In These New Times

Scotland on Sunday

12th December, 2010

‘AWRIGHT, let’s go,” says Sean. “We’re gonna do HSBC.” This, on a late morning in Glasgow when the temperature is minus 12, is as close as you get to a cri de coeur.

Sean Clerkin, a 49-year-old call centre worker, is an organiser of Citizens United, an eclectic group of pensioners and anarchists, students and academics, public and private sector employees who are angry and fearful about the government’s spending cuts.

Their response has been to occupy banks – entering, protesting and refusing to leave. So far they have occupied three: Glasgow branches of HBOS, Lloyds TSB and the Royal Bank of Scotland were all hit last month. Now they are on their way to a fourth occupation: HSBC on West Nile Street.

Citizens United consider themselves fellow travellers of the student protesters who recently brought chaos to Millbank and, last Thursday, brought violence to Westminster. Though Citizens United insist they are non-violent, they are driven by the same anger and sense of injustice which led to blood and bonfires in Parliament Square. They feel, to paraphrase David Cameron, that they are all in this together.

“It’s more than just the students. There’s something deeper happening in our society,” says Clerkin. “There’s definitely an undercurrent of militancy growing among people. This is the beginning of something.”

Citizens United make a motley band, slogging up slushy streets, the air around them clouded with frozen breath and the smoke from roll-ups. They don’t resemble the usual rent-a-mob. They range in age from mid-twenties to early eighties; visually, it’s a real mix of mohicans, black anarchy flags, young women dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz, white hair and sensible anoraks. The OAP wing is very striking in this context. When they walk into a bank, it looks like the cast of Still Game gatecrashing an episode of The Apprentice.

There is no denying the seriousness of their intent, however. Citizens United argue that the economic crisis was caused by recklessness within the financial sector and that, despite this, bankers continue to enjoy “obscene salaries and bonuses” while the poor bear the brunt of the cuts. “This reminds me of the conditions in Paris in 1968 – the way the student occupations blossomed out into workers’ struggles, and then the state repression that came afterwards,” says Ian Cowan, 47. “That’s what’s coming.”

We find ourselves, suddenly, in a new winter of discontent. Though the various causes may seem diverse – from anti-tuition fees to rage against the financial machine – they are all being driven by the economic crisis, by dismay at the coalition government’s response, and by a visceral revulsion at a Cabinet which includes 23 millionaires.