Groups from six starting points descend on common in south-east LondonThe scaffolding
truck and a small group of rented vans pulled up quietly on the edge of Blackheath just before 1.40pm yesterday, watched only by a handful of curious local people and dog walkers. They did not yet realise it, but this was the decidedly low-key beginning to the country's biggest annual environmental protest: Climate Camp had arrived in London.Following a morning of cat-and-mouse games with police – who, unlike at April's G20 protests, kept a low profile yesterday – approximately 1,000 activists soon arrived at the site from six locations around the capital,
travelling by
bike, train, bus and on foot, bringing tents, guitars and
food.Many will stay camped on the parkland in the prosperous corner of south-east London until Tuesday. It is the fourth such event, which has previously targeted two coal-fired power stations and Heathrow airport.This year's location remained a secret to all but a handful of organisers until more or less the moment the first trucks arrived. Within minutes, activists had erected manned scaffolding tripods
designed to thwart police dispersal, and began sealing off the site with temporary metal fencing.The Metropolitan police kept a remarkably low profile, with pairs of officers following campers to the heath but allowing them to construct the site unimpeded. Unlike at the G20, where hundreds of officers in riot gear "kettled" campaigners in small areas almost from the start, police were in soft hats and kept a distance.Just before 7pm the Met's chief superintendent Julia Pendry, silver commander in charge of tactics for the operation, walked on to the site to talk to organisers, sparking a hostile response from a crowd of around a dozen anarchists. Apparently against the wishes of the rest of the camp, they shouted "scum", "kill the pigs" and "you murdered Ian Tomlinson" at Pendry as she left the site with a colleague.But she struck a concilia ...
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