Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #21
free/donation
Apr 09

“Keep­ing our heads in a cri­sis”

Sum­mit For Noth­ing

This month, 20 of the world’s most pow­er­ful lead­ers flew in pri­vate jets to Lon­don to stay in lux­u­ry hotels, drink the finest wines, and dis­cuss the col­lapse of the glob­al econ­o­my. Safe­ly tucked away behind the UK’s most expen­sive police oper­a­tion in his­to­ry (£8 mil­lion, thank you very much), with their every desire attend­ed to irre­spec­tive of cost (hotel expens­es top­ping £50 mil­lion), our glo­ri­ous lead­ers failed to notice the obvi­ous answer to the UK’s 2‑mil­lion-strong employ­ment prob­lem.

Which was, I sourly reflect­ed at the slight­ly dis­ap­point­ing block out­side the con­fer­ence cen­tres on Thurs­day the 2nd, to train them all as jour­nal­ists. As this jour­nal­ist pon­dered his genius, anoth­er ner­vous-look­ing hip­py edged up to me and whis­pered “Hey, are you a pro­test­er?” Of course not, I replied, I’m an under­cov­er media par­a­site des­per­ate­ly hop­ing this will sud­den­ly start liv­ing up to the awe­some front-page-grab­bing defi­ance of yesterday’s ruckus in the city. “Me, too!” he exclaimed, with a junkie-like edge to his voice. “Have you found any­one who isn’t? I need some quotes, man…”

Sat­ur­day the 28th of March’s Put Peo­ple First pro­ces­sion was the excep­tion rather than the rule, with the placid police let­ting the 40,000 marchers get on with it. But as for the Cli­mate Camp… It was sup­posed to be beau­ti­ful. Sneak­ing like a weed through bro­ken paving cracks, tan­gled vines creep­ing through urban decay, snatch­ing back the stolen space that was swal­lowed up by the city. Camp­ing under twin­kling stars and street­lights in the very heart of cap­i­tal­ism. Singing songs around camp­fires fuelled by news­pa­per scraps and debris. Screw the sys­tem, we’ve got samosas, cake and a com­post loo! It was sup­posed to be like that, but the Camp For Cli­mate Action, occu­py­ing the space sur­round­ing Lon­don’s Euro­pean Car­bon Exchange, was evict­ed after 12 hours on the night of April 1st.

Indeed, overnight, bru­tal police attacks, raids, false impris­on­ment and sleep depri­va­tion (offi­cial­ly recog­nised by the UN as tor­ture) had hit the all the oth­er squats and con­ver­gences spaces around the city too, to ensure that there was no repeat of Wednesday’s 15,000-strong march­es, no fluffy car­ni­val, or entire­ly jus­ti­fi­able smash­ing of RBS. Despite all this provo­ca­tion, the pro­test­ers remained peace­ful and pro­por­tion­ate. Despite cop­pers delib­er­ate­ly assault­ing civil­ians, baton­ning peo­ple in the crotch, and walk­ing up and down the lines shield-smash­ing the face of each demon­stra­tor in turn, the crowds refused to low­er them­selves to the pigs’ lev­el. Which, frankly, they should have.

http://www.g‑20meltdown.org/
http://www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk/

How The G20 Plan To Help The World’s Poor

So what actu­al­ly hap­pened at the G20 sum­mit last week? Well, in an attempt to give the glob­al econ­o­my a kick up the arse and return to “busi­ness as usu­al”, $1.1 tril­lion was giv­en to the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund to aid fail­ing indus­tries around the world. $50 bil­lion of this will alleged­ly go to poor coun­tries, but will it actu­al­ly reduce pover­ty?

The IMF typ­i­cal­ly only lends out funds at a price, con­trol­ling poor­er coun­tries by means of iron­i­cal­ly named ‘Pover­ty Reduc­tion Strat­e­gy Papers’. Loans are grant­ed in exchange for the approval of reg­u­la­tions that help cor­po­ra­tions and harm work­ers, such as cuts to the min­i­mum wage and the ban­ning of unions. The IMF and rich lender coun­tries want to make sure they get their mon­ey back, so poor coun­tries are forced to focus their indus­tries on pro­duc­ing exports, rather than food for their own peo­ple. They are made to remove trade bar­ri­ers so that rich for­eign cor­po­ra­tions can flood their mar­kets with cheap goods and run local traders out of busi­ness. Pub­lic ser­vices such as health­care, schools and trans­port are pri­va­tised while gov­ern­ment spend­ing on health and edu­ca­tion is cut – plac­ing the empha­sis on prof­it rather than pro­vi­sion of ser­vices. When the Bech­tel cor­po­ra­tion took over the sup­ply of pub­lic water in Bolivia, bills went up by up to 90%, leav­ing many fam­i­lies unable to afford water. When riots forced them to with­draw, Bech­tel (sup­port­ed by the IMF) demand­ed $30 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion from the Boli­vian Gov­ern­ment.

Deci­sions made by the IMF over­ride nation­al laws. For exam­ple, when the State of Cal­i­for­nia banned the gaso­line addi­tive MBTE because it pol­lutes ground water and pos­es a real threat to pub­lic health, the Cana­di­an mak­er of the addi­tive sued them under IMF and World Trade Organ­i­sa­tion laws, because this restrict­ed trade.

Who needs colo­nial­ism when you’ve got the IMF? They put the “rights” of cor­po­ra­tions ahead of human rights. The G20 mean busi­ness as usu­al and don’t give a shit about the poor if this is their plan for change.

Tak­ing The Vis­teon

On Tues­day the 31st of March, work­ers at three fac­to­ries owned by Vis­teon, a Ford sub­sidiary received news that is all too com­mon at the moment – you’re fired! The work­ers in Belfast, Enfield and Basil­don were ordered to leave with­out any notice, redun­dan­cy pack­ages, back pay and oth­er mon­ey owed to them by the com­pa­ny. What hap­pened next how­ev­er, shows what hap­pens when work­ers stand up to the boss. Refus­ing to leave, the 70 work­ers locked them­selves inside their fac­to­ries, refus­ing to budge despite intim­i­da­tion from cops and boss­es until they got the mon­ey and rights that were owed to them. The work­ers stayed put for 11 days, receiv­ing huge sup­port from locals and activists who set up 24-hour pick­ets in the fac­to­ries’ car parks. The occu­piers have now left the fac­to­ries, but the fight is only just begin­ning: a per­ma­nent pick­et has been estab­lished at the Lon­don fac­to­ry, along with oth­er ini­tia­tives and the work­ers and their sup­port­ers have vowed not to give up the strug­gle. The cam­paign needs your help, and is set­ting a great exam­ple of how organ­ised work­ers are capa­ble of stand­ing up for their rights in the face of the clas­sist attacks of cap­i­tal­ism and the state. In this reces­sion, the boss­es and politi­cians have made it all too clear that they are look­ing out for them­selves, their rich mates and nobody else. Only by tak­ing a leaf from the book of the Vis­teon work­ers, or the Prisme Pack­ag­ing & Design work­ers in Dundee, and get­ting organ­ised to fight back can we build a fair and just soci­ety rather than relent­ing to lead­ers’ vision of busi­ness as usu­al. Or why not emu­late the 2 mil­lion French who’ve just enjoyed their sec­ond gen­er­al strike of the year, or the sacked Sony work­ers of the Lan­des region who took their chief exec­u­tive hostage? To find out how you can sup­port the Vis­teon work­ers, drop and email to visteon_support [at] haringey.org.uk, or bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk for info on local sup­port actions.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/03/423897.html
http://www.visteonoccupation.org

EVENTS

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ings, 2nd and 4th Mon­day of the month, 8pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: From Poll Tax Rebel­lion to Reces­sion Resis­tance’ talk and film, Thurs­day 23rd April, 7.30pm, The Cube cin­e­ma, Dove Street South, Bris­tol

Vis­teon sol­i­dar­i­ty pick­et, Fri­day 24th April, 5.30pm, Allen Ford garage, oppo­site for­mer Bath Press, Red­bridge House, Low­er Bris­tol Road

World Day for Lab Ani­mals march, Sat­ur­day 25th April, Hyde Park, Lon­don, coach leav­ing Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads, 8.45am, info@wdail.org to book place

anti-police bru­tal­i­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty demo, Sun­day 26th April, meet 12 mid­day out­side Bath Spa train sta­tion

May­day TU march, Fri­day 1st May, Clerken­well Green, Lon­don, 12 mid­day

Anti-Mil­i­tarist Gath­er­ing, Sat­ur­day 2nd May – Sun­day 3rd May, Cow­ley Club, Brighton, http://www.antimilitaristnetwork.noflag.org.uk

May­day every­day gigs, Fri­day 1st May — Sun­day 3rd May, Chesters, Frog­more Street, Bris­tol

May­day in Brighton, Mon­day 4th May, 12 noon, Brighton, http://www.smashedo.org.uk

Bath Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Mon­day 4th May, 8pm, Still­point, Broad Street Place, Broad Street

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 6th May, 7.30–8.30pm, back­room of The Bell,

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 7th May, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 9th May, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street

Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 9th May, 12–4pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, email broad­land­sor­chard­share [at] googlemail.com or phone 07532 472 256

Bath Green­peace meet­ing, Mon­day 11th May, 7.30–9pm, Still­point, Broad Street Place

Tran­si­tion Open Forum, Tues­day 12th May, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 13th May, 8.30pm, the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

Per­for­mance: ‘Roots – A Tale Of Love And Veg­eta­bles’, Thurs­day 28th May – Sun­day 7th June, BOG Low­er Com­mon Allot­ments

G20 Death – Pigs Might Lie

Amongst the bro­ken win­dows and smashed banks of the recent G20 protests, a tragedy occurred that is threat­en­ing to drag the inhu­mane and bru­tal tac­tics reg­u­lar­ly employed by British cops into the pub­lic eye. Ian Tom­lin­son, a 47-year-old paper sell­er, was walk­ing home from work through the protests, when he sud­den­ly dropped dead of a heart attack. The cops were quick to clar­i­fy the mat­ter for us – Ian had become trapped in the crowd before col­laps­ing. Police efforts to res­cue and resus­ci­tate the man were ham­pered by bay­ing mobs of pro­tes­tors pelt­ing police medics with bricks and bot­tles. Real­ly? The police clung dogged­ly to this ver­sion of events despite sev­er­al con­vinc­ing wit­ness state­ments to the con­trary. Then, some video footage came to light that showed a vast­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Ian, on his own, was walk­ing away from a line of riot police with his hands in his pock­ets. With­out warn­ing, an offi­cer beat Tomlinson’s legs with a trun­cheon before shov­ing him to the floor with his shield. He remained on the floor for around 10 sec­onds, receiv­ing no help before being helped up by activists and mov­ing off, “Dazed and stum­bling along the road.” A minute lat­er, he was dead. The police have now changed their sto­ry to suit the uncov­er­ing of their lies, but they deny any incon­sis­ten­cy in their ver­sion of events, which has changed from “bay­ing mob stop us help­ing the injured” to “well, maybe an offi­cer over­re­act­ed.” In a fur­ther rev­e­la­tion, the police have been crit­i­cized for rush­ing the post-mortem and using an incom­pe­tent, and wide­ly dis­cred­it­ed pathol­o­gist. Mean­while, Sat­ur­day the 11th of April saw near­ly 500 peo­ple march through cen­tral Lon­don to protest the death – thank­ful­ly, this day wasn’t attacked, unlike the vig­il for Ian held on the 2nd.

The cop who mur­dered Ian has now been sus­pend­ed pend­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, but this avoids the most impor­tant issue sur­round­ing the inci­dent. This is how police ALWAYS behave dur­ing pub­lic order sit­u­a­tions. ‘Ket­tling’, the police tac­tic of con­fin­ing a group and refus­ing them access to toi­lets, med­ical aid or water is now com­mon place, as is police refusal to wear iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, use of pep­per spray, and unpro­voked baton charges. Sus­pend­ing and pun­ish­ing one cop is a start, but we need to use the trag­ic death of Ian Tom­lin­son to chal­lenge the vio­lent and arbi­trary man­ner in which police deal with almost all acts of pub­lic protest. Ian’s death was not caused by the actions of one ‘bad apple’, but by a cul­ture of con­tempt, vio­lence and arro­gance that is the rule, rather than the excep­tion in the mod­ern police force. Will we, in Britain, sit by and watch as the police con­tin­ue to kill and injure us with arro­gance and bru­tal­i­ty? Or per­haps now is the time to stand up against a sys­tem that is hap­py to vicious­ly strike any­one who dares to stand up and ques­tion its wan­ing author­i­ty.

A full video of the events lead­ing up to Ian’s death can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADd_6ISHLdg

What Hous­ing Cri­sis?

As repos­ses­sions soar by 68%, hous­ing lists dou­ble (from 3,000 to 6,000 local­ly over the last decade), and the mar­ket con­tin­ues to nose­dive, B&NES are deal­ing with things the only way they know how. They’re, um, sell­ing off all coun­cil hous­es. With 1,100 afford­able homes ditched already (thanks to retired banker Coun­cil­lor Mal­colm Han­ney, who lives in a very unaf­ford­able house in Chew Magna), and more at Man­vers Street, Dorch­ester Street and Broad Street to fol­low, this can only mean one thing… Less rent to pay!

That’s right. The­ses hous­es aren’t going any­where, after all. There’s no actu­al hous­ing short­age – just an excess of scam­ming land­lords leav­ing build­ings emp­ty. And increas­ing num­bers of peo­ple across the region are choos­ing to legal­ly squat these emp­ties rather than choose home­less­ness or giv­ing every pen­ny they own to the unde­serv­ing.

In Bris­tol, a nation­al squat­ters’ meet­ing on the 14th and 15th of March, brought peo­ple from across the coun­try to a spe­cial­ly-occu­pied man­sion for a week­end of dis­cus­sions and work­shops – and also helped the econ­o­my by pro­vid­ing work for a ver­i­ta­ble horde of journos. More local­ly, the Squat­ters Com­mu­nal Asso­ci­a­tion of Bath have final­ly lost the for­mer Twer­ton rail sta­tion fol­low­ing their fourth ille­gal evic­tion, with the tac­it approval of Twer­ton ward Lib Dem Coun­cil­lor Tim Ball. Bath police turned a blind eye to the theft, crim­i­nal dam­age and bur­glary com­mit­ted by pub­lic­i­ty-shy bailiffs, who even got away with pour­ing boil­ing water over one occupant’s hands. Res­i­dent David Clements explains, “Deal­ing with a land­lord who resorts to force first and the courts sec­ond is hard, but we stuck at it to teach them a les­son. For­tu­nate­ly, land­lords like that are rare, so we’re look­ing for­wards to hav­ing an eas­i­er time of things in our new home.”

Inter­est­ed in squat­ting or learn­ing more? Con­tact bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk. Prob­lems with bailiffs or repos­ses­sions? Con­tact resist­bailiffs [at] yahoo.co.uk, or 07794 774938.

http://www.squatter.org.uk/

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bath­bomb­press [at] yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request.

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, email bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

Meet­ing True Veg

Kil­ter, Bath’s unique out­door the­atre com­pa­ny, pre­mieres their new pro­duc­tion ‘Roots – A Tale Of Love And Veg­eta­bles,’ dur­ing this year’s Fringe Fest, run­ning from Thurs­day the 28th May to Sun­day 7th June, it is to be per­formed on Bath Organ­ic Group’s Low­er Com­mon Allot­ments, in Vic­to­ria Park. Plant­i­ng the seeds of change with a play­ful and engag­ing show, Kil­ter lead their audi­ence on a gen­tle jour­ney down the bean-rows to inves­ti­gate food-secu­ri­ty, food his­to­ry and tra­di­tion­al skills in the approach­ing post-oil world. Friend­ly, wel­com­ing char­ac­ters tin­ker with their seedlings whilst mulling over the cycles of past and future. The set is made up of entire­ly found and recy­cled mate­ri­als, and you even get to take away a free set of seeds at the end! Kil­ter, who will be work­ing the allot­ments dur­ing the pre­ced­ing week, is com­mit­ted to engag­ing audi­ences in issues on the envi­ron­ment, social jus­tice and Eng­lish her­itage, and seeks to deliv­er low car­bon the­atre. Tick­ets are priced at £9 (con­ces­sions £7) and are on sale from ICIA’s Box Office at Bath Uni — ring 01225 386777.

http://www.kiltertheatre.org

A Cut Above The Rest

Here at Bath Bomb HQ, we were sad­dened to hear the news sur­round­ing the death of pas­sion­ate blood-junkie Trevor Morse. Trevor end­ed his life attempt­ing to pre­vent two hunt mon­i­tors from tak­ing off in a gyro­copter they were using to mon­i­tor fox hunt­ing activ­i­ties. Run­ning in front of the fast mov­ing air­craft, Trevor was obvi­ous­ly under the impres­sion that the sheer strength of his per­son­al­i­ty would suf­fice to halt a speed­ing air­craft. Wrong. It was not so much the news of his gyro­copter-inflict­ed near-decap­i­ta­tion that caused our bad moods, but the ridicu­lous charges that have been pinned on the pilot, Bryan Grif­fiths, of the gyro­copter, a peace­ful man who has been charged with mur­der. In the last 20 years, three hunt sabo­teurs have been killed, most­ly being run over, by hunters, and the most seri­ous charge brought against a hunter has been reck­less dri­ving. But as soon as it is a hunter who dies, it is not a trag­ic acci­dent, but mur­der. This charge just high­lights the one-sided polic­ing that’s been the norm regard­ing hunt­ing for decades. A sup­port group has been set up for Bryan, and let­ters of sup­port can be sent to:

Bryan Grif­fiths XW8892
HMP Hewell
Hewell Lane
Red­ditch B97 6QS

Phar­ma To Get Taste Of Own Med­i­cine?

In spite of the Government’s sus­tained attack on ani­mal rights advo­cates, World Day for Lab Ani­mals will be marked this year in Lon­don with a nation­al march on the 25th April. Meet­ing in Hyde Park at 12 mid­day, the demo will pro­ceed to through the cen­tre to a ral­ly at Par­lia­ment. Whilst Neo-Labour still refuse to car­ry out their much-promised Roy­al Com­mis­sion into the med­ical rel­e­vance of ani­mal test­ing, 18,000 peo­ple a year die from dodgy drug side effects in the UK alone: in fact, rely­ing on ani­mal test­ing results for our med­i­cines is Britain’s fourth biggest killer. But instead of wor­ry­ing about help­ing research into mod­ern non-ani­mal test­ing, such as the work car­ried out by the Dr Had­wen Trust or Euro­peans for Med­ical Progress, instead they bail out com­pa­nies like Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences, who car­ry out con­tracts for ani­mal abuse and have once again recent­ly been exposed for cru­el­ty. To join this fight for both human and non-human ani­mals’ health and dig­ni­ty, a coach will be leav­ing Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads train sta­tion just before 9am that morn­ing, £4 waged return or £2 unwaged return: get in touch with bathani­malac­tion [at] yahoo.co.uk, or ring 07595 745441 to book your place.

http://www.shac.net
http://www.curedisease.net “ “ ‘
http://www.drhadwentrust.org.uk
http://www.wdail.org

The Big Chalk-In

Mem­bers of BAN attend­ed a big ‘chalk-in’ out­side Bris­tol Mag­is­trates’ Court on Thurs­day 9th April. This demo was called because Paul Sav­ille, a UWE stu­dent, had chalked on a pave­ment in Bris­tol: ‘Lib­er­ty – the right to ques­tion it, the right to ask are we free?’ Obvi­ous­ly not, because he was prompt­ly arrest­ed and charged with crim­i­nal dam­age. He was to appear at court the morn­ing of the 9th, but the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice dropped the charges at the last moment. The chalk-in was called as a protest against the lat­est would-be attack on our right to free­dom of speech and dis­sent. Peo­ple on the demo took turns to scrawl slo­gans, and were joined by oth­er young peo­ple who’d been in court that morn­ing already. Paul, how­ev­er, had prob­lems in tak­ing part, as his wrist had been bro­ken by the police at the recent G20 protests! This time, the thin black and blue line kept a low pro­file, prob­a­bly due to their own cur­rent pub­lic order prob­lems. The day proved that the best way of defend­ing one’s rights when attacked is mass defi­ance.

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com