument you wanted me to look at. I looked at it and don’t think it stands a chance in court. Now you say that I haven’t heard the argument? Perhaps you are referring to some other argument that you haven’t told me yet? How could I give my view on that?
You pull out of context a remark I made about one part of Occupy Brighton’s initial statement. The post you are commenting on isn’t about the policy declarations of Occupy Brighton. It is all about the problem of letting anyone join the movement. You make a good point about the difficulties of abolishing interest charges; there are arguments on either side but the fact is that this is not what I was writing about, is it?
I don’t state what my goals are in this post but you can find them easily enough – I support the Green Party. You seem to have got stuck on one remark I made…
Sorry if I’ve offended you, Duncan, but I did acknowledge from the start that I was commenting on a peripheral point.
I did indeed point you to a blog post which (since you’d found my comment on an earlier post thought-provoking) I thought you might find interesting. I was surprised that you chose to comment here on what I wrote there, and that you treated an introduction of an idea as a fully-fledged argument, but that’s your privilege, and perhaps I shouldn’t have responded. I’ll not bother you again.
You haven’t offended me but I do wonder at people not seemingly ever wanting to comment on the main thrust of anything but only on peripheral points. Obviously cold print and electronic media can cause a certain amount of miscommunication by themselves and perhaps this comment thread is an example. I thought you were pointing me to what you considered to be a fully fledged argument. That said, it is difficult to imagine what your fully fledged argument would be, given the outline of the points you made.
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Thanks for your last reply, Duncan. I hadn’t intended to say any more, but I decided it would be worth explaining my position a bit better – sorry it’s a bit long.
First, however, I’ll apologise for suggesting that you weren’t committed to fundamental reform. I recognise that you are, but I’m afraid your initial reply triggered my cynicism; a lot of people who talk about fundamental reform seem to be unwilling to contemplate what it would actually mean. In fact I wouldn’t have commented on your post in the first place if I’d thought you weren’t, so I’m sorry I said what I did.
You wonder at ‘people not seemingly ever wanting to comment on the main thrust of anything but only on peripheral points’. In my case it’s because I have my own agenda; I’ve spent many years looking for specific small reforms which would catalyse larger reforms, and have reached a point where I need to link up with others who could help push them through. When I come across someone who I think might recognise the value of the kind of thinking I’ve been doing, and be able to add something to it, then I take what opportunity I can to try and establish a connection.
In the context of your blog post, the issue of monetary interest is certainly a peripheral point, but in the wider context, it’s one of a very small number of root causes of the injustices which Occupy is protesting against; and from my point of view (I hope you’ll forgive me for saying this) vastly more important than the tribulations of a movement which, while it has made a splash, hasn’t yet demonstrated the kind of coherent purpose which might lead to substantive change. That point about abolishing interest is the only thing I’ve seen from the Occupy movement which I see as both specific enough to be taken seriously, and genuinely radical.
Thinking radically places us in a difficult position; we can plan how to change the world with a mass movement, but what do we do if we can’t persuade others of the merits of our vision? My answer to that dilemma is to look, not just for strategies which a pressure group might use, but also for things which I can do on my own; and that’s the context in which I mentioned, in that blog post, the possibility of forcing a dispute with my local authority. It wasn’t the main purpose of the post (which was to introduce people to the need for a specific change to the monetary system); it’s not by any means my preferred path; and I’ve no illusions that a court would accept my reasoning within the law as it stands. I would expect to have to take the argument into constitutional territory, and I wouldn’t have any great confidence that I would succeed – but it is an avenue I could pursue on my own.
I regard it as necessary (in the absence of a better path) from two points of view. Firstly, my main focus is on constitutional change – I came to the question of land rights and the problem of monetary interest because they seem to me to be so central that they should be regarded as part of the constitution – so bringing the incoherence of the constitution up in court is an end in itself.
And secondly, I have to do it in order to be true to my own rules; for quite a few years I’ve believed that a mature society has to recognise the concept of ‘lawful rebellion’, and a couple of years ago (after I came across some ‘Freemen’ using the term), I came up with a definition of it: “For me ‘Lawful Rebellion’ means rebellion which is rooted in a commitment to law – there’s no need for it to be permitted by existing laws, but it must arise from an undeniable failure of the established system; it must offer a viable solution to that failure; and it must allow a reasonable opportunity for the established system to implement that solution. Only if that opportunity is ignored does rebellion become justifiable, and even then, to my mind, only if it can address the deeper failings which prevented the resolution of the original grievance – in other words, it must offer not just a solution to the failure of law, but also a solution to the failure of government. That means having a clear idea, in advance, of what will be put in place if the rebellion succeeds.” Until the courts have had an opportunity to accept or reject our arguments, I don’t believe we have a valid claim to the moral high ground.
That blog post I pointed you to is one of five I made back in June, in which I discussed a handful of key changes which I think would lead to a transformation over a period of fifteen or twenty years (I am intending to rewrite it all at some point because it’s no more than a bare bones outline – and incomplete at that – and I was writing that blog for the particular audience at Uncivilisation …. and I’ve also not yet found a voice I’m happy with). As I suggested in my first comment to you, my focus currently is on getting the courts to implement proper procedures for recognising and addressing incongruities within the law, but I don’t have high hopes that what I’m trying at the moment will get anywhere. However, I can see the power of the tactics of the Occupy movement; if they were used by a fairly small, disciplined group, and focused on demands which lie within the domain of the courts, I think they could make a real difference. But without that discipline, and without a coherent vision to work towards, I suspect the movement will settle into a series of ritual occupations which The Machine will accomodate without too much trouble.
Anyway, I hope your current disillusionment with the movement doesn’t put you off activism. I do wish you luck, whatever your goals.