Bye Bye Occupy

The exodus from Victoria Gardens begins...

I noticed while driving in Brighton the other day that Brighton's Occupy movement has disappeared, so hold that delivery of a nativity scene for them for Christmas.

The BBC report, with attending picture (left) is a little confusing as to why the 'occupation' of Victoria Gardens suddenly ended.

The Occupy Movement's Brighton Blog has this message for its supporters:

'Firstly we would like to say a huge thank you to everyone that has supported the Occupation in Victoria Gardens.

The camp has been destroyed by a combination of terrible storms and a fire at the camp which damaged tents and equipment beyond repair. The site has now been removed.

We have done our best to re-seed the garden, even though it is really the wrong time of year. The park and the local people that visited us have a special place in all our hearts now. We will continue to repair the park until it is as good, or probably better than when we found it.

The Occupy Movement in Brighton is far from over, please keep watching here and on Facebook for more info.

We also have a forum here where you are free to discuss any of the issues and we will be expanding the website with more information about the experiences at the camp, what we have learnt and what we can do to make a better system for us all.'

Inspiring. If only Lenin's supporters had been so easily put off by bad weather and so considerate, we wouldn't have had a century of communism and mass murder to contend with. These guys are my kind of revolutionaries. Re-seeding of the 'occupation lawn' having experienced bad weather and thought better of the revolution after all! That's just the kind of radical anti-establishment behaviour that will have those huge corporations shuddering in their shoes! I mean, what with the Occupy movement involving some people with money in the bank, couldn't they have, perhaps, er, bought some new tents?

The BBC report has some interesting information too. For instance, the report says that 'the leader of Brighton's Green-run council, Bill Randall, said because of this he would not tolerate another similar camp in future.' Yet, apparently, this movement had the backing of the Green MP Caroline Lucas and the camp had been assured that all the authorities, including the police, had no problem with them. Confusing or what? Now The Argus is headlining with the story that the Council have 'banned' such camps from Brighton in the future, though this story is yet to make it onto the online edition of their paper.

Malcolm Cook, someone I know from my time at the Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project, is quoted in the BBC report. If you read it, you'll see that it uses quite a lot of BBC-speak. That is, they can say something without actually saying it. Notice how the homeless are being put to blame for the ending of the camp:

Ch Insp Simon Nelson, from Sussex Police, said: "It is disappointing that after many weeks of peaceful occupation an event has occurred which put the safety of others at risk, damaged the environment and resulted in a public servant being assaulted. Most of the occupiers were committed to a peaceful protest and even assisted with clearing the site, but over a period of time the camp had been infiltrated by others who did not share this commitment."

So, the camp fire rolled around on the floor and set fire to a tent? Big deal! Accidents will happen.

One of the occupiers, Malcolm Cook, said the camp had started to attract people with drug and alcohol problems. A large part of the camp's infrastructure was destroyed by bad weather, resulting in the occupiers deciding to leave. However, he said he was proud of what the camp had accomplished. "I'm overwhelmed with what it has achieved," [Sorry, run that by me one more time. What has been achieved again?] he said. "The amount of attention we've received for our cause, for a few tents in the park, is outstanding." [Ah, you received attention. Now, that's an achievement.]

So, from this I think we can glean that the original situation of the Occupy Movement of being a peaceful movement of middle class anarchists was tolerated by the authorities, but that homeless people were attracted to the sight of loads of tents in a park and then the movement had to be closed down, with the agreement of the group themselves, and a stormy night of weather was the perfect excuse for it to be ended.

I've no doubt that the homeless have drug and alcohol problems, but the fact that people have drug and alcohol problems does not necessarily mean that the camp would suddenly become not a peaceful protest. If anything, their residence there would have refined the Occupy Movement's agenda, if they had been so thoughtful as to listen to what is going on in the lives of the homeless and had been so gracious enough as to care.

My guess is that, in the end, the middle class kids couldn't get on with the homeless people because they didn't want 'people like that' there and didn't understand where they were coming from. It looks, to me, rather like 'democracy' here might just have failed, within the camp and without it.  Homeless people in this town have genuine grievances with no recourse to justice. Long term readers of this blog will be aware of many of those grievances and the causes of so much of the injustice. Ultimately, ten or twenty anarchists who have their own flats, some of whom work, but who join together daily at a local peace camp against capitalism and gather around a fire is not a threat to the 'existing order'. There are loads of socialists and marxists who work for the Council. No, a threat to the 'existing order' would be 10 or 20 homeless men and women sleeping in tents in a park with signs up saying, 'We want human rights'.

More on that later.

Occupy Brighton: Up to Date Reportage on the Most Limp-Wristed Revoution in History

I don't want to be on X Factor. Why would I when I'm on Rorate Caeli!? It doesn't get bigger than that in the traditional Catholic World!

If anyone wants a copy of the song below, by the way, I have home recording software on my computer and a copy is yours for just £2.49, yes, that's right, just £2.49, by which time I'll have got around to the elaborate sax solo and the difficult B-side, Across the Universae Ecclesiae.

Anyway, more reportage from the Occupy Brighton camp tonight, where I've been choosing love over fear in what has to be the most limp-wristed revolution in history. Not that its just a Brighton thing. This kind of not-in-the-slightest-bit-offensive, very confused protest is now going global. I don't know what is amiss with it, its just I can imagine Che Guevara walking into the 'occupied territory' on the Victoria Gardens strip, wondering why he'd even bothered learning about dialectical and historical materialism, throwing his kalashnikov into the fountain and walking off in a huff. They were even worried about making noise after 11pm because the landlord of the King and Queen pub had told them he'd made a complaint about noise to the Council because his baby daughter wasn't sleeping well. So, in a spirit of true civil rebellion, the camp complied because they don't want the Council to get complaints. "Let's not storm the Winter Palace tonight, boys, we might wake the children!"

That's not to pour scorn on the resolve or idealism of the protesters. Most, though by no means all, are quite young, naive and just want to see the World be a nicer place in which niceness prevails over political corruption, corporate greed and the inordinate love of money. That's right! Just £2.49!

This evening there were about ten of us around the campfire. Guitars were released from their cases and played, though I must say I did not have the courage to play any of my own material ("Summorum what?") It was only when I walked home with a friend that we discussed the reality of the Occupy situation and that, in fact, despite the presence of between 20-25 tents on the site, only ten people were around all night. I asked my friend whether anyone might have gone to bed early and he said, "No, they're empty, mate." I spent a good hour trying to catch up with an incredibly competent guitarist as he negotiated his way through a series of intricate song arrangements with chords that I have never seen.  There was a truly cringeworthy moment (yes another one) when I played along to him playing 'Another Brick in the Wall' for which I shall have to answer on the Last Day. 

Credit where it is due, though, for the Occupy Movement is not, from what I can see, rejecting the homeless. I talked to one man by the campfire who has been homeless in Brighton quite a long time and who apparently goes on the Soup Run by the Peace Statue. He has a tent and sleeps in the Occupy camp and he's grateful for it because in his words, 'it is the only just rent system in Brighton'. He has a point. We discussed how much housing benefit St Patrick's Nightshelter take from the Council in terms of public money and how even more rapacious corporate scumbags like Baron Homes Corporation Ltd plunder the misery of the homeless at 17/19 Grand Parade and use the money to help sister organisation, Baron Estates, acquire a vast portfolio of property at home and abroad.

He says that every hostel and temporary homeless accommodation place he has been offered from the Council he has refused and walked away. Why? Because they are all s**tholes, squalid dives of places where you literally have to be on drugs in order to stay there, in order to stay sane. He was particularly scathing of St Patrick's Hostel, where all he found in his room was a messed up rubber mattress and a sink covered in blood! All of these places charge a top-up of between £10 and £20 a week even though it is obvious both charities and businesses in the tramp-farming trade could do well without it.

So, he prefers to sleep rough and has done for a long time. He isn't on smack, crack, Jack Daniels or even Scrumpy Jack. He chooses to live as a rough sleeper because he has seen all there is to see of Brighton's accommodation for the homeless and life is genuinely more pleasant and safe outside.  He even camped out for a while near 'millionaires row' where Brighton's celebrities reside, like Fat Boy Slim a.k.a Norman Cook, who started out in The Housemartins and went on to become a very rich local DJ.

All he did was camp on the beach near the millionaires and lit a campfire, slept out there with a placard demonstrating against Brighton's squalid and corrupt hostels system and the millionaires called the police on him and made repeated efforts to have him removed from the beach!  Nice! God forbid that millionaires should see such eyesores as the homeless outside their windows! All I can say is, thank God the Occupy Brighton people let him sleep in his tent there and he has a nice fire he can warm himself by. Good on them!

Meanwhile, please pray that I will not be possessed by the spirit of '68, or if I am, to be exorcised of it soon so that I do not join these young idealistic children of the revolution in their fight against enemies both 'visible and invisible'. Say a prayer for them. They mean well. One of them even works at Domestic and General. The homeless man said that this camp is being treated very leniently and that if the homeless had tried this camp city (yes I know its already a camp city) then police with batons and tasers would have been in before the fire could be stoked.

The idealistic young people will most likely eventually quit the camp within the year (that's the 99% of them who do have flats) and ten or twenty years down the line vote Conservative. The 1% of the camp that is genuinely homeless are the real deal. Their stories, I believe, should be reported more. Aside from that, I think that the Occupy movement is just an excellent excuse for young left-wing people to feel 'good', chat, make friends and sing songs by a campfire like, presumably, their parents did. I came home to my nice warm flat, ate some nice warm pate on warm toast, had a nice hot cup of tea and now I'm going to my nice warm bed. Tomorrow morning, like many of the radicals of Occupy up and down the country, I'll have a nice warm shower, some nice warm lunch after Mass and maybe pop over tomorrow evening to chat with them again to warm myself by the fire like St Peter denying his Lord. Gosh, now this is what I call my kind of a revolution! I get to keep living as I have been and watch the World change before my very eyes! Right, bedtime, but first I'm going to listen to the proper Catholic legend, Bruce Springsteen, one more time. "Tramps like us, baby we were born to ruuuuuuuuuun!" Incredible...

One last thought on Occupy. Somehow, we have to communicate to the Occupy movement that with only one or two exceptions, great mass movements that push God to the periphery or exclude Him are either doomed to fail or result in some kind of tyranny.  St Francis of Assisi and Blessed Theresa of Calcutta show us that we can only change the World for the better when we ask for Divine Help and when we are servants of God, rather than masters of human affairs. If all men and women in Parliament and the banking industry served God, then our current climate, let's face it, may perhaps be a little different.

Occupy and Christ the King

I spent half an hour talking with a few of the people at the Occupy Brighton tents in Victoria Gardens near the Pavillion last night. I've been reading some of Tim Stanley's reports from Occupy New York and wanted to get a gist of what the movement is about in Brighton.

I have to say that, like what I have read about Occupy in London and elsewhere, the aims and ideals of the movement appear inchoate and vague. The occupiers just have this general feeling that 'something' is wrong. There's a real sense of a 'democratic deficit' which is already present nationally even if the undemocratic European nightmare still staggers on. There's the firm conviction that unbridled capitalism is producing rotten fruits, but when has it ever produced notably good fruits?

Talking to one man who was there to give a talk tomorrow to the occupiers, I said that protesting against capitalism was a bit like protesting against Original Sin. There is grave injustice in the World, the greed of people at the top of society makes greed seem even worse and avarice even more ugly than it is for the rest of us, even though we are guilty of the same faults, because the impact on the rest of society is disproportionately large.

Certainly in Brighton, even though it is being organised by anarchists, there is something peaceable and communitarian about them. There was a homeless man or two hanging around with a dog, a load of tents, some small, some big, the number of which has been steadily increasing after three weeks. I arrived after the community had had their general assembly. They have the full support of seemingly the Council, the police and Caroline Lucas MP in their expression of peaceful non-conformism and protest. To my surprise, they weren't all middle class idlers (like myself) but some were poor and noticeably so. There was even a picture of the Divine Mercy with the words of Our Lord at the Last Judgment ("I was hungry and you...") plastered over the main tent. I couldn't help thinking that Dorothy Day might have considered residing here and using it as a base to protest against society's reluctance to adopt Catholic social teaching and to gather stories for her Catholic Worker. I was told that some of the occupiers even work and come back in the evening.

This Sunday, in the new calendar at least, it is the Feast of Christ the King and I wonder whether I might print off a copy of two of Quas Primas and give it to the occupiers. In it, Pope Pius XI writes...

'If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. What We said at the beginning of Our Pontificate concerning the decline of public authority, and the lack of respect for the same, is equally true at the present day. "With God and Jesus Christ," we said, "excluded from political life, with authority derived not from God but from man, the very basis of that authority has been taken away, because the chief reason of the distinction between ruler and subject has been eliminated. The result is that human society is tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation.'

Brighton, however, does not appear to be a place in which any form of radicalism takes off. It is still too pre-occupied with itself and its own image. The number of radicals in Brighton is small (is it 1%, I wonder?) and most Brightonians, especially the youth, are probably still more concerned with the pleasures of the World, bars, nightlife, clothes, having fun, having sex, getting drunk, taking drugs etc. It was noticable that the occupiers have a sign saying 'No drink or drugs by law' on the entrance to the camp, because obviously they don't want to give the police an excuse to close them down and street drinking is illegal in Brighton. I did wonder whether it was also to keep some people out of the camp. While I was there, one man, dressed in an army uniform came in and introduced himself as someone who could help with 'security' for the camp. He had apparently helped out with 'security' in London. Presumably he was some kind of Che Guevara type. I later heard that there is no 'security' at the camp because it sounds too oppressive. Instead, there are 'tranquility' teams who go around, enforcing 'tranquility'! How very Brighton! 

"You appear distressed and argumentative, dear. Would you like a herbal tea and some aromatherapy to help you relax? No? I see....Reiki?"

There are quite a few tents there in Victoria Gardens but, in all honesty, the protest looks a little small and almost totally inoffensive. Protest movements have moved on from the bloodthirstiness of the Russian revolution presumably because of men like Ghandi and Martin Luther King who won acclaim and respect for their goals through peaceful protest and non-violence. That seems to be the model for even a group dominated by the hard left. 

The occupiers, seemingly a mixture of relatively young to not as young, are a community forged out of confusing times when economic and political corruption have met and entwined. There is a sense that people have no voice or stake in society and that 'something must be done'. They don't know what should be done, but neither do any of us, all we know is that society is 'tottering to its fall, because it has no longer a secure and solid foundation'. I asked one of the occupiers how long this protest would last. He replied, 'As long as it takes to make a change, so if necessary, forever.'  Thank God, they have a fire to see them keep them warm over winter. I must say, if there was a small group of Catholics there representing the Church, I would consider joining them. We could Catholicise the group from the inside with Rosary by firelight, guitars and the rest. Unfortunately, I'm getting a bit old for such things. I need to get a job and pronto. I'd like to settle down, get married and start a family, which, let's face it, in Brighton, is the most revolutionary thing one can do.

Perhaps we could all donate some money and buy them a nativity scene for over Christmas?

Occupy Occupy

An Outside View tonight posts on the Occupy Movement's efforts in Brighton.

He makes an interesting point in the following passage...

'The Brighton occupation raises another point. Most of the campers seem to be middle class, affecting a working class accent. They have the resources to equip themselves with comfortable, weathertight accommodation. But also in Brighton is a hard core of genuinely homeless people, with nowhere to go, who are living in the streets and sleeping in shop doorways.

I wonder if it has occurred to these concerned anarchists to engage with their neighbours who have fallen through all the safety nets? How would they feel about sharing their well-found accommodation with those much worse-off than themselves?'

I hate to say it, but for all the good intentions of the Occupy movement's rather vague campaign aimed against capitalism, bankers and the rest of it, a few homeless men turning up at the doors of their tents (if indeed, anyone lives in the tents at night) might have them running back home to mum and dad.  It is obvious that like a lot of campaigners and protesters, Occupy think global, when, in fact, Christ teaches us that we need to think local, very local, to the very poor in our midst or even just to our neighbour, who might be, God forbid, a banker! They think macro, whereas Our Lord, from the Gospels at least, seems to think micro.

Obviously, the more influential in society one is, decisions can affect millions of lives, but my personal take on it is that a load of protesters sleeping in nice tents in sleeping bags is a bit of an insult to the homeless in Brighton. I might add, also, that if Brighton's homeless community formed a community like this in protest at inadequate housing provision, or being locked out of a housing network that demanded a 'local connection', then the police and the Council would be onto it sharpish and you wouldn't hear anyone, certainly not Mary Mears, standing in their defense. These protesters, however, are being indulged by the authorities to a level which is quite eerie.

They may be the '99%' against the 1%, but what about the 0.03% of Brighton that is rough sleeping, every night, without a nice cosy fire to gather around, nice new tents, supplies of food and drink, camaraderie, guitars and big signs saying, "We are the 0.03% of Brighton." I am quite certain that a demonstration of real voice by the homeless would last about a day before being raided, but then, I guess we'll probably never know. If these middle class protesters think sleeping in a tent is hard, well, let them take up residency in crack central, 17/19 Grand Parade, and see how long they last there or try it without a tent. The temperature is dropping again and when winter bites, the protesters might think again. The homeless community of Brighton can think again, but those who don't have a 'local connection' will not be able to demonstrate against the greed of Baron Homes, the sinister way in which they are courted by the Council and the whole nature of the housing benefit hostel rip off that is Brighton's homeless circuit. Is it really the case that the authorities think these Occupy guys are untouchables because their dads are barristers or something?