The atmosphere at the camp was just incredible. The whole thing was occupied in about 5 minutes, with 1000+ people descending from all angles at exactly the same time. Tents flew up and pretty bunting marked the boundaries. Within half an hour it had workshop spaces, toilets, a kitchen serving hot food, people playing snakes and ladders and 'hang the banker' in chalk on the floor... at this time the police were just observing and letting it happen, it was entirely peaceful. The camp occupied around 300 yards of bishopsgate, and by 2pm numbers must have been at least 2000. IT felt like a big party, a big social event.. i couldnt walk 10 meters without bumping into someone id met at some point over the last year, the atmosphere was just electric.
I left the camp at around 4pm when things were still happy and peaceful. I went over to the convergence space. The convergence space, Payne House, was a squatted space that we (a group of people staying at rampART in the previous few days) opened up to use as sleeping space for people involved in the G20 events. It was AMAZING. It was a 4-floor office building, about 200 yards behind Liverpool Street Station, and although it had been abandoned from 2002 it had heating, electrics, running hot water and working toilets. From the roof you were surrounded by office buildings, with the gurkin just behind.. We cleaned it up, decorated it, got two full kitchens going and hung the black flag.
We had opened up the space on the night of the 31st with around 100 people sleeping there. I returned at 4pm on the 1st to see how it was going and to do some door duty (and have a nap). I had literally got through the door when I received a text message calling for an 'emergence process meeting' on the site of the camp.. I heard from friends still in the camp that the police had multiplied in numbers and were sealing off the sides of the campsite. NOTHING the camp had done, provoked this complete change in attitude.
As the Bank protests died down, both protestors and police moved into the climate camp, and tensions started to increase as the police started to stop movement in and out of the site, and pushed the north and south boundaries.. squashing the huge number of people into an even smaller space. The next thing i knew about, was that people were getting (literally) thrown and dragged out of the campsite... tents, bikes and belongings were trampled on..
Large groups of people were suddenly turning up at the convergence centre, so we made the effort to collect people all through the night who had nowhere else to go. By around 3am the entire camp was evicted. People were expecting to spend the night in the climate camp yet found themselves on the streets. Numbers at Payne House reached 300+ and the kitchen crew cooked curry for everyone! The media referred to Payne house as an 'anarchist HQ' where people were 'plotting to blow up banks' which is a load of ****.. there was no mention of the fact that we stopped hundreds of people from spending a night in the streets.
It was a busy but peaceful night, and most people left early in the morning to head towards the ExCel centre, with no police prescence outside the house... yet just gone midday we realised that the street outside looked like this..
By the time the alarm was sounded they were already in the building, our reinforced doors were no more than a minor annoyance. The police apparently used a tool which is half crowbar half pickaxe, which is illegal in the UK. hmm.. Anyway they stormed through the building, tazer guns and CS gas at the ready. It was probably the most terrifying experience of my life.. i was fearing more for the people whos screams i could hear from other parts of the building than for our group of 22 barricaded into an office cell. We were all detained in plasticuffs for 'suspected violent disorder' and marched outside, where i could see at least 4 of my friends bleeding from the head. They blackmailed us with arrest threats into giving our names and addresses.. then sat us there in the cold for an hour, while we watched them close off the building they had just ILLEGALLY evicted us from. Squatting is a civil matter which is settled through courts, the police have no business evicting squatters.
Anyway, around 4 people were arrested as they were recognised as being involved in things at Bank the day before.. the other 50 or so of us were let go. By this time, the climate camp site at Bishopsgate looked like it had 2 days ago, business as usual. The area of London around the ExCel centre was a fortress, and we could do nothing but wonder back to rampART (which had suffered the same eviction process, but they managed to reclaim the building) and start on the beer.
