Will we "Occupy Tunbridge Wells"?

Given that Tunbridge Wells (in the words of Wikipedia) "has a reputation as being a bastion of the middle class and a typical example of 'Middle England'," it might seem surprising that an "Occupy" camp might be set up there. It happens to be the most local planned or existing Occupy site, so I went along today to the inaugural General Assembly, held in the centre of town, and timed to coincide and show solidarity with the public sector workers' strike.

I turned up half an hour late, to find that they were only just beginning to sort out the spray-painting stencils to create a protest banner (somewhat bland, using the established Occupy slogan: "We are the 99% Occupy Tunbridge Wells") and people looking like they didn't know what was going on. This, it turned out, was because most of them didn't know what was going on. One of the people who had helped plan this event admitted to me when I turned up, "It's a shambles."

A jovial copper from Kent Police popped by a few times to see that everything was in order and was warmly received by those present - he might be the very antithesis of the pepper-spray/tear gas approach to policing. But then, nobody was actually trying to camp anywhere at that point.

Eventually, with the banner more-or-less completed, there was an attempt to run through the way that the consensus/General Assembly process is supposed to work, and then get started. Then we had to go through the process and hand signals again for those who hadn't turned up, then there was a proposal to break into smaller groups because it seemed as though people weren't paying attention but chatting amongst themselves anyway. Then they got the megaphone working properly so people could hear better (it was a small group, and we couldn't get consensus on whether or not to use the Human Microphone or not, because some people wanted to make quite detailed points that they felt would be hard to get across in small enough bites, and surely everyone can hear okay anyway?)

At last, everyone seemed to be involved and the GA began. And then people didn't seem involved or wanting to talk, so we got a few speeches about how bad the cuts and austerity measures are, and boo-hiss to the government, from a couple of the people who I gathered were "usual suspects" around the organisers (well, I say "organisers" - I didn't see much evidence of organisation except for the minutes of a "planning meeting" held the day before!)

The points that were to be discussed:

• Shall we set up a camp today?
• Where shall we set up an Occupy TW camp?

People seemed to be somewhat uncertain about both questions, and so the discussion did not remain terribly focussed. With no clear facilitator (the role seemed to shift several times, depending on which of the organisers was having most input in other respects to the conversation) the two questions kept switching over, and then got derailed by someone asking whether there would be alcohol allowed on the camp, which led to a long discussion (that started with the words, "that's a different debate, we can leave it for another time"...) about drugs and alcohol policy (most people saying "keep it off-camp").

After wrestling the conversation back on-topic, there seemed to be some agreement on one site in particular (not giving any clues) and the general sense seemed to be that yes, we should occupy straight away if we have enough people willing to be there on the first night tonight. However, no one ever put the proposals to consensus, so nothing was actually formalised!

About halfway through, during a break in the GA, a young reporter from the local paper (the Kent & Sussex Courier) came along to find out what we were all about, and a few people were happy to chip in with their explanations. At one point, when she asked for names to quote, she was told, "It's a leaderless movement." Hopefully out of earshot, I muttered under my breath, "...and rudderless, it looks like..."

If anything, this is the stereotype I have in my mind of "Middle England" - lots of earnest ideas, but hardly any organisation to sort them out. To be honest, it's a wonder how we English ever managed to rule an Empire with territories in just about every timezone! (The dinner party in the finale of Carry On Up The Khyber really does resemble the way the British do things, historically and in regards to the current financial crisis - although waving our knobs at the bankers and financiers who are carrying us to hell in a handbasket probably isn't going to be as much help to the 99% as it was for the 3rd Foot And Mouth Regiment!

It was a lot of fun, but very little seemed to be achieved. Eventually, after about 3 hours (I'd been there 2 1/2), people started to drift away and there was finally a proposal that won unanimous consensus - "Let's move the organising committee into the pub!" I opted to head home after that.

I suspect that with practice, the Occupy TW bunch will get better at holding GAs and running them smoothly (appointing a facilitator, and having a process meeting to draw up an agenda would really help! The planning meeting really should have done that).

As I write this, I have no idea whether or not there will be a camp set up tonight, but I do know that they plan to try a similar meeting and GA tomorrow lunchtime in the same place and maybe arrive at some kind of conclusions this time!

~***~

In other Occupy news, more camps have been shut down by the police in the US. It beggars belief that you would need 1,400 officers to arrest 200 protesters - the report says they operated in teams of four or five per protester, arresting them one by one. There was no use of violence by either side, and the protesters did not, it appears, attempt to resist arrest (which raises the question of why you needed so many officers to restrain each protester - if you need that many to make an arrest, why do most TV shows show cops only going around in pairs?!) This is about a show of force by the police, it seems to me, and an attempt to intimidate those who think about protesting against the government, just the way "kettling" tactics are used to intimidate law-abiding protesters in the UK. More to the point, it's about showing off to the media that "you can't trust these rebellious scum to play nicely" (hence, also, wearing riot gear and biohazard suits).