In the small, quiet hours of the morning this past Tuesday, London police and bailiffs marched on the encampment outside of St. Paul's Cathedral, and served notice on Occupy London.
The occupiers were given 5 minutes to pack up and leave. Any failure to comply would be a violation of court orders. Neon vested bailiffs, hard hats on head, did most of the dismantling, with the riot cops hovering ominously in the background, waiting for the rabble to get violent. The rabble remained peaceful though, and if those dressed ready for trouble were at all disappointed, they didn't show it. When it was all over, 20 arrests were made, and only a few skirmishes broke out. Most of the remaining occupiers began to pack up the tents they've called home these past 4 months. Resigned to the finality at hand, they complied.
Some, however, chose to build a fortress from what remained of their broke down lodgings.
While many packed up to go home, or go find a new home, a group of protesters quickly gathered up wooden pallets, ladders, mattresses, and what other random debris they could find to build up a barricade in an effort to waylay their eviction. Young men and women stood atop their ramshackle blockade in defiance while spotlights flooded the square around them and rubbish lorries sat idle, waiting to be fed.
On the ground protesters and bailiffs engaged in a tug of war for control of the rubble, while at the top of the heap, a single bailiff climbed up on the unstable structure to force the occupiers down in to the waiting arms of their comrades in neon yellow and orange. When one occupier fell, another would climb up to take their place, and one clever long haired fellow managed to take the bailiff down with him as he dropped from the barricade wall.
Their efforts to remain were admirable, but the outcome was equally inevitable.
The last gasp occurred on the cathedral steps. A small group had gathered and, believing the steps to be safe ground, huddled at the cathedral's gateway; some kneeling down to pray. One by one they were swept off the steps by riot police. The resisters, bent in prayer or otherwise, were moved either by fear, or force.
This final action, which saw armoured police force citizens off the steps of the church, could only have occurred with St. Paul's approval. As documented in The Guardian, at around 2am protesters reported seeing police officers on the Cathedral balcony, giving support to the idea that the police had the full cooperation of the church to remove people from the steps. Shortly after, City of London police confirmed they had the blessing of the church, leaving many occupiers stung, and stunned, by the betrayal.
By dawn, there was little left to remind the city that there had been a camp outside of the venerable cathedral at all. The mess had been washed away before the morning's first mug of tea was brewed.
But while the city and the church worked to sweep Occupy into the trash bins and out of sight, the banker's at Barclays were providing yet another reminder of why these voices, calling out the excesses and damaging schemes of profit chasers, remain so necessary.
The second scheme is more convoluted, revolving around authorised investment funds. The bank's goal was to convert non-taxable income into an amount granting a repayable tax credit, thus guaranteeing a refund while no actual tax would be paid. Combined, the two schemes provided a loophole that would have helped Barclays avoid 500 million in tax.
In both cases the schemes ran afoul of a forthcoming new corporate tax dodging law to be introduced in Chancellor George Osborne's new budget next month. When faced with what were called two "very aggressive" tax avoidance schemes, the legislation was quickly backdated to take effect at the beginning of December 2011, an unusual act of retrospective legislating. Initially, the government refused to call out the offending bank by name. Barclays later admitted to being the culprit, and assured shareholders that profits would not be affected by the schemes being shut down.
These two events are at such perfectly opposing poles, it's difficult to believe there wasn't a bit of fate involved in the timing. While Barclays bank was caught out in the end, one has to question if it would have happened without the presence of those struggling to keep a light shining on the dark corners of unbound capitalism and its scramble for new, ever creative ways to turn civic responsibility inside out in the hopes of bonus profits spilling into their open hands.
With the ground troops of established rule driving the forces of dissent from the steps of St. Paul's, and the profiteers at Barclays attempting to game the system from the confines of the executive boardroom, on Tuesday night in London, it was back to business as usual while the city slept.
