Having noted that Atos is playing the victim card as it looks to exit the work capability contract, I thought I’d start posting some video from last week’s protest outside Atos HQ in London’s Triton square. You know – so that people can see how things last week went, etc.
These protests are peaceful and people have a perfect right to hold them. The work capability assessment is absolutely toxic and that point needs to be made good and loud. As it has been. Campaigners have done vital work over the past few years to make that clear, and to make Atos’ position untenable. That has been the real success. Other campaigns will take note. As more and more public services are privatised, people will know that they can target a company and tarnish it to the point where it has to leave. That is a result.
The ridiculous behaviour in the video below really came from Atos’ and the police. You’ll see in the video that a very elderly man and woman tried to lead a small delegation into the Atos building. They wanted to raise their concerns about the work capability assessment with someone – anyone – inside the building. You’ll note the ridiculous response they got when they tried this – coppers hurrying over and asking them to step back and pulling the barriers around so that two elderly people couldn’t make a break for it, or whatever the hell it was Atos thought they were going to do. I mean – really. One copper turned up after a bit (I’ll post a video showing this as well) to tell the elderly pair that they couldn’t enter the Triton square building because it wasn’t an assessment centre, but that he’d give them the address of the one up the road that was. People just looked at each other when he said that. Did he mean the police up the road would let people into an alternative Atos building? What kind of crap was that? Even the copper looked as though he knew he was talking bollocks. Didn’t seem to be able to stop himself though.
Anyway – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Protest is not extremism, thanks very much. The act of protest is not excessive. It’s just come to be seen that way. As I said last year – it seems to me that we’re fast reaching a point (probably reached it now) where a mere objection is thought of as very scary indeed. A raised voice, or a sit-down protest is somehow translated as galloping insurrection (not that I would mind a bit of that).
As it happens, sitting outside a government department or an Atos building and holding a banner which outlines your objections to service cuts or a work capability assesment is not extreme. Occupying a pavement outside the DWP and stringing up a row of underpants on which you’ve written a few rude words and drawn Iain Duncan Smith’s face is not extreme. Gluing yourself to a building and refusing to move in protest at corporate plans to frack your planet is not extreme. It’s actually a very logical response. By comparison, taking public money from people who need public services and can’t get to work, or college and/or through life without those services is extreme. Giving that money to private companies like Atos – that’s extreme. Blowing big bloody holes in the planet with fracking gear is extreme. There are those who’d say an extreme response would be warranted. Wonder how the private sector will react when things totally kick off. Suppose that’s where the water cannon come in. These people like to protect their investments.
Will post more video soon. But yeah – enjoy the one of Atos sending the coppers in to head two very old people off at the pass. Those two are even older than me.