Tent city in the City

Today the Occupy London protesters were issued with an ultimatum, warning that they would be evicted if they did not leave within 48 hours, and the Dean of St Paul's resigned.

I only had time to drop by for a brief visit. Because the City of London is not a place I normally frequent, I got off the tube one stop away in order to get a feel of it as I walked the short distance to St Paul's. The area is redolent of capitalism and the market economy and has been for centuries. The street names themselves are all about buying and selling: Cheapside, Bread Street, Poultry, Exchange Street, Bank. Old wealth-generating stone edifices crouch monolithically beside the glassy, glossy canyons and escarpments of modern financial institutions. Huge dazzling versions of all the familiar High Street stores are lined up cheek by jowl. Historic churches flaunt their money-powered foundations. Streams of bright red London buses tail each other in single file around this lifesize Monopoly board.

The protest camp has become a tourist attraction in its own right and I felt a little uncomfortable to join a throng of onlookers wielding cameras and mobile phones. I know I'm too old and too far away to contribute anything useful except admiration and enthusiasm for the Occupy movement. Here on the pavements around the cathedral young people have created a space for discussion and debate, they are challenging the status quo and demonstrating radical ways of practicing true democracy. Under canvas or in the open air, there's a school, a university, a craft workshop, a recycling system, a newspaper, a library, a piano, and a canteen serving hundreds of free meals. All around mill the gawpers, tour guides, city bankers, freeloaders, journalists, churchmen and police officers who watch and wait - for this to go away? I don't think that's very likely. The tents may be swept up and the posters torn down, the protesters may be kettled or shoved or arrested but the Occupy movement is not going to die any time soon.

"You may cut the trunk of the tree of liberty but it will spring up again from the roots, for they are many and they are deep."