London-based New York Times reporter Alan Cowell sympathized with the British off-shoot of Occupy Wall Street on Wednesday: "British Authorities Demolish Protest Camp at St. Paul's Cathedral."
Moving after midnight, bailiffs supported by police officers dismantled a tent encampment outside St. Paul's Cathedral here early Tuesday, ending a four-month protest that caused tension within the Church of England and resonated with Britons opposed to what they see as runaway capitalist greed.
Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protest at Zuccotti Park in New York, the camp was started late last year amid a deep economic slowdown, as jobs were being lost and social services cut even as Britain's investment bankers sought large bonuses.
Many protesters had begun to take down their tents last week after losing a battle in court over whether they could stay. But about 50 tents remained as the bailiffs, who are responsible for enforcing English judicial decrees, and police officers moved across the plaza in front of St. Paul's.
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The protest fed into a broader public outrage that led many British banks to reduce bonuses to their staffs.
Cowell's concerned with capitalist "greed." Last November Cowell issued a moralistic "Memo from London" trodding similar left-wing territory: "As the riots in London and elsewhere in August seemed to show, the profound gulf between haves and have-nots has been magnified by the inequalities and envies of a society that has built its newest altars to consumption and greed."
