Last year, London Rising Tide (LRT) 'celebrated' BP's Annual General Meeting by holding a Carnival Against Oil Wars & Climate Chaos outside. Several concerned members of the public also entered the meeting to make absolutely sure their concerns hadn't been swamped by the high tide of toxic greenwash that had flooded the South Bank for the day.

12 months have now passed, and what have we seen..?

* BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and all the other big oil companies profiting handsomely from the murderous, deceit-ridden war in Iraq;
* fossil fuel-induced climate chaos hitting Europe in August, killing tens of thousands of mostly older people in record-breaking temperatures. ‘Be more tomorrow than we are today’ trumpets BP emptily in this year’s Annual Report. Can we really survive in its bleak future? ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3139549.stm,  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/29/world/main570810.shtml)
* construction began on BP's Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, becoming an enormous embarrassment, proving the company's green and socially responsible rhetoric to be nothing but top dollar public relations. Don’t take our word for it: even the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail are saying it - (www.baku.org.uk)
* BP’s oil & gas operations throughout the world, eg. in Colombia (www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/), West Papua (www.jatam.org/english/case/bt/), Alaska (www.alaskaactioncenter.org), Russia, Angola and even here in the UK continued to cause destitution, ecological devastation and climatic havoc;
* as BP oilworkers saw their personal safety, union rights and wages in tatters (www.oilc.org/), BP boss Lord Browne watched his own salary soar to £5m.

LRT is taking action today partly against BP, but also as part of an ongoing campaign to persuade the OFH, sometimes known as the People's Palace, not to shut its doors to the public for the day in exchange for BP's hefty fee, and to cancel next year's BP booking. How about replacing it with a free public event showing what a fossil fuel free future could look like, with loads of bands performing with a (non-corporate) renewably-powered PA?

Next stop for LRT is an ‘Exhibition of Resistance to BP and Big Oil’, running from June 15th-21st 2004. This series of actions and events will run alongside the BP-sponsored National Portrait Award (at London’s National Portrait Gallery), and reveal a far truer portrait of an oil company. Once it was OK for a cigarette firm to sponsor the NPA – now it’s time for all of us to use our creativity to kick Big Oil out of our museums and galleries…(and then get rid of them altogether). Get in touch to find out more or to let us know what you might contribute.

Thanks for reading, and keep on doing what you can for peace, justice, the environment and the long-term survival of our planet.