last tree in Bonn square Oxford occupied, eviction expected at dawn, friday — update

4.01.2008

The last tree left in Bonn square is being occu­pied in attempt to save it — please get sup­port down there

appar­ent­ly the tree is over 100 years old, and there is a preser­va­tion order on the memo­r­i­al to the tirah cam­paign in afghanistan, but not on the trees which are old and sig­nif­i­cant also.

If any­one can get media or sup­port down there urgent­ly please

The youtube ver­sion for online view­ing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5kGNDlOyN0

Full rez for screen­ing
http://blip.tv/file/get/Undercurrents-OxfordTree616.mp4

You can get more videos like this from http://visionontv.net
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evic­tion now expect­ed Mon am

Text mes­sages from the Bonn Square tree protest say that evic­tion is expect­ed tomor­row morn­ing, around 8 or 9am.

If you are free, please go along and sup­port 🙂

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10.01.2008

Today ten pro­test­ers turned up to resist the removal of beau­ti­ful, mature Lon­don Plains trees behind the West­gate Shop­ping Cen­tre in Oxford city cen­tre.

These trees, along with shel­tered hous­ing, and — I was told by a group of young peo­ple — the Oxford and Cher­well Val­ley Col­lege stu­dents’ pub are being cleared to make way for a gar­gan­tu­an cathe­dral to cap­i­tal­ism plus mul­ti-storey car park. As one stu­dent sar­cas­ti­cal­ly put it, “Yeah, ‘coz what we real­ly need are more shops”.

Most peo­ple spent all day observ­ing the goings-on of coun­cil employ­ees and tree ‘sur­geons’ and man­aged — albeit tem­porar­i­ly — to remove one guy rope from one of the trees along the west side of the West­gate car park.

How­ev­er, this did not deter the Leisure and Parks peo­ple from begin­ning to remove the trees on the north side.

Once they start­ed on the trees, emo­tions — which were already high — reached fever pitch. Coun­cil­lor Deb­o­rah Glass Wood­in was arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass (even though she did­n’t quite man­age to get into the fenced off area) and then held for 5 hours at St Aldates Cop Shop.

One oth­er pro­test­er is spend­ing tonight in the trees, brav­ing the gale force winds; I feel slight­ly guilty for being inside on my lap­top writ­ing this report. If you can get down to the site to join him and oth­ers please do.

Bruce and friends (not the cops, mind) are on the cor­ner of Nor­folk Street, near Cas­tle Street; around the back of the West­gate Cen­tre near the mul­ti-storey carpark. Map here:
http://openstreetmap.com/?mlat=51.75055&mlon=-1.2615&zoom=16

Video on YouTube ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=uXdLcAffXnE).

I count­ed the rings of the one of the first-felled trees, which you can see in the pic­ture. It was near­ly thir­ty years old; as old as I am.

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10th: just heard that Bruce, who has been up one of the trees behind the West­gate shop­ping cen­tre in Oxford, has final­ly come down. He spent over 24 hours up the tree — brav­ing the freez­ing gales and lash­ing rain from last night and today.

He was joined this morn­ing by a fel­low pro­tes­tor; pics from today’s protest to fol­low soon.

And wor­ry­ing­ly, one of the pho­tog­ra­phers from the BNP protest in Novem­ber was on site too. This time he said he was from ITN rather than local news.

West­gate protest con­tin­ues; court on Mon­day
9.01.2008

Tree-sit­ters in Bonn Square (Oxford) oppos­ing the mas­sive expan­sion of the near­by West­gate shop­ping cen­tre were served with a court sum­mons today for an evic­tion hear­ing on Mon­day. More action is sore­ly need­ed.

Since last Thurs­day one of the large trees in Bonn Square has been occu­pied in an attempt to save it from the chain­saws. It is one of around 40 trees, includ­ing many large mature ones, in the West­gate area marked for destruc­tion as part of the grotesque expan­sion of Oxford’s plas­tic con­sumer­land.

More back­ground on the West­gate scheme is here, amongst oth­er places:
http://matthewsellwood.blogspot.com/2006/10/westgate.html

There have been sev­er­al evic­tion rumours in the mean­time, but the clear­est clue came today when the pro­test­ers were served with court papers. Since the hear­ing is on Mon­day, any evic­tion before then would be ille­gal, and seems unlike­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the coun­cil can eas­i­ly con­tin­ue cut­ting down the oth­er ‑unoc­cu­pied- trees in the mean­time. In fact, work has already start­ed on felling the oth­er trees in the area.

If you want to help, or find out more, pop down to Bonn Square. They have a peti­tion which they are ask­ing peo­ple to sign and are col­lect­ing dona­tions to cov­er basic costs. If you’re feel­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly inspired, you could even organ­ise a bunch of peo­ple you know to go and dis­rupt the tree cut­ting which is tak­ing place right now. Or tar­get the ster­ile shop­ping cen­tres, cor­po­rate scum­bags and cor­rupt local politi­cians that are push­ing the scheme!

The West­gate Part­ner­ship are cur­rent­ly chain­saw­ing trees to make way for the West­gate expan­sion (this is slight­ly dif­fer­ent from the Bonn Square project, which is linked to the West End ‘regen­er­a­tion’ but not part of the West­gate expan­sion per se). This is despite the fact that a pub­lic enquiry is still going on over the demo­li­tion of Abbey Place hous­ing — a clear indi­ca­tion of what the devel­op­ers think of the legal process.…

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9.01.2008

10am — trees being cut down in Par­adise Square.

We’ve had a mes­sage that trees are being cut down now to make way for the new bloat­ed West­gate shop­ping centre/temple to Mamon. If you can, get down there as soon as pos­si­ble.

At the moment tree sur­geons are at Par­adise square, but prob­a­bly won’t be for long. Maybe fol­low the sound of the chain­saws if they’re not there any­more.

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