“Common Ground” Community Garden Finally Evicted

Report on Thurs­day 18th Octo­bers evic­tion of Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den.

It seems it was “fourth time lucky” for Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil bailiffs today, when they final­ly realised that it’s not a good idea to inform anar­cho-com­mies (and oth­er assort­ed rev­o­lu­tion­ary repro­bates) 2 weeks in advance if you want to evict them from coun­cil land. Arriv­ing unan­nounced at 9.00am this morn­ing, they began by evict­ing our squat­ting neigh­bours, giv­ing us enough time to form an impromp­tu resis­tance of 3 peo­ple.

This reporter arrived at 10.00am, to find approx­i­mate­ly 8 police, 4 bailiffs, 4 coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tives and a bunch of burly builders board­ing up build­ings. Coun­cil bailiffs had kicked a large hole in our gar­den fence, which they left unguard­ed. After a short con­sul­ta­tion we decid­ed to climb through it, sit in our gar­den and peace­ful­ly resist. This reporter is ashamed to say that his resis­tance last­ed a mat­ter of min­utes, before he was con­vinced to leave the gar­den rather than face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of arrest. The resilience of his com­rades was some­what more respectable.

Leav­ing the gar­den, he dis­cov­ered that the 8 police had left just as the fun seemed to be start­ing, beg­ging the ques­tion “why had they come in the first place?”

Bailiffs and coun­cil employ­ees attempt­ed to use diplo­ma­cy (a facet for which they are not well known) to con­vince the remain­ing two gar­den­ers to leave. Both refused, and there ensued a minor kafuf­fle. A charm­ing gen­tle­man, sport­ing a fash­ion­able red coat (pic­tured) blocked our pho­tog­ra­ph­er from tak­ing any pic­tures of this. At one point, he even attempt­ed to steal the cam­era prompt­ing the ques­tion “What the fuck are you doing?”. He imme­di­ate­ly desist­ed in his klep­to­ma­ni­ac-like actions, but refused to stand aside and allow fur­ther pic­tures to be tak­en of this inci­dent.

By this time, there was but one com­rade remain­ing in the gar­den. Coun­cil employ­ees and bailiffs, unsure what to do about this final poten­tial men­ace, decid­ed to call for back-up. After a wait of 15 min­utes, a riot van arrived con­tain­ing 2 of Thames Val­leys finest, aka da Five‑0, da Fuzz, da Filth, da Feds aka PC 5479 A Hunt, PC 5292.

The offi­cers of the law entered the gar­den and a new arrival from our group fol­lowed them. He was asked to leave, with the promise of some con­ver­sa­tion, which he did not get. Once again we were down to one soli­tary indi­vid­ual, peace­ful­ly refus­ing to leave. The offi­cers of the law asked him to move on; he refused. This called for extreme solu­tions: one police man got on the phone and asked his boss what he should do. The answer was clear­ly “do noth­ing”, for that is what they did….

It seemed that no police or bailiffs actu­al­ly want­ed to arrest our “last man stand­ing”. Per­haps they realised the poten­tial dan­ger that they would be putting them­selves in (for he is a 3rd dan black belt in origa­mi…), but more like­ly there was nobody that was pre­pared to be “the one that arrest­ed a gar­den­er”. In any case, it even­tu­al­ly fell to a gen­tle­man from the coun­cil to forcibly pick him up and remove him from the gar­den. This sig­nalled the end of our resis­tance, and we called it a day.

At the time of going to press, sev­er­al ideas are being float­ed about to keep up the momen­tum and build upon the com­mu­ni­ty spir­it that Com­mon Ground has cre­at­ed so far. Need­less to say, this is not the last that Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil will hear from us, and it may not be the last time we set foot in our gar­den

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Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den — on squat­ted land in Sil­ver Street, Kates­grove — was evict­ed Fri­day morn­ing. This is the third evic­tion attempt, the pre­vi­ous two, which the coun­cil announced in advance, were met with strong local resis­tance.

At about 9am on 18th Octo­ber 2007 coun­cil offi­cials, bail­liffs, police and PCSO’s arrived, and coun­cil offi­cials broke down the door to num­ber 6 Sil­ver Street (ex-Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre). Police and offi­cials entered the prop­er­ty and evict­ed the two peo­ple liv­ing there. They also broke a hole in the gar­den fence.

Around this time a cou­ple of local res­i­dents, who have worked and relaxed in the com­mu­ni­ty gar­den over the past 10 months, arrived on the scene, ask­ing ques­tions and attempt­ing to take pho­tographs of the event. After the evic­tion teams plans to “board-up” the gar­den were over­heard, two more local peo­ple who have worked in Com­mon Ground arrived.

Three peo­ple entered the gar­den and sat at a table, before coun­cil offi­cials entered and told them to leave. An argu­ment fol­lowed as the res­i­dents demand­ed that the com­mu­ni­ty should be asked what it want­ed to hap­pen to the site, rather than a devel­op­ment being imposed with­out con­sul­ta­tion, while coun­cil offi­cials sim­ply replied “its pri­vate prop­er­ty” — as if this is more impor­tant than social and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns or local democ­ra­cy. When told “This isn’t right and you know it!”, offi­cials replied “You may have a moral argu­ment, but by the law this is right”. Sure­ly there is some­thing wrong with law when it con­flicts with what is moral­ly right or with local democ­ra­cy?

One coun­cil offi­cial began to get aggres­sive and pulled one per­son­’s seat from under­neath them, throw­ing it across the gar­den. He then start­ed shov­ing the res­i­dent and squar­ing up to him, while the res­i­dent stood his ground and asked the offi­cial his name. Even­tu­al­ly, two res­i­dents had to leave the gar­den for per­son­al rea­sons, while one remained. Offi­cials asked him to leave again, before ask­ing the police, who had left, to return.

The Police once again asked the res­i­dent to leave, to avoid “embar­rass­ment”, only to be told “I’m not embar­rassed to defend this gar­den”. Even­tu­al­ly, fol­low­ing dis­cus­sions between the coun­cil and the police, a reluc­tant coun­cil offi­cial was told to use rea­son­able force to evict the per­son. The pro­test­er was phys­i­cal­ly lift­ed and dragged out of the gar­den, before builders fit­ted boards over the gar­den gate and over the hole in the fence.

This is def­i­nite­ly not the end, and Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive will dis­cuss var­i­ous options over the week­end.

The Coun­cil have stat­ed in press releas­es and in the recent full coun­cil meet­ing that offers of alter­na­tive land had been reject­ed ‘out of hand’ by the gar­den­ers. This is a mis­lead­ing state­ment. Com­mon Ground gave care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion to the offers and, as a group, agreed to con­tin­ue defend the gar­den where it is, and push for a local demo­c­ra­t­ic process where the com­mu­ni­ty would decide what hap­pens to the site long term.

How­ev­er, indi­vid­u­als involved in Com­mon Ground have begun engag­ing in dis­cus­sion with local coun­cil­lors and the Kates­grove Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss the via­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing oth­er com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens on the land offered by the coun­cil. It should be point­ed out how­ev­er, that both alter­na­tives are not with­out imme­di­ate prob­lems as one is very small and slopes down to the riv­er mak­ing it poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous, and the oth­er is not whol­ly owned by the coun­cil. The iden­ti­ty of the part own­er in the lat­ter case is seem­ing­ly unknown. But all options will be con­sid­ered and pur­sued as far as they can go.

Thanks for all sup­port we have recieved over the last year, we’ll be back!

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/common_ground_garden