Category: London

1st June 2009
up to 200 cyclists joined the cli­mate rush bike ride tonight out­side chatham house where the cor­po­rate con­fer­ence “coal: an answer to ener­gy secu­ri­ty?” was being held.

Cyclists assem­bled out­side chatham house, while an ener­getic krish­na band on wheels played rather good cov­ers of sex pis­tols and oth­er rous­ing tunes. a sec­ond sound sys­tem was used for short speech­es and announce­ments.

there were quite a few police around, includ­ing some for­ward intel­li­gence and pho­tog­ra­ph­er tak­ing snaps (which depen­dent on a pos­si­ble appeal to the house of lords by police, may soon be a point­less job if they can’t keep all their nice pics on a nice big data­base of inno­cent pro­test­ers).

slight­ly lat­er than planned (isn’t it always), the mass set off on it’s mys­tery bike ride to vis­it ‘cli­mate crime scenes’ and aim­ing to end with a pic­nic.

the ride took in BAA and E‑ON HQs among oth­er places, and after a few rounds of par­lia­ment square, set up a pic­nic on west­min­ster bridge.

—-

The ‘Bike Rush’ gath­ered around 5 pm out­side Chatham House, where ear­li­er in the day 5 Cli­mate Rush activists were arrest­ed when they tried to block the entrance to the con­fer­ence, ‘Coal: An answer to our ener­gy secu­ri­ty’ with a bike sculp­ture and a ban­ner read­ing ‘NO NEW COAL – CLIMATE RUSH’.

By 18.10 when the protest moved off there were almost 300 cyclists and a tan­dem pulled sound sys­tem. The rush toured the main streets of the West End includ­ing Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus, Shaftes­bury Avenue, Oxford St, Regent St, St James St and The Mall, pass­ing Buck­ing­ham Palace and then cycling around Vic­to­ria before head­ing to the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment and West­min­ster Bridge.

Some of the pro­test­ers rode in white dress­es and hats evok­ing the Suf­fragette era, and one came in black as a wid­ow, mourn­ing the end of coal. Many more wore red sash­es, copied from the pur­ple sash­es worn by the Suf­fragettes, but red, to sig­ni­fy­ing the we are at the high­est lev­el of dan­ger — and some car­ried the mes­sage ‘Cli­mate Code Red’. Oth­ers bore the suf­fragette mot­to, ‘Deeds Not Words’, and there were also sash­es say­ing ‘No Air­port Expan­sion’. ‘Action on Coal Now!, Trains Not Planes’ and ‘Ped­al Pow­er.’

Police on ped­al bikes rode with the pro­test­ers, stop­ping the traf­fic at some junc­tions so the ‘Rush’ could safe­ly and legal­ly go through red lights, and at sev­er­al points there were a cou­ple of police For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams (FIT) beaver­ing away as usu­al behind their long-lens cam­eras and video col­lect­ing thou­sands of images of pro­test­ers and jour­nal­ists for the data­base they deny hav­ing. There were also police vans and more police out­side sev­er­al places occu­pied by ‘cli­mate crim­i­nals’, includ­ing the government’s clum­si­ly-named Depart­ment for Busi­ness Enter­prise & Reg­u­la­to­ry Reform (BERR), respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing much of its anti-envi­ron­ment cli­mate warm­ing activ­i­ty.

The ‘Rush’ halt­ed out­side sev­er­al of these offices of com­pa­nies they accuse of crim­i­nal irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty towards the envi­ron­ment, includ­ing BP in St James Square, the British Air­ports Author­i­ty at Vic­to­ria, and BERR. At each stop peo­ple came to the micro­phone to com­ment on the activ­i­ties of these organ­i­sa­tions and oth­ers we had passed, explain­ing how these com­pa­nies were harm­ing our envi­ron­ment.

Police on ped­al bikes rode with the pro­test­ers, stop­ping the traf­fic at some junc­tions so the ‘Rush’ could safe­ly and legal­ly go through red lights, and at sev­er­al points there were a cou­ple of police For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams (FIT) beaver­ing away as usu­al behind their long-lens cam­eras and video col­lect­ing thou­sands of images of pro­test­ers and jour­nal­ists for the data­base they deny hav­ing. There were also police vans and more police out­side sev­er­al places occu­pied by ‘cli­mate crim­i­nals’, includ­ing the government’s clum­si­ly-named Depart­ment for Busi­ness Enter­prise & Reg­u­la­to­ry Reform (BERR), respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing much of its anti-envi­ron­ment cli­mate warm­ing activ­i­ty.

The ‘Rush’ halt­ed out­side sev­er­al of these offices of com­pa­nies they accuse of crim­i­nal irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty towards the envi­ron­ment, includ­ing BP in St James Square, the British Air­ports Author­i­ty at Vic­to­ria, and BERR. At each stop peo­ple came to the micro­phone to com­ment on the activ­i­ties of these organ­i­sa­tions and oth­ers we had passed, explain­ing how these com­pa­nies were harm­ing our envi­ron­ment.

After cycling around Par­lia­ment Square, and stop­ping to express sup­port for the Tamils on hunger strike there, the mass of cyclists came to a halt on West­min­ster Bridge, and after a few min­utes, decid­ed to have the end of ride pic­nic in the mid­dle of it.

A very long ban­ner with the text ‘Remem­ber Remem­ber the 5th of Decem­ber’ — the date of the Cli­mate Demon­stra­tion — as well as a ref­er­ence to the man often claimed as the only per­son to have entered par­lia­ment with hon­est inten­tions, was hung briefly from both sides of the bridge and dis­played it on the road­way.

Police quick­ly cleared the cyclists from the south­bound car­riage­way, but when I left around 15 min­utes lat­er the pic­nic was still con­tin­u­ing on the north­bound side of the bridge, and no traf­fic was mov­ing across the bridge in either direc­tion.

——–

Police Abuse Pow­ers To Pre­vent FA Cup Cli­mate Protest

Police offi­cers unlaw­ful­ly con­fis­cat­ed cam­paign leaflets and T‑shirts from cli­mate pro­test­ers out­side the FA Cup final on Sat­ur­day, pre­vent­ing a legal demon­stra­tion from tak­ing place. Activists from the Camp for Cli­mate Action are call­ing this yet anoth­er exam­ple of over-the-top polic­ing designed to silence envi­ron­men­tal protest, and are redou­bling calls for an inde­pen­dent pub­lic review of the polic­ing of protest.

On Sat­ur­day just after 12 noon, two police offi­cers stopped Alan Wen on his way to meet fel­low cli­mate cam­paign­ers out­side the match. Mr Wen and his fel­low cam­paign­ers had been plan­ning to hand out leaflets to match-goers, explain­ing how E.ON, the spon­sors of the FA Cup, are try­ing to build the UK’s first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in 30 years, which would have dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the cli­mate [1]. Claim­ing to be act­ing under the Lon­don Local Author­i­ties Act, the two police offi­cers seized the fly­ers and T‑shirts – all bear­ing the spoof logo “E.ON: F.OFF” – and demand­ed Mr Wen’s name and address, threat­en­ing to arrest him if he did not com­ply. In fact, the offi­cers had no legal pow­ers to do any of these things, and Mr Wen was not break­ing any laws [2]. He is now con­sid­er­ing mak­ing a for­mal com­plaint.

A spokesper­son from the Camp for Cli­mate Action’s legal team said: “Have the police learned noth­ing from the G20 protests? This was yet anoth­er dis­grace­ful exam­ple of over-the-top polic­ing, designed to pre­vent envi­ron­men­tal protest from tak­ing place. Why are the police abus­ing their pow­ers to pro­tect the prof­its of a giant ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion?”

This inci­dent fol­lows wide­spread pub­lic crit­i­cism of heavy-hand­ed and aggres­sive police tac­tics at the April 1st G20 protests, as well as con­cern about inap­pro­pri­ate use of police sur­veil­lance and stop-and-search pow­ers against envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers [3]. A report by the Nation­al Police Improve­ment Agency, thought to be crit­i­cal of police tac­tics at last August’s Cli­mate Camp protest at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion, has been mys­te­ri­ous­ly kept out of the pub­lic domain [4]. Mean­while, the Cli­mate Camp’s legal team have slammed an upcom­ing review of the polic­ing of protest by Her Majesty’s Inspec­torate of Con­stab­u­lary (HMIC), brand­ing it a “white­wash” and refus­ing to be involved.

In an email to the HMIC explain­ing their deci­sion [5], the Cli­mate Camp’s legal team said “If a tru­ly inde­pen­dent, wide-reach­ing and influ­en­tial pub­lic review of the polic­ing of protest were to be launched, we would con­sid­er becom­ing involved. How­ev­er, the HMIC review is like­ly to be a biased, tooth­less white­wash and so we believe that our time will be bet­ter spent cam­paign­ing against the root caus­es of cli­mate change.”

The human rights organ­i­sa­tion Lib­er­ty have sim­i­lar­ly declined to be involved in the HMIC review.

ENDS

Notes for Edi­tors

[1] Ger­man ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion E.ON have applied for Gov­ern­ment per­mis­sion to build the first new UK coal-fired plant in thir­ty years at Kingsnorth in Kent. If built, this
pow­er sta­tion would pro­duce the same amount of car­bon diox­ide as the world’s 30 least pol­lut­ing coun­tries com­bined. If – as the Gov­ern­ment have sug­gest­ed – the new pow­er plant is fit­ted with a demon­stra­tion “car­bon cap­ture and stor­age” (CCS) device, this would only reduce its emis­sions by a quar­ter. This means that even if the tech­nol­o­gy worked (which is by no means cer­tain), Kingsnorth would still be far more pol­lut­ing than a gas pow­er sta­tion – let alone a switch to wind, solar, tidal, or wave, or sim­ply using less ener­gy in the first place, all of which are viable alter­na­tives.

[2] The Lon­don Local Author­i­ties Act
(see http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/localact1994/ukla_19940012_en_1#l1g4) gives police in Lon­don the pow­er to con­fis­cate lit­er­a­ture “which adver­tis­es, or con­tains or com­pris­es an adver­tise­ment, for com­mer­cial gain”. It only applies to com­mer­cial adver­tis­ing and does NOT give police the pow­er to seize cam­paign leaflets or T‑Shirts. It is per­fect­ly legal to dis­trib­ute free leaflets in a pub­lic place so long as noth­ing is for sale. The Local Author­i­ties Act also con­tains no pro­vi­sions for police to search peo­ple to look for “free lit­er­a­ture”, nor to take people’s names and address­es.

[3] See for exam­ple http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8061050.stm, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/mar/12/protest-kingsnorth and http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/apr/02/g20-climate-camp-protest-london-police-bishopsgate.

[4] http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/05/police-shelve-review-on-kingsnorth-protest/

[5] The full text of the email to the HMIC is copied below:

(Sent Fri­day 29th May 2009)

Dear HMIC,

We are writ­ing to for­mal­ly reject your offer of dis­cussing how we might be involved in the HMIC’s “Review of the Polic­ing of Pub­lic Protest”.

The dis­grace­ful police behav­iour at the G20 protests this April was part of a wor­ry­ing ongo­ing trend in the dis­pro­por­tion­ate and aggres­sive polic­ing of protest. At the Camp for Cli­mate Action at Kingsnorth in 2008 we encoun­tered the indis­crim­i­nate use of stop and search pow­ers, the mass con­fis­ca­tion of per­son­al prop­er­ty, and aggres­sive behav­iour by police offi­cers on mul­ti­ple occa­sions. There is a des­per­ate need for a tru­ly inde­pen­dent pub­lic review into the polic­ing of protest — but this HMIC review will be no such thing, for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

* Lack of inde­pen­dent mem­ber­ship: The HMIC is staffed large­ly by ex-police offi­cers, and despite its claims of inde­pen­dence retains strong ties with both the Home Office and the police. It can­not be trust­ed to car­ry out a full and fair review of police tac­tics.

* Nar­row­ness of scope: The pro­posed HMIC review aims to “Assess the effec­tive­ness and impact of pub­lic order tac­tics” and “iden­ti­fy dif­fi­cul­ties and bar­ri­ers” to their “suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion”. The clos­est it will come to cri­tiquing these tac­tics will be to “exam­ine the over­all direc­tion of pub­lic order goals, strate­gies and tac­tics” with rela­tion to “the acknowl­edged prin­ci­ples of British polic­ing”. The review will not con­sid­er whether some or all of the tac­tics used by police at protests are in fact com­plete­ly inap­pro­pri­ate. It also con­tin­ues to con­sid­er protest as a form of pub­lic order offence — i.e. a form of crim­i­nal­i­ty — rather than a vital demo­c­ra­t­ic right in a free soci­ety.

* Lack of influ­ence: Even if this review were, against all the odds, to pro­duce a seri­ous cri­tique of police prac­tices we have lit­tle faith that its find­ings will lead to any sig­nif­i­cant shift in pol­i­cy or prac­tice. As a case in point, a sim­i­lar review by the NPIA into the polic­ing of the Kingsnorth protest seems to have been buried with­out any pub­lic expo­sure.

If a tru­ly inde­pen­dent, wide-reach­ing and influ­en­tial pub­lic review of the polic­ing of protest were to be launched, we would con­sid­er becom­ing involved. How­ev­er, this HMIC review appears like­ly to be a biased, tooth­less white­wash and so we believe that our time will be bet­ter spent cam­paign­ing against the root caus­es of cli­mate change. We note that the human rights organ­i­sa­tion Lib­er­ty have sim­i­lar­ly declined to be involved.

Yours sin­cere­ly,

The Camp for Cli­mate Action Legal Team

http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

1st June 2009
The Cli­mate Rush geared up for their Ped­al Pow­er Bike Rush this evening by blockad­ing a con­fer­ence, ‘Coal: an answer to ener­gy inse­cu­ri­ty?’ by glu­ing them­selves to a giant bike sculp­ture. The Bike Rush is due to leave from that same place at 6pm sharp this evening.

In prepa­ra­tion for a protest bike ride this evening, sev­en mem­bers of the envi­ron­men­tal action group, ‘Cli­mate Rush’, have obstruct­ed the main entrance to a coal con­fer­ence, ‘Coal: An answer to our ener­gy secu­ri­ty.’ The bike rush: ‘Cli­mate Rush presents Ped­al Pow­er’, will set off from out­side this coal con­fer­ence as it ends at 17:30.

On arriv­ing at Chatham House the Cli­mate Rush­ers held up a bike sculp­ture and a ban­ner that read ‘NO NEW COAL – CLIMATE RUSH’. They were aggres­sive­ly removed by the police and so far two young women, Yamu­na (22, stu­dent) and Han­nah (21, stu­dent) and three oth­ers have been arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

The group was demon­strat­ing against the build­ing of new coal fired pow­er sta­tions, recent­ly giv­en the go ahead by Ed Mil­liband MP. They had cre­at­ed a bike sculp­ture to rep­re­sent how we must look to alter­na­tive sources of ener­gy and trans­port if we are to avoid run­away cli­mate change.

A mem­ber of the group, Mari­na Pep­per, said:

“Our politi­cians are fail­ing us on cli­mate change, allow­ing multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions to con­tin­ue to sell us ener­gy from coal, because there’s a prof­it in it. Putting the desire for prof­its before the needs of peo­ple and our plan­et is moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble. This is why we take direct action and will keep tak­ing direct action”

The Bike Rush begins in St James Square at 17:00 and will end with a ceilidh and pic­nic in an undis­closed loca­tion.

climaterush@gmail.com
http://www.climaterush.co.uk

27th June 2009
Four activists from envi­ron­men­tal action group Cli­mate Rush glued them­selves around a stat­ue in the lob­by of the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment today. Once fixed they spoke about the impacts of cli­mate change, to the sur­prise of MPs, civ­il ser­vants and tourists.

At 10am three women and one man, dressed in white like the orig­i­nal Suf­fragettes and wear­ing red ‘cli­mate’ sash­es, used super­glue to stick their hands around the sword car­ried by a stat­ue of Vis­count Falk­land. Exact­ly one hun­dred years ear­li­er (27th April 1909) a Suf­fragette, Mar­jo­ry Hume, chained her­self to this sword to protest for wom­en’s suf­frage. Police were forced to cut the stone sword to set her free. One hun­dred years on, the police had to rely on sol­vent to unstuck the pro­test­ers.

Rush­er Cadi St John, a twen­ty year old stu­dent at Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty said:

‘A hun­dred years ago women were forced to break the law to have their voice heard in Par­lia­ment. A hun­dred years on and noth­ing’s changed. I’m in my first year at uni and I’m almost ready to give up and become a full-time cam­paign­er about cli­mate change. Like so many of my gen­er­a­tion I’m ter­ri­fied about what the future holds, but instead of envi­ron­men­tal action Labour promis­es new coal fired pow­er sta­tions and a third run­way at Heathrow. This is the only way I can make myself heard.’

Chris Kitchen, anoth­er rush­er and a sec­re­tary for The Insti­tute of Edu­ca­tion said:

‘We don’t want to wake up to a cli­mate cri­sis which will be caused by the same polit­i­cal cow­ardice and chron­ic short-ter­mism as the eco­nom­ic cri­sis. It’s now or nev­er. The politi­cians need to stop rely­ing on unproven tech­nol­o­gy and get stuck into real cli­mate solu­tions.’

Last week Ed Miliband gave the go ahead to a new gen­er­a­tion of coal fired pow­er sta­tions, which will use unproven CCS tech­nol­o­gy to reduce emis­sions. If this tech­nol­o­gy fails it will lock us into a car­bon inten­sive ener­gy future and make it impos­si­ble for Britain to make emis­sions cuts. Cli­mate sci­en­tists pre­dict that there will be no sum­mer Arc­tic ice as ear­ly as next year. This could be the begin­ning of run­away cli­mate change.

http://www.climaterush.co.uk