Occupy London began with a splash worthy of every front page and a media junky’s wet dream. The John Wilkes of the 21st Century, Julian Assange, broke his house arrest and risked his neck to be there. 5,000 people rocked up and took over the most famous churchyard in the world in open, public and democratic assembly. When they voted to suspend proceedings to hear Assange, it was the biggest unanimous vote in history. Assange preached that we wanted, “not the destruction of law but the construction of law”.
This unusual outdoor sermon met with the congregation’s firm approval. The congregation itself met with the approval of the rest of us, with opinion polls in that first week showing support for the occupation averaging at 87.5%. Londoners poured physical and financial support into the occupation to sustain it and to nurture it.
Then came the tussle with the Cathedral. For a while the story became the Church of England’s iconic church giving account of itself. It was a sorry tale of muddle, indecision and incompetence. St Paul’s Cathedral successively took on each party’s position as if trying them all out for size. First it appeared to support the encampment, although in reality it had only supported their right to protest – that is Labour’s position with its striking members. Next it closed its doors and asked the Occupationists to leave – that was what its local authority, the City of London corporation, wanted. After that it reopened its doors, withdrew from legal action and began to talk to some of the Occupationists – that was what the Christians wanted. It squeezed in an offer to accommodate a tent on its own land – that was what the Occupationists wanted – before subtly siding with the City by giving witness evidence for it in its eviction proceedings – a nuanced approach to morality which met with the approval of the thieving Tory bastards.
Along the way, Occupy London spent increasing amounts of time justifying its own existence instead of consecrating its original purpose, the construction of law. Some of the most able protestors wasted inordinate amounts of time dealing with the Cathedral despite its eventual abandonment of the cause being utterly predictable. The Church of England sits on vast funds invested in the London Stock Exchange. The idea that it would shake off centuries old form for supporting the establishment for the sake of this temporary popular support is nonsensical.
For the first month of the Occupation, numbers at the nightly general assemblies remained impressive. They were frequently attended not by hundreds but by thousands. In the second month they were attended in the low hundreds still. Now, in the third month, they are rarely attended by more than a hundred – the usual figure is less than 50. That’s 1% of the numbers on 15th October 2011. This then is a 1% claiming to represent the 99%. What went wrong?
Mission creep has been the main problem. With a mission statement so simple it is easy to see how the rot set in. The original idea was to occupy public spaces, complain about corporate power gone mad, raise public consciousness and be there when the public at large decided to join in, thus the revolution would not be televised, it would be on YouTube instead. All that church chit chat was not part of the original agenda. It was meant to be an Occupation with a capital O, not tea and biscuits with the Bishop. Taking over buildings was also a new development. All other parts of the Occupy movement around the world had kept themselves to public spaces, whereby anyone could join in. Occupy London changed the game plan by making its visitors to its most exciting political work guests in a seized bank building. Consequently, only the bravest parts of the wider public attended. Although plenty did attend, London is a big place. These people were already on onside – Occupy London had begun to preach only to the converted.
Despite commencing as a campaign for the construction of law, Occupy London showed remarkably little faith in the concept. Most people in the camp were persuaded that violent crimes should not be dealt with by the police standing nearby at all times but by the camp itself. Consequently internal violence began to rise because no-one was able to contain it. Violence entered the camp from within and from outside. Predictably, the camp became a dangerous place to be on some nights. This state of regarding itself above the law was a mistake. A collective and complete error of judgement.
The central idea of the Occupation was mass civil disobedience. Here’s me spelling it out, on 21st October 2011:
Clearly I am not the greatest ever advocate for civil disobedience but I did command the attention of a few hundred and win all their approval. The winning idea behind civil disobedience is that you choose which law to break, to make your point, ensure your arrest and charge, obtain publicity and obtain public support. Ordinary civil disobedience is converted into the successful mass participation form when many people join in. It is peaceful politics. It respects the law of the land and proves that respect publicly. It doesn’t involve any private law breaking. The moment Occupy London went indoors, it turned public protest into a private matter. Seizing and squatting banks is a specialist affair. Anyone can set up a tent!
It’s notable that no-one in Occupy London argues the weather necessitates private squats. There are said to be dozens more lined up for the taking. The activists who take on this sort of thing are highly experienced and have been in the protest movement for a long time. They are now training other activists in the craft. Whilst their actions around London carries the mood of many others, it does not carry their personal enthusiasm. It does not convert them to disobedience.
Having raised our country’s consciousness, Occupy London must either be seeking to recruit others to mass civil disobedience or it must go home. What other purpose does it have? The massive public support it once enjoyed was not won for the prospect of an extended picnic in central London. Pointlessly pouting on the sidelines is not what Assange did. Since deciding, through inaction, to foster anti-police culture and also deciding, by dint of an accidental consequence of its co-option of bank property, to privatise its protest zones, Occupy London has crept some distance away from the business of mass civil disobedience. It did this most stealthily, so that none of the people involved (myself included) saw how far gone it was. Stealth implies deliberation but this is wrong. These errors of judgment occurred precisely because of a lack of deliberation. Had there been any form of political leadership involved, all of this could have been thought through. Almost everything that had happened has been completely predictable.
Occupy as a whole turned its back on leaders. In part this is due to the movement’s anarchic creed but mainly it represents the best interests of the fearful nature of its followers, the masked and anonymous. Refusing leaders is a convenient way of avoiding anyone getting the primary blame for subsequent criminal prosecutions. Yet, since the cause is just there is no shortage of people willing to pursue the risk and, by so doing, lead others into activism. Isn’t that exactly what Ghandi did?
Insisting that everyone is equal for every conceivable activity isn’t what democracy looks like, it’s an attempt to defeat conspiracy charges. Luckily, it also means that nothing much ever gets decided so as a defence it is strikingly successful. Easy as it is to state this particular version of the equality principle, hard to impossible it becomes to follow through. Inevitably direct actions and other recruitment activities are conducted only by those with the need to know because that is the only way to get anything done. Consequently, people who most want responsibility take it, rather than the people everybody most wants to take responsibility; the latter is what democracy looks like.
I lost faith with Occupy London some time ago. I stayed involved because I thought that the original idea deserved its day in court: that mass civil disobedience was a legitimate form of protest which potentially overwhelmed other competing rights, such as those belonging to the local authority in relation to a pedestrian highway. That was why I recruited John Cooper QC to advise me personally on behalf of the Occupation on 15th October 2011. I took that responsibility because I was the only one present at the legal forum on the first day of the Occupation who knew how. (I had wanted to help with the shelter forum, as it happens.) I quit the scene shortly after the trial had commenced, having fulfilled my promise to set up a proper defence.
As the Occupation progressed, I became increasingly concerned about the presence of the Freeman Cult inside the camp. Over half of all the enquiries I got related directly to their nonsensical deconstruction of law. Eventually I wrote a post mocking the main Freeman Cult member on the original site. Inexplicably, the very next day whoever the Guardian allowed to take over Comment is Free decided to include an article by the very man I satirised, with the result that sensible minded Occupationists were made fools of. It looked like we took this legal woo seriously! A rearguard action was fought by sympathetic bloggers. They vigorously attacked the cult; one even exposed BNP involvement in it. This was a very damaging episode because all parts of what used to be called the intelligentsia were now badly misinformed as to the purpose of Occcupy London. We had gone from being a radical campaign for the construction of law to a camp which at that time had produced no serious proposals for law reform and only quasi-legal gibberish.
Occupy London’s media team established a close relationship with the Guardian. Certainly I was told about one or two stories that the Guardian had agreed not to print; whether that was true or not I do not know but the word was clear – the paper was on side. The paper agreed to abide by news embargoes, with the result that when Occupy London finally issued some political and economic demands beyond a general set of desires it was not reported until three days had passed from the decision being made. I know this because the Guardian accidentally busted the embargo and during the short window when the story was on early release, I spotted it on their website. I mentioned this to Naomi Colvin and the story was pulled immediately until she gave permission for its release. This news management goes far beyond the remit Occupy London’s general assembly ever granted the media team.
No doubt Occupy London’s media team will defend itself for including the voice of the Freeman cult by pointing to the new version of the Equality principle. As buckets to carry arguments in go, this is so leaky you’d only have to travel a couple of steps before all the water poured away! You cannot stand for the construction of law and simultaneously wish to abolish it. You cannot be completely open and transparent but at the same time hold stories back until it fits your agenda.
You cannot present the faces of the occupation to the world in masks. You cannot claim to offer a better society whilst making a worse one yourself. You cannot have any claim to public support whilst sheltering in private spaces. These are the hard facts of life for Occupy. Mission creep has gone too far too be recovered easily. The best method would be to pick an end date before judgment in the eviction proceedings, which will be on 11th January 2012 at the earliest. That’s Occupy London’s last chance to pitch their appeal to Joe Public: by making the Occupation suddenly due to end, more people will strive to catch it before it disappears. This sets it up for a sequel.
However the sequel plays out, it cannot be along the same failed line as this Occupation. Futile protests must be abandoned or else activists are being self-indulgent. The challenge is to see what it would take to muster bigger numbers. Encampments breed fatigue after five or six weeks. Starting well into the autumn was always going to be a bad move – a media crew get the blame for that as well: Adbusters kick started Occupy Wall Street with a date and a poster. Perhaps starting again in May might be more successful? If the movement is determined to avoid leaders, it will have to propose something much simpler, which does not require any organisation whatsoever. Perhaps standing around in a park every day rattling keys for a couple of hours? Plenty of people could join in with that. What worked for Vaclav Havel, might work here. I’m not holding my breath though. I’ve returned to being a Green Party activist. We’ve got over our childish dispute about whether to have a leader or not. We take responsibility for what we do, which currently includes running the grooviest City in the South – Brighton & Hove. Occupy London excited English politics for a while because there was a concentration of talent working cohesively. As the Occupation progressed, the various specialists in the camp pulled away from one another and, collectively, from their generalist comrades. They lost sight of their key objective – recruitment – and only began to see themselves.
The enemy within Occupy London
Occupy London makes proud its boast to fight against the 1% and most of the country is on their side on that score. The problem this particular protest encampment faces, after holding their ground physically for more than two months in St Paul’s Churchyard, is not how to get the message across. It is how to recruit more people to activism. With the onslaught of Christmas, the primary consumption festival of capitalism, the problem becomes more acute than ever. There are now less people on that hallowed ground battling against the death star of the London Stock Exchange than there were in the early days. Campaign fatigue has set in, social problems have set in and the winter cold doesn’t help.
Although five thousand people turned up on the first day and thousands turned out for several weeks, the numbers are now down to the small hundreds. The camp lacks political leadership. It still organises bold and ambitious events but these are increasingly only taken up by the converted. Early high profile backers, such as the clergy in St Paul’s Cathedral, have fallen away. This is hardly surprising. Whereas the Occupy movement has much to complain about, it does not properly address its own internal problems. Instead it pointlessly continues to debate them.
To begin with many people were needed to establish the camp. I’m pleased to have been one of them. Large numbers of people were required to physically hold the ground, to occupy. As time has gone by and the Occupationists have proved that they are not rioting or disturbing the peace in any way that the police could seriously complain about, large numbers were not required to hold the space. Had the authorities launched an eviction attempt in the first few weeks, doubtless many thousands would have arrived to defend the camp. Certainly we had people ready at all times to get themselves to the City in that eventuality. Instead, the City played a waiting game. It cannot be congratulated on having any political wisdom for this; it was more a case of muddled strategy born out of inexperience of persistent popular protest. They haven’t had to deal with anything on this scale for centuries. As the encampment continued and other spaces were occupied too, there was a sense of direction and motivation but the fact is the activists were spreading themselves more thinly, rather than recruiting more people.
Less people have been attending on the ground because of two reasons. Firstly, increasing numbers of activists have dropped out. Partly, this is down to sheer burn out. For myself, I found it increasingly difficult financially to travel to London and live in the Churchyard. Other people became exhausted from other factors, such as constantly repeating debates about the direction of the camp with people who essentially already feel that it has achieved everything they want – a place to live, with free food and companionship. We’ve lost key activists because of our inability to exclude people who settle disputes with violence. We’ve created a culture inside the camp that anyone who goes to the police to complain of physical assault is some kind of traitor. Yet this movement never intended to be anti-police! In the early days much effort was made to get the individual officers of the City of London police force to see us for what we were: peaceful refuseniks engaged in mass civil disobedience. We worked closely with them and won them over, to begin with.
The second reason that numbers have fallen away is the failure to recruit. Occupy London will not recruit newcomers when the social problems it has created and refused to deal with are so well known. Not everyone has read about them in the Daily Mail or the London Evening Standard, although plenty have. You only have to visit the camp to see them for yourself. Occupy London fails to recognise that its many visitors talk to their friends. As one of my commentators (Jim Jepps, commenting on my post about Occupy Brighton) recently said, “… 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.”
The genuine activists in Occupy London realised the inevitability of this situation some time ago. Unfortunately they were hamstrung by their insistence that every voice be heard, with the result that the people whose activism is restricted to taking from the camp’s social provision shouted them down. The debate about how to cure the problem has been raging for weeks. It’s not a complicated debate. There are three basic options.
The first option is to do nothing and continue the camp as it is. Everything’s fine, say the advocates of this option and anyone who says otherwise is either a police spy, an agent provocateur or just a member of the 1% in disguise seeking to destabilise the camp. The advocates of this option are blind to the fact of the falling numbers. They’ve found a great new place to live and understandably want to keep it intact. They cannot see the likelihood of continuing social disintegration or widespread emigration from the camp because they cannot see much beyond the next day. Often they cannot see beyond their next can of special brew. These people are not genuine political activists. They have severe personal problems and need help. Unfortunately their voice is equal to everybody else’s, because that is a founding Occupy principle – every voice will be heard, regardless of whose it is. That principle combines badly with another founding principle – that no decision can be made until everyone agrees about it.
The second option is to quit the camp. This is known as the exit strategy. There has been much debate about this idea and it carries a certain credence. The example of the Spanish arm of the Occupy movement, known as 15-M or the Indignants, is often cited. The Spanish movement carries much influence around the world of Occupy because of the vast numbers of people who were recruited. Theirs was truly a mass movement. RTVE, the Spanish public broadcasting company published figures estimating participation in this movement to be between 6.5 and 8 million people. Occupy London was blessed to have Spanish activists in its ranks on the first day and when they made suggestions as to how to get the camp established, there was universal agreement. The Indignants have ended their protest encampments. They set a date to quit and celebrated their decision with a week of partying before leaving. Then they tidied up after themselves. A large number of the activists in Occupy London would like to adopt an exit strategy so as remain in charge of events and be able to return in bigger numbers at some later date. This is my preferred option.
The third option is to adopt what is known as the Amsterdam Model. Occupy Amsterdam faced the same problems as Occupy London because it insisted on including absolutely anyone who wanted to turn up and take the free food, company and shelter. They split their encampment into two separate sites. One site provided what might loosely be described as social services: food, accomodation and welfare but on the whole the party scene was not tolerated. The other site provided for the political purposes: debating, library facilities and general assemblies. By making this division, the social problems were separated from the political recruitment ground. The troublemakers were contained and, to some extent, left; probably because hanging around a campsite with a lot of well meaning folk who insisted that this was not a place of protest was a lot less exciting than other places they had to go to.
Over the last three weeks or so, the debate between the genuine activists inside Occupy London has shifted from preferring an exit strategy to adopting the Amsterdam Model instead. As I said, this isn’t a complicated debate. It doesn’t take long to make a decision about it. Yet Occupy London’s internal organisation is so tortuous that this simple decision, which could easily have solved both the recruitment and the fatigue problems weeks ago, has been allowed to drift. Last night, after much wrangling on the ground and in secret chatrooms on the internet, a proposal in favour of the Amsterdam Model was finally put to the general assembly. The meeting began just after 7:00pm and was still continuing after 10:00pm. No decision was taken! Unsurprisingly, universal agreement could not be obtained, even with the meeting dragging on and some people leaving before the end.
Some activists are charitably saying that some people needed more time to let the idea sink in. Certainly it is a radical rethink of the nature of the Occupation but how much time do people need to think about something as simple as this? If Occupy London cannot take swift decisions on simple matters like this, it will not recruit more people to the idea that we’d be better off running society according to Occupy’s basic principles. Imagine how Occupy London would cope with any sudden and serious policy challenge! The planet regularly suffers crises which require large-scale interventions. This morning we awoke to the news that the government of the Philippines has decided to commit immediately the bodies of thousands of drowned people to mass graves, without identifying them first, to halt the spread of disease. There are so many instances of emergencies that affect us all that there’s nowhere to even start listing the problems which general assemblies working by consensus would never be able to cope with.
Many people in Occupy London do not accept that their internal method of organisation is unsuited to the problems of the wider world. Those that do, persist with the belief that it is suitable for organising protest encampments. Certainly it does have a fantastic advantage over more traditional political organisations: cohesion. Having everyone agree with everything decided keeps the movement together. That is why, today, with the High Court eviction case brought by the City of London Corporation beginning 65 days after Occupy London began, there are still hundreds of people involved. 86 people were prepared to give witness statements to defend the Occupation. Few of these people will be under any illusions as to the outcome but their will is strong.
Despite this remarkable cohesion, the stark fact remains that the Occupation has suffered problems which you wouldn’t want visited on anyone: fear of violence, deep seated paranoia and chronic indecision. The debate as to the best method to organise the camp continues – it will be debated again this evening at another extraordinary general assembly. Whether a decision can get taken remains to be seen. My bet is that it will be decided tomorrow but that many people will continue to vote with their feet. They will simply walk away from the mess that they have inadvertantly created.
It is often said that a political movement’s worst enemies are within. Occupy London’s worst enemy is indecision. General assemblies run on consensus breed it. On the first day of the Occupation I began to organise the legal team. The internal organisation of the team has changed much since I wrote that post. It would have been far better to exclude people rather than let pretty much anyone join in but that would have broken Occupy’s founding principles. I believe much of what I have done has been decisive – I’m that kinda fellow. Certainly we are more prepared for this particular court case than anyone expected us to be. Our legal strategy throughout the Occupation has been far better than the City’s. Witness our destruction of the pathetically misconstructed Health & Safety complaints raised against us by St Paul’s Cathedral. However, the High Court’s task is not to award brownie points for which side’s legal team has performed best. The High Court will be assessing the facts on the ground as of the dates that the witnesses give evidence and in relation to the legal issues brought by the City. If Occupy London had got its act together some time ago, its witnesses could have presented a far more attractive case to the High Court. With no fixed end date and internal disorder, no sensible judge could allow the Occupation to continue.
Many will say that I am betraying the movement by writing these words now. At the same time, they will hypocritically defend the right to free speech and genuine debate. This is a plea for a decision on the available options. Occupy London needs to choose when it leaves and do it with style, rather than squander the political support it has mustered. If it chooses to set an end date, that date will have to be within the next month because it doesn’t have the resources (financial, people and propaganda) to sustain itself any longer. Before it leaves, it needs to reorganise itself so that it is no longer the cause of social disorder; the Amsterdam Model may well be a route to achieve that. If it can manage to make these decisions by tomorrow, then its witnesses stand a chance of persuading a judge to decide to allow it to continue until its chosen end date. This window of this opportunity is closing very fast. The decisions need to get taken before Occupy London’s witnesses tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the world.
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Posted in Bank of Ideas, City of London Corporation, Civil Disobedience, Eviction, General Assemblies, Legal Commentary, Negotiations, Occupy Everywhere, Occupy London, Occupy London Finsbury Park, Occupy London Stock Exchange, Occupy Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, Politics in the Cave, St Paul's Cathedral, Witness Statements