If you were a tourist in London during the past week wishing to visit Britain’s most famous cathedral, you were out of luck – you were up against the disorganised and incompetent management of an antiquated institution paralysed by an unexpected moral dilemma.
The ludicrous decision to close the doors of St Paul’s for the first time since the Second World War, only to re-open them a week later without anything apparently having changed, shamed and embarrassed the cathedral’s religious leaders – partly because of the nonsense of it all, but largely because it displayed a sense of indecision about whose side the Church was on.
Finally, after a week of discussions and deadlock, yesterday’s news that legal action is to be taken to evict the protesters means the cathedral – in partnership with the municipal authority, the City of London Corporation – have decided enough is enough.
After all, if the camp’s grievance really is as fundamental as the curse of capitalism and the state in which it is said to have left the world economy… a natural resolution is not exactly imminent.
Unless, of course, this is just another fashionable fad that will fade as soon as the media circus rolls out of town. The Sage invites the reader to make up his or her own mind.
Of course, this is no isolated protest. Demonstrations have sprung up in different forms and on different scales across the developed world, with a mixture of international and local axes to grind but all united under the ‘Occupy’ banner. The movement was started by massive marches around Wall Street in New York but has since inspired similar events in countless cities – most notably in Rome, Madrid and Athens.
London itself is not the only city in the UK to be ‘occupied’ – George Square in the heart of Glasgow is the scene of a similar (albeit much smaller) tented demonstration, which suffered a similar fate yesterday when the city council formally ordered the protesters to leave.
But it is not only the sheer scale of the London camp which has caught the people’s imagination and the media’s attention – it is also the typically English social politics that arises when a revered ancient monument clashes with a modern exhibition of people power.
It’s a conflict that the authorities have not handled well. The protesters, said to be disappointed when the cathedral was closed last week, must have been flabbergasted yesterday when the powers-that-be hit back so defiantly. Isn’t the Church supposed to be all-for tackling inequality – the proclaimed mission of the Occupy movement – and people’s right to express their dissent?
Of course it is, but the Church would also advocate the argument that such freedoms must be exercised within the rule of law and – much like the case of Dale Farm earlier this month – the law must be enforced and be seen to be enforced legitimately, fairly and consistently.
The protesters are partly camped on both public highways and the cathedral’s own private property. That is illegal, and the persistence of the camp and the continued toleration of it by the authorities threaten not only to make a mockery of the rules but also to set a worrying precedent.
They may have spent the week on a PR drive claiming to be the good guys – honest, hard-working men and women vacating their tents in the daytime because ‘they have to go to work’ – but law enforcers have a job to do, too. It looks like the unhappy campers must find somewhere else to go and make their futile case – they better get comfy, they could be there a while.
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