An ugly scene of hard drugs, violence and corruption among protesters
Tom Rawsthorne, of The Daily Mail reported on December 16: Yesterday marked the 60th day of the anti-capitalist Occupy movement’s protest outside St Paul’s.
Two weeks after they had set up their tents on the piazza that surrounds the cathedral, I spent 48 hours in their midst, camping in a tent, eating their food and listening in on debates about pretty much everything under the sun. Think Speaker’s Corner meets the Glastonbury Festival.
At the time, I was struck by the lack of direction, the lack of organisation and the fact that, for many of the protesters, this was more about partying than politics — a chance to drink and take drugs in central London while being feted by the Left-wing Press as the outriders of the revolution.
So what had changed when I returned to the camp last week?
During my first visit, the protesters had agreed during one of their interminable daily General Assembly meetings to ban drink and drugs from the site. But drop in any day of the week and there are people, hoodies up, wandering around, swigging from cans of strong lager. Menacing: A protester, his face covered by a scarf, walks through the camp during the early stages of the protest
Meanwhile, the smell of cannabis is unmistakable. And harder drugs are also now commonplace. Two weeks ago, the City of London Corporation installed ‘sharps bins’ for hypodermic needles after police found addicts’ paraphernalia scattered around the tents.
With drink and drugs comes anti-social behaviour. Now, as then, problems continue, with people urinating and defecating in and around the site and the cathedral. But worse still is the air of menace that hangs around the camp.