Local weather Camp Blackheath 2009 – On Wednesday 26 August 2009 I joined a gaggle of local weather activists who have been gathering in entrance of Stockwell Underground Station in south London, ready for instructions to maneuver to wherever that 12 months’s local weather camp was to be held. They have been ‘Blue Group’, at one in every of six places round London, ready to get the key directions and transfer to the location.
It had been chosen as one of many assembly factors due to what occurred there on 22 July 2005. As I wrote, coming “up the escalator at Stockwell station it’s onerous to not shiver on the reminiscence of these movies displaying Jean Charles de Menezes strolling all the way down to catch his final practice, and police coming although the gates in pursuit. There’s a memorial to him outdoors the station, together with a substantial amount of details about the occasion and the misinformation and overlaying up by police.”
It was a horrible mistake made by the Metropolitan Police and the officer in cost was rewarded for it by being put answerable for London’s police. She solely lately misplaced that job after the London Mayor made clear that he had misplaced confidence in her, however an enormous variety of Londoners had misplaced confidence in her and the police in 2002.
After hanging round for whereas, we have been advised to go and sit in a close-by park and wait there, and we sat down and ate our sandwiches whereas some performed video games. Finally at 2pm directions got here and we adopted the leaders onto the tube, alighting at Financial institution and altering to the DLR, most nonetheless not understanding the place the journey would finish.
By the point the DLR arrived in Greenwich the vacation spot had grow to be clear, and we left the station for the lengthy stroll up the hill to Blackheath Widespread, an space of frequent land with an extended pedigree as a gathering place for rebels. Police appeared blissful each at Stockwell and on the journey to look at the activists from a distance and as we walked previous a police station they gave the impression to be in hiding.
The frequent was the location the place John Ball made his well-known speech along with his well-known “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” and urged his peasant viewers to “solid off the yoke of bondage, and recuperate liberty.” However the Peasant’s Revolt ended badly in 1381, with teenage King Richard II wanting on because the priest was briefly hung after which rigorously stored alive to look at his genitals and bowels being eliminated and burnt earlier than he was beheaded and his physique hacked into 4 items.
Jack Cade was somewhat extra lucky after his rebels camped right here in 1450, as he was killed in a battle earlier than he might be executed, however like Ball his severed head was displayed on London Bridge as a warning to others.
In 2009, the authorities quite stood again and watched, together with from a helicopter hovering above because the camp was arrange. As I commented, “With stabilised cameras the picture high quality ought to have been excessive sufficient for them to match the faces in opposition to their database (which after all they declare doesn’t exist.)” Later they introduced in a cherry picker to take footage from, a significantly cheaper possibility.
I’d largely averted photographing earlier local weather camps due to their ‘media coverage’, which as I wrote “seems to be pushed by a number of people with paranoid concepts about privateness and a very irrational concern of being photographed. It actually doesn’t steal your soul!” This acknowledged that press photographers needed to signal the coverage and be accompanied whereas on the location by a minder.
I didn’t have any issues wandering freely and taking footage whereas the location was being arrange, and met many individuals who welcomed me, having met me at earlier environmental protests. And I used to be invited to return later to the camp as a member of the documentation workforce with a sash that allowed me to wander freely. So I got here again two days later to take extra footage, and although there have been a number of individuals who made clear they didn’t wish to be photographed I used to be typically in a position to work as regular.
There have been no uniformed police on the location on my later go to – and as I famous, it “was virtually actually probably the most caring and most law-abiding a part of South London, with no crime, no medicine and little or no alcohol round.” The organisation of the location was really spectacular.
However shortly earlier than I left I observed that one of many police cameras on their cherry picker was following me as I walked round, and after I left the location I used to be “adopted quite ineptly (maybe intentionally so) by a younger black man in plain garments as I wandered round for the subsequent quarter-hour, sometimes writing in his pocket book. It appeared a waste of public cash.”
I’d stopped for some minutes at a number of of the workshops that have been happening on my second go to, and had been impressed by the experience of many, each these main the periods and a few of these contributing to the debates. If individuals like these quite than the politicians had been in positions of energy we might now be in a really significantly better place to keep away from local weather disaster, however sadly what we have now seen is 13 extra years virtually fully wasted.
Extra footage from Wednesday August twenty sixth
Local weather Camp: Blue Group Swoop
Local weather Camp: Setup
And for an account and footage from my day there on Saturday August twenty ninth
Local weather Camp: Saturday
Tags: Blackheath, Blackheath Widespread, Blue Group, cherry picker, Local weather Camp, local weather disaster, clmate change, DLR, documentation workforce, world heating, world warming, Greenwich, Jack Cade, Jean Charles de Menezes, John Ball, London, media coverage, Peasants Revolt, peter Marshall, police, protest, rebels, Stockwell Station, Tube
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