Bemused bankers confronted by City protest

Workers heading to the Square Mile yesterday were met by placard-waving activists who have set up camp in front of St Paul’s Cathedral.

The demonstrators took up their position on Saturday after police blocked them from the London Stock Exchange in nearby Paternoster Square.

Meanwhile, the month-long Occupy Wall Street campaign in New York, which has inspired the London protest and similar demonstrations across the globe, gained new momentum yesterday as it attracted cash donations and the sympathy of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Mr Ban said finance chiefs from the G20 group of rich and developing nations, who are meeting in Paris, should listen to the demonstrators.

“Business as usual, or just looking at their own internal economic issues, will not give any answers to a very serious international economic crisis,” he added.

“That is what you are seeing all around the world, starting from Wall Street, people are showing their frustrations, are trying to send a very clear and unambiguous message around the world.”

In New York, the movement has raised almost £190,000 and protesters are filling storage space a block from Wall Street with donated goods to help sustain their occupation of nearby Zuccotti Park.

Supporters are said to be shipping 300 boxes a day and the demonstrators’ supplies include blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, cans of food, medical items and even 20 pairs of swimming goggles to protect them from pepper-spray attacks.

The protests in New York and London, as well as similar demonstrations in Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Athens, Berlin and Rome, have been supported by the Green Party.

The party’s leader and sole MP, Caroline Lucas, said the London camp was “an opportunity to explore a different kind of future to the one the mainstream political parties have constructed”.