RBS – The Protests grow!
Monday saw the arrest of a number of people following on from a protest in Edinburgh against RBS. There were a number of protests that took place through out the day, at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) headquarters, and at various RBS and energy industry sites in the city. The protests culminated in confrontation between activists and riot police.
Police seized what they described as ‘weapons’ at a number of different protests. These weapons included such things as: hammers, a coal chisel and other tools.
So why are RBS being targeted?
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), who own Natwest, have been funding fossil fuels for many years, between 2001 and 2006 they provided over $10billion in loans to oil and gas projects.
Since the government bailed out RBS twice, in 2008 and then again in 2009 meaning that the government – and therefore the people now own around 84% of RBS now, you’d think this would have stopped, but no, RBS have continued to pour funding into fossil fuel extraction.
As a Consumer?
As someone who banks with Natwest, and who is very much in favour of the move away from fossil fuels and towards alternatives such as wind and sun power, I was quite surprised when I heard about these protests as I had no idea that ‘my’ bank was involved in something like this.
I have to say that I think the protestors were correct in what they were protesting against, even if I’m not certain how I feel about their methods of protest. I’m also grateful to them – if they hadn’t protested in such a strong way, I’d have carried on ignorantly not knowing that my bank was behaving like this.
One of the activists – Harry Reynolds, was quoted as saying, ‘We’ve done a lot to disrupt RBS dirty energy operations today, but we are committed to keeping up the pressure until we manage to cut off the flow of capital from the banks to the fossil fuel industry’.
For me this is a very hard point to deal with. As a customer I know that by loaning the fossil fuel industry lots of money, RBS are not helping with the carbon footprint of this country and I feel unhappy being associated with what they are involved with. However, at the same time, I can’t help wondering just how much money I and every other customer might have lost if this bank hadn’t done what it has done and kept on one of its biggest clients.
For me and many other RBS customers, the dilemma is now how committed to our morals are we?! Right now, disgusted as I am to learn that money I have saved in this bank has been bolstering the fossil fuel industry, I can only be grateful that it’s not worse, it could have been boosting the nuclear fuel industry!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-11077167
http://www.guardian.co.uk/edinburgh/2010/aug/24/edinburgh-climatecamp-lothian-borders-police-costs-foi
I’m afraid I take a rather different view of this week’s events for two reasons.
Firstly, I don’t think the bank is really a legitimate target. Its the nature of their business to provide loans and to make money from those loans. We might not approve of everyone that they do business with but I just don’t think that any business that wants to survive can be that picky about who its customers are. If they don’t loan to these companies then other banks will (and do!) and then ultimately they’d be losing money and we’d all lose out. I think it is much more valid for climate protesters to protest against businesses that do have alternatives that they’re not using – transport companies etc.
My second point is that, as always, these sort of protests always attract a few more ‘extreme’ protesters and this ends up costing the public unnecessarily and putting people in danger. Who has really been hurt by these protests? Probably not RBS as a company because they’ve been given an opportunity to point out what they do that is environmentally conscientious and the amount of hassle this has caused them will get them some sympathy. But what about the RBS staff who haven’t been able to get to work for two days. You might think that its ok because they’ll just be treating it as an extra holiday but its not that simple. Apart from the stress of having to try to get to work or not knowing whether or not you should go until you get that call at 7am (I have a friend who works there), you have to face the possibility of a 2 or 3 day backlog when you get there and ultimately this may mean that the customer suffers. But is that likely to make them change bank? Unless of course you were one of the few who did go in and was then stuck in a big glass-fronted office with protesters hurling missiles at the windows. Does anyone trying to earn a living deserve to be subjected to that?
And what about the innocent people who have been affected, motorists delayed by the disruption such as the oil spread accross the main roads into Edinburgh and the possible damage this may have done to some vehicles and the cost to businesses of this damage or delay. And all those wasted police hours.
Yes we do need to address the climate issues but if RBS and Lothian and Borders police gave you the opportunity to have a properly-set-up camp in a safe area and make your peaceful protest and you decided to go and spoil it then you make as many enemies as you make supporters.