Comment: Climate Camp

Contrary to popular belief, Climate Camp is not about fighting the police - it's about fighting climate change.

By Liz Stephens

You've never seen so many disappointed people on Wednesday when Climate Camp 'swooped' on London. I'm talking about the media. At the time I joined the 'yellow' swoop outside the Bank of England the media outnumbered the protesters and the police by almost two to one. There were more photographers than at a sighting of 'Brangelina' at the Cannes Film Festival. There was a palpable sense of expectation - would this be another G20? Would there be carnage, kettling and photogenic 'clashes' between the police and activists? At one stage an activist walked up to two policemen and took a photo of them at close range with her camera phone. The mob of photographers clamoured to the scene hoping for a good baton-to-the-head shot. The policeman smiled and then checked his mobile phone for Twitter updates for the umpteenth time. There was an audible mew of anticlimax.

We expected anarchy. What we got was a bunch of idealistic, eloquent, mostly young people with a penchant for handicrafts and an impressive understanding of global economics.

Much of the reporting of Climate Camp has focused on the policing of the event but this is not the real story. The real story is that a couple of thousand people meet up for a few days once a year to organise debate on the problems and solutions of climate change - and everyone who doesn't wish them violence is welcome to participate. They take time off work (yes, every protester I spoke to was either gainfully employed or studying - these are taxpayers, voters, citizens) to attend, many of them spending their spare time in the other 51 weeks of the year to plan the event. The truth may not be 'sexy' but Climate Camp has succeeded in putting the issue of climate change squarely on the front pages by courting the media focus on the G20 policing controversy and turning it to their advantage.

These days many people associate protest with violence and lawlessness: a good citizen doesn't protest, a good citizen shops and watches crap TV. Let me tell you about something I saw on Wednesday. As I stood outside the Bank of England waiting for a text to reveal the "secret location" of the camp, I was witness to a conversation between a City worker and one of the Climate Camp organisers. The unnamed trader used his lunch hour to have one of the most interesting and informed political conversations I've ever heard. The kind of conversation you always hope to hear in parliament but somehow often gets railroaded in favour of slanging matches and points scoring. Not to get all gooey but it gave me a truly utopian feeling of what could and should be.

A Christian Aid poll recently revealed that ninety-three per cent of the public think everyone in the UK should have the right to peaceful protest - and that 18 per cent were put off protesting in the future due to heavy handed policing. Hopefully this camp will pass off peacefully and more people will join, but the sad truth is that if it does pass off peacefully it will cease to be 'news'. As the camp set off on the swoop to its final location in Blackheath (fittingly the site of the Peasants Revolt) buying tickets for the DLR, ensuring no litter was dropped along the way, much of the media presence drifted away. What a shame, because things were just starting to get interesting.