Bailiffs backed by riot police on Monday night evicted activists who have spent four months outside London’s St Paul's Cathedral denouncing economic injustice, tearing down the last remaining high-profile tent city of the worldwide Occupy movement.
Most activists honoured a pledge to refrain from violence made when their legal challenges to the planned eviction failed last week, although there were scuffles as police dragged a hardcore of protesters from a makeshift barricade.
“The end of this camp is only the end of the beginning,” said George Barda, 36, an Occupy campaigner from London. “There’s been a shift of the public narrative to the terrain it needs to be on,” he said, citing recent criticism by David Cameron, UK prime minister, of “crony capitalism” and a growing debate on income inequality.