On Thursday 15th of July, Ivan and myself reached a funny café in a crypt beneath a church. Unusual place to start what would be an exciting day of delivering the results of our No Tar Sands street work in Edinburgh to BP headquarters!
Armed (quite literally) with a beautiful bouquet of thistles, we stood outside the building from noon to 3pm, leafleting all of those who came in or out of it. We held the Edinburgh "No Tar Sands" posters with pride in front of the staff entrance while two volunteers from Islington did the same at the main entrance.
The response from both staff and visitors was good. BP's employees had clearly been told to be polite, as I don't think I have ever heard someone say "No, thank you - but thank you, thank you very much" when refusing to take a leaflet...
After a couple of hours, Robert Wine from the press office passed a message to us that he was very busy and could not come down to meet us (getting tired of our presence after three days? tss tss) but when it became apparent that we were not going anywhere, he finally came down and met with us.
We handed him over the Scottish thistles and we explained that the people of Edinburgh were clearly against their project of Tar Sands extraction in Alberta, Canada. The volunteers from Islington gave him a box of Arsenal sweeties and told him pretty much the same thing. He was very polite and promised us he would take this message on to the board of members, so wait and see!
It felt great to be part of something bigger, especially a "communication event" that will involve groups from all around the country. The constant presence of Greenpeace volunteers for more than two weeks at their headquarters will surely put even more pressure on the company to, at last, do the right thing...
Comments