OCCUPY Leaves St Paul’s - Where Now for Protest?

February 29, 2012, 3:10 PM GMT+0

It was bound to happen sooner or later and this week it did: the OCCUPY camp which has been pitched outside St Paul’s Cathedral since last October was finally cleared. But have the protesters made a difference? And what future do such protests have?

The appearance of pitched tents on the land in front of the steps of St Paul’s last autumn may have been sudden but didn’t come out of the blue. It was the British manifestation of a global development in political protest inspired by the Arab spring and facilitated by the use of social media for political ends. The occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo this time last year prompted a wave of similar protests not just in the Arab world but in the west too. Anti-capitalist western protesters found inspiration in the success of vast numbers of Egyptians in bringing down what had seemed an impregnable regime.

The simple occupation of land provided an effective means of peaceful protest: OCCUPY was born.

In July a protest camp suddenly sprang up in Zuccotti Square in New York. Similar camps appeared in major cities throughout the world and London joined the club in October. The sea of tents right by the main entrance to St Paul’s put the cathedral itself into a panic. On one hand, what the protestors were protesting about was something the church itself had preached against: the havoc and hardship created by the excesses of global capitalism. But on the other, the camp was an eyesore, a potential health hazard, an obstacle or, at the very least, a disincentive to visitors who might want to visit the cathedral (and spend their money there). The cathedral authorities were divided about what to do. One of its canons, Giles Fraser, resigned in protest at the possibility that if legal means were pursued to clear the camp, the result could be forced eviction by bailiffs and even violence.

The camp lasted a lot longer than many people thought it would. While it was there all the parties involved – the protestors, the cathedral authorities, the City of London and the police – cooperated with each other to make sure that so long as the camp was in place the protest could be made without tensions boiling over. The protestors themselves made clear that if ever they were obliged to leave they would do so peacefully.

That is what happened earlier this week when the high court gave final authority for the site to be cleared. Now it has gone. A smaller camp stays on for a while nearby in Finsbury Square but few think it will remain for long.

So has OCCUPY made any difference?

Some would say it has made a great deal of difference. Mainstream politicians, they claim, have been forced to take notice of a protest movement which has attracted not a little public sympathy. From the Prime Minister down, with his public condemnation of ‘crony capitalism’, politicians have expressed the view that the protestors may have a point, even if they take it too far. What’s more, there has been real change as a result of what OCCUPY has drawn attention to. The bonus culture, for example, has undergone a transformation. The shift in public sentiment forced Stephen Hester, the boss of RBS, to refuse a bonus worth nearly a million pounds and Lloyds Bank actually took back some of the bonuses previously awarded to some of its staff.

Sceptics, however, say that such changes in public sentiment and in the response of capitalists themselves were happening anyway. What’s more, they say, it’s easy for politicians to make emollient speeches, quite another for them to introduce really radical changes of the sort the protestors were demanding. After all, they weren’t asking for tweaks to the bonus system but fundamental changes to capitalism, indeed its overthrow. Their banner, ‘Capitalism is Crisis’ said it all. So how far has their protest progressed toward achieving their goals?

‘Not a bit’, their opponents would say; and then add, for good measure, ‘a good thing too’. In their eyes OCCUPY represents childish idealism. Capitalism is the most effective economic system human beings have ever invented, they argue. Of course it has its drawbacks, as all human projects do, but these are best dealt with by patient reform. That is exactly what has gone on over the three hundred years or so that capitalism has been the dominant economic force in human affairs. The mass of mankind is immeasurably richer as a consequence and the wealth it has generated has enabled education, healthcare and a great deal else to reach people who could not otherwise have dreamed of it. If there are still major problems with the system, as indeed there are, the way forward is to deal with them one by one and not overthrow the system itself. The OCCUPY protestors are simply baying at the moon.

So, as the OCCUPY camp disappears, is that the end of the story? The protestors themselves would say most emphatically. Whatever truth there may or may not once have been in this reformist account of capitalism, they say, it most certainly does not reflect what is happening in the world now. Capitalism is not making the world better but worse. The era of its success is over. Inequality is rising again and, in many parts of the world, in extreme forms. Even in developed countries, the real incomes of the many are stagnating or even falling as the incomes of the rich soar. Environmental degradation continues to be rampant and the ultimate threat of climate change remains as great as ever, notwithstanding the explosion of hot air emissions by politicians on the subject. Meanwhile the whole system is supported by a vast and expanding bubble of debt which must ultimately explode. We are rushing to the abyss.

In the eyes of many of those who take this view, the problems are beyond solution by democratic politicians. The democratic system itself pushes party politicians in search of votes into a middle-ground where radical action is impossible. All they can do is try to patch and mend and that just isn’t sufficient. The danger is that once their failures become too obvious to ignore, the way will be open for extremists of left and right, ready, if necessary, to use violence to seize and then hold power. Theirs will be a very different sort of protest from the resolutely peaceful form OCCUPY represents.

So do protest movements like OCCUPY have a future that could actually make a difference? That is the question that hangs in the air as the tents and the idealists depart from St Paul’s.

What’s your view?

  • Do you support or oppose the OCCUPY movement?
  • Do you think it made any real difference?
  • Should the camp outside St Paul’s have been allowed to stay, removed sooner or evicted when it was?
  • Do you think the protestors had a serious message to deliver or were impractical idealists without any substantial programme for how to make the world a better place?
  • Do you share their view that ‘Capitalism is Crisis’? If not, do you think that capitalism can be reformed by democratic politicians in ways that would spread greater welfare through the world?
  • Do you share the view that the likely failure of democratic politicians to make the current system work better will bring extremists of left or right to power?
  • And, finally, do you think there is any future for radical, peaceful protest that might actually make a difference?

Join the debate by using the Disqus comment box below.