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

Nick Martian | 19.08.2010 06:31 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Workers' Movements | Liverpool | World

Three climate activists were arrested by Scottish police as they took the site for the Camp for Climate Action in Edinburgh which set up very close to the Royal Bank of Scotland Headquarters at Gogarburn Gardens off Gogar Station Road just after 9pm yesterday evening.
It is understood that the three who were arrested have all been released without charge.

The @climatecamp Twitter site reports:
Three arrests last night.
Ridiculous reasons.
Otherwise chilled.
We look forward to seeing you on the swoop soon!

Amelia Gregory reports:
I just woke up and took some photos of the climate camp by daylight.
Just saw one of the people who was arrested last night.
He seems okay.
At least he's back on site anyway!
Just a few people up.
Everyone else is getting a bit of shut eye and all is calm.

Camp for Climate Action swoop update:
We are now swooping at noon from just one location in Edinburgh.
Meet at St Andrews Square.
We need large numbers to come down and support us on the swoop.
Please help out!

RBS is a 30 minute walk from Edinburgh park station or get the westbound bus from Haymarket or the town centre.
Come join us as soon as you can!
RBS HQ is also very near the airport.
Enter via Kellerstain Farm lane off Gogar Station Road.

BBC Scotland reported: Climate protesters set up climate camp close to RBS headquarters.
Press release info: secret climate camp location revealed as over 100 activists have descended on grounds of RBS headquarters a day early.
If you'd like to speak to any of us please contact press @climatecamp.org.uk
All interviews welcome!

Nick Martian

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

Swoop?

19.08.2010 07:57

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.

Protestor


Swoop

19.08.2010 08:15

Previous comment disruptive non news. Please hide.

Protester


No,

19.08.2010 08:43

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

A sab


A little pointless, perhaps

19.08.2010 10:13

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.

Andy R


Disrupt lending activities?

19.08.2010 10:46

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.

FCC


Help!!!

19.08.2010 11:27

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.

Jimmy


straw men

19.08.2010 12:37

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.....

easy to shoot down


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