100 people gathered and then what?

A hundred posh people (and Ian Bone) pranced around singing merrily, then fucked off to their million pound semi's!!

So, how does this creative movement with lots going for it get turned into something more radical and edgy in time for Christmas - any thoughts Aunty?

The second event organised by Climate Rush in less than a week, around a hundred people gathered outside the RBS head offices near Liverpool Street Station, although a large percentage of those were press or others with cameras. The police were there to in great numbers guarding every door to the vast RBS building and plenty more in reserve in vans hidden away in the back street just in case. An uncomfortable mix of Met and City cops, they needn't have worried as the hastily organised 'rush' had attracted only a small crew and the action turned into more of a picnic than an full frontal assault on the bank.

Despite being a climate rush event it did attract the local Whitechapel Anarchist, the Government of the Dead and Class Wars Ian Bone. So-called 'FIT' were there too to take some snaps and make voice inaccurate observations about people personal lives. Crowds of city workers took photos with their mobiles from vantage points on the opposite side of the road and RBS employees watched from the balconies inside their glass fortress.

Speeches where made (amplified over the tandem towed trailer sound system) and highlighted the how this bank which is now mostly owned by the tax payer continues to supply funding to industries complicit in climate crimes. Much was made of a certain wankers retirement payoff and a cap was handed round to top up his pension should he choose to forgo his undeserved wind fall (the £8.27 collected was later given to a homeless person who seemed more in need). Also raised during the speeches was the mobilisations being planned around the G20 in April.

Many passers by enquired what was going on, at least one joined in. There were no arrests, no rush. Lots of cameras, little to shoot. Some food, some tea, little anger but a bit of dancing.

By getting a hoodie, a scarf, a black and red flag and being kettled for 6 hours.......... makes so much more of a statement dont you think?

Kids its not a binary choice between 'dress up like a fanny and dance about' or 'dress up like a fanny (in black) and get kettled'. The choices you should be making are based on your goals, not what protest subculture you subscribe to.

Now Climate Rush believe that associating their non-volent direct action with the suffragettes, and generally being awfully nice, pleasant and so on, helps their cause - which is to get an overhaul on the govts energy policy. They may well be right. You need to ask whether that is *your* goal, not whether it matters what they came dressed as and whether they charged the police. Theory and form, y'know.

lol at ian bone looking decidedly unamused byt the proceedings!

By the by, ian hasn't been in Class War for decades, tho i can see why the author assumed he was.

my advice would be fuck even conversing with them, keep hitting the streets with the flyers - they are literally shitting bricks about this one and are really scared there is another poll tax riot coming only this time something even bigger than that. the army may be on standby but the army are not going to do shit once they really it's their families in the streets too MAKING HISTORY!!

Your Mothers Farthers was on the front line:

Twenty-five years ago, an accelerated programme of pit closures triggered the miners' strike, which divided friends and families and ended with the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

Ian McMillan's poem for the Miners Strike

It feels like a hundred years ago, or it could just be last week When they stood on a freezing picket line and history took a turn When communities refused to die or turn the other cheek And what did we learn, eh? What did we learn?

For a year the pit wheels stood stock still, And money dwindled, then ran out But collectivism's hard to kill And if you stand and listen, you'll still hear them shout... But what did we learn, eh? What did we learn?

It feels like just a week ago, or it could be a hundred years When the police vans charged with their sirens on through the silent weeping streets;

And they cooked and marched and argued through a mist of pain and fear And a shut down pit's a symbol of depression and defeat So what did we learn, eh? What did we learn?

The past is not just Kings and Queens, it's those like me and you Who clashed with a woman at Number 10, who had to stand and fight Cos when your way of life's being smashed to bits, what else can you do?

As the pickets braziers glow and smoke in the freezing Yorkshire night; What did we learn, he? What did we learn? Buy frozen peas where the braziers burned What did we learn? What should we learn?

Ian McMillan, March 2009

Now the Sons and Daughters of those, and the Mothers Farthers of those who stood along side, are now saying NO NEW COAL, attacking the very people you once suported, who said this was NOT A CLASS WAR?

I sing a song called 'Soul Power Not Coal Power', and sometimes dedicate it to the recently striking Drummond coalminers in Colombia, because I believe in the right of people to make a decent living without being condemned to wage slavery of any kind, but particularly the kind that forces them to mine for coal in appalling conditions deep underground. There's got to be a better world out there somewhere for all of us.

When it comes to climate change, as it begins to bite, it is biting most remorselessly on the world's most dispossessed, poverty-stricken and hard-working people. So that's why I, bourgeois son-of-a-gun that I am, go to events like this and Climate Camp and try to raise a racket for climate justice...

Keep well all...

Senor Carbonito

PS. For more on Drummond, see  http://www.laborrights.org/end-violence-against-trade-unions/colombia/1604

Use the link below to complain about trouble you saw yesterday.

 http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/index/complaints/forms/form_complaint.htm