police solidarity blockade of shell petrol station

27.1.12

in many years of inde­pen­dent report­ing, i’ve often seen sit­u­a­tions where police have caused larg­er dis­rup­tion than a hand­full of pro­tes­tors, clos­ing roads, some­times clos­ing down busi­ness­es, and some­times mas­sive­ly ampli­fy­ing the pow­er of the pro­tes­tors alone (not that that’s their inten­tion). how­ev­er, this evening was, i think, the first time that they so com­plete­ly did the job of the activists for them, that the cam­paign­ers could sit in a nice warm pub and toast the met, instead of stand­ing around in the cold them­selves.

the protest this evening was called by the cli­mate-con­scious shell-bash­ing ‘lon­don ris­ing tide’ group, in co-ordi­na­tion with the leg­endary activist sam­ba band ‘rhythms of resis­tance’.

each jan­u­ary, the band com­mem­o­rate the life of activist, val jones, a woman who helped put the ross­port coun­ty mayo strug­gles on the polit­i­cal map, and who, as a design­er, pro­duced many bril­liant huge ban­ners for the move­ment. she was sad­ly struck down with motor neu­rone dis­ease and passed away two years ago. in mem­o­ry of val, the com­mem­o­ra­tion takes the form of a shell garage block­ade each year.

so, tonight, the call-out was for a block­ade at the shell sta­tion in old street, the scene of pre­vi­ous block­ades. around twen­ty peo­ple turned up to the meet­ing point, armed with drums, ban­ners, and leaflets. well, actu­al­ly some­one for­got the leaflets, but as it turned out they weren’t need­ed.

the usu­al time-line for these events is that the activists turn up at the garage, the band plays on the fore­court, the large ban­ners are used to close the entrance to the site, and leaflets are hand­ed out to staff, to motorists, and to passers-by. the staff then close the shop and call the police, who turn up after about half an hour. the police warn peo­ple that they might be com­mit­ting aggra­vat­ed tres­pass, and then they force­ful­ly facil­i­tate the con­tin­u­a­tion of the action on the pave­ment, so that the garage opens for busi­ness once more.

how­ev­er, tonight, some­thing was very dif­fer­ent. even before the demo began, the garage went dark, bol­lards block­ing its entrance, and small groups of police lurked on street cor­ners near­by.

so the activists were con­fused. what to do? was there any point attempt­ing a block­ade of a garage that was already closed for busi­ness? pre­vi­ous esti­mates from block­ades show that garages lose sev­er­al thou­sands of pounds of busi­ness when they close, and this is of course part of the point of the protests. also, some­one had for­got­ten the leaflets, so although there was a sug­ges­tion of mov­ing to a dif­fer­ent tar­get, there was the con­cern the protest would­n’t be so effec­tive with­out this ele­ment.

every now and then, some­one went out to check the site, and the garage remained total­ly closed for busi­ness, all lights off, staff locked in their shop, and non­cha­lant street-cor­ner polic­ing. so, anoth­er drink, a bit of food, plans afoot for future actions, and as the cold wind built up, and the wet driz­zle came down, the occa­sion­al check that the police were con­tin­u­ing to car­ry out the activists’ mis­sion.

an hour passed, anoth­er one, a third. wow, this was bet­ter than any pre­vi­ous small-scale block­ade. there was fond rem­i­nisc­ing of the upper street block­ade a few years ago, val and the band present, on a sat­ur­day. this had closed the upper street shell garage for five or six hours, and end­ed with loads of TSG arriv­ing , a cou­ple of arrests, and a lot of details tak­en. but it was a much larg­er scale event with lots of pri­or plan­ning. tonight was always meant to be a small, token, and com­mem­o­ra­tive action.

after three hours, the police scaled down and appeared to leave, but the garage stayed closed for a futher two hours, until final­ly near 11pm it opened for busi­ness once more.

this has to have been the most suc­cess­ful block­ade with­out a sin­gle activist present. maybe they should con­tact the gui­ness book of records. we have the pho­tos, the eye-wit­ness reports.

var­i­ous the­o­ries emerged as to why this hap­pened tonight, but none of us real­ly know, so in the mean­time, the met should be heart­ened that a glass or two was raised to them for their ster­ling work this evening in cost­ing shell five hours-worth of busi­ness at a nor­mal­ly very busy lon­don garage, and thanks to them that a cou­ple of dozen activists stayed warm, safe and con­spir­a­to­r­i­al. 

all involved hope that the met join in with even more sol­i­dar­i­ty for the big block­ade on the 8th feb­ru­ary (occu­py­oil).