It started well as DLR passengers were entertained by an apparently BP-sponsored performance singing the praises of the company that manages to produce 4.4% more oil and gas per year and still somehow remain committed to sustainability. The performance was scuppered though by an increasingly doubt-ridden singer who finally can't take any more of the bullshit and tears off her shiny green skirt to reveal a second skirt covered in incriminating facts about the company's record.

Unfortunately, shortly after this mini-epic, their guitar-led hymn to greenwash was met with a series of stony-faced obstacles. First, the British Transport police kicked them off the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) platform at Customs House for 'unacceptable behaviour' (ie. singing).

Then, on the advice of BP, ExCel security refused entry to the AGM one all-singing shareholder, who was admittedly sporting a frightwig exactly matching the green of BP's helios logo. (Did this in itself constitute enough evidence to justify overriding his legal right to attend the meeting? No, but perhaps the leaflet he was brandishing that itemised 8 reasons why BP is anything but clean and green, and the fact that LRT is working towards the dismantlement of the entire oil industry, all added up to convince BP that illegal exclusion is a risk worth taking.) The
shareholder likened BP's presence at ExCel to the DSEi arms fair, held at the centre every two years, and which is attracting seriously negative publicity for the fair's organiser, Reed Elsevier.

Meanwhile, the LRT troupe began singing a darker hommage to BP at the AGM's entrance, managing also to thrust leaflets into the hands of a swarm of BP logo-festooned temporary staff as they fluttered into the building muttering as one 'It's not our fault - we need the money!' However, they didn't reach the song's denouement, ('there might be an end, if we can stop BP and its friends'), as yet again the police rudely interrupted it
in mid-flow. This time they wanted to move the troupe into a
specially-prepared 'protest pen', where it would be impossible to
distribute leaflets, be heard, or even be seen due to a pointless piece of advertising street furniture. So this gracious offer was refused, and the troupe kept on with the show where they stood until dragged off ExCel's private property by the police, passing several perplexed-looking BP meet-and greeters, and dumped on DLR property where they again started leafletting until again dragged off the station, this time in a touching collaboration between Metropolitan Petroleum and British Transport police.

This was a small incursion into BP's airbrushed, reputation-managed, dissent-free, soul dead airspace, which yet again highlighted the company's attitude to anything that threatens the brand image or the triple bottom line of 'profit, profit and profit'. The next incursion by LRT will be Art Not Oil 2006, the third year of an exhibition dedicated to using art to expose the dark heart of big oil, as well as being committed to severing the sponsorship link between oil companies and cultural institutions, and lastly hoping to inspire positive visions of a world beyond oil and profit. It opens at the 491 Gallery in London on June 10th and travels round the country for the rest of the year.

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London Rising Tide,
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street,
London E1 1ES
www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk
Tel: 07708 794665

See also the Camp for Climate Action site: www.climatecamp.org.uk
as well as Climate Indymedia: www.climateimc.org