During the Depression, tent cities sprung up across America. Today, in the second great contraction, they are appearing in the financial centres of the western world. But there is a crucial difference: the contemporary campers are there out of choice not necessity. Pitching your tent has become the fashionable form of protest.
It is easy to dismiss the attention heaped on ‘Occupy London’ and its criticisms of greed in the City as a classic example of left-wing media bias. The rally for an EU referendum attracted nearly ten times as many people, but didn’t receive even a tenth of the news coverage.
But the reason Occupy is causing such a stir is because of the sense that some new form of politics should be emerging. The 200-tent encampment outside St Paul’s is, we are told, the new home of radicalism. And when one considers the collapse of the economic model of the past decade and the loss of trust in nearly every institution that underpins our society, it is indeed remarkable that a new movement or party has not gathered momentum. Ukip might have attracted some new supporters, but even its leaders can’t see how they can win a single seat at the next general election.
Most politicians view the Occupy movement as a threat, a form of politics that they can’t control. Ed Miliband sees it as an opportunity. He has already adopted the protestors’ slogan about the responsible 99 per cent and the irresponsible top 1 per cent.
Miliband wants to take their inchoate agenda and mould into it something more substantial, to use politics to answer the questions they are struggling to pose. His circle now view Blair’s ‘one nation’ attempt to govern for the 100 per cent as a mistake.
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