A report from the No Borders network gathering

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

Sat­ur­day began with report backs from local groups, giv­ing us an impres­sion of the activ­i­ty of the No Bor­ders net­work. Oppo­si­tion against ID cards and the IOM, and actions against depor­ta­tion air­lines and immi­gra­tion snatch squads, are as much part of the No Bor­ders agen­da as is sol­i­dar­i­ty with detainees, depor­tees and migrant work­ers. It was obvi­ous that the vol­ume and vari­ety of actions is one of the strengths of the net­work which has helped it to con­tin­ue to devel­op and grow with­out los­ing momen­tum.

The inter­na­tion­al dimen­sion of the net­work was stressed when peo­ple told of large-scale block­ades of a deten­tion cen­tre in Bel­gium, of Ham­burg air­port to stop depor­ta­tions, and of the attempt to dis­man­tle a deten­tion cen­tre in Den­mark. Peo­ple felt it is increas­ing­ly impor­tant to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing info and action-shar­ing net­works with peo­ple across Europe and else­where. UK No Bor­ders activists are mak­ing con­nec­tions with cam­paign­ers in North­ern France to high­light the sit­u­a­tion of hun­dreds of refugees trapped in Calais.

Dis­cus­sions also devel­oped around the idea of orga­niz­ing a big­ger No Bor­ders event in the future that would include actions and info-shar­ing.

On Sun­day, the need to devel­op No Bor­ders pol­i­tics was stressed in a dis­cus­sion on ‘who are our allies’. At a local lev­el, whilst work­ing on some issues in coali­tion with groups and organ­i­sa­tions that dif­fer in char­ac­ter, No Bor­ders has a firm­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an stance. Over all, the net­work reit­er­at­ed its explic­it anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an posi­tion, and a group formed to work on pub­lic­i­ty that offers an eas­i­ly acces­si­ble guide to No Bor­ders pol­i­tics. This could take the form of writ­ten pub­li­ca­tions and media projects such as the devel­op­ment of a film.

All in all, shar­ing infor­ma­tion and sto­ries was an inspir­ing expe­ri­ence and by strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and net­work-wide tac­tics, peo­ple across the UK will con­tin­ue to devel­op their ideas and inspire each oth­er to take action against bor­ders and to pro­mote free­dom of move­ment for all.

The next gath­er­ing is pro­posed for February/March 2009 in Bris­tol
www.noborders.org.uk