Home > Oil brokers trade blows with eco-warriors
By James Sturke
Greenpeace campaigners, not a group of people unaccustomed to flying in the face of danger, were forced into a tactical retreat yesterday after feeling the wrath of angry oil traders.
On the day the Kyoto Protocol came into force, 35 eco-warriors stormed the Interna- tional Petroleum Exchange [IPE] in the City. Armed with fog horns, rape alarms and whistles they tried to stall business by creating a deafening noise that made it impossible for the traders to work. But the campaigners, who took ear plugs to hand out to traders, appear to have underestimated the hostility from their intended victims.
One demonstrator described how "all hell broke loose" on the trading floor: "We were actually getting battered. We weren’t fighting back, which makes it even worse." Greenpeace’s executive director, Steven Tindale, said: "They kind of pinned us into the corner, there were a couple of dozen around us. We were non-violent and peaceful and we made it clear that’s what we were there for but there were quite a few blows raining down on our heads.
"They pulled a metal bookcase down on our heads. They were trying to use that to push us back out so that was the moment we decided to retreat."
He said he was shocked. "They weren’t interested in our message, they just laid into us. They wereswearing at us, it wasn’t very subtle. Everyone who goes on a Greenpeace action is trained in non-violent direct action, so we know not to respond, although a few swear words may have come from ourselves."
At least one person was injured and taken to hospital by paramedics. Police arrested two dozen protesters for various public order offences and took them to local police stations, a Scotland Yard spokesman said.
The IPE specialises in "open outcry" trading where business is carried out in audible surroundings. By making so much noise, the protesters hoped to sabotage all trading between 2pm and 7.30pm, but a spokeswoman for IPE said all trading had resumed by 3.15pm.
Greenpeace started a second protest, at the annual dinner of the Institute of Petroleum at the Grosvenor House hotel on London’s Park Lane, and ruined table settings with red wine.
Forum posts
19 February 2005, 16:30
hit them where it hurts.dont drive as much if possible.
19 February 2005, 23:28
You Greenpeace guys ought to know better. The traders in the City are very aggressive types and disprupting their business was no doubt taken as a personal affront.
Maybe the Greenpeacers need to get to a gym every now and then. Pump some iron, do a little work on the cycle, toughen up, ya think?
23 February 2005, 01:54
This entire episode should show the weak stance put forever forth by Greenpeace. This kind of behaviour is nonsensical and completely ineffecutal. That is, it is ineffectual with regards to achieving the true stated aims.
Let’s say that GP was able to halt trading even for one day; what of the the next and following days? Can these lame, unthinking, emotional acts be sustained long enough to achieve whatever goals GP seems to have? And then what of, if those goals are achieved?
These kinds of emotional outbursts are linked to a type of personality that has to play the underdog and forever come out on the losing end.
Pity that so much time and energy is spent for such useless actions.
As a result of these actions and their broadcast, only two real and lasting things have been accomplished. (1) Sympathy for the traders/companies grow and (2) Sympathy for GP grows amongst a few. In the former circle are the persons who will rule the resources of the future and in the latter are the GP-personalities. Nothing is truly achieved towards the stated goals.
This can easily be seen over the last 35 years. We are into the third generation of the GP vs. "companies" confrontations. Througout this time, GP has always acted as do today and repeatedly lost. Companies quietly have always implemented their policies and won.
Nothing has advanced vis-a-vis GP and nothing has been "saved" vis-a-vis GP.
To show affinity with GP is simply to "vent" against industry. An overall ineffectual pass time.
What is needed is a new understanding of what balances can be attained starting with the smallest to the largest. But this requires thinking detached from the emotional bindings which, I am afraid, very few of us are capable of doing.
[Please don’t think that I am one of the elite thinkers... Like many of us, I have my own agenda.]