Moves to evict London demonstrators outside St Paul's Cathedral underway

Moves to initiate legal action to evict the demonstrators occupying St Paul's Cathedral Churchyard were underway Wednesday and had caused rows behind the scenes. The City of London Corporation, which owns part of the land at St Paul's where the camp site of 200 tents is located, confirmed to Xinhua Wednesday afternoon that it would start legal moves to evict the protesters. The legal plan is expected to be presented to city of London councilors on Thursday, and a writ is expected to be lodged at the High Court in London on Friday. The protesters settled at the square near St Paul's Cathedral on Oct. 15, after a bid to occupy the neighboring London Stock Exchange as part of a global day of protest at the bankers' crisis was foiled by police. They were initially welcomed by a senior cleric, but later the cathedral authorities asked them to move. After six days the cathedral was shut down for the first time in more than 65 years for health and safety reasons, as the authorities said the occupation was dangerous to public safety. Arguments behind the scenes were revealed on Wednesday with the Bishop of London calling for protesters to move, while a key figure in the St Paul's hierarchy threatened to resign if force was used to evict the demonstrators. "The time has come for the protesters to leave, before the camp's presence threatens to eclipse entirely the issues that it was set up to address," the bishop of London Richard Chartres said. However the BBC reported Wednesday that Dr Giles Fraser, the cleric who welcomed the demonstrators on to church land after the first night of the occupation and who ordered police off the land, had threatened to resign if force was used in eviction. No spokesman was available from St Paul's to comment on the story.