Occupy London activists: Only the start

The Occupy London protest camp set up last Saturday is set for a long-haul as campaigners against the extremes of the capitalist system tell IRNA that it is “only the beginning” of a global movement. “Time is to say enough. Politics doesn't work, doesn't represent the people,” said one female activist encamped among hundreds of others for a fourth day outside St Paul’s Cathedral, near to the London Stock Exchange. “This is a different way of saying what we think,” she said. “Ideally, stop the bail-out, no more money to the banks, more money to the people,” she said. Protests against the global finance system have been held in more than 900 cities in over 80 countries around the world affiliated to what has become an Occupy movement. “It is only the beginning. It will continue, it is growing,” the female campaigner said, convinced that the movement has gained its own momentum since camps were set up in New York's Wall Street a month ago. “It gives energy to the people who want to replicate the movement somewhere else, gives people ideas. Yes they definitely connected,” she told IRNA. Her sentiments that the Occupy protests were spreading and that activists are prepared for a long haul were echoed by a male activist outside St Paul's Cathedral. “The first thing is about getting the message out to everyone else at the moment. It is probably only a minority who think this way otherwise we all be here,” he said, believing that the movement was self-perpetuating. The activist acknowledged that the Occupy protests built on the motivation of others, including the examples shown in the Arab Spring as it spread across North Africa and the Middle East. “These feelings were already in this country, been here, don't know, 100 or 200 years probably. It is a good inspiration to do things, get things going and if they work somewhere else, it might work here,” he said. The campaigners said that it was vitally important to show solidarity in forming a network, with several camps also set up in other UK cities, convinced that if the momentum continues, then governments will have to listen.