How To Blow Up A Financial Sector
Just Stop Oil successor Shut The System sends a message
This morning right as I woke up a comrade told me that actionists had damaged infrastructure of three major financial companies. Reporting in an exclusive piece Novara Media Richard Hames described how activists from Shut the System severed the gas feed into JP Morgan in Liverpool Street, the earthing cable for Allianz offices in Monument and up in Northampton the 5G mast for the Barclaycard headquarters.
I wrote in a previous piece about the “retirement” of Just Stop Oil and their departing wink to an audience who didn't realize they were an audience until the show was over. At that time, Shut the System, the direct action group that claims to be focused on more intentional acts of sabotage against the machinery of ecocidal capital, had done a small number of actions copying some JSO and arguably some Palestine Action tactics. Compared to the theatrical departure of Just Stop Oil at the same time, Shut the System’s actions seemed a little meager.
Now however, with the action this morning, we may be witnessing the start of something both more intense and with a more cohesive message for the powers that be. This action, already strides ahead of what many climate groups in the UK have been up to, forewarns of bigger things yet to come. When I say this I don't just mean the Instagram post promising a (perhaps belated given the August 18th start) “Summer of Sabotage” - I mean that the action itself is a very powerful communication.
First we have to put ourselves in the shoes of Shut the System and think about the why and how a little bit. I've been saying for some years now that if sabotage focused direct action groups wanted to slow the machinery of capitalism and the climate catastrophe from within the UK, then sabotage to the financial sector and its biggest hitters would be the obvious path they would eventually take. I discussed it in my video essay The World Is Not Ending, where I point out that application of Andreas Malm’s ideas in How To Blow Up A Pipeline would lead British direct actionists to this. How to Blow Up a Financial Sector. I also talked around the topic a little in my recent discussion of the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, where I likened sabotage of the financial sector to the cutting of the elevator cable in the books that makes financial and political control of Mars by Earth easier for the powers that be. i had no idea I would see cables being cut so soon.
In that Mars video, I say that the damage that would be done to the economy if someone were to shut down London’s financial district for even a day would be comparable to the elevator cable sabotage in the books not just because it would disconnect us from a broader system of imperialism, but because in the books the cable coming down causes untold death and destruction to the planet. If the financial sector were shut down, the British economy may well go into utter freefall. I know this, I think it's clear the actionists at Shut The System know this, and we cannot even slightly doubt that the finance perverts in their offices in the Money Touching Factory all know this too.
What we saw today demonstrated that with a relatively small crew and a little planning, Shut the System as a group is capable of coordinated mass sabotage anywhere up to the scale I have been alluding to. This should have the finance perverts very very scared.
There were three targets in this action: 1. JP Morgan the financial giant that profited off the 2008 financial crash and makes endless fortunes for its traders from the fossil fuel industry; 2. Allianz, an insurance company that worked with the Nazis in the 20th century and provided the SS with insurance that today works with companies that are ravaging our ecology as well as insuring weapons manufacturers like Elbit Systems responsible for the deaths of countless Palestinians; and 3. Barclaycard, credit card service of the bank Barclays which is a high profile target of the BDS campaign, was one of the first and biggest companies to gleefully join in on banning trans people from toilets, and of course like the rest of the financial sector is critically enmeshed in the destruction of the world's biodiversity. These targets are fantastic because of the cross-issue public reputational problems of these companies, drawing together elements of the struggle, but they also send a message. They targeted a bank, an insurance agency and a massive financial trading and investment firm. They are inviting us to imagine a world where the banks, stock market and insurance companies all go dark at once.
Not only that, but the way that they sabotaged each company is different. An electrical cable, a gas line and a 5G mast. They are saying that with a few people they were able to simultaneously sabotage 3 different types of infrastructure for 3 different types of finance pervert company in 3 different locations at once. If the executives at the bank of England haven't shit themselves yet they should start as soon as possible.
This action is a warning about what is possible, and what is possibly already in the pipeline (ha ha).
Of course, nothing will be done by our government or by these companies. If the system were able to respond appropriately to this action it would surely have already responded appropriately to the existential threat to all life on earth posed by the climate crisis and instituted radical changes to our mode of production. To imagine a world that is responding responsibly to the climate crisis is to imagine a world altogether without JP Morgan, Allianz, Barclays or Keir Starmer.
So what can we take from this? I don't know anyone at Shut the System even if I do have a vague hunch that they probably watch my video essays, so I don't think I can comment on how likely they are to follow through. If they did however, the devastation to the British economy would be enormous, in a way that community organizers would need to Prep for and I mean Prep with a capital P because it would require that we do our best to make our communities as sustainable through interdependence as possible. But that all may be a bigger discussion for another article.
The immediate takeaways from this action as I can see them are this: Just Stop Oil and their performance art activism are gone, and Shut the System are deadly serious about stopping the climate crisis; the infrastructure that keeps the ruling class in power over us is hysterically flimsy in a way that nobody would reasonably imagine; and we need to get preparing to keep each other stable and safe, because if sabotage is going to burn down the world of the finance pervert before they burn down everything else, we need to get clear of the blaze.