The wonderful poet Gail Wronsky is in London for a semester and has been tracking the Occupy movement that’s been unfolding in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Over the weekend, around 700 Occupy Londoners marched to Westminster, some British politicians joining them, prompting arrests.
Gail visited the St. Paul’s Occupy camp in the days before the march, after the Mayor of London had given the Occupiers an eviction notice. Then, following a flood of public pressure and some negotiations, the Mayor climbed meekly down from his position and said that Occupy London could stay until just after the New Year. Occupy London organizers, however, have tentative plans to stay until the Olympic Games begin in the summer of 2012.
Here’s Gail:
“NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCOUNT TENTS”
Freezing outside St. Paul’s with Occupy Londonby Gail Wronsky
They’re more literary than we are, the Brits, as the bit of signage I’ve quoted in the title rather deliciously shows. There’s a matchmaking service here for singles who love Shakespeare! And they’re gloomier. In London, The Biography Peter Ackroyd quotes Pierre Jean Grosley’s remark that “melancholy prevails in London in every family, in circles, in assemblies, at public and private entertainments . . .” So clearly I should not have been expecting celebratory scenes from Hair when I went to St. Paul’s Cathedral to check out the Occupy London tent city. Maybe it’s the ubiquitous gray mist, or the cold, or the eating of red meat—
I’m an Angeleno teaching in London for a semester, and trying to pack in as much traveling as I can around my classes. My first encounter with the Occupy Wall Street movement happened to happen in Istanbul. I hadn’t been aware of what was going on in New York, so I was stunned when I got off a trolley in the Sultanamet neighborhood and saw a group of 10-15 people, men and women, mostly young, holding signs that said, “We Support the American Revolutionaries,” “Occupy Wall Street,” “Occupy Istanbul.” It was thrilling, actually, to find out what people were up to. This particular group was terrifically energized, too, the air around them sizzling with life and hope. Memories of the anti-Viet Nam War era cascaded happily through me.
But this isn’t 1973 or Ann Arbor, Michigan. Back in London, there are over 200 tents outside St. Paul’s. And the British, as many have observed, even the young ones, are a fairly melancholy tribe. Signs saying “Stay Calm and Move Forward,” the ultimate slogan of imperialist hauteur, are posted amid signs calling for an end to capitalism. This is a generation (I know because I teach them) that sets up infrastructure before plugging in their guitars and cranking up the amps.
Occupy London has a first aid tent, a legal advice tent, an IT tent, a massage tent, a food compound with an elaborate volunteer schedule, a meditation tent. Where was the ideology tent? The Karl Marx reading group? When I visited, someone with a microphone led a discussion about personal space and not being judgmental. It was cold. It didn’t seem as though anyone was having fun. It reminded me, in fact, of a meeting of the Topanga Elementary P.T.A. with all the talk about “boundaries,” and “non-hierarchical structure.” How could this group possibly have any effect or influence among the marble-encased, ridiculously bewigged legal mucky-mucks of this city, much less among the bullet-proof Lear jet corporate heavyweights? I want desperately for a charismatic leader to rise up among them and give everyone focus and conviction, and yet, as Chuck, my companion on this excursion said, “if someone like that did appear, they wouldn’t accept him or her.” They’re really trying to do it in a new way.
Somehow I think, like many other people do, that in their gentle and respectful ways they will accomplish something. They do, I dearly hope, represent the start of a significant political sea change. They’re there. And maybe that’s all they really need to be for now. May Mahatma Gandhi’s grace light their way.
The truly weird thing about the London occupation so far is the effect it’s had on the Anglican church. Already three clerics, including Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser, have resigned because a group of kids, basically, is camping outside! What a spectacular over-reaction! Kind of unfigurable. It’s like leaving your marriage because the garbage wasn’t collected on Thursday, right? And yet . . . watching these men on the telly, I find myself admiring them. Here are three middle-aged guys with no pensions, no real marketable skills, in a country with epidemic unemployment, quitting their jobs because Christianity means certain non-negotiable things to them, one of which is a commitment to nonviolence. They quit because they refuse to be part of something, the eviction process, which may lead to a violent encounter between protesters and police.
Working at a Catholic school (Loyola Marymount University) I understand that there are complex, and no doubt seriously hierarchical and political issues behind the scenes here at St. Paul’s. Their first reaction to the occupation was to shut the cathedral doors, doing which, they soon realized, made them look bad. Then there’s the issue of losing tourist revenue (over $200,00 a day, they claim). So, as we say in the states, “it’s complicated.” But the resignations can be seen as heroic, as harbingers of things to come, of consciousness being awakened. I’m hopeful.
Finally, we did encounter a political conversation outside one of the tents. Two gray-haired fellows and a young man with one long trademark dread were trying patiently to listen to a woman who had come, rather obviously, to complain about the occupation. “How can you reject the system and still reap its benefits?” she said, reminding me of all those ad hominem attacks leveled at hippies in the old days (“you want to reject the culture and still have good stereo systems . . . “) The young man said, “We’re in the system. We’re part of the system. We pay V.A.T. We just think things could be done more fairly.” The complaining woman was one of those people who talk and don’t listen, so she kept repeating her mantra. The young man eventually walked away. The older guys stepped in, maintaining a remarkable degree of good-spiritedness.
Ken Livingstone, one of the occupiers, has said, “The Mayor of London’s office has wildly misjudged the issue, making the Occupy movement the enemy but failing to act on public concerns about jobs and growth.” Brilliant. And almost Shakespearian in its rhythms. So, yes, there’s hope, I thought as I caught one delightful whiff of patchouli on my way back onto the tube.
POST SCRIPT:
As of now, the tents remain, although city officials are sifting through ancient bits of small print and survey maps in order to find an excuse to have them moved.
Yesterday, some excrement was found inside St. Paul’s, which has brought on new calls for the annihilation of the encampment. From what I can gather in shops and on public transport, the population of London seems unimpressed. Nine out of ten people assume the stuff was planted by the opposition. They weren’t born yesterday. Public support remains pretty strong.