Pedal Power Bike Rush Mo 1 June

The 'Bike Rush' gathered around 5 pm outside Chatham House, where earlier in the day 5 Climate Rush activists were arrested when they tried to block the entrance to the conference, 'Coal: An answer to our energy security’ with a bike sculpture and a banner reading 'NO NEW COAL – CLIMATE RUSH'.

By 18.10 when the protest moved off there were almost 300 cyclists and a tandem pulled sound system. The rush toured the main streets of the West End including Piccadilly Circus, Shaftesbury Avenue, Oxford St, Regent St, St James St and The Mall, passing Buckingham Palace and then cycling around Victoria before heading to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge.

Some of the protesters rode in white dresses and hats evoking the Suffragette era, and one came in black as a widow, mourning the end of coal. Many more wore red sashes, copied from the purple sashes worn by the Suffragettes, but red, to signifying the we are at the highest level of danger - and some carried the message 'Climate Code Red'. Others bore the suffragette motto, 'Deeds Not Words', and there were also sashes saying 'No Airport Expansion'. 'Action on Coal Now!, Trains Not Planes' and 'Pedal Power.'

Police on pedal bikes rode with the protesters, stopping the traffic at some junctions so the ‘Rush’ could safely and legally go through red lights, and at several points there were a couple of police Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) beavering away as usual behind their long-lens cameras and video collecting thousands of images of protesters and journalists for the database they deny having. There were also police vans and more police outside several places occupied by 'climate criminals', including the government’s clumsily-named Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR), responsible for promoting much of its anti-environment climate warming activity.

The 'Rush' halted outside several of these offices of companies they accuse of criminal irresponsibility towards the environment, including BP in St James Square, the British Airports Authority at Victoria, and BERR. At each stop people came to the microphone to comment on the activities of these organisations and others we had passed, explaining how these companies were harming our environment.

Police on pedal bikes rode with the protesters, stopping the traffic at some junctions so the ‘Rush’ could safely and legally go through red lights, and at several points there were a couple of police Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) beavering away as usual behind their long-lens cameras and video collecting thousands of images of protesters and journalists for the database they deny having. There were also police vans and more police outside several places occupied by 'climate criminals', including the government’s clumsily-named Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR), responsible for promoting much of its anti-environment climate warming activity.

The 'Rush' halted outside several of these offices of companies they accuse of criminal irresponsibility towards the environment, including BP in St James Square, the British Airports Authority at Victoria, and BERR. At each stop people came to the microphone to comment on the activities of these organisations and others we had passed, explaining how these companies were harming our environment.

After cycling around Parliament Square, and stopping to express support for the Tamils on hunger strike there, the mass of cyclists came to a halt on Westminster Bridge, and after a few minutes, decided to have the end of ride picnic in the middle of it.

A very long banner with the text 'Remember Remember the 5th of December' - the date of the Climate Demonstration - as well as a reference to the man often claimed as the only person to have entered parliament with honest intentions, was hung briefly from both sides of the bridge and displayed it on the roadway.

Police quickly cleared the cyclists from the southbound carriageway, but when I left around 15 minutes later the picnic was still continuing on the northbound side of the bridge, and no traffic was moving across the bridge in either direction.

There are a few more/different pictures on Demotix:
 http://www.demotix.com/news/pedal-power-planet-climate-rush-london

Quite a few more pictures on My London Diary in a day or two:
 http://mylondondiary.co.uk