RBS dirty fuel protesters open up new front of attack

Bank's annual meeting targeted by protesters in pinafores, Marigolds, headscarves and a chimney sweep's tattered rags
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 3 April 2009 17.37 BST

They swept down on the neatly coiffed Royal Bank of Scotland shareholders wearing pinafores, Marigold gloves, headscarves and a chimney sweep's tattered rags, shovelling dusty piles of coal across the pavement underneath tiny carpets.
After months of public fury about the destruction of the bank's reputation and its shareholders' wealth, the 22 young climate change campaigners were today trying to open up a new front of attack on RBS: its long-standing and multi-billion pound investments in "dirty" fossil fuels.
They barked out choreographed chants as shareholders filed past into the bank's annual general meeting in Edinburgh - "clean up RBS: we don't want your climate mess"; "no more fossil fuels: give us green borrowing rules" and "RBS, don't be fools: stop extracting fossil fuels". Similarly dressed cleaners and "dodgy bankers" from the People & Planet group had also descended on Bishopsgate in London.
But this was far more civilised than Wednesday's riotous scenes in the City, where one RBS branch was besieged by scaffold-wielding protesters. In Edinburgh, the most threatening sight for shareholders was the bank of airport-style full-body and bag scanners inside the International Conference Centre entrance, and a rank of white-capped, black-jacketed security staff. Outside, the protesters played with brushes, dustpans and their piles of coal behind a crash barrier patrolled by two good humoured policemen.
"There's too much coal to sweep under the carpet," one protester quipped in a loud stage voice.
The slogan barked out to shareholders by Dan Abrahams, brandishing his loud hailer, seemed more first-year dissertation than barricade rallying cry.
He told shareholders: "We own 70% of RBS and we want this money invested, not in fossil fuels, but in public transport and fuel efficiency. You're putting our future at risk ... put regulations in place to make sure that they invest in things that we need to invest in to make the transition to a low carbon economy."
Abrahams did not seem to draw breath, but his demands were ignored by the shareholders - chiefly elderly and smartly dressed - who were preparing for their own personal battles. The one leaflet they did read was, suitably, printed on pink, from the RBS Shareholders Action Group. It urged their support for a legal challenge accusing RBS of misleading shareholders.
As one senior shareholder told its new chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, the institution was now "a dead bank on life-support", while the former chief executive, Sir Fred Goodwin, was a cheat. "He's a benefit scrounger on a massive scale," the unnamed stockholder told the AGM. "It has to be payback time."