Bees: Swarm on Downing Street

This morning hundreds of 38 Degrees members joined a host of campaign organisations to swarm on Downing Street to protect our bees.

David Cameron was meeting his cabinet to decide whether to allow banned bee killing pesticides to be used on fields across the UK. Unbelievably, a mega pesticide company called Syngenta has just made an emergency appeal after their product was banned across Europe last year due to the risk it poses to our bees.

Yesterday we handed in our huge people-powered petition to No.10 Downing St so that it landed on David Cameron’s desk before the big meeting.

This morning, as MPs turned up at the cabinet meeting they were greeted by hundreds of people chanting at them to do the right thing, and protect our bees. We wanted to make sure that the ministers were in no doubt that not only scientists, but the public too were demanding that they stop the bee killer pesticides.

We all arrived at 8am, bright and early in the morning, ready to catch the ministers as they walked into the meeting.  Alongside 38 Degrees a huge range of campaign organisations came along, Buglife, Client Earth, Environmental Justice Foundation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Natural Beekeeping Trust, Pesticide Action Network and the Soil Association all joined the campaign.  We even had Barry Gardiner MP (The Shadow Environment minister) join us and chant along.

Armed with spotter cards we kept our eyes peeled for the ministers as they walked into the cabinet meeting.  Each one was greeted with chants to save our bees and stop the Syngenta pesticides from being used on our fields.

“David Cameron, just say no – Tell Syngenta where to go!”

“What do we want? Bees! When do we want them? Forever!”

“All we are saying, is give bees a chance!”

We managed to spot lots of the politicians walking in through the front entrance of Downing Street.  David Cameron, Vince Cable, Grant Shapps, William Hague and many more.  Unfortunately we think Owen Paterson (the environment minister) snuck in through a back door.  As David Cameron walked up and waved, the crowd literally swarmed on Downing Street chanting “save our bees!” and chased him into the meeting with a rousing chorus of chants.

Watch this space to see what happens next.

David Cameron and his cabinet should be in no doubt as to what the world expects of them.