It was fascinating to see the Greenpeace HQ in London, where the UK contingent for the international action in Belgium had to gather on the night before we travelled to Belgium. I got a brief glimpse of the offices and the Andy Galsworthy sculpture there, before being led to the workshop where we were meeting amongst all kinds of neatly organised equipment, including a life size model of a polar bear.
We were given an outline of our programme for the next 3 days before being fed pizza and packed off to a trendy hostel near Kings Cross called ‘The Clink’.
All through the 4 days Greenpeace fed us well and organised and paid for all our travel, very efficiently, and made us volunteers feel very appreciated. We were also told that it was OK to drop out at any point if we wanted to.
One woman activist I was standing next to on the first night asked another volunteer “How are your teeth?”. “Oh they are all fine now. Greenpeace paid for the dentistry”. They had both been kicked in the face by private security guards at a previous action in Belgium. That made me a little nervous, but no less determined to go.
We headed off in 3 minibuses to the Greenpeace HQ in Belgium at 7am the next morning.
For me probably the best thing about the whole experience was talking to the other Greenpeace activists. There were people from across UK who have been running Greenpeace activities for years, there were people planning to buy plots of land and become self-sufficient ready for the inevitable food shortages that global warming will bring, there were lots of people who grew their own food and seriously tried to live low-carbon lifestyles, people who ran 'alternative' cafes and community activities, hardened Greenpeace activists etc. Generally a bunch of 'thinking' people who didn't just drift with the flow.
On the first evening in Belgium we practiced everything we needed to do the next day, and were thoroughly briefed. We had a meeting of everyone where some of the activists complained that Greenpeace was wrong to praise certain businesses for signing up to the 30% emissions reduction, because they were businesses that were doing very damaging things too. There was a long debate which concluded with the organisers explaining that this issue had already been discussed and decided, and that the evening before an action was too late to change the nature of the activities anyway.
Early the next morning we all got dressed up in business clothes. Easy for me as I have worked in offices for decades. Some of the 'Greenpeace business delegates' did not look very convincing with their long hair, multiple piercings and second-hand ill fitting business clothes. But we passed muster and 3 coachloads of apparently ordinary business delegates headed off for the venue of the European Business Summit 2011.
When we arrived the 3 coachloads streamed towards the conference centre looking very ordinary and carrying briefcases and several suitcases. If anyone had looked closely they would have seen that the suitcases were all identical, and that the briefcases all had slogans on one side. Once at the building the suitcases were opened, the barrier bars inside were quickly wedged into the doorways, as we had practiced the night before. Two activists were chained to each barricade. More activists handcuffed themselves together to block one of the main entrances. Meanwhile Greenpeace climbers, who had entered the building opposite as well as the main building, let down banners and giant signs to get our message across.
I won't describe the whole action and its purpose and message,as you can read that on the main Greenpeace website (search on "European Business Summit"). I will just tell you what it was like for me.
As this was my first action I was put on a quiet doorway at the back of the building. People came round from the front and we got news of how the conference organisers, the delegates, the press and the police were behaving. People from the conference catering crew, and delegates, wandered round to the back to see whether they could get in that way, and wandered away again.
After about two hours we were told that the police were systematically clearing all the entrances. We could hear the bangs as they used sledge hammers to knock th barricades down. It was a bit scary as I knew that if we were going to get hurt, this was it. I could hear the shouts of people further down the line of entrances who were being roughly handled by the police if they did not cooperate with their arrest. Soon they came to our doorway. The 3 of us stood motionless as the police swung the sledge hammers, braced to catch the barricade behind us as it fell so that it did not hurt the two who were chained to it. We managed to break its fall, and we immediately sat on the floor. Neither me nor my two companions resisted arrest too much as the action was nearly over now, and I had heard the shouts of people who did try to stop the police strapping their hands behind their backs.
We were carried to the car park and made to sit on the ground, legs apart, in a row with each person wedged tight between the legs of the person behind them and our hands bound behind our backs. It was very uncomfortable. Despite our helplessness I felt very relaxed and relieved as I knew that the risk of violence against us had now passed. I was glad that my mother could not see me! It was a long 45 minutes until a police bus came to take us away. Some people sat like that for over 2 hours.
Once at the police station the police were very nice to us. We had all our possesions taken away from us, our wrist-bindings taken off, and were put in large cells, men and women segregated, about 20 per cell. Eventually we began singing and playing playground games to pass the time, laughing and joking. After taking our details (as advised I had my passport with me) and keeping us for about 4 hours, they let us go. they even put us onto coaches and drove us to the centre of town. Somehow magically there were Greenpeace people there with money to buy our train tickets back to Greenpeace HQ, and we were divided into groups of 10 and escorted back like a school party!
Back at base we were fed, we had a big debrief meeting, shown the press coverage from different European countries (none in UK) and then a few crates of beer were brought out (too bitter for me - not even any lemonade to make a shandy).
Early the next morning the UK minibuses headed back to the London HQ where Greenpeace had laid on some lovely food for us before we all went our seperate ways (some of them went to the pub).
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