Although Occupy Sheffield regret that the Cathedral has decided to take this very expensive legal route, the group is pleased that the Judge did not grant the possession order the Cathedral were seeking today. Instead it was decided that a full 2 day hearing should take place to give consideration to the wider implications of the protest. A proper proportionality review has been scheduled for the 21st February, giving both sides time to marshal their arguments.

Prior to today’s hearing, Occupy Sheffield offered to move the camp no later than 7 days before the Cathedral required the land for building works.  This offer was declined by the Cathedral.
 
Occupy Sheffield did not choose its location in order to enter into conflict with the staff and management of the Cathedral.  The Occupy movement worldwide is a people’s movement for social and economic justice and a prolonged dispute of this nature is an unwelcome distraction from our primary purpose.
 
The invitation to the Dean and Chapter to join the Occupiers in the marquee in order that there can be substantive face to face discussions about the future of the camp remains open.
 
Occupy Sheffield

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As with the case of the City of London Corporation v Occupy London, this case is being heard by a High Court Judge, namely Mr Justice Foskett. Unlike in Occupy London case, Sheffield Cathedral are seeking costs which already amount to over £8000 and have chosen to name 14 individuals (& “Persons Unknown”) in the court documents. Through fundraising efforts Occupy Sheffield has managed to raise enough funds to be represented by Barrister Michael Paget who also represented Occupy London in the St Pauls case.
This week the camp offered to leave the Cathedral forecourt seven days before the land was required for planned building works. This was the latest offer from Occupy which the Cathedral found unacceptable.

Occupy Sheffield feels strongly that all legal costs could have been avoided if a substantive discussion had been entered into at an earlier stage (and not 24 hours before a court case, a belated offer which we could only decline as the subject of our proposed eviction was not to be discussed!).

Occupy Sheffield believe that for the Cathedral to name individuals is unwarranted, and they should be removed. But this should not be a distraction from the fact that by naming ‘Persons Unknown’ the Cathedral are indicting working people, disabled people, Christians, homelesss people, unemployed people, young people and pensioners. ‘Persons Unknown’ are the 99 per cent.

If you are poor, take heed. If you are unemployed, take heed. If you are disabled and losing funding, or young without a job, or sick but made to work, take heed. If you are a worker who sees your wages stay the same, your conditions of employment ever weakened while the Chief Executive of your company walks away with more and more, take heed. Objecting to this situation may cost you dearly. Occupy Sheffield will soon find out if there is a price on the head of protest and protestors, and implore the court to determine that access to basic democratic freedoms is not contingent on access to funds.

We know already that the influence of finance on democracy is corrosive at the highest level. We await to see if access to funds will be determined a necessary entry point to democracy at the grass roots, and hope that the Judge will see that it is in the service of democracy to allow sustained and peaceful protest to take it’s course. We passionately believe that access to democracy is a basic right not contingent on wealth, and it is now clear that at the heart of our peaceful fight for economic and social justice is the struggle for democracy.

Occupy Sheffield

Firstly, we are pleased to have had the opportunity to talk to the Dean.

This is only the second time Occupy Sheffield has spoken with the Dean, the first being at the ecumenical meeting at the URC. It is unfortunate however that the Dean seemed to have been given a different frame of reference for the radio appearance than we were. This meant that the subjects covered were broader and we were unable to tackle our issues about the letter, as originally intended.

We therefore think it is in the interests of clarity to outline our concerns with the letter itself. Irrespective of what the Dean may have intended the letter brought out a number of points.

Firstly the letter suggests that many of the neighbouring businesses are being inconvenienced by the protest. We are not aware of any such problems.

We were actually informed of this letters existence by some of those local businesses, disturbed that in the first paragraph the Dean states that he is doing all he can to end the protest.

If the Dean has any specific complaints from local businesses we would be more than happy to address them, but he has not let us know of any as yet.

Our second concern with the letter is that it suggests the Dean’s gratitude to the Banks seems to override any concerns over their conduct.

He may have received a positive experience from these institutions but many many people have been poorly served by them.

If we choose to gloss over their role in creating the banking crisis in 2008 we would still have concerns.

Barclays, RBS and HSBC have been identified as being in the top 20 ‘Climate Killer’ banks for investing Billions in the coal sector, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.

Bob Diamond the CEO of Barclays made £27M selling his bank shares in 2009, just one year after the banking crisis.

He was also amongst the bank chiefs that tried to derail the banking reforms.

HSBC meanwhile have just been ordered to pay a record £40M in fines (10.3M) and compensation (29.3M) for the misselling of investment bonds to 3,000 vulnerable elderly customers (Average age 83) and has set aside £270M to compensate customers missold PPI.

Lloyds TSB has had to set aside £3.2Bn to cover similar claims.

Lloyds TSB are also part of a syndicate that has invested $2BN in Lockheed Martin, manufacturers of cluster bombs, and this is after it was bailed out by the taxpayer.

So yes we have questions about the banks.

We have no axe to grind with the Cutlers Company. From the beginning our hopes for being opposite the Cutlers Hall have been that, as a meeting place for the great and the good of Sheffield business, they might find time to come to Occupy Sheffield to discuss and understand our protest, which is often wrongly portrayed as being anti-capitalist.

So far we’ve seen a boy scouts reunion and the internet company Plusnet who came across to talk but it’s early days.

Finally we are concerned that the last paragraph appears, and I hope we are wrong in this, to be an attempt to generate support for the removal of Occupy Sheffield by any means short of eviction.

WE ARE.

Disappointed that this letter was sent out after such a positive ecumenical meeting, where so many of the city’s religious representatives were so positive, and when we’ve had positive responses from across the spectrum of faiths in the city.

Sad that our interaction with the Cathedral is being portrayed by parts of the media as a battle between Occupy Sheffield and the Cathedral when we are trying our best to avoid this. Together we would be so much more effective in campaigning for change

Encouraged that so many of the cathedrals congregation have expressed their support, as have very many other ordinary people of Sheffield. The petition we presented to the council on Wednesday had collected 600 signatures in just a week.

Nigel Slack.

Occupy Sheffield.

What we believe we are seeing in this letter is a manager, with many stakeholders, attempting to maintain good relationships with those stakeholders, in challenging circumstances – a situation which will be familiar to many people and is not unusual. We do not find fault with this.

It is not, and never has been the intention of Occupy Sheffield to take on a battle with Sheffield Cathedral. The camp is set up – literally – if not figuratively – with the Cathedral at our back, and facing towards the banks.

What saddens us is that having been very close to the great work that the Cathedral do with the Archer project, and with the small window on the experience of homelessness that our time in the camp has allowed us, we are saddened that it is necessary for him to have to go cap-in-hand to the very people who have promulgated this crisis, which will see many more people in poverty, and many more people lose their homes.

Occupy Sheffield is there to have the conversation ‘how can we do things differently’, and we invite Peter Bradley to further continue the discussions that were started last
week.

Transcript of Letter

5 December 2011

Dear neighbour

I am writing to thank you for your forbearance. We understand that many of our partners locally are being inconvenienced by the protest currently taking place on the Cathedral forecourt. I want to assure you that we are doing all we can to bring the protest to a peaceful conclusion.

The Cathedral deeply values its long-term partnerships with many companies, banks and other agencies in the city. I hope you will be reassured to know that on the very first day of the protest I publicly thanked our major commercial partners, including Barclays Bank, HSBC and the Cutlers Company. Whatever questions the protesters may be drawing to our attention, our experience of these and similar institutions has been of their consistent professionalism and committed support of our work.

If there are any issues arising out of the protest that concern you particularly, do please get in touch with me.

With all good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Peter Bradley