Occupy London has ended, in it's current form at least but what does this say about the public perception of Occupy London?

The 15th of October 2011 was the day that British apathy turned out in tens of millions on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral in London.

Britain was in the grip of economic turmoil as the extent of the wealth divide between the 99% and the 1% was now becoming common knowledge thanks to the new media and figureheads of said new Media like former trader turned presenter, Max Keiser.

Bankers continued to award themselves huge bonuses even though their respective publicly owned banks were making huge loses on behalf of the tax payer.

Public sector workers were facing wage cuts, redundancies and negative pension restructuring with the cries from the various stop the cuts protests falling on the deaf ears of the government.

Ed Miliband initially came out in support of the stop the cuts protest then withdrew to the shadows only to endorse many of the public sector cuts at a later date.

Meanwhile across the pond in New York a new protest movement inspired by the Arab Spring was growing, which threatened to bring the American financial trading centre in Wall Street to a grinding halt.

The movement's name was and is, 'Occupy Wall St'.

The true numbers of those who attended the momentous Occupy Wall St protests will never be known and just as the Arab Spring influenced New Yorkers, Occupy Wall St in turn inspired similar Occupy movements across the United States and then the globe.

The youth had woken up to social injustice and corruption that was part and parcel of this quasi-capitalist system and there was hope in the air as our children shamed us by having the guts to take to the streets and peacefully object against the status quo.

It was only a matter of time until such demonstrations reached the United Kingdom and much was expected of the Occupy LSX protests, however on the day of action only an estimated 3,000 people turned up to protest…….the rest of us stayed at home.

Why?

The cat was out of the bag yet we chose to muzzle it, so why did we stay at home?

Three reasons spring to mind, apathy, conditioning from social engineering and the lack of a clear 'Occupy' agenda and message from the Occupy movement itself.

With respect to the latter, a flash democracy evolved where someone would shout an idea and a show of hands would decide the outcome, however this did not extend or translate very well to the outside world watching on television, which could be the fault of representation by the media or simply that it was a rather naff idea that bore no relation to true democracy or real life on a large scale.

i.e. crowd mentality influencing voting was more than evident.

The lack of clear message from Occupy was not isolated to the London movement and gave ammo to critics who felt the Occupy movement as a whole was open to speculation on the nature of the movement and the potential for infiltration and influence by extremists was cited as a potential danger.

But the lack of a clear message did not justify the poor turnout in London.

As for conditioning, no one is more conditioned by a corporate media than the United States of America, yet the dedication to the protests from young Americans was so great that it became contagious.

So what is the reason for the low turn out at Occupy London?

Apathy.

Now then, if there was an Olympic event for apathy then I would say that Britain would claim the medal, except I fear we would be too apathetic to turn up to collect the medal, but by default it would then revert to us for being so apathetic.

Where else in the world would such a pathetic turnout occur at such a pivotal time and location on such an important issue affecting the entire nation for future generations?

There are no excuses, we all knew that the Occupy movement was seriously flawed but we all had an opportunity to send a quick message out to the establishment that we are not prepared to be slaves to debt and pay the price for the mistakes of others any more.

We all know that we are being lied to by the state and corporate media who have so many vested interests in the status quo, a conflict of interests becomes an understatement.

Die hard capitalists and socialists are both united in hatred over the mutant variations of their favoured ideologies represented in the political arena by today's supposed polemic political party distinctions because there are no distinctions. But they failed to sieze the opportunity of reflecting that in the ambiguity of the Occupy London movement.

The ambiguity of the movement may prove to be it's most powerful tool and instead of Occupy reforming it's tactics and adapting to suit a left or right agenda, perhaps it should revel in it's nondescript agenda and keep trying to appeal to us all.

Maybe we just didn't get it's simplicity, which translates into 'stick your hand up if you've had enough of corporate greed and social injustice'.

I cannot say that the entire British public was apathetic seeing as there have been Occupy protests up and down the country attended by persons whose own consciences extend beyond the confines of buying the band aid single back in 1984.

Occupy Lancaster is one example of such dedication and actualisation of a social conscience and all credit to them.

But let us not forget that as winter fades and spring welcomes in weather more suitable for sleeping outdoors on a concrete mattress, there will be a return of protesters and this time we might like to not necessarily support Occupy London but at least take advantage of the opportunity to add a number to crowd.

And this applies to me also, if I can be bothered.

But then again with the Olympics in the offing you can bet that the authorities will not be apathetic in hunting down fledgling Occupy camps and dealing with them before they can take hold. The Chinese wouldn't have done that for the Beijing Olympics would they?

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