Three arrests as activists take site for Edinburgh Camp for Climate Action

Whats the point of having a swoop if the camp is already taken. Climate camp just gets sillier. "Tripod stages", swoops that aren't. CC is turning into a laughing stock.

Previous comment disruptive non news. Please hide.

The poster made a valid criticism of a tactic, which is rapidly becoming silly, undersupported and imnefective. I know quite a few people inside cc who are sick of the camping tactic, and I hate how stage managed the whole thing is

It does seem a little pointless devising a tactic – the ‘swoop’ – and encouraging activists to travel to Edinburgh for what would have been a fun-day of playing cat-and-mouse with the police only to be told that they never really intended to do that. This may have been the most sensible thing to do, but the CC cannot claim to be run by open consensus decision-making and then the small clique that runs it arbitrarily decides to do something different.

CC is not quite ‘turning into a laughing stock’ but it does seem to be missing the point. If the camp had chosen to go anywhere else in Edinburgh then the police would be forced to split their numbers between the camp and RBS’s headquarters. Although it looks good from a media perspective to be next to RBS, it is not only assisting the police enormously but it is now going to make the planning ‘day of action’ against RBS far more difficult to organise. It also means that unless it attracts truly large numbers, which seems unlikely, giving RBS a bird’s eye view of the camp may have precisely the opposite effect and persuade them that it not a serious threat to its lending activities.

I know a lot of people such as myself as going up at the weekend and so hopefully there should be a good turnout for the day of action.

It doesn't matter how many people turn up, shutting down RBS HQ for a day is unlikely to disrupt its lending activities, the money already lent the damage being done. Although when their employees don't turn up for work on the 23rd it will be claimed as an amazing victory for the environmental movement. Your time in Scotland would be best spent and most appreciated engaging with and taking action alongside established ongoing struggles, it's a far more rewarding and effective experience than standing outside a bank asking for it to reform its investment policies.

Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.

I’ve just come back from the camp and although people are in good spirits it looks at if numbers are way down. There were only about 120 people when i left and the swoops only attracted about 40 – so were still short of 840 people. So please come and support us and also bring water as well as this seems to have gone wrong as well.

Doh - the climate camp is run in an open way, apart from the Land group, which chooses the site to be taken, and how to take it. This unfortunately cannot be open, for reasons to do with the structure of society and the role of the police in protecting it! If you refuse to understand this and instead see it as a clique running the camp, you are naive, shit-stirring and/or not involved in the direct action scene.

If the only way to outfox the police is to take the site before the swoop gets there, then so be it. My ego isn't bothered by that, and I'd be glad by turning up to the swoop to have enabled the site to be taken. I'd get there and pitch in. It's an old tactic that has been used countless times with taking squatted social centres and much more - a small group find a way in, stay there overnight, and when the large group that meets at the meeting point to take the building arrive, they are let in and start transforming the place.

There seems to be a huge lack of trust in these comments about other activists. That's a pity, and not something we can easily build a better world and confront the old one with!

I may put my energy into other places now than the Camp for Climate Action, but we can at least be active in changing the world, rather than just typing fast here.....