St Paul's Cathedral getting ready for protest eviction

[Exi5tentialist]

From The Guardian

Apparently the church authorities aren't even talking to the protest leaders now. Having closed the cathedral for Elf and Safety Reasons (God knows why - they didn't explain), the Dean and the Corporation of London are now trying to find out how best to evict the Occupy London protest, so they can get back to normal raking in £20,000 a day.

This could go on till Christmas, it could take longer, or it could end suddenly with some nasty midnight eviction. The prevalence of mobile phone cameras in modern protest appears to act as a brake on police irresponsibility, so hopefully things could remain reasonably civilised, but there again, these are British authorities who have a track record of trampling on protest with little regard for human rights. One to watch.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

So an organisation which doesn't pay it's taxes, running a building built using public money, wants to evict members of the public off of "it's property"..?


Classy

[Rum]

There's a view that St Paul's did not really have to shut down at all but are taking sides with the City.

This would not be surprising of course, except they did initially express some sympathy for the anti-capitalists.

[Exi5tentialist]

I'd have thought the correct procedure with Health and Safety is to assess the risks, then take some action to minimise them, only closing as a very last resort. Even then, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of any specific health and safety issues, only one mention of 'evacuation' needs and the word of 'experts'. One would have thought the protesters would comply eagerly with any action to create better gangways for fire evacuations, alternative muster points etc. St Paul's may not have the resources normally to carry out such risk assessments, but they do seem to have the resources to lose £140,000 a week so something is not adding up.

I am sure the presence of tents does create some peripheral health and safety hazards: tripping etc. But these are hardly major hazards except in a fire, in which case widening gangways would be a rational response. There seems to be no concept of balancing a few minor safety possibilities against the major public interest risk of destroying a peaceful protest.

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the assumption that health and safety is just an excuse does seem very likely to be the case. If there is evidence to the contrary, why aren't the authorities sharing it? It all seems like a bit of a game; a chess move presaging more chess moves. I'm fairly convinced this one is going to get quite nasty, probably fairly soon.

I've been scouring the web for more health and safety detail on this. Nothing. If anyone can come up with anything more convincing other than speculation, I'd be very interested.

http://london.indymedia.org/articles/10600
http://londonist.com/2011/10/health-and ... -close.php
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=119424
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/f ... ety_concer
http://www.stpauls.co.uk/News-Press/Lat ... -Cathedral
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/ ... s-20k.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... emory.html

[Rum]

Seems a lot of effort for minimal return. Why not take the Crumple approach and assume the worst. In this case it will I suspect apply.

[Exi5tentialist]

Seems a lot of effort for minimal return. Why not take the Crumple approach and assume the worst. In this case it will I suspect apply.

Indeed.