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Dean of St Paul's Cathedral Resigns over Occupy London Protest Row
Graeme Knowles, the dean of St Paul's, stands down with immediate effect, saying his position has become 'untenable'
The perceived dithering and divisions of church officials over the protest camp outside St Paul's in London have claimed a second major scalp with the resignation of the cathedral's dean, the Right Rev Graham Knowles.
The dean of St Paul's, Graeme Knowles (left), with the bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres. (Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features) The dean – whose job is sufficiently senior that a replacement must be approved by the Queen – announced that mounting criticism over the cathedral's handling of the situation made his position "untenable".
In a statement read on his behalf to the media at the Chapter House, opposite St Paul's, Knowles said: "In recent days, since the arrival of the protesters' camp outside the cathedral, we have all been put under a great deal of strain and have faced what would appear to be some insurmountable issues.
"I hope and pray that under new leadership these issues might continue to be addressed and that there might be a swift and peaceful resolution."
Last week the St Paul's canon chancellor, Giles Fraser, stepped down after the cathedral's governing chapter voted to begin possible legal action against the Occupy the London Stock Exchange camp, in place now for 16 days. A part-time cleric also resigned.
Cathedral elders have faced criticism not just over the possibility that force and violence will be used to evict the camp, but for the decision to close the cathedral for a week over health and safety concerns that remain unclear. The church has also experienced wider condemnation for failing to properly and publicly agitate on the excesses of finance and global banking until prompted to by the camp, part of a burgeoning global movement.
The bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, who spoke to activists at the camp on Sunday, told the briefing he had been asked by the chapter to assist the cathedral until Knowles's replacement was found.
Chartres said he wanted St Paul's to find a place in modern public life as pivotal as that it had during bombing of London in the second world war, when it was a symbol of Blitz defiance.
The chapter had said they "would not condone the use of violence in effecting any expulsion" of campers, he said. However, he added, the legal action would continue and the position could change: "Who knows what is going to happen?"
The first step in what is likely to be a lengthy legal battle to remove the anti-capitalist camp from outside St Paul's was beginning later on Monday afternoon when officials were due to formally hand activists a letter requesting that they pack up their tents and other belongings.
A Corporation of London spokesman said the letter, which was still being drafted, was likely to ask that the Occupy the London Stock Exchange protesters move within 24 or 48 hours. Activists have been camping outside St Paul's for several weeks in protest at the perceived excesses of bankers and the global finance system.
Legal officials from the corporation, which owns some of the land around St Paul's, said they would distribute several copies of the letter in the camp.
If the activists do not comply, which appears almost inevitable, then the corporation's lawyers will most likely start court proceedings on Wednesday under the Highways Act, seeking an eviction. This process could take several months, lawyers have warned.
The letter will point out that there is no objection to a 24-hour protest at the site, on the western edge of the cathedral, but that the presence of more than 200 tents plus assorted marquees providing food, information and other facilities means the thoroughfare was blocked.
Announcing the plan to take court action after a meeting on Friday, Michael Welbank, the councillor who chaired the meeting, said: "Protest is an essential right in a democracy – but camping on the highway is not."
The Occupy camp ended up on the site, which is part owned by St Paul's, on 16 October after an initial plan to base itself at nearby Paternoster Square, the private business and retail development housing the London Stock Exchange, was thwarted by police action.
The cathedral has backed many of the camp's aims, but on Friday said it supported legal action.
A protester at the camp, Spyro van Leemnen, said any response to the letter would be decided at a general assembly later in the day. The movement makes decisions democratically, through mass meetings.
The group has promised to remain at St Paul's in the long term and spread to other areas in the City. A "spillover" camp at Finsbury Square, further east, set up a week ago, is now thought to be near capacity. It is believed that protesters will target a third site later this week.
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Show AllThis article doesn't include a remarkable comment uttered by Ken Costa, the hugely rich banker who bankrolled the evangelical Alpha Course in the U.K..
As published today in another Guardian/UK article, Costa said: "I have been in the City since before the Big Bang whose 25th anniversary came this week. I have been through several recessions but I cannot recall the underlying sustained anger across all social levels – from dinner parties to demonstrations – aimed at bankers and the market economy as a whole."
That should tell us something about the huge impact that OWS and its international counterparts is having. Keep up the pressure. It's definitely being felt.
Any banker that doesn't understand why people are upset is pretending ignorance. Even the illiterate can watch a movie like "Inside Job" to get an idea of the scale of the crimes, the criminals, the victims, etc. The bottom line for industrial society is that NO MATTER HOW GRAVE THE CRIME, THERE IS NO ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE RULING CLASS.
Oh, I think they probably understand the reasons themselves well enough. They're just awfully shocked that the "99%" have figured them out and got so angry about them. It's not what they've come to expect from their heretofore placid victims.
From the quote above, K. Costa does not say that he doesn't understand, "..but I cannot recall the underlying sustained anger across all social levels – from dinner parties to demonstrations – aimed at bankers and the market economy as a whole."
His comment is useful, because he gives us a view of otherwise unseen private dinner party discussions.
Thus, RV's statement:
"Keep up the pressure. It's definitely being felt."
Ahh, the Anglican Communion. For more than 500 years, scrupulously weeding out the Christians from among its ranks. :-)
How do you explain the fact that the British welfare state was pushed through Parliament in the 1940s by the "new Jerusalemite" coalition of Anglican bishops sitting in the House of Lords, and socialists and Christian-socialist MPs in the House of Commons?
Momentary aberration -- just like the Catholics' Vatican II. Both churches have been "walking it back" ever since.
You are absolutely wrong about the Anglican Church. I can't speak for the RC Church.
The FDR-type wave of reforms moving throughout the world. Immediately after FDR's death, the "counter-wave" of back-to-business-as-usual had started. These waves take time to move through. By the time between JFK's assassination (killing the last rally of "new dealism") and Nixon's watergate resignation (by which time he had destroyed the fixed-exchange rate,; a well-planned opening for monetarist speculators), the "counter-wave" was in full motion. Carter hinted around, about "a Malaise". Reagan shut that down with "morning in the empire, er America". Power to the Brit 99-ers. This empire has long historical roots in wallstreet, the city, amsterdam, venice, and MANY other out-lying outposts, (even china & the hong kong xchange).
Whether by accident or design, the Occupy London Stock Exchange people made a very clever choice in pitching their tents on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral. Maximum publicity. Forcing others in the public eye - in particular the clergy at the cathedral - to decide which side they are on. Challenging anyone who tries to evict them to drive them from a place of sanctuary.
It was not by design... we gathered at Paternoster Square (home of the London Stock Exchange) at noon on 15th October 2011 and baricades were in place with notices relating to private property status. We attempted all entrances and by early evening were 'kettled' by the police into the neighbouring horeshoe area in front of St Paul's. .
The police tried to push us from this area and after a scuffle on the steps - Giles Fraser (then, Cannon Chancellor) told the police he wanted no violence and to leave protesters alone. The welcome was not necessarily shared by all in the church. Giles quit and since him, 2 others have. The church said they would seek to evict then decided against it. .
We are currently preparing to decide how to handle a threatened eviction from the other land owner - the City of London. Interestingly, the church board of Trustees would seem to have a bias to our presence: :
Sir John Stuttard
Chairman of St Paul's hails from PricewaterhouseCoopers, of which he is now Deputy Chairman of the firm's Advisory Board. .
John Spence
of Lloyds Bank .
Roger Gifford
UK Country head of SEB Swedish bank .
Carol Sergeant
Chief Risk director at Lloyds Banking Group. .
The camp is of course grateful to Giles and many of the church who do not wish to see a violent eviction. .
We are astride major financial and religious centres and it rather feels like this fateful geography may just have touched a nerve we weren't expecting... almost as if we were aiming for a limb and got an artery.
The Clergy, for and against being flushed out. Now we see who the true Christians are. As the Catholics say " Watch the ones nearest the Altar Rails."
trying to avoid making jokes using the phrase "altar BOYS" . . . not succeeding . . . :-)
One of the points common throughout the movement is the focus on cultivating process.
"Protest is an essential right in a democracy – but camping on the highway is not."
The presence of Occupy is a commons that the system seeks to privatize (systemic process) by exercising a private primacy of time and space. Non-violent unbroken presence is one of the few configurations that holds a mirror to this.
If the system is so pressured, by its own self-referential exclusionary configuration, that alternative time and space perceptions of peaceful presence cannot abide alternatives, then the flow of what does function about the system is shown to be in denial of the necessity in the long term of the presence of the commons.
What the system fails to realize is that Occupy is the proverbial canary in the goldmine. It is ultimately a force of nature, of laws of physics being offered in prophetic manifestation.
The flaws of the legacy of colonization were "externalized" to such genocidal acquisitions like silver under the indigenous peoples of the Potosi mine in Peru and other places. The deaths of millions in slavery gave rise to the industrial revolution and the empires. The finite nature of the planet requires the evolution of "civilization".
The social spiritual reality is that the teachings of Christ on the "least amongst us" speaks of attention; that is, those not cited (those who give rise to there being a least amongst us, are the inverse and necessitate the teaching.
Derek Jensen articulates valuable aspects of these dynamics ... Identification: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSa9tyuIdkI
"Protest is an essential right of democracy" -- so long as it doesn't bother the banksters and the proetsts are silent & invisible.
A thought. Is the government itself guilty of incitement to public violence by using the law to prevent public peaceful democratic protest ?
"Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." Mat 7:20
The Church of England surely remembers that Jesus Christ promised that the meek will inherit the earth. What they didn't count on was that the time is now. Jesus loved the poor and told the rich to sell what they own and give the money to the poor. Whose side is the church on now?
"The letter will point out that there is no objection to a 24-hour protest at the site, on the western edge of the cathedral, but that the presence of more than 200 tents plus assorted marquees providing food, information and other facilities means the thoroughfare was blocked."
___________________________________________
The thoroughfare to heaven is being blocked by devilish right reverends.
_____________________________________________
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller
Holy Mother of God. The Christians have abandoned Jesus. I am relieved that there are some clerics left who understand what Jesus taught.
Oh, the Strain!
It's a catastrophe it appears for the Church of the One Percent. I guess I would quit in disgust too and retire to my 100 million dollar corporate yacht on the Thames river.
Those pesky poor people blocking the thoroughfare for the clergy's jewel encrusted horse drawn carriages and their flock's hundreds of limousines. And talk about an eyesore! How can we raise money for Christ's causes if we have stare at a bunch of homeless needy right there out in the open.?
The strain of our elderly of holding their heads high with all that gold and jewels weighing them down is absolutely terrible.
It's terrible, I say.
What if they encountered a lowly unemployed person in a tent on the sidewalk and had to go around him?
Horrors!
So the eviction process could take months. I can't think of a better scenario. Months of controversey dragged out in the courts as the powerful (who are supposed to be the representatives of the powerless) try to squash a gathering of people who just want their voices heard. And then after all of that fanfare leading up to the ultimate expulssion by jackbooted goons in riot gear, on film, on TV, 24/7.
And note that it IS OK for protesters to stay, just not with shelter or food. And if it's raining no umbrellas please.
Or even years. The police have only recently evicted a small group of travellers (gypsies) off Dale Farm in Essex ten years after first applying for the court order to evict them. Estimated cost to tax payers was £18,000,000.
Evicted them from their own land. Horrifying.
Last May, I visited St. Paul's. I was appalled by the fact that one had to pay to enter as well as by the price of admission. This was the first time I paid to enter an Anglican Church (my late father was an Anglican priest). During my visit, I was told that St. Paul's is "the people's Cathedral," . . . the place everyone went at the end of WWII, on 9/11, etc. In the future, they will be bragging about the Occupiers. I could write the text for them now. At the moment, though, shutting down St. Paul's for a week shut down a multi-million dollar corporation. Good job Occupiers!