Category: Action Reports

Squat news — London, Cambridge

12.06.2008

Bowl Court Social Cen­tre Days Are Num­bered — Lon­don

12.06.2008

Bowl Court Social Cen­tre Days Are Num­bered — Lon­don

The court­ing hear­ing today ruled in favor of the prop­er­ty devel­op­ers claim­ing own­er­ship of the derelict ware­house in Bowl Court that has been used as a rad­i­cal social cen­tre since open­ing 23rd March. The David vs Goliath case was clear­ly moti­vat­ed by Ham­mer­sons desire to pre­vent the new social cen­tre becom­ing a hub for the local cam­paigns against their pro­posed devel­op­ment for the area, the biggest devel­op­ment in Lon­don since Dock­lands in the eight­ies.

The vic­to­ri­an social cen­tre is locat­ed in the Shored­itch Street Con­ser­va­tion area and pre­vi­ous attempts to obtain plan­ning con­sent for demo­li­tion have been refused. The neigh­bor­ing ware­house was knocked down with­out plan­ning per­mis­sion by Gam­ma City Devel­op­ments which was pur­chased by Ham­mer­son, along with vast tracts of lands ear­marked to become a for­est of glass sky­scrap­ers over the next ten years. Num­ber 6 Bowl Court was left emp­ty for years with a gap­ing hole cut in the roof and deep exca­va­tions dug around it’s exter­nal walls, appar­ent­ly with the aim of speed­ing up it’s decay to jus­ti­fy future appli­ca­tions for demo­li­tion.

Although at least two oth­er squat­ters occu­py near­by prop­er­ties which Ham­mer­son claim to own, the attempts to evict Bowl Court came about only as it became appar­ent that the social cen­tre was becom­ing involved in the local cam­paigns against the rede­vel­op­ment plans for the area. The com­pa­ny had been informed of the occu­pa­tion on the 24th March but only made moves to repos­sess the prop­er­ty three weeks ago.

In court, the defen­dants ques­tioned the evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the claimants regard­ing own­er­ship. Their land reg­istry title was con­tra­dict­ed by titles known to be held by oth­er com­pa­nies. There was also issue over whether the notice of the pro­ceed­ings had been cor­rect­ly served as res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty requires five days clear notice but only three had been giv­en. With no pro­fes­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the defen­dants were unable to put togeth­er a robust defense and also found them­selves threat­ened with over £21,000 in costs. How­ev­er, the judge also con­sid­ered the costs to be out­ra­geous­ly inflat­ed an choose to award just £2,500 in costs.

The future of the social cen­tre is now obvi­ous­ly in doubt but in the mean­time events con­tin­ue as nor­mal. See http://www.bowlcourt.co.nr for details.

——-

Mill Road Social Cen­tre May Stay For Flip­pin’ Ages — Cam­bridge

A pos­ses­sion order was grant­ed to Tesco today in court, yet rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Mill Road Social Cen­tre had appar­ent con­fir­ma­tion of indef­i­nite leave to remain from Tesco’s solic­i­tors.

About 20 social cen­tre groupies went to court today dressed in all our wet fin­ery and had a friend­ly bit of ban­ter with the Tesco legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive and the judge. The judge decid­ed that, although we point­ed out in our defense that their claim was­n’t accu­rate and so should be thrown out, she was hap­py to quick­ly amend it in court. This meant that we no longer had a defense as that was the only way our legal assis­tance had found for reject­ing the claim. So, the judge award­ed Tesco the pos­ses­sion order, as we thought they might.

We raised the issue of Tesco stat­ing that they did­n’t want to apply the pos­ses­sion order imme­di­ate­ly, they just want­ed hold of it. The solic­i­tor again con­firmed that this was the case.

SO, net result, as far as we know, we can remain in there doing fun things until Tesco want to get the builders in, hope­ful­ly some­time nev­er. Obvi­ous­ly it’d be use­ful to keep open some kind of dia­logue with Tesco about when they’re going to move in and we’ll look into that, how­ev­er the ear­ly hope is that we actu­al­ly have the space for a num­ber of weeks and can get crack­ing in earnest to make it even more love­ly and use­ful.

The solic­i­tor said in court that “Tesco has no use today for the premis­es.” to which the judge replied “So they are in no posi­tion to com­mence rede­vel­op­ment at this moment?”, and the solic­i­tor answered “No.”. So if that’s right, and if they do want to wait on the plan­ning process before try­ing to evict us, it could be a long long time. Hur­rah! 🙂 It also means they were fib­bing when they said they could open a store “tomor­row” in the evening news. Cheeky blighters.

millroadsocialcentre@lists.riseup.net
http://millroadsocialcentre.wordpress.com

—

social cen­tre attacked (again)

15.06.2008
At about half 1 this morn­ing the mill rd social cen­tre was attacked for the sec­ond time in a week. Thugs armed with an iron bar smashed win­dows and dam­aged vehi­cles in attempt to intim­i­date the occu­pants, then drove off. No Pasaran.
———-

New autonomous and cre­ative social space in South Lon­don

The Chapel project is an autonomous and cre­ative social space sit­u­at­ed in the heart of Nun­head. The space is used for all kinds of cre­ative and social­ly mind­ed work­shops and events. Our main aim is to pro­vide afford­able cul­tur­al activ­i­ties to peo­ple, pro­mot­ing cre­ative inter­ac­tion and there­fore social change.

Come and get involved. What­ev­er ideas, mate­ri­als or pos­i­tive ener­gies you can share would be great whether its run­ning a work­shop, show­ing your art work, or just spread­ing the word. We hope to see you soon.

http://www.chapelproject.com

Women and Trans DIY-SQUATTING Weekend in London, 28th-29th June

This is a call­out to all women and trans-folk that would like to be involved in a week­end of work­shops around diy-squat­ting

We plan to take advan­tage of all the usu­al chal­lenges that semi-derelict build­ings pose as a plat­form for shar­ing our knowl­edge, skills, and expe­ri­ence in all the tasks relat­ed to open­ing and main­tain­ing a healthy and hap­py squat!

This is a call­out to all women and trans-folk that would like to be involved in a week­end of work­shops around diy-squat­ting

We plan to take advan­tage of all the usu­al chal­lenges that semi-derelict build­ings pose as a plat­form for shar­ing our knowl­edge, skills, and expe­ri­ence in all the tasks relat­ed to open­ing and main­tain­ing a healthy and hap­py squat!

These are all the areas that we’ve thought of so far, but more ideas are always wel­come:

* Elec­tric­i­ty
* Plumb­ing
* Gas
* Secu­ri­ty- doors/locks etc
* Bar­ri­cad­ing
* Legal
* Deal­ing w/ cop­s/own­ers- talk about experience/share tac­tics
* Women/Trans squat­ting- open dis­cus­sion on expe­ri­ence of squat­ting from a wom­en/­trans-per­spec­tive.
* Sus­tain­able ener­gy

All lev­els of expe­ri­ence in any of the above areas are wel­come, and even if you have no expe­ri­ence in any of the prac­ti­cal, diy-relat­ed areas, we hope to have a plat­form to share
expe­ri­ences, sto­ries and advice relat­ed to all aspects of squat-liv­ing from a trans/woman’s per­spec­tive.

Please get in touch if you’d like to help out at all in organ­is­ing this week­end — We’ll need help find­ing a suit­able space and prepar­ing it for the week­end, pub­li­cis­ing the gath­er­ing, and then run­ning work­shops on the week­end itself, as well as col­lect­ing and prepar­ing food.
We also hope to pro­vide child­care (on a rota-basis), so please let us know if you can help with that.

This gath­er­ing will be held on the week­end of the 28th — 29th June.

You can e‑mail us at diy_squatting@riseup.net

Please spread the word!

**Let us know if you would like to be sent leaflets**

Action update Australia

In May, a per­son­al let­ter was hand deliv­ered to the $10 mil­lion man­sion of Mike Smith, the CEO of the ANZ bank in Mel­bourne’s most afflu­ent sub­urb of Toorak.

In May, a per­son­al let­ter was hand deliv­ered to the $10 mil­lion man­sion of Mike Smith, the CEO of the ANZ bank in Mel­bourne’s most afflu­ent sub­urb of Toorak. The let­ter, signed by the E.L.F., declared that his prop­er­ty, includ­ing his and his wife’s lux­u­ry cars, amongst a detailed list of oth­er per­son­al items, would not remain safe so long as ANZ con­tin­ued its financ­ing of the pro­posed Gunns Tamar Val­ley Pulp Mill in Tas­ma­nia.

The pro­posed pulp mill, run by Gunns- Tas­ma­ni­a’s forestry cor­po­ra­tion which holds a vir­tu­al monop­oly over the state, would con­tribute great­ly to glob­al warm­ing, it would spew 64,000 tonnes of efflu­ent into the Bass Straight every day, bring the Tas­man­ian wedge-tailed eagle, the spot­ted tail Quoll, and the giant fresh­wa­ter cray­fish to extinc­tion, and would turn the ancient old growth forests of the Great West­ern Tiers, the North East High­lands, and the Ben Lomond forests into pulp.

The same night, veg­an piz­zas from numer­ous mul­ti-nation­al chains were deliv­ered unsus­pect­ed­ly to the doorstep of Mike’s fam­i­ly home.

By strange coin­ci­dence, the fol­low­ing week ANZ with­drew its sup­port for financ­ing the $2 bil­lion Gunns Tamar Val­ley Pulp Mill project.

This effec­tive­ly puts the pulp mil­l’s future in a dire sit­u­a­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments of Aus­tralia still con­tin­ue their back­ing of the eco-cidal project.

9th June Noise Demo at UK Coal Head Office Protest — next one 14th July

UK Coal is about to dev­as­tate a beau­ti­ful part of the Der­byshire coun­try­side by start­ing an open cast mine. So ‘Leave it in the Ground’ and Earth First! decid­ed to make some noise over it with peo­ple from Der­by, Not­ting­ham Leeds, Sheffield, Man­ches­ter and Brighton as well as oth­er places, all trav­elled to UK Coals Head office in Don­cast­er to make some noise.

UK Coal 1st noise demo 1UK Coal 1st noise demo 2UK Coal is about to dev­as­tate a beau­ti­ful part of the Der­byshire coun­try­side by start­ing an open cast mine. So ‘Leave it in the Ground’ and Earth First! decid­ed to make some noise over it with peo­ple from Der­by, Not­ting­ham Leeds, Sheffield, Man­ches­ter and Brighton as well as oth­er places, all trav­elled to UK Coals Head office in Don­cast­er to make some noise.

On arrival the police were there as expect­ed, but did lit­tle to engage us and a lit­tle lat­er in the day a 2 police officer’s with a cam­era and a video did appear in a daft attempt to intim­i­date us. UK Coal had there own secu­ri­ty at the gate who just stood there more bored than the police.

The day was hot and very sun­ny at the bleak entrance of UK coals Head Office, a soul less place with noth­ing that said they were very proud of their com­pa­ny, no ornate plants, flow­ers or trees, just a big main­tained hedge for their pri­va­cy. It is no won­der they are hap­py to destroy beau­ti­ful coun­try­side for the dirty coal.

Every one was in high spir­its and chilled as we all made noise for the after­noon in the sun. The plod just looked bored and there faces were get­ting red­der by the hour under the fluro’ jack­ets and hel­mets.

We were fine of course, as we occu­pied the UK Coals sign for the only bit of shade while the plod kept roast­ing; we also sat around eat­ing cake, pasties and sausage roles all from Veg­gies in a take out form, while still mak­ing a din.

At times the noise sound­ed good and they delib­er­ate­ly had to try and play bad­ly just so it was annoy­ing, after all it was no pic­nic. Ban­ners were also hung and a police offi­cer told us we could tie them to a lamp post, not that we need­ed his per­mis­sion. Dri­vers com­ing in or out were also leaflet­ed and many motorists pass­ing the entrance beeped in sup­port (prob­a­bly ex min­ers who hate open cast­ing with a pas­sion)

It’s not just the local open cast, peo­ple are oppos­ing of course but also the UK pol­i­cy on coal that is now out­dat­ed as cli­mate change looms in front of our eyes. Burn­ing coal is threat­en­ing the glob­al envi­ron­ment and all our futures and UK coal are cash­ing in on cli­mate dev­as­ta­tion and destruc­tion. The Lodge House site in Der­byshire is just one of 7 sites and Lodge house will have 1 mil­lion tonnes of coal ripped out of a 122 hectare area in 5 years

Local media had turned out and radio inter­views were done over the phone and there is more stuff to fol­low check http://leaveitintheground.org.uk and http://leaveitintheground.wordpress.com for the lat­est infor­ma­tion

derby@earthfirst.org.uk

Next event: noise demo out­side UK Coal on Mon­day 14th July 2008 — meet 3:30 at Don­cast­er train sta­tion, or 4pm at UK Coal

Reclaim Hulme Park — every Friday — Manchester

Local res­i­dents reclaimed Hulme Park in Man­ches­ter on Fri­day for an hour by clos­ing down the road that runs through it.

Hulme Park reclaimed 1Hulme Park reclaimed 2Local res­i­dents reclaimed Hulme Park in Man­ches­ter on Fri­day for an hour by clos­ing down the road that runs through it. Leaflets had been dis­trib­uted and posters stuck around invit­ing peo­ple to reclaim the park — “one love, one park!!” Peo­ple played games, ate and drank, and gen­er­al­ly sat around in the street chat­ting to old friends and new. The police turned up in fair num­bers on time, but sen­si­bly — shock hor­ror — just left enough of them and PCSOs to help direct traf­fic away, and left us to it.

When the Cres­cents got knocked down in the 90s, to sani­tise the com­mu­ni­ty action and cre­ativ­i­ty that was rife through­out Hulme, these high-den­si­ty cres­cents of flats were replaced with a new park, and the land around sold to devel­op­ers for swanky hous­es and flats on new exclu­sive streets with (s)wanky names like The Sanc­tu­ary.

The prob­lem with old Hulme, as described by the coun­cil regen­er­a­tion stooges, was that peo­ple and cars did­n’t have to mix and were large­ly kept sep­a­rate. New Hulme — a mix of old coun­cil hous­ing (just sold off), hous­ing asso­ci­a­tion, a big hous­ing co-op, pri­vate rent­ed & pri­vate sold – would be safe for the city cen­tre to expand into the space left as com­mu­ni­ties were bro­ken up and shipped out to over­spill estates around Man­ches­ter.

So what this park need­ed, right, was a road right through the mid­dle of it (as well as on all sides), to keep the chil­dren safe because “the head­lights of cars would act as cat’s eyes and pre­vent dan­ger”.

Well, we’ve had enough.

Every Fri­day, 5–6pm, until we…Reclaim Hulme Park!

and

Close down the part of Royce Road that sep­a­rates the two halves of Hulme Park.

Bring fris­bees, balls, bikes.

Demonstrators tear down privatisation fencing bars (Thessaloniki, Greece, 7/6/2008)

What hap­pened is a demon­stra­tion of hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Kala­maria (a large sub­urb of Thes­sa­loni­ki by the sea) and Thes­sa­loni­ki on the seafront of Kala­maria.

What hap­pened is a demon­stra­tion of hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Kala­maria (a large sub­urb of Thes­sa­loni­ki by the sea) and Thes­sa­loni­ki on the seafront of Kala­maria. There, pri­va­ti­za­tion works fence the one open area after the oth­er, so, after a deci­sion of a res­i­dents assem­bly, the demon­stra­tors tore down the fenc­ing bars of the local mari­na that pre­vent free access to the sea­side. This action was wel­comed with applause from local peo­ple.

Texts in greek and a lot of pho­tos can be found here:
http://indy.gr/ or here http://athens.indymedia.org/ or there: http://diexodos.blogspot.com/.

$3.5 million luxury home torched in South Carolina

6.06.2008
Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, U.S. — 16 par­tial­ly or recent­ly con­struct­ed lux­u­ry homes have been inten­tion­al­ly burned down in south­east Char­lotte, west­ern Union Coun­ty, and Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na since 2001. Author­i­ties have yet to find who is respon­si­ble for the fires, but now believe that rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists may be behind the arsons. The most recent devel­op­ment to go up in smoke was a $3.5 mil­lion man­sion destroyed Mon­day evening, see pic­tures below.

Charlotte luxury house burning6.06.2008
Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, U.S. — 16 par­tial­ly or recent­ly con­struct­ed lux­u­ry homes have been inten­tion­al­ly burned down in south­east Char­lotte, west­ern Union Coun­ty, and Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na since 2001. Author­i­ties have yet to find who is respon­si­ble for the fires, but now believe that rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists may be behind the arsons. The most recent devel­op­ment to go up in smoke was a $3.5 mil­lion man­sion destroyed Mon­day evening, see pic­tures below.

More pic­tures: http://www.charlotte.com/multimedia/galleries/gallery/651704.html

The fire at 8407 Winged Bourne Dri­ve, south Char­lotte, start­ed about 7:30 p.m. in a sec­ond floor hall­way and spread quick­ly, shoot­ing flames hun­dreds of feet into the air. The three-sto­ry man­sion off Gle­nea­gles Road near Quail Hol­low Club had ply­wood floors and stud­ded walls and was about 60% com­plete. By Tues­day inves­ti­ga­tors had ruled out all pos­si­ble acci­den­tal caus­es.

“The only dif­fer­ence is this burned dur­ing day­light,” said Char­lot­te’s Chief Fire Inves­ti­ga­tor David Low­ery said, declin­ing to elab­o­rate.

See also:

ELF Burn Down Lux­u­ry Homes (March 3rd)
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20859

GroenFront! blocks E.ON Benelux HQ

June 3rd, Groen­Front! occu­pied the Benelux head­quar­ters of E.ON in Rot­ter­dam. The office was closed shut down from 6 AM — 1 PM, when police spe­cial­ists final­ly man­aged to remove some tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced lock-ons. Groen­Front! is demand­ing an imme­di­ate halt to the con­struc­tion of an E.ON coal pow­er plant on the Maasvlak­te, part of the port of Rot­ter­dam. The action is part of GroenFront!‘s “shrink or drown” cam­paign, which aims at bring­ing down the size of the Dutch econ­o­my to more man­age­able pro­por­tions. Sev­en pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed for refus­ing police orders or refus­ing to show an ID. They were released around mid­night.

EOn Rotterdam lock-onJune 3rd, Groen­Front! occu­pied the Benelux head­quar­ters of E.ON in Rot­ter­dam. The office was closed shut down from 6 AM — 1 PM, when police spe­cial­ists final­ly man­aged to remove some tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced lock-ons. Groen­Front! is demand­ing an imme­di­ate halt to the con­struc­tion of an E.ON coal pow­er plant on the Maasvlak­te, part of the port of Rot­ter­dam. The action is part of GroenFront!‘s “shrink or drown” cam­paign, which aims at bring­ing down the size of the Dutch econ­o­my to more man­age­able pro­por­tions. Sev­en pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed for refus­ing police orders or refus­ing to show an ID. They were released around mid­night.

The E.ON plant is said to be CO2 cap­ture-ready, but in a leaked email con­ver­sa­tion between E.ON man­agers at the British Dept. of Indus­try, it appears E.ON itself has no faith in this tech­nol­o­gy at all and is not expect­ing it to work. Groen­Front! and clown army activists had ear­li­er tried to put a lit­er­al ‘cork’ on an exist­ing E.ON plant in Hol­land to illus­trate this point.

July 19th a bicy­cle protest and pic­nic are being organ­ised by locals from the area and GroenFront!-ers.

Anoth­er coal pow­er plant is being planned only 1 km from E.ON’s con­struc­tion site, by the Bel­gian com­pa­ny Elec­tra­bel, and there are also plans by NUON and RWE for new coal pow­er plants that Groen­Front! says it will oppose by direct action.

Groen­Front! was start­ed in 1996 as the Dutch and Bel­gian branch of Earth­First.

More info: http://www.groenfront.nl

Video of the action

Cancellation of London Dongria Kondh tribe picket following targets disinvestment from Vendanta

The Sur­vival demon­stra­tion out­side Coutts Bank pre­vi­ous­ly adver­tised on this web­site planned for the 10th June has been can­celled. In reac­tion to the planned pick­et Coutts has just informed Sur­vival that they no longer hold shares in Vedan­ta, the British-based com­pa­ny whose planned baux­ite mine will dev­as­tate the lands of Indi­a’s Don­gria Kondh tribe.

The Sur­vival demon­stra­tion out­side Coutts Bank pre­vi­ous­ly adver­tised on this web­site planned for the 10th June has been can­celled. In reac­tion to the planned pick­et Coutts has just informed Sur­vival that they no longer hold shares in Vedan­ta, the British-based com­pa­ny whose planned baux­ite mine will dev­as­tate the lands of Indi­a’s Don­gria Kondh tribe.

Sur­vival is con­tin­u­ing to lob­by oth­er Vedan­ta share­hold­ers, as well as the com­pa­ny itself.

For more infor­ma­tion, please go to http://www.survival-international.org/tribes/dongria

Report fol­lows of pick­et last week.

Sur­vival protest — ‘Fins­bury prof­its from tribe’s destruc­tion’
28 May 2008

Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al this morn­ing held a demon­stra­tion out­side the Lon­don PR com­pa­ny FINSBURY, a sub­sidiary of glob­al adver­tis­ing com­pa­ny WPP. The protest high­light­ed Finsbury’s involve­ment with British min­ing giant Vedan­ta, which is set to destroy one of India’s most iso­lat­ed tribes – the Don­gria Kondh.

Car­ry­ing plac­ards that said ‘Fins­bury prof­its from tribe’s destruc­tion’, demon­stra­tors hand­ed leaflets to Fins­bury employ­ees as they arrived for work, urg­ing them to per­suade Fins­bury to resign their account with Vedan­ta.

Vedanta’s sub­sidiary, Ster­lite, plans to mine alu­mini­um ore from the Niyam­giri moun­tains in Oris­sa, India, where all of the 8,000 Don­gria Kondh live.

The Don­gria Kondh vehe­ment­ly oppose the mine. Jitu Jake­si­ka, a Don­gria spokesper­son, said, ‘We will become beg­gars if the com­pa­ny destroys our moun­tain and our for­est so that they can make mon­ey. We will give our lives for our moun­tain.’

The Don­gria Kondh have lived on the slopes of Niyam­giri since time immemo­r­i­al, and are total­ly depen­dent on its forests. They view the moun­tain as sacred, grow crops on the slopes, and gath­er wild fruit in the dense forests.

Whaling protester scales embassy — court update

4 June 2008 update (main sto­ry below):
Con­di­tion­al dis­charge of four months and ordered to pay £100 costs after being con­vict­ed of tres­pass.

Wyness told the court staff at the embassy had giv­en him per­mis­sion to protest out­side the build­ing.

4 June 2008 update (main sto­ry below):
Con­di­tion­al dis­charge of four months and ordered to pay £100 costs after being con­vict­ed of tres­pass.

Wyness told the court staff at the embassy had giv­en him per­mis­sion to protest out­side the build­ing.

He said they had giv­en him the invi­ta­tion when he had tied him­self to ban­is­ters inside the build­ing on a pre­vi­ous occa­sion on 25 Jan­u­ary.

The court was also shown footage which had been secret­ly filmed which showed a mem­ber of embassy staff sug­gest­ing it would be bet­ter to protest out­side the build­ing.

—

6 March 2008
A cam­paign­er protest­ing against whal­ing by the Japan­ese has been arrest­ed after chain­ing him­self to the front of the coun­try’s embassy in Lon­don.

Mar­tin Wyness, 50, of Here­ford, climbed the build­ing at about 0730 GMT and low­ered the Japan­ese flag to half-mast about 40ft (12m) from the ground.

He then unfurled a ban­ner say­ing “Japan stop your ille­gal whal­ing” before chain­ing him­self to the build­ing.

Police said Mr Wyness came down from the build­ing at 1047 GMT.

He was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal tres­pass.

His protest was believed to be timed to coin­cide with a meet­ing of the Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ing Com­mis­sion which began on Thurs­day.

The three-day sum­mit, which is being held in Heathrow, will dis­cuss the future of whal­ing in Japan, Nor­way and Ice­land.

In Jan­u­ary, Mr Wyness and his 14-year-old daugh­ter Sophie were arrest­ed after tying them­selves to a stair­case with cable ties inside the embassy, in Pic­cadil­ly.

The charges against them were lat­er dropped.

Video of action