Occupy London protesters evicted – St Paul’s Cathedral has been accused of “betraying” Occupy London activists after giving the City of London police permission to remove protesters from its steps and end the four-and-a-half month camp. Follow the latest on the live blog here.
At the autumn peak, about two dozen Occupy camps existed, from Edinburgh to Plymouth, Norwich to Belfast. A handful lasted into winter, but even those are now packing up. The few activists remaining on Exeter’s Cathedral Green left last week.
The camp on Bristol’s College Green, at one stage numbering 60 tents, was cleared after the final, solitary protester gave in. Occupy Edinburgh finally finished last week, while Sheffield must quit on Monday after a court order.
That leaves just Nottingham, where campers are discussing an “exit plan”; Norwich, where campers have agreed to leave their city-centre site; and the slightly incongruous-sounding Occupy Thanet, which set up camp outside the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, Kent, just over a fortnight ago.
Then there is London, where the flagship outpost – the sizeable if slightly diminished encampment in the lee of St Paul’s Cathedral – also faces a possible visit by bailiffs and police from Tuesday. Once that is cleared, all that will remain is a lower-profile offshoot on Finsbury Square, just north-east of St Paul’s, and a squatted former court building.
It is a similar story worldwide.
Read more on the state of the Occupy protest now here.
#Occupy supporters in Cardiff have carried a coffin through the city centre. Symbolises death of protest…
— steven morris(@stevenmorris20) February 8, 2012
Steven Morris tweets from the trial in Cardiff of two men arrested after trying to set up an Occupy camp in Cardiff castle. Read a letter to the guardian from those opposing the action here. Here’s an extract:
As trade unionists, elected representatives, lawyers and campaigners, we feel that the 11 November police action constitutes an attack on the right to peacefully protest. Furthermore, the subsequent CPS decision to prosecute, far from serving any public interest, endangers free expression and risks chilling democracy. We call for the charges against Eric and Jason to be dropped. We also call on South Wales Constabulary to act responsibly when called on to “police” protest.
More and more lists of ‘the best’ of 2011 (and the worst!) are appearing in the build up to the New Year this weekend. As well as a crop of Guardian articles looking back at the year that has been, we round up some of the other good top ten lists we’ve seen on Tumblr:
Feel free to add your own 2011 review post link by reblogging this post. We look forward to reading some more before the year is out!
Xeni Jardin responds to peppersprayingcop on Comment is Free - “The pepper-spraying cop gets Photoshop justice”:
Nature abhors a vacuum, it is said; and the internet abhors unexplained dissonance. When photographs emerged of police lieutenant John Pike pepper-spraying University of California Davis students, it wasn’t just the violence in those images that captured the world’s attention – it was the surreal juxtaposition of that violence with Pike’s oddly casual body language and facial expression
(…)One way the internet deals with that kind of upsetting dissonance is to mock it. And that’s what the internet has done with Pike. The “casually pepper-spraying cop” is now a meme, a kind of folk art or shared visual joke that is open to sharing and reinterpretation by anyone. This particular meme has spread with unusual velocity – in part, I imagine, because the subject matter is just as weird as it is upsetting.
A selection of stories, photos, quotes, video and audio from guardian.co.uk, curated by James Walsh, Hannah Waldram, Carmen Fishwick and the Guardian's editorial team. We are also editors of the news tag.
