Oxford Tree Protest Brings Fences Down; update & latest on end of protest/arrest

12.1.2008
A demon­stra­tion in Oxford against the felling of trees and the build­ing of a mon­strous new shop­ping cen­tre saw hun­dreds of peo­ple gath­er around Bonn Square. Many of them then took spon­ta­neous direct action to stop the fenc­ing-off of the square, and forced the Coun­cil to take the fences back down!

We won this time, but the strug­gle to save the trees and stop the West­gate Cen­tre goes on. On Mon­day, the tree-sit­ter is in court and the Coun­cil is seek­ing final per­mis­sion to go ahead with the felling. Sup­port is always need­ed down at the Square, and watch this space for announce­ments of future actions.

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Activist arrest­ed while try­ing to give tree pro­test­er water

13.1.2008
An activist is arrest­ed for “on sus­pi­cion of lit­ter­ing” while try­ing to throw Gabriel, the Bonn Square tree pro­test­er, some water.

At about 2 AM on Sun­day morn­ing two activists went to Bonn Square to try to give the fenced-off tree pro­test­er, Gabriel, some water. As one dis­tract­ed the secu­ri­ty, the oth­er tried to throw a bot­tle to Gabriel, but unfor­tu­nate­ly it was­n’t a very good throw 😉

Police sit­ting in a near­by car quick­ly noticed and the bot­tle-throw­er was arrest­ed “on sus­pi­cion of lit­ter­ing”. For­tu­nate­ly only about 3 hours was spent at the police sta­tion before the activist was released with­out charge — the police seemed to have changed their mind and decid­ed it was­n’t a pros­e­cutable offence.

The arrestee was advised by a solic­i­tor that whilst the arrest was poten­tial­ly unlaw­ful, pur­su­ing legal action would like­ly only result in a dif­fer­ent charge such as “pub­lic dis­or­der”. An IPCC com­plaint may be made.

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14.1.2008
Lat­est update from BBC:

Police arrest tree man pro­test­er

A pro­test­er who was liv­ing in a tree in an attempt to stop it from being chopped down has been arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

Gabriel Cham­ber­lain set up his makeshift tree house in Bonn Square, Oxford, 11 days ago.

The city coun­cil secured an evic­tion order to force him down, but Mr Cham­ber­lain came down vol­un­tar­i­ly after he ran out of water and sup­plies.

The tree was lat­er felled as part of a £1.5m facelift in Oxford’s west end.

The sycamore was the largest of four trees which have been cut down.

The oper­a­tion sparked protests in Bonn Square from oth­er res­i­dents and police have arrest­ed at least two oth­er peo­ple.

The trees will be replaced with sev­en semi-mature robinia pseudoa­ca­cia trees.

A coun­cil spokesman said Bonn Square was in a key loca­tion at the inter­sec­tion of four major routes.

He said the plan was aimed at mak­ing the square more attrac­tive and improv­ing CCTV sur­veil­lance.

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Yes­ter­day morn­ing Gabriel was arrest­ed and work began on destroy­ing the tree. I don’t know the exact details; whether it was a planned evic­tion or whether he was grabbed hav­ing come down from the tree for sup­plies or a break.

Pro­test­ers were out­num­bered by cops and secu­ri­ty and the tree itself was sur­round­ed by sev­er­al lay­ers of fenc­ing. Nev­er­the­less a few attempt­ed to block the work, but were quick­ly dragged away. They were arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass and I believe all have now been released on police bail, and will find out in a few weeks whether or not the charges will be dropped.

This is not the end of the cam­paign though; there are still tens of trees under threat as part of the West­gate expan­sion, and the Bonn Square cam­paign has served to gal­vanise local action. Watch this space 🙂

Mean­while the Radley Lakes Town Green appli­ca­tion was turned down by the Coun­ty Coun­cil, despite plen­ty of evi­dence; cam­paign­ers will take the case to the High Court.