This is a film about a very peculiar institution, the City of London Corporation.
Its laws predate Parliament. It has its own police force and army regiment.
In certain respects, it is an independent state in the heart of London.
Even the Queen has to ask for the Lord Mayor's permission to enter the city.
It's not a local authority, but it acts as one.
Yet despite being a public body, it does not publish full financial reports
because it claims the source of its wealth is a private fund.
This huge wealth is a source of vast political influence which is used to advance the interests of the financial sector within the square mile and beyond.
The City of London's ambiguous role advantages large corporate interests in the city,
particularly those of property developers, and it is time, say critics, that this historical anomaly was brought up to date.
The Lord Mayor's Show
Every year, thousands of people come to watch the extravagant parade through the city.
It is a ceremony that marks the start of the tenure of each new Lord Mayor, an office which is held for one year.
The historical meaning of the show is the introduction of the new Lord Mayor to the people.
This had to happen because the people didn't know who the new Lord Mayor was because his appointment was a secret affair.
The City of London Corporation enjoys the spectacle of the show.
Its spokesmen frequently appear in the media to advocate the continued deregulation of the financial sector.
It also does a lot of charitable work through its various trusts and manages large public spaces all across London.
But recently, the City of London has been making unwelcome headlines because of the Occupy protests at St Paul's,
which ended in a high court battle and subsequent eviction of the protesters.
The Occupy protests drew media attention to this unique organisation, which is both medieval in its foundation and rituals,
and also at the forefront of global finance and commerce.
The Corporation of the City of London is quite an extraordinary institution.
I mean, it's been one of the very good things that the Occupy London protests has done is to expose this sort of farcical,
ruritanian institution. I mean, it's something of a joke that you have on the one hand, something that's basically existed for hundreds of years,
essentially unreformed, it still has a property qualification for voting, which is something I'm sure most people would be seriously taken aback by.
It has all these kind of ludicrous rituals, the Lord Mayor's Parade, the various guilds, everyone dresses up in their, you know, their pomp and their finery.
And yet at the same time, it's a very, very powerful lobbying institution for corporations, for the major banking and financial interests
that are in the City of London.
The Lord Mayor's key responsibility is to support the City of London as one of the world's leading financial centres.
The city brand is said to include all UK financial service centres and not just those in the square mile.
Among the Lord Mayor's duty is listed Promoting Financial Services in London.
And this includes specifically providing hospitality for visiting heads of state, ministers and other senior business VIPs either at Guildhall or Manchin House.
I suppose the City of London Corporation is the last club in the city.
I mean, they all used to be run by clubs. Stock exchange run by a club. Bought exchange run by a club. Loids is run by a club.
And it's the last club.
When I made a Freedom of Information request to find out which MPs had been whined and dined at the Lord Mayor's expense,
I was given a predictable list which included successive Prime Ministers and Chancellors.
But when I asked how much had been spent, I was told that this information was outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.
The reason for this, I was told, is that the banquets are funded by the City Cash, which the City of London Corporation insists is a private fund.
The City Cash, although the Corporation will argue that it's not public money, quite clearly is if you look at it.
If it's public money, the public should know what it's being used for.
The historical source of the City Cash is public, as it is based on rents from land held in trust for the people of London.
There's two specific trusts. There's the Gresham Trust. There's the Thomas Gresham Nefertis Estate to the trustees of the City Corporation and the Mercer's Company.
And mainly it was for facility, the Royal Exchange, facility for London merchants.
So over the years that's changed. And now the Royal Exchange has just used an asset to maximise an income.
A lot of the income does go to very good causes, but the accounts should be published.
It's maybe an old charity, an old trust. The accounts should be published so people should know that it's being spent properly.
The same with the City Cash. That actually came from a land grab most of it, about 1820 or so.
The real estate, North and Moorgate, used to be a park called Moorfields.
It was enclosed, built on, City still owns it, and they got other estates as well.
So that's a public asset, quite clearly. And the accounts for it used to be published up by 1965, because we did abstract and we're just the Almanac.
Suddenly they weren't. Quite clearly they should be.
When I went to St Paul's with my camera on October the 15th, the protesters first skirmish with the City of London authorities had already happened.
As the City of London's own police force and officers from the Met had prevented protesters from entering Peyton Oster Square and occupying their original target, the London Stock Exchange.
The following morning, Can and Giles Fraser emerged from the cathedral and told protesters he had asked police to leave and that people had a right to protest.
Giles Fraser later resigned his post after the church decided to put commercial interest first and asked the protesters to leave.
During the first few weeks of the camp, some of the most coherent arguments against the financial system were focused on the issue of tax injustice.
While the talk with Intent City was about the murky world of corporate tax avoidance and dirty cash flows out of developing countries into the City of London, the media focused on the conflict between the protesters and the church.
However, in both these narratives, the influence of the City of London Corporation was there for anyone who cared to look.
The board members of the trustees of the cathedral include Roger Gifford, Alderman for the ward of Cordwayner and chairman of the Association of Foreign Banks.
And the chairman of the board of trustees is Sir John Stuttard, a former Lord Mayor.
I think people need to realise that one of the reasons the church is so stressed about the occupation is that for the last 800 years as part of the Lord Mayor's Parade, the canon of the cathedral has blessed the Lord Mayor, the head of the Corporation of London on the steps of St Paul's.
And that's going to be very difficult to do if this is still occupied.
This is the unique historical moment with the Corporation of London on the one side, the occupation on the other and they need to realise the power they have and the church in the middle and the churches.
I know there's a debate within the cathedral and at the moment they've decided to side with the Corporation of London.
I hope they change their mind and I hope the occupation is because it's still there on the 12th of November for the Lord Mayor's Parade.
While the sun shone on Occupy London, the campers did everything in their power to respect the wishes of the cathedral.
Apart from leave the site.
Two days ago I cooked for 800 people at lunchtime, I conned them all and dinner time was 600 people.
Yesterday lunchtime I cooked for at least 750 people, at least. Every single meal, like more and more or less, but it's around 600-700 people.
And every day people are coming here, like more than 3 or 4,000 people are coming here every single day to visit the kitchen tent.
To have at least a cup of tea or something like that is being proved here and I swear I never heard that nobody likes somethings from my kitchen.
I think that they are here for all of us who are trying to find these money-grabbing capitalists.
The world has gone to pots and we wanted to be different.
If we want to express that we disagree, we make this signal, cross our hands, that's it, well done, very good.
If I could see things put right, just a few things.
First off, just capitalism as, you know, the rich man always wins, the rich white man always wins.
This is completely wrong in every way, at least in my opinion.
It's important that everyone is involved in this, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, whatever,
because it needs to be head out because there are reasons behind what these people are saying
and they need to be heard even if the people don't believe in it themselves.
They need to at least acknowledge that these people do.
On the steps of St Paul's, the General Assembly may have been sent to stage,
but in the Wings, the City of London Corporation plotted how to bring down the curtain on the protest.
We heard a few days ago that the City of London, and it's primarily it seems the City of London
that are driving this, but the Cathedral are there with them now, are issuing process against the occupation.
That will be strenuously defended by their lawyers, on various grounds.
Three cheers for the Lord Mayor.
As most of you people here were unable to vote for the current Lord Mayor,
I decided to vote for him on your behalf, using my 20,000 votes.
But I'm sure you're in favour of that.
It denies democratic rights to ordinary residents.
It doesn't consult with residents sufficiently.
It consults with itself.
It's interested only in its own particular narrow world of finance,
which is an old school tie system of patronage
based on a medieval system which still persists.
And it's time it was uprooted and something put in its place.
People are trying to get through.
Would you stand to one side and let people come through, please? Thank you.
Mammons by Sawyer London.
How many of you guys are there?
I don't know. Are you not friends or anything?
We're just here to celebrate the New Lord Mayor.
We're here to say good luck, mate.
We're here to support him.
He's my kind of guy, basically.
Well done.
Hi, I'm looking for Doveel. Is she around?
Yes, we're Angela Hale.
Away from the media spotlight, Patrick Streeter kicked off his campaign
for election to the City of London Court of Common Council
in the Bishopsgate Ward moat.
I'm here to support him.
He's my kind of guy, basically.
Well done.
Hi, I'm looking for Doveel.
Is she around?
Away from the media spotlight, Patrick Streeter kicked off his campaign
for the Bishopsgate Ward moat.
Patrick is a seasoned adversary of the city fathers
and knows exactly what he is up against in seeking elections.
Particularly about conflict of interest to some of the common councils
in the city of London, because it looks as though they're being sponsored
by the big property companies, some of them.
As usual?
Well, I face that.
And I think of this day and age, it's not really on.
You know, 10, 15 years ago, people would accept that sort of thing,
but now it's unacceptable.
And people have just got to stand up in the county and say,
no more, no more.
Office blocks over there, Broadgate, Herbert Smith and UBS.
Then you've got small arcades, small shops down that way.
And then further on, in the old East India buildings,
you've got other big firms and solicitors, insurance companies.
So you've got a mixed ward, 90% businesses, 10% residential,
and also a lot of shops.
So very varied, but mainly it's the big businesses with the block votes
who pack the punch.
I stood for, I got elected about five years ago,
but only for one year.
That's the city, that's the Court of Common Council.
I had to stand down because we had a bit of a crisis in our family business.
And now I've got more time, I'd like to get re-elected,
particularly on a reform platform.
All this estate right here is owned by British land.
This is the Broadgate estate, which is headed by the Rittback family.
And if you want to contact the voters in here,
basically you have to write to them and then deliver a letter.
It's quite difficult to contact them in person.
Some of the firms are very good, like Deutsche Bank,
who invite the various candidates to come in and address their members.
Other ones are more difficult to contact.
Traditionally, and nobody would argue against this,
the block voted city elections was formidable.
And everybody said, well, that firm solicitors,
that firm of accountants supported all that.
It's rather like the old Labour Party and the trade union vote.
And everybody said that's the way it works.
But over the years, people have realised that that's not really the right way of doing things.
But the vestiges are still there.
You can see in certain elections, the old block vote is still there.
People are still trying to manipulate it.
And it's anti-democratic.
That's a matter for each company to admit its members.
But it's open to a wide variety of individuals.
And indeed, they do a great deal of charitable and other work,
which is really their main characteristic in the modern day.
The Court of Alderman used to be able to veto Aldermanic candidates.
They were told they couldn't do that anymore.
But they now did it through the back door,
because an Aldermanic candidate has to be a JP.
So he goes to the front of this JP selection committee.
And extraordinary, some very respectable people,
solicitors and chairman of important banks
and quite established charity accountants in the city.
They've gone far to this committee.
And they've been phoned back.
And it's just because the city fathers are putting influence on the committee
and saying, you know, we don't want this chap as Aldermanic candidate.
The net effect is a lot of the Aldermanic elections are uncontested.
And that really has got to be stopped,
because it's nothing to do with modern democratic processes.
And it's an extraordinary anomaly, whereby you can get a vote
just because you've worked anywhere in the city in the last 10 years.
And I think they slipped that through the legislation when nobody was looking.
This is all Boardgate Estates here.
And what worries me, and where I feel it's my job to keep people on their toes,
is various common councillors seem to have got remarkably close
to the establishment of British land and Boardgate Estates.
You have one Michael Cassaday who was on the main board.
And you have another one who's a voter for them at Archibald Galloway.
And Archibald Galloway didn't even declare an interest.
Well, I feel he should have done, because obviously in everything
in business and politics, there's conflicts of interest.
We can all deal with it as long as it's declared.
Do you think there is a revolving door between these property companies
and the City of London corporations, particularly the committees
that relate to planning and property development?
Yes, I think you put it right.
These chaps there, footwork is very deft.
And they don't break any technical bits of the regulations,
except sometimes I'm mistaken.
But when you look at it in the whole, it's far too close to comfort.
Cassaday and Galloway, they've helped with these planning permissions.
And Cassaday is non-executive director of UBS.
He has been a director of British land, shareholder of British land.
And when you look at the whole picture, it looks far too incestuous.
And, you know, I wasn't against the business fate when it was kept.
But now I feel it's being abused.
The whole thing has to be reviewed.
Mr Galloway did not want to be interviewed on camera about his association with British land,
but denied any conflict of interest, saying that he had never been employed by the company.
The City of London Corporation press office also denied there was any conflict of interest on the part of Michael Cassaday.
It seems that Archie Galloway did declare an interest in British land in the planning committee,
but he said that it was a personal interest and therefore not prejudicial because it wasn't financial.
He also described himself as an old friend of British land.
Is this just an example of an old boy's network?
Well, I think nowadays in the city these things really should be above board and quite clear where people stand.
And as I saw it, he was quite clearly sponsored by British land.
They got him elected.
And what worries me is he basically, he's on the Common Council,
basically representing British land's interests, not the interests as the whole of the ward, which he should be doing.
Let me give you the detailed votes.
This is in alphabetical order.
John William Brewster, independent, 91 votes.
Wendy Marilyn Hyde, independent, 101 votes.
Saïd Barik Mahoud, 14 votes.
Patrick Tromps-Thomas Streeter, 69 votes.
Well, obviously I was disappointed before the hard fight.
I think there's some mystery about those, looks like block votes.
I'm not quite sure who's operating. I think there must be some block votes still operating.
And quite interesting to find out exactly how they are operating.
We need a bit of luck to find that out, but I should keep my eyes open and see what comes up.
Is there very much you can do to find out?
Well, we can study the postal votes because some firms register all their partners and members as postal votes.
And, you know, this ward is my village.
I'm talking to a lot of people, I know lots of people.
And if it comes out that block votes have been operating, I shall ask the authorities to stop it,
because it's obviously seriously undemocratic.
We pray, we pray, brothers and sisters, for the Lord Mayor,
for the Alderman, for the Corporation of London and for the starving poor and indebted of this world.
The city put the eviction notices on the tents yesterday.
As a result of that, the process begins.
If my clients do not vacate the area by six o'clock tonight and the clock is ticking,
as we hear now, the clock is ticking,
then it seems that the city will be in court on Friday to start the process.
We are waiting to react to what the city's serve upon us.
So far, the advice the client has been given on health and safety issues,
we've been right and they've been wrong, so far so good.
They weren't really negotiations.
The City of London Corporation asked us to come and meet them,
at a meeting where they were putting a proposal on the table to do with the occupation here,
and about eight of us went to the Guildhall to meet with a couple of representatives of the Corporation.
The basis of the proposal was that if we would agree to slightly scale back the camp,
this was for a fire-access reason, and agree to leave by New Year 2012,
they would desist from taking legal action.
That was the end of that proposal.
It was taken back to our legal team here and the City of London Corporation Working Group.
We have individual groups that look at things before they go to General Assembly.
And so, by the Friday at close of business,
the City of London Corporation at that point sent an email to our solicitor at Byneman's,
where the original proposal that we'd taken back to the camp was there as the first clause,
but there were 11 additional clauses,
which we couldn't get any advice on, obviously, until the Monday because the email came in after close of business.
And we were going through these clauses trying to work out what they were all about,
which point to the City of London Corporation,
sought an initial notice to quit, which is the situation we're in now,
which states currently that unless we go by nine o'clock tomorrow morning,
they will begin legal action, and that's basically the crux of it all.
I think one of the things they misunderstand is that they work in a very structured and different way to us.
And I think not so much their behaviour, but they're in comprehension.
One of the main reasons for this occupation is our experiment really working towards real democracy.
And we're not able to make decisions really quickly.
I suppose I feel that they said originally we could, you know, if we agreed to leave by January.
And I think I thought we had a bit more time to go through these clauses and so on and come to a proper conclusion.
I personally would want the Corporation to understand we don't work in the same way.
I want everybody here to be able to understand these documents,
not to be talking in the dark.
You know, I'd liken it to an insurance policy with lots of small print.
And people get caught out by the small print.
So really we were trying to go through the process meticulously.
It's a bizarre institution that's just been allowed to exist more or less and molested for hundreds of years now.
And if there's one thing that the Occupy has done that's absolutely critical to its success,
it's been to expose some of that because the City of London is central to maintaining the power of the city as a set of institutions,
as a power of the financial institutions there.
And once you start to say, OK, let's democratise this, let's throw some light in its workings,
you start to expose the entire way the city broadly as the set of financial institutions operates.
Thank you.
