Post date: Jun 06, 2013 9:47:47 PM
Protesters demonstrate outside a meeting of the world's most powerful people, criticising the annual gathering for being shrouded in secrecy.
WATFORD, ENGLAND, UK (JUNE 6, 2013) (REUTERS) - A hotel in Watford, near London, was under heavy police guard with local roads closed off, to guard the delegates at an annual meeting of some of the world's most powerful people on Thursday (June 6).
The Bilderberg Conference this year was meeting at the luxury Grove Hotel. The group of around 140 high-ranking figures meet to discuss global policy in meetings which are shrouded in secrecy and where no minutes are taken.No journalists are ever allowed inside the four-day event and no communiqué is given.
The Bilderberg Group is typically made up of influential politicians and business leaders and royalty. This year's attendees reportedly include Britain's finance minister, George Osborne, his opposition counterpart, Ed Balls and the CEO's of Google and Amazon.
Protesters were allowed to gather on the perimeter of the large hotel grounds to slam the conference's lack of transparency.
"It's just a gathering of people who are concerned that our elected politicians who promised transparency are meeting in secret with heads of top banks, pharmaceutical companies, weapons companies, you name it, European royalty are in there sort of thing. It's just incredible that they can say one thing and do the other," said protester and political blogger Daniel Kirby.
Among the protesters was Member for the European Parliament (MEP) Gerard Batten, from the UK Independence Party.
He criticised the power the Bilderberg Group has and their lack of accountability for any decisions which are taken at the yearly gatherings.
"I think it would be very naive to think that all of these people are going to turn up to a meeting unless it has some effect. Just take one example from our own country,George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer - he's got two or three days to spend in a meeting with people? Not unless it's very important. So I'm sure they are actually reaching decisions about which way public policy should be going in the countries that are represented and of course in the European Union," Batten said.
Delegates arrived in cars with blacked-out windows as protesters shouted "you scum" at them.
Police erected a five metre high steel fence in the fields surrounding the hotel to keep protesters out of the grounds.
Local residents are required to show passports at police lines in order to get to their own homes.
The Bilderberg Group, named after the hotel where it first met in 1954, was formed early in the Cold War era in reaction to a growing Communist threat. Today, many critics see it as a conspiracy and an agent of a new capitalist world order.