OccupyLSX weighs up offer from Corporation of London
November 2, 2011 Category: News, Statement 17 Comments 
Occupy London Stock Exchange (OccupyLSX) today met with the Corporation of London at their request. There were seven representatives from OccupyLSX including its legal representative, Paul Ridge of Bindmans, and two representatives from the Corporation.
The Corporation said that they had no objection to the camp continuing until New Year, with the only condition being a clear path for fire access along St Paul’s Churchyard, which would involve a slight reduction in the size of the camp. Representatives of OccupyLSX agreed to take this information back to its General Assembly for discussion and debate, before making a decision on what action to take.
The specific proposal is that they would suspend legal action if the occupation agreed to:
- Scale back the part of the camp on their land to allow improved fire access
- Remove all tents from Corporation land by New Year 2012.
So; not only has the Established Church has finally woken up to the excellent PR possibilities of supporting the occupation, the other face of the Establishment has realised that a court case over your eviction will bring their, previously hidden, doings into a very public light.
Yeah, accept the reprieve but, for god’s sake, don’t fall into the trap of believing they have any sympathy for your cause. Use the time to build support and entrench your position. Get the word out, and don’t let the Corporation off the hook. One of the most interesting outcomes of the past few days has been finding out just how much power and how little accountability the City has.
Good luck, keep going.
Rose Allwork
keep going all the way people.very good news.peace
Yes, spot on.
They have been stung by the spotlight that has been directed at them as a result of the occupation, and the fact that the Church of England has split over this issue.
Some very useful stuff has been brought into the public domain about the completely undemocratic nature of the Corporation, which they could only expect to spread far and wide in the event that they went for eviction without being able to hide behind the cassocks of the Church.
Cameron and Theresa may wants to kick the occupation out, Met Commissioner Hogan-Howe has slandered the occupiers as law-breakers, and I don’t believe for one second that this medieval bankers guild have has any change of heart.
All they have had is a change of tactics. Expect a lot more rancid lies about occupiers in the media now that they have decided to play for time. If they can find a way to accuse you of desecrating the cathedral with drug-fuelled orgies, or some other vile smear, they will do it. So they can come back later for an eviction. Be on your guard for dirty tricks.
And keep it up my friends. Many support you, and many more will do so the more they know about what is happening. All of us with the ear of the more decent elements of the media, all with ways of spreading alternative information, need to be giving this coverage and support.
Twinkling approvingly there 🙂
With the Church realising that it can achive so much more in cooperation with the Occupation than it could in opposition. The Occupation can use this breathing space to hilight *respectfully* the other issues arising. Perhaps using the Remembrance Day to hilight the plight of ex-servicemen still sleeping rough on our streets.
A number of alternative festivities around Chrismas spring to mind. Focusing on the spiritual rather than the Commercial festival it has become. And I am sure that here too, the good offices of the Church may provide synergy.
As to the CoL I would suggest that the Occupation engage with the local residents and ask them what changes they would like to see in the way they are governed and highlight their local issues with as much vigour as the larger issues arising out of Corporate malfeasance!
Quite forgot (facepalm)
http://www.soldiersoffthestreet.com/
“A number of alternative festivities around Chrismas spring to mind. Focusing on the spiritual rather than the Commercial festival it has become.”
Amen.
Yeah,
Not so much CHRISTmas as BLINGmas !
Thats great news-I think people have being putting pressure on them behind the scenes-Im assuming we have all been writing letters, making calls etc etc-The Guardian has been exceptionally supportive
We as the people are trying to bring about a change in a very corrupt and unjust system this will not happen if we give in to their demands. We are there to make a change not become friendly with the co-operation of London! We need to stand our ground and practice our god given right to assemble and protest any issue we feel strongly about. If and when they do decide to take action against us it should be meet with a peaceful yet adamant stand that unless they are prepared to make real changes to the way our world is run we will not move come hell o!r high water
Although one thought keeps recurring
– Is it up to them, to tell you when to leave?
Im sure this has already occured to you , after all its a protest not an invitation to tea
– and surely by giving you ‘permission’ to stay is’nt there an element of them trying to pacify you in a softly softly approach
-and then what -come the time the deadline expires, does everyone just go home?
-Isnt it better to let you set the agenda rather than them
I agree with most of what is above. The Corporation of London exists to defend the interests of the financial markets and actors based in London and occupy exists to counter those interests, in my opinion. They will be thinking of a plan B to neuter the growing influence of the movement.
Could the corporations thinking be……………
If we make a fuss, as with st. paul’s, they will stay in the news, and grow.
If we (the corporation) dont make a fuss they (occupy/99%) wil become non-newsworthy !
Also, Winter is here……….Leave them alone, and they will go home.
Need to keep on becoming more relevant to the rest of the 99%.
One of the key considerations of the campers should be whether the Corporation of the City of London has sufficient democratic authority or is just a plutocratic institution. I think I know what side they’ll come down on.
A quick look at the Corporations media pages, show us what a great job they do lobbying for (the bosses of) the financial sector. Three recent announcements say:
1. The 50p tax for higher rate earners is ‘hard to justify’ and should be scrapped so that it does not ‘jeopardise our future economic security’
2. A Financial Transaction Tax (‘Robin Hood Tax’) has ‘no economic justification’ and implicitly it is misguided to say the banks don’t make a ‘fair contribution’
3. In the restructuring of the financial framework, we should ensure that we do ‘not damage competitiveness’.
http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/Council_and_democracy/Council_news/Council_news_and_information_releases/index.htm
Let’s talk less about the ‘economic justification’ and more about the ‘democratic justification’.
thanks for the link will. peaceful protestors IF you are blocking any highway don,t.
don,t play into the hands of these people.they will find anyway to try to stop this protest.
i have faith in you all the way.
By all means meet with them again (let *them* come to *you* next week). But do not ‘do a deal’ with the Corporation simply to gain what in effect will probably be a matter of a few extra days before they end up turfing you out anyway. It’s pretty obvious they despise your values, they despise your presence, they want you out, and in addition their form of ‘democracy’ seems to be accountable mainly to businesses not individual residents, and they represent many of the interests and entities that Occupy is protesting against. All that is familiar information. So by doing a deal – being “allowed” to stay at their largesse – you gain a few days perhaps, but you let them off the hook. You give them a mandate for your own eventual eviction. It becomes an agreed eviction. They don’t have to ‘forcibly’ remove you, so they avoid an action that dramatises the gulf between ordinary people peacefully protesting and a financial elite who use power ‘because they can’ and whose abuse of privilege has wrecked the nation’s finances in a form of capitalism run amok, at great expense and social diminution to many ordinary people and the cuts to their resources. By doing a deal, you cease to ‘Occupy’ a symbolic front line, and instead you become a guest of the Corporation, and the Corporation’s largesse, But in doing so, I believe the integrity of your challenge is compromised, and it’s a kind of sleeping with the devil, and it is ‘too reasonable’ an action, because you become a participant in your own eviction, and a partner (in the deal) with the Corporation… whose very claims to evict you are in my view spurious, lacking in true democratic accountability, and motivated by desire for the status quo which brought our nation to its present parlous state. So my strong advice would be: “Don’t do any deal with the Corporation.” By all means tell them you’ll think about your own choices when New Year comes. By all means keep inviting them to come to you at the camp to have genuine dialogue if they really want it. But you are not the status quo. The Corporation is largely involved with those who are accustomed to use financial power and privilege for their own best interests. They should not use you. Your voice should not be changed from an occupation of protest to a negotiated voice on their terms, before they finally evict you to try to stifle you. Keep the voice pure and idealistic to the conclusion of this phase. You have already won this phase. Complete the phase with integrity and don’t buy into their old ways of trying to tie you into ‘deals’ (with always the threat of force lurking in the background). They don’t want that violent suppression highlighted so they want you to let them off the hook. They are not in a position to dictate the terms, because they have already lost the media war. You have won. You don’t need to deal with them.
THIS is privatisation – removal of democracy in the name of economic justification. Anyone pushing for it should be seen as the enemy. Then there’s that old paranoia-inducing chestnut “economic security” AKA ‘National Security. The two didn’t used to be so confused (on purpose), but in recent years leaders are very happy to hide behind it. The more Tony Blair / Gordon Brown and the ConDems spout this ‘national security’ [1% of our least-tax-paying wealthiest people’s security and a BIT of trickle-down economic benefit] line, the more it proves that this nation is dictated to by selfish economic interests rather than a democratic balance of FAIR economic interests that help EVERYONE rather than the 1%. I understand the philosophy of the economically-led, a good friend of the family swears by it, whilst my parents don’t, but the fact seems to be, on the street, that the philosophy is barely more practical than communism. Look at China – big business would love us all to have such poor life conditions as the average chinese worker. We don’t need to draw the line at luxury, but we do need to draw it somewhere sensible, and workable. Not sure anyone around has the location of this line and a means of demonstrating it, so how are the aims of the movement going to be taken seriously? If not, then one other option is all-out war. Now if diplomacy can’t continue under normal means (and I predict at some point it won’t), then what? They’ll quickly call the mildest of violent protests ‘terrorism’, the whole mechanism is long in place to tar legitimate protestors with this brush, as we’ve all seen. I think that was the point of it, too, not catching a handful of genuine terrorists. So, typically when fighting such an opposite philosophy, things break down into violence, which is the ultimate power. Then what are we going to do? We can’t even prosecute recent violence by cops. What are we going to do? The colder it gets, I think, the less we’ll do, until the movement peters-out. If we want to avoid that, how do we do so? It’s going to get really cold soon.