29 August 2009
climate camp, blackheath, today
As I don't seem to be able to load any pictures to Blogger (more ftp problems, perhaps?), I've put up the photos from the Climate Camp at Blackheath here as a Flickr set.
It's probably the cleanest place I've ever seen! I mean that in all seriousness - they're running an incredibly organised thing down there (and what it is isn't quite clear: Climate Camp tend to picket and protest at things, like the G20. Here they've just set up camp and put on meetings for a week, raising awareness about climate change and related matters). The campers are incredibly young, or perhaps I am just getting old. There were a few proper crusties about, and not a little juggling, but mostly it was perky twenty-somethings making vats of food, giving presentations and asking me if I were a journalist ('I might write something on my blog!' I squeaked, happy just to be thought of as a member of the press, rather than worried I might be kicked out, which was in fact quite likely - the mainstream media coverage, as you might imagine, has not been very positive).
Anyway, as Owen pointed out as we walked beneath the very good, and somewhat Benjaminian 'Capitalism IS Crisis' sign, this is it - the Climate Camp people, the RMT and the odd Trotskyist group. Whatever organised resistance there is in Britain, it looks like this: unable to formulate a properly economic response to the economic crisis, whatever opposition to the undead spectacle of neoliberalism there is has found itself moored on the shores of environmentalism and the odd industrial strike. Whilst these are obviously important things, there are so many gaps left open: I mean, the banks, they belong to us! The bankers can't just go back to those grotesque bonuses, can they? The fact that they can with barely a pause can only mean that when the crash happens again, and it will, it'll be even more catastrophic. Capitalism IS crisis: a Tory government (however weak) will be more of the same, but somehow even worse. Labour will spend years in the wilderness and come up with another New Labour plan (Neo-New Labour perhaps). The minute political oscillation around the centre-right will carry on forever and ever until there's one pigeon in Trafalgar Square, half a job for one unpaid intern, and one train costing £500 for a ten minute journey.
It's probably the cleanest place I've ever seen! I mean that in all seriousness - they're running an incredibly organised thing down there (and what it is isn't quite clear: Climate Camp tend to picket and protest at things, like the G20. Here they've just set up camp and put on meetings for a week, raising awareness about climate change and related matters). The campers are incredibly young, or perhaps I am just getting old. There were a few proper crusties about, and not a little juggling, but mostly it was perky twenty-somethings making vats of food, giving presentations and asking me if I were a journalist ('I might write something on my blog!' I squeaked, happy just to be thought of as a member of the press, rather than worried I might be kicked out, which was in fact quite likely - the mainstream media coverage, as you might imagine, has not been very positive).
Anyway, as Owen pointed out as we walked beneath the very good, and somewhat Benjaminian 'Capitalism IS Crisis' sign, this is it - the Climate Camp people, the RMT and the odd Trotskyist group. Whatever organised resistance there is in Britain, it looks like this: unable to formulate a properly economic response to the economic crisis, whatever opposition to the undead spectacle of neoliberalism there is has found itself moored on the shores of environmentalism and the odd industrial strike. Whilst these are obviously important things, there are so many gaps left open: I mean, the banks, they belong to us! The bankers can't just go back to those grotesque bonuses, can they? The fact that they can with barely a pause can only mean that when the crash happens again, and it will, it'll be even more catastrophic. Capitalism IS crisis: a Tory government (however weak) will be more of the same, but somehow even worse. Labour will spend years in the wilderness and come up with another New Labour plan (Neo-New Labour perhaps). The minute political oscillation around the centre-right will carry on forever and ever until there's one pigeon in Trafalgar Square, half a job for one unpaid intern, and one train costing £500 for a ten minute journey.
