G20 Climate Camp

Once the kettle closed around the protest outside the Bank of England I decided to head over to the Climate Camp to see what was going on. Due to pre-planning that was so half-arsed I hadn't bothered to look at a map I was expecting Bishopsgate to be a good half hours walk away from the Bank of England. I was then quite surprised to find that the Climate Camp had set up the other end of Threadneedle street.

When I arrived at around 13:15 the camp had already sprung up along Bishopsgate between St Helen's Place to the south and London Wall Street to the north. The campers had set up their own boundary at either end of the camp and set up tents, tables and sound systems within the site. Beyond the camps own boundary the police, in soft-uniform, had set up a porous cordon that allowed people to come and go from the camp at will. The police had also deployed officers within the camp which could easily come together to form cordons between the camp and the surrounding buildings if the need arose.


My coverage of the event in the weeks running up to the protest meant I was probably less popular at the Climate Camp then the police so I didn't stick around for long. From what I did see the mood at the camp seemed, as always, friendly and good natured. Campers sat around chatting, sharing food, playing musical instruments, dancing, holding meditation circles and reciting god awful poetry. With the police cordon open the camp was joined by local school children and people who were obviously dressed down bankers. All of these people were welcomed by the campers and allowed to freely and peacefully mingle. The atmosphere is well captured by this video shot at around the time I was there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc1jCsESLAU
The contrast between the scenes at the Climate Camp and the nearly violent scenes at the Bank of England is quite interesting. It is the sort of thing that a female MI5 officer in her early to mid-30's would describe as displaying the juxtaposition of "good" protesters versus "bad" protesters. The idea being that this display is to encourage disaffected people to join ineffective "good" protests rather then more effective "bad" protests. At around 13:45 I decided to leave the Climate Camp to see what was happening at the Stop The War Coalition protest at the US Embassy. As I left I witnessed a terrible indictment of modern society. Around 200 metres north of the Climate Camp there was a pub showing the news of a big screen TV. Outside the pub a group of around 100 people had gathered to watch, on TV, events that were happening 200 metres away from them.

When I returned at around 15:30 the atmosphere over the whole area had changed from the worse. At the Climate Camp the soft, porous cordon had been replaced by a sealed cordon made up of hardcore Uxbridge TSG officers in level 2 dress. Although many of them were wearing their NATO helmets from their belts rather then on their heads I did see them make a couple of snatch arrests as well as push, shove and punch a few protesters. To the campers credit they remained calm and good natured in spite of provocation. This included a chinless wonder of a banker who went on a little mission to march through the camp hurling abuse at anyone who came close to him. To be fair to the police an inspector did eventually pull this man to one side and give him the "Fuck off now or I'll nick you speech." At around 19:00, after I'd left, this happened. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t244-zEENSs

Aside from showing the polices general attitude to the the G20 demonstrations the video reveals several interesting things;

• Sussex Police Officers. These can be identified by their all black riot shields and the "KB" designation on their helmets. Sussex is several police jurisdictions away from the City of London so their presence along with officers from Hampshire shows just how large the G20 policing operation was. Also there are rumours of large protests happening in Sussex so it appears they were involved in the operation in order to train them to operate under the Metropolitan Police command structure.

• Police Conference. 30 seconds into the video you can see "Bronze" squad sergeants with orange epaulets in conference with "Silver" inspectors with white epaulets and "Gold" chief inspectors with yellow epaulets. This shows that the polices command structure was under little or no pressure at the time and were able to well plan their next move.

• The Protesters. In the video you can see and hear that the protesters are standing, facing the police lines, with their hands in the air chanting "This is not a riot!" This is important because it shows that at the time of the baton charge the protesters were posing no threat to either the police or members of the general public. I also shows that the rather then being some sort of violent hardcore the protesters aren't familiar with this type of contact with the police. In this type of situation more experienced protesters would stand with their backs to police lines. This reduces confrontation with the police, makes it harder for them to land baton strikes and stops the police using some of their dirtier tricks like punching people in the throat or kicking them in the balls.