Brixton Reclaim Your Food Collective, 2 Arrests.

Peo­ple tak­ing part in Brix­ton’s Reclaim Your Food week­ly action faced arrest on Sun­day (2nd March 2008 ) as they chal­lenged the legit­i­ma­cy of a Dis­per­sal Order issued by the Lam­beth branch of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police.

The week­ly veg­an open pic­nic has recent­ly faced grow­ing repres­sion from Police and con­sis­tent sup­port in the com­mu­ni­ty. Police (which con­sti­tut­ed a mix of PCs, CSOs and high­er-rank­ing offi­cers) were wait­ing for the col­lec­tive before they even arrived. They came equipped with a mobile sur­veil­lance van, 2 reg­u­lar Police vans and 2 Police cars. Dis­pro­por­tion­ate? Make up your own mind…

The first arrest came as a result of a refusal to com­ply with the Dis­per­sal Order placed upon the group, the sec­ond for attempt­ing to estab­lish the legal basis for such an arrest.

The Dis­per­sal Order, made pos­si­ble by the con­tro­ver­sial Anti-Social Behav­iour Act, was issued in response to an alleged Sec­tion 5 Pub­lic Order offence — defined as caus­ing harass­ment, dis­tress or alarm. How­ev­er, when ques­tioned, the Police failed to pro­vide ade­quate evi­dence to sug­gest that such an offence was tak­ing place. What fol­lowed was a series of con­vo­lut­ed and dubi­ous expla­na­tions as to why they had rea­son to believe an offence was being com­mit­ted:

1) By giv­ing out free food, a cli­mate was being cre­at­ed that enabled drug-deal­ing — which in itself could pro­mote harass­ment, dis­tress and/or alarm. Case Law con­tra­dicts the use of this Pub­lic Order law ‘by proxy’ (as it were) and it has pre­vi­ous­ly been ruled that if a Sec­tion 5 offence is being comit­ted, it is unlaw­ful to arrest any­one oth­er than the alleged per­pe­tra­tor of the offence.

2) “Local Busi­ness­es” — such as the near­by McDon­alds & KFC resta­raunts — were claim­ing that the actions of the col­lec­tive were inhibit­ing their abil­i­ty to make a prof­it. No law that explic­it­ly states the inter­ests of said busi­ness­es are to take prece­dent over the inter­ests of the oth­er par­ties involved was invoked. How­ev­er, it’s hard­ly a shock­ing rev­e­la­tion that prof­it comes before peo­ple.

3) The con­cen­tra­tion of Brix­ton’s drug users and deal­ers in Brix­ton Town Square, alleged­ly as a result of the Reclaim Your Food col­lec­tive’s project, was mak­ing the ‘prob­lem’ more dif­fi­cult to Police. This isn’t even wor­thy of a wit­ty retort.

Thank­ful­ly, the long arm of the law did not stretch to the Bicy­cle Repair Work­shop or those mak­ing Punc­ture Repair Kits and Wal­lets from recy­cled and sus­tain­able mate­ri­als. These were wel­come addi­tions to the Town Square, which was reclaimed as a ful­ly-func­tion­al pub­lic space for all…with room for a bit of a dance to the chilled reggae/dub soundsys­tem!

Despite all the Police intim­i­da­tion and gen­er­al­ly not fan­tas­tic weath­er, a good time was had by most peo­ple who turned up or hap­pened to be pass­ing by!

Sun­day’s events also demon­strate the pow­er of sol­i­dar­i­ty and engage­ment with the com­mu­ni­ty, after Police aban­doned ini­tial threats to arrest every­one present because they thought those involved had ‘learnt their les­son’ and would not be back the next week. This, of course, had noth­ing to do with the logis­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ties that would’ve arisen from arrest­ing up to 50+ peo­ple with lim­it­ed resources — and hav­ing to jus­ti­fy that to the large­ly sup­port­ive mem­bers of the pub­lic present…honest, sarge! There were many peo­ple on hand to pho­to­graph and film the behav­iour of the Police and to record the iden­ti­ty num­bers of the offi­cers involved. The action was not only ful­ly com­plet­ed and large­ly unim­ped­ed by Police inter­ven­tion but also took to the streets after­wards, march­ing to Brix­ton Police Sta­tion and stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the two arrestees. The Reclaim Your Food ban­ner was unfurled accross the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police logo at the front of the sta­tion, gen­er­at­ing pub­lic inter­est and sup­port. Tea and Bis­cuits were also on offer, giv­ing the whole pro­ceed­ing an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly twee vibe!
Many Brix­ton res­i­dents approached the col­lec­tive, shar­ing their own expe­ri­ences of deal­ing with Police intim­i­da­tion and bru­tal­i­ty. Whilst this may appear incred­i­bly doom-and-gloom, the atmos­phere was more con­ducive to a sense of mutu­al sup­port and a desire to chal­lenge the state appa­ra­tus than of feel­ing down­trod­den or apa­thet­ic, which left many peo­ple feel­ing pos­i­tive about the pos­si­b­li­ty of resist­ing the ever-creep­ing Police state.

The col­lec­tives involved in Sun­day’s action are keen to wel­come any­one who is inter­est­ed in any aspect of the project to come along. The project will con­tin­ure to meet at Brix­ton Town Square

(by Cold­har­bour Lane, oppo­site the Ritzy Cin­e­ma) from around 2/3pm every Sun­day. The town square is well on it’s way to being a free pub­lic space, for any­one to use. This does not fig­ure in the plans of the Police and Local Gov­ern­ment, who are intent on see­ing through gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of the area. Let’s show them whose streets they real­ly are!

Video and Report: http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/03/392723.html
Pre­vi­ous Encoun­ters: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/391653.html?c=on#c189534