Comment: Occupy London is just getting started
Occupy's international aspect is one of its major strengths – 2012 could be the year the movement starts playing to them.
By Naomi Colvin
Two weeks on from the eviction of Occupy London's most visible camp in St Paul's Churchyard and the analysis of what it meant goes on unabated. I've lost count of the number of academic publications and lectures about Occupy there are in the works. The fact that "peaceful demonstrators exercising their right to protest" have even been spotted in Ambridge does indicate that we've had an impact on the popular consciousness too.
A YouGov poll released this week provides some support for these suspicions. Behind the headlines, which emphasised that respondents were in general doubtful about whether Occupy had achieved anything substantial, the figures show that 41% said that they supported the aims of Occupy London – that's an increase of four per cent from when the same question was asked four months ago. Although activists are supposed to be above such things, I can't help but think that many politicians would be quite happy with poll results like those.
Although many of those who lived at Occupy London Stock Exchange at St Paul's are still coming to terms with its loss, in many respects the fact the camp isn't there anymore hasn't changed the working patterns of those involved in Occupy London all that much. The working groups still meet, and they still meet in many of the same places. There's a whole group of pubs, bars and sandwich shops on and around Ludgate Hill still benefiting from the Occupy daytime trade.
While it may take a while for the emotional centre of the London movement to move, there's not been an enormous shift in the focus of those meetings, either: attention had begun to turn to the spring even while the camp was still in place. So what is it that people are talking about now?
One of the ironies of Occupy as it has manifested itself worldwide is that what is, at heart, an extraordinarily international movement has made much of its progress in very national terms. The day that Occupy London came into being, October 15th last year, was a day of action in over 1,000 cities worldwide. Yet, if you wanted to take issue with that YouGov poll and point to the critical moments for Occupy London since mid-October, you'd probably be looking at the examination of conscience within the Church of England, the brief political oneupmanship in defining an approach to "crony capitalism" at the turn of the year and the furore over Stephen Hester's bonus. I'd argue that all three moments were of some importance, but it can hardly be denied that all three were very British affairs.
As Occupy London regroups, its international links come back into focus. The next red letter days for the global movement fall in mid-May. In Europe, May 15th marks the one-year anniversary of the indignados beginning their mass occupations of public spaces in Spain – and this really was the moment last year when the spirit of the Arab Spring finally reached Europe. The gatherings in Spain, broadcast online as they were happening, were seen almost immediately as a national event of huge importance, replicated outside Spanish embassies throughout the world. In a matter of weeks, the spark spread to squares in Greece, Italy, France and beyond.
In the US, the convergence of the G8 and Nato summits that start a few days after the 15th have long been a focus of attention, with initial preparations for a mass gathering in Chicago being made from late last year. It is probably testament to the strength of this mobilisation that the G8 summit has recently been moved from Chicago to the comparatively secluded setting of Camp David. Nato will still be meeting in Chicago from May 19th, though, and it seems safe to say that delegates can expect a welcoming party when they get there.
There are certainly plans afoot on both sides of the Atlantic and, while you wouldn't expect me to give the whole game away right now, there are already indications that Occupiers, indignados and sympathetic activists internationally are thinking about how to coordinate at a deeper level than simply staging events on the same day. There are new online networks for communication and a series of physical international meetings are scheduled in the next couple of months.
Intriguingly, Adbusters (the Canadian online magazine which is credited with disseminating the idea of Occupy Wall Street before it happened) has already called for the international movement to "throw its weight behind a single demand". Whether the one per cent "Tobin Tax" Adbusters sees the movement rallying around is precisely what is required to lift us out of the mess we're in is questionable, but a policy demand articulated on an international scale would be an undeniably impressive achievement.
Occupy's international aspect is one of its major strengths – 2012 could be the year the movement starts playing to them.
Naomi Colvin is an activist involved in the Occupy London Stock Exchange and UK Friends of Bradley Manning organisations.
The opinions in politics.co.uk's Comment and Analysis section are those of the author and are no reflection of the views of the website or its owners.
