Climate Campers go on cleaning spree against the government’s dirty investments
Monday,7 September 2009 by Craig Griffiths
This is a blog post I wrote for the climate camp website [now adapted] after an affinity group I was involved in carried out a direct action targetting the treasury on Monday 31st August.
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At 11am today we converged on the Treasury in our cleaning overalls, feather dusters and dishcloths - to clean up the Treasury’s act over their climate change-inducing investments. On this “anti-bank” holiday we dropped a banner highlighting that ‘Climate Change doesn’t take holidays’ - most of the bankers and officials may have had the day off but we were there to press home that time is running out in the fight against climate change.
The government is ignoring its commitments made under the Climate Act by throwing billions in public money at high street banks such as RBS - but doing absolutely nothing to challenge the banks’ investment in environmentally and socially destructive projects such as tar sands in Canada. Our affinity group thought it was time to do something to remind the government that if its really wants to be a global leader on climate change it must stop these investments and instead give political & financial support to renewable technologies. Its most recent track record on this is appalling; blindly following business interests has resulted in madness such as the closure of the Vestas wind turbine blade factory on the Isle of Wight.
After swooping on the Treasury from St James’ Park we moved onto targets in Whitehall - after learning that apparently the Treasury’s windows fall under the remit of the Royal Parks. You can look at the ducks all you like in St. James’ Park, but forget freedom of speech; demonstrations and banners are banned (at least according to the police officers on site). The Inland Revenue buildings, the gates of Downing Street and the Department of Energy & Climate Change were all treated to a visit from our cleaners - but we know that unfortunately there’s still a lot of dirt to be washed away in the area.
No arrests were made, indeed one police officer even found the time to discuss our action with a young kid passing by - who after getting one side of the story soon joined in with our spontaneous consensus decision-based meeting on the lawn. It was the first or second action for many activists in our group; we were delighted that it all managed to come together in such a short space of time. It was also great to move onto direct action after four days of training, sustainable living & movement-building at Climate Camp. There’s much more to come!
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Have a look at a vid of our action here, and a BBC website article here
Take part in the Great Climate Swoop on Ratcliffe Coal-fired Power Station on 17th/18th October!
Tags: Climate Act, climate camp, direct action, tar sands, Vestas