Billy Bragg paints town red on visit to anti-capitalist camp

By Jennifer O’Mahony
Published on Tuesday 15 November 2011 00:00

Veteran musician and activist Billy Bragg played a free concert at the Occupy Edinburgh camp in St Andrew Square and threw his support behind a new coalition between the social justice movement and the Church of Scotland.

Bragg played a four-song set including his own version of trade union song Which side are you on? and The Internationale.

Dressed in a beret, black coat and boots, Bragg led a crowd of 60 in a singalong protest against bankers and politicians.

“We are not the first people to stand under this banner. We are not the first people to fight this fight. This is an age-old fight,” he shouted to cheers and applause.

Bragg, 53, later told The Scotsman that he was “really encouraged” to see Occupy Edinburgh join forces with the Church as part of the Kirk’s Economics Commission.

“If you bother to look at the teachings of the Church there’s a hell of a lot more in there about justice and fairness than there is about women priests and gay marriage,” he said.

“If Christ had to choose between Sir Fred Goodwin or sitting down with the Occupy movement, I think I’d know where he’d be,” he added, in reference to the disgraced former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland.

The Church of Scotland’s Economics Commission is a 13-member group tasked with finding solutions to inequality. It will report its findings to the Church’s General Assembly in May next year.

Professor Charles Munn OBE, chairman of the commission and former chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland, said there was a “fair amount in common” between the Church of Scotland and the Occupy movement.

“The economy has become much more competitive, much more aggressive,” he said. “The commission grew out of a discontent in the Church between the apparent objectives of economic relationship and their consequences for our human relationship.

“It appears to us that the Occupy movement, though articulating it very differently, is driven by that same sense of dissatisfaction and discontent. We hope to explore this sense of common ground.”

However, Prof Munn admitted that the Church and Occupy Edinburgh were “not holding hands yet”, and that he would “probably not” be staying over at their camp. Prof Munn and the convener of the group, the Rev Ian Galloway, held a joint press conference with Eric Nelson and Pete Nicholson, two members of Occupy Edinburgh.

Mr Nelson, from Boston in the US, said: “Politicians and policy makers are humans that are driven by the same monetary incentives as all of us, and that compromises their interests. We are attempting to educate people on the corrupt practices and workings of the global free market economic system and its choke-hold on democracy.”

Mr Nicholson said his movement and the Church had “fundamentally very similar beliefs”, adding: “We’re vocalising our rejection of this economic system that’s in place and we want to increase support for a fundamental change from the ground up.”

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