Introduction

This chapter argues that the protest camp is inevitably susceptible to fetishisation – the subordination of process to form – and as such proposes that it be reconceptualised as an antagonistic form of activism, torn between the need to institutionalise social movements and the drive to subvert any form of institutionalisation. I start by drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre and John Holloway – two authors who discuss the challenges of creating counter-forms from below – in order to ground the discussion in theoretical debates surrounding fetishisation and institutionalisation. Although the problem of fetishising the protest camp was discussed within Occupy camps back in 2011 (for example, Kall, 2011) there has been little theoretical reflection. The remainder of the chapter examines the losing of Occupy London's principal occupied space, the camp outside St Paul's Cathedral, and points toward a wider set of issues surrounding protests camps and territorial forms of struggle. I conclude by conceptualising the protest camp as an antagonistic form that necessarily exists against-and-beyond the social movements that constitute them.

Occupy London came to life on 15 October 2011, inspired not only by events in New York but by the explosion of protest camps worldwide. The movement set up two protest camps in London's financial district, in the courtyard of St Paul's Cathedral and a small park called Finsbury Square, lasting for four and a half and eight months respectively, making them two of the longest-standing Occupy protest camps. As in camps elsewhere, Occupy London created numerous working groups, focusing on everything from food and welfare to its very own Occupied Times newspaper. At its peak there were around 3,000 participants, but for most of the time numbers were in the hundreds.

The chapter focuses on Occupy London's most prominent protest camp, at St Paul’s, and is based on research that combines a seven-month ethnography, 43 in-depth interviews and archive analysis. My involvement in Occupy London, first as an occupier and later as a researcher, led me to frame my investigation as militant research: an ‘intensification and deepening of the political…[that] starts from the understandings, experiences, and relations generated through organizing as both a method of political action and as a form of knowledge’ (Shukaitis and Graeber, 2007, 9). To this extent, my research has been oriented not solely around academic questions but also around activist debates and concerns.