Climate Camp in the city took center stage at Bishopsgate, Central London at exactly 12.30. Dozens of tents were simultaneously pitched in the street and activists sat down on picnic rugs along the road, despite the efforts of a few police who had no option but to retreat to the pavement. Within minutes more tents were pitched, drum sounds and bunting and banners decorated a quarter of a mile of Central London's financial district, turning it into a carnival style camp for climate action. Someone even brought a fully functioning compost toilet facility. The plan? To occupy the street for 24 hours of workshops, protests, a newly formed community portraying sustainable living in a festival style. The message? Don't let the financial fools make the rules! 

With the G20 leaders meeting to discuss the way out of the financial crisis, we had a unique opportunity to demand an investment of a greener, more sustainable economy - and that in no way were we going to bail out the people who got us in to this mess. 

The specific target was the European climate exchange on Bishopsgate, home to a number of emissions trading firms. Emissions trading attempts to adopt a market based solution to the problem of climate change, but in reality it does nothing to reduce emissions, or tackle our fossil fuel addiction.  Indeed we've seen what the market system has done to our economy and as one huge banner at the end of the road stated: "NATURE DOESN'T DO BAILOUTS".

Policing during the day was refreshingly restrained. There was a chilled out vibe surrounding the camp as policemen looked on as protestors played "wind turbines and runways" - a life-size eco-version of snakes and ladders, with a vegan kitchen set up to feed campers cake and jacket potatoes. I took a turn stoking the rocket stove, boiling water for cups of tea, before heading off foraging for more firewood. The violence predicted by the scaremongering press, and the shockingly heavy-handed police tactics witnessed at the last climate camp gathering in Kingsnorth seven months ago seemed a million miles away. For a few hours, this Central London street with construction sites at each end, and tall drab buildings rising up either side of us was beautiful. 

At around 7pm, things started to change. With no apparent reason or warning, the police guarding each end of the street tightened ranks and stopped letting people in or out. This same tactic of "kettling" had been employed just hours earlier outside the Bank of England, penning people in for hours against their will and causing tensions to rise. I happened to be at the north end of the camp as the police tightened ranks and moved forward, and found myself falling through a tent, helped by a firm shove in the back from the law. Not exactly police brutality, but still an overly aggressive reaction to a peaceful situation in my opinion.
 
Over the following four hours we were held captive by police, reinforced by a fully equipped riot squad with dogs. A sense of indignation gradually grew among protesters at the hard-line stance and occasional baton charges, but their response remained peaceful in the face of aggression from the police which occasionally spilled in to violence. 

It was 11:30pm by the time I was allowed out. I was one of the first to leave, but still there was no chance of me getting any transport home to Bristol before the morning. According to a policeman I spoke to, they were in the same boat as me, as they had to "go home after looking after us lot too".  Whilst some individual officers had been chatty and polite, the immaturity and ignorance of this officer summed up the rest. 

Climate Camp in the city was a peaceful, chilled out haven of caring people who had the impudence to believe that a better world is not only possible for all, but essential for our planet's future. For the most part of the day the police handled the situation appropriately, however later on they demonstrated the worrying trend of intimidation, aggression and dirty tactics used against peaceful protests such as these, designed to frustrate and provoke a reaction from people exercising their democratic rights within the limits of the law. Of course my experience doesn't compare to that of Burmese monks but nevertheless we should be very concerned at the direction policing of peaceful protests is going in the UK.