Occupy London: CSM On The (church) Ground
It was just after lunchtime on Monday 17th October as I exited St Paul’s station to a surprisingly quiet scene at the London Stock Exchange. People went about their business and school children on trips filed by as usual. The only clue as to what lay around the corner was the barricades and police officers blocking every entrance to Paternoster Square.
 As I turned the corner I was greeted by the noise of a loud hailer and the sight of hundreds of people, wrapped up warm and sitting on the ground listening to some sort of seminar, nodding and applauding, sharing ideas and stories from the protest so far.
It was a windy day and the tents and tarpaulin that make up the canvas village around the Cathedral were being blown about, threatening to lift off the ground. People had secured their temporary dwellings as best they could with what they had available. The camp was very organised considering it was only about 3 days old: there was an information point, a kitchen, waste disposal site and designated meeting points. Clear boundaries were respected and a sense of peaceful purpose was evident throughout the camp.
One onlooker, Steve, who works in the city, described the scene as ‘civilised’ and ‘heart warming’; he said he was impressed with the way in which everyone was ‘getting on’, ‘even the signs are spelt correctly, with apostrophes in the right place’. Asked if he had sympathy with the protesters and their cause, he said he did, but was probably more to the centre in his politics than the majority of the protesters and didn’t feel strongly enough to camp out.
Others who had camped outside the Cathedral since Saturday night, however, told  me that this was not a protest against any one form of politics. One man compared Labour and the Conservatives to ‘Pepsi and Coke’, making the point that it really doesn’t matter who you vote for, there were people in St Paul’s square of all manner of political persuasions, their common enemies are the financial institutions and the monetary systems that exert control over society.
I met a girl who was painting a banner on what looked like an old bed sheet that read ‘This is what democracy looks like’. Her name was Dani, an American student studying at UCL. She told me that she was protesting in solidarity with those at ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and others around the world who recognised that there are things that are ‘fundamentally wrong with how the world works’. Another banner stated ‘we are the 99%’ and she said that was her message to the world, and to the 1% who ensure that huge numbers of people suffer without having their basic needs met. ‘We can all be in the 99%’ she said, ‘it’s a choice’.
I tried my best to find a representative from St Paul’s to give me their take on the protest. I wanted to ask them whether they felt a sense of solidarity with the cause  and whether in lending their land and therefore their iconic status to this protest, they were in some way joining it. Sadly there was no one available to comment and the Cathedral staff issued me with their standard media statement ensuring that their major concern has been public safety, but that they were working with the protesters to ensure that ‘the daily life of St Paul’s Cathedral can continue without serious interruption.’ This seemed to me and to others commenting on the CSM website to be a bit of a cop out; surely the day to day running of the Cathedral as a tourist destination must come second to taking a stance on issues of economic justice and at least making a comment on the situation beyond affirming the right to protest.
But whatever one thinks of the response of St Paul’s, the general feeling amongst the protesters I spoke to was that the clergy and others at the Cathedral had been brilliant, they had been welcoming and understanding. One man went as far as to say that without the help of the Cathedral, the protest would not be possible as the police would have definitely moved them on. Dani, the American student, spoke of how amazing it had been when the Canon came out and blessed the protesters, asking the police to step down and allow the campers to stay. It was heart warming to hear her say that she wanted to ‘bless the Cathedral in return’.
There were lots of ideas being banded about, creating a buzz around the camp.  Musicians were singing political lyrics to catchy melodies and drawing a substantial crowd. One protester said he was fighting to see a resource-based economy where we dispose of money as a commodity and do away with the scarcity brought about through capitalism. Others wanted to see more transparency in the banking system and others stressed the need for governments to control the financial sector rather than the other way around.
For the most part though people were coming together, not under one idea about how the world can change, but under the notion that it must change. A protester named Matthew admitted to me that he really didn’t have a clue about solutions to the problems we face, but that it just didn’t seem right that ‘we throw billions to failing institutions’. There was a sense of reality that changes that would make a real difference in the world would come at a cost. As one man reminded me however, the fight for women’s rights and the abolition of the slave trade seemed to come at a cost and were controversial at the time, later to be proven right.
My thoughts about my experiences at Occupy London today were summed up well in the comments of a woman I overheard speaking to a journalist with passion and vigour. She said the message that they were sending to the world was a very simple ‘No more’. The place of the financial institutions in society is wrong, the billions earned by bankers whilst thousands lose their jobs and millions die of hunger is wrong, and this is a movement that has started from a yearning for change rather than from considering what’s possible. I resonate strongly with these sentiments; a sense that all is not right with the way society works, especially in the case of our economy. This is partly what encouraged me to join CSM.
Like the protesters camping out in the wind and the cold, I’m not sure what the realistic solution is to this mess, but I do know there needs to be change and probably radical change. That begins here, with asking questions, diagnosing the problem; as one protester commented, more and more people are now taking an interest in economics, they’re asking how it all works and what it all means.
As a relative novice in economics, this is a journey that I am starting myself. As I discover more about our economic system starting from the basics and going as far as my mind will stretch, I will be letting you know the developments in my thinking on the CSM website as I go. | 
