Rising Tide Hits London

London & Oxford Rising Tide join forces to take action against Baku-Ceyhan pipeline

People from London & Oxford Rising Tide came together today to take action against BP's proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, beginning with a near occupation of London's World Bank office, and followed by banner-and-leafletting at the heavily BP-sponsored Natural History Museum.

The World Bank is being asked by BP to fund Baku-Ceyhan. Between 1992-2002, BP received $939m from the World Bank, so it's not as if this is just a one-off. Other fossil fuel companies are no better: in the same time period, Shell received $1.93bn, Halliburton $1.93bn, ChevronTexaco $1,391, Totalfinaelf $982m, ExxonMobil $882m and British Gas $594m. (See 'Clear and Present Danger' at www.seen.org for more on the World Bank's support for private companies profiting from climate chaos and enormous social injustice.)

Three Rising Tiders managed to get past security barriers on the ground floor, but weren't able to get up to the WB offices on the 15th Floor of New Zealand House, Haymarket. One person was wrestled aggressively to the ground as he tried to take the stairs, and held there in an arm lock that restricted his breathing. Police arrived and escorted the three outside, where there had been a brief banner hang ('No public money for Baku-Ceyhan pipeline') from trees there. Since the New Zealand Embassy is also housed in the building, the police claimed that our presence with banner injured its 'dignity', but said that 'dignity' wouldn't be harmed if we were on the other side of the extremely wide street. An offer we declined to take up, partly because of the ferocious heat.

One Rising Tider had a long chat with a very tense policeman who was wearing an enamel badge showing the US and UK flags stuck together. The tense policeman claimed that it was absolutely fine to be expressing a political opinion while on duty, that after September 11th 'when 3000 Americans died', the US gained the right to do anything they liked in retaliation, that he had 'absolutely no interest' in the reasons we went to war in Iraq, but that the Rising Tider was 'probably right' in his opinion that our lawmakers don't have our best interests at heart.

From the World Bank we made our way to the Natural History Museum, intending to visit the Ecology section and draw attention to its being sponsored by BP. On the way in, we passed the 'Earth from the Air' exhibition, powerful stuff which exhorted us to confront, amongst other things, the companies destroying our planet. Gaining strength and succour from this unexpected declaration of support for our activities, we entered the Museum. Only to discover that BP's name had been completely removed from the Ecology section. Nonplussed, we called up at the info desk to the woman who deals with the Museum's corporate relationships, to hear that the 10 year deal with BP had come to an end, but that they were planning some creative new ways to develop new projects thjat were mutually rewarding, or some such greenwash. I - for it was I - explained to her that we had come to protest against BP being present, and that we were very happy that they'd been removed from this particular exhibition, (while wondering silently whether London RTS' visit back in 2000 or so had anything to do with it), but that we deplored BP's 'partner' status there, and that we'd be very distressed if and when BP helios logos started to appear all over the place again. (By the way, other corporate supporters include Rio Tinto, British Airways, Pfizer and Britsh Gas - quite a rogues gallery all in all.)

While this conversation was taking place, the 'BP sponsors climate chaos' banner was being unfurled in front of the enormous dinosaur that fills up the Museums' central hallway, as an apt description of such energy companies that we want to see the back of, whatever form of energy they sell.

Two natural historian-type employees were interested and chatting about the corporate sponsorship situation and about Baku-Ceyhan, until they noticed a seniorish security guard watching them (and us). At that point they clammed up and politely disappeared. Escorting us from the building, said seniorish security guard said that in future we should get in touch with the Museum before protesting, but that any request to do so on Museum property would be turned down, thus demonstrating our soundness of mind in not doing any such thing. He also refused to take a Baku-Ceyhan briefing, explaining that it would be 'unethical' to do so.

Unethical. Now there's a word that's lost whatever meaning it may once have had.

By the way, London Rising Tide meets at LARC (www.londonarc.org) almost every Thursday (not August 14th, though), is one of the many groups supporting actions set to shut down DSEi, and is running a workshop on oil, war and climate change at 4pm on Sunday 7th September at the pre-DSEi conference.

Keep at it, everyone...

A London Rising Tidal type