Common Ground — Squated Community Garden Still Growing, Still Resisting!

2nd Evic­tion Attempt Resist­ed, Injunc­tion Bro­ken Again, New Gar­dens on the Hori­zon!

Com­mon Ground — a squat­ted com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove, Read­ing — is still being enjoyed by the com­mu­ni­ty and still grow­ing, despite a 2nd attempt by the coun­cil to close the gar­den down and evict the gar­den­ers.

2nd Evic­tion Attempt Resist­ed, Injunc­tion Bro­ken Again, New Gar­dens on the Hori­zon!

Com­mon Ground — a squat­ted com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove, Read­ing — is still being enjoyed by the com­mu­ni­ty and still grow­ing, despite a 2nd attempt by the coun­cil to close the gar­den down and evict the gar­den­ers.

The coun­cil owned land, which backs onto sev­er­al derelict build­ings, was occu­pied by near­by squat­ters and local activists in Jan­u­ary this year. They spent four months trans­form­ing a rub­bish strewn junk­yard into a beau­ti­ful gar­den, rely­ing on recy­cling, dona­tions and self-organ­i­sa­tion to get the job done.

On May 19th the gar­den was opened to the com­mu­ni­ty, despite the Coun­cil obtain­ing an injunc­tion mak­ing the open­ing BBQ and acoustic music gig ille­gal. Near­ly 200 peo­ple came through the gar­den, and all were amazed at the dif­fer­ence. Since then, locals have been using the gar­den reg­u­lar­ly to relax and eat lunch in, or take the chil­dren to the play area.

In June, the Coun­cil obtained an pos­s­e­sion order for the squat­ters home and Com­mon Ground. On 20th June, despite leav­ing their home, the squat­ters, gar­den­ers, activists and local res­i­dents teamed up to resist the evic­tion of the gar­den, with a few res­i­dents being pre­pared to break the law to con­tin­ue occu­py­ing the land. Coun­cil officials/bailiffs showed up, and pret­ty quick­ly retreat­ed, leav­ing every­body to enjoy anoth­er par­ty.

In the last few weeks, the Coun­cil have unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed a sec­ond evic­tion. In late July, once again gar­den­ers, neigh­bours and activists mobilised to defend the gar­den from evic­tion, once again defy­ing the law and once again see­ing Coun­cil offi­cials retreat­ing emp­ty hand­ed. And last Sun­day, despite intim­i­da­tion as the Coun­cil threat­ened unnamed organ­is­ers with jail, sev­er­al peo­ple enjoyed a com­mu­ni­ty pic­nic and arts day in the gar­den, cre­at­ing a brand new moza­ic path­way.

Main­tain­ing the occu­pa­tion of the land is not the only suc­cess of Com­mon Ground. In a bad­ly thought out attempt to move the occu­piers, the Coun­cil offered two alter­na­tive sites. How­ev­er, when the gar­den­ers refused them, the Coun­cil were oblig­at­ed to offer them to the local res­i­dents asso­ci­a­tion. Indi­vid­u­als involved in Com­mon Ground have met with the res­i­dents asso­ci­a­tion, and it is like­ly they will help the res­i­dents to cre­ate a sec­ond and pos­si­bly third com­mu­ni­ty gar­den for the area, this time legal­ly. Direct-action gets the goods!

Even bet­ter, Com­mon Ground is appar­ent­ly inspir­ing oth­ers to take direct-action to improve their neigh­bour­hoods. On the oth­er side of a Read­ing, a lady who had been refused per­mis­sion from her hous­ing asso­ci­a­tion to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den on some of their derelict land, has told peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground that she has now been inspired to go ahead and do it any­way! Nat­u­ral­ly, some Com­mon Ground gar­den­ers will offer advice and assis­tance with this new project.

Com­mon Ground is locat­ed through the alley­way, next to the ex-Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre in Sil­ver Street, Kates­grove, Read­ing, 10 min­utes from the train sta­tion. Please email katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk for more infor­ma­tion.

Resis­tance is fer­tile!

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk

Climate Camp Land Occupied & directions

11.08.2007

Cli­mate Camp activists met at a half dozen loca­tions around Lon­don this after­noon, mov­ing dur­ing the evening in vans to var­i­ous sites near Heathrow.

Just after eleven the groups con­verged on a large field oppo­site the air­port. With­in minute tripods were erect­ed and occu­pied with a large ban­ner read­ing “Cli­mate Camp, No Air­port Expan­sion” slung between the two.

climate camp 07 set-up marqueeclimate camp 07 set-up FITclimate camp 07 set-up marqueeclimate camp 07 busy setting-upclimate camp 07 set-up right by terminal11.08.2007

Cli­mate Camp activists met at a half dozen loca­tions around Lon­don this after­noon, mov­ing dur­ing the evening in vans to var­i­ous sites near Heathrow.

Just after eleven the groups con­verged on a large field oppo­site the air­port. With­in minute tripods were erect­ed and occu­pied with a large ban­ner read­ing “Cli­mate Camp, No Air­port Expan­sion” slung between the two.

By 11.30 a hun­dred or so peo­ple were on the Sip­son Lane site
( http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=sipson&ie=UTF‑8&oe=UTF‑8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox‑a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl) , half way between Sip­son and Har­ling­ton vil­lages. Vans were being quick­ly unloaded, tape was mark­ing out the bar­rios and tents were being erect­ed. Despite the pitch dark­ness kitchens were being organ­ised and a vil­lage began to take place.

Mid­night saw the arrival of the first police — does over­time kick in at a high­er rate after the witch­ing hour? Five vans lined up out­side the west gate, a cou­ple more out­side the east gate and sev­er­al saloons denot­ing the pres­ence of senior offi­cers.

A pha­lanx of cops poured on to the site and demand­ed to speak to the lead­ers. A quick call out for peo­ple to the main gate seemed to over­whelm them and they beat a hasty retreat back to the vans, a fair­ly low grade FIT team video­ing and stum­bling over the brack­en as it went.

The mood on the site is one of great ela­tion. After months of plan­ning and antic­i­pa­tion the day has final­ly arrived and the site is tak­en.

==========

The Cli­mate Camp site has been suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en!

We now need lots of peo­ple to come down and get every­thing set up.

We are on Sip­son Lane, between the vil­lages of Sip­son and Har­ling­ton, North of Heathrow.

By pub­lic trans­port:

Train from Padding­ton to ‘Hayes and Har­ling­ton’ sta­tion.

From there bus 90, 140 or H98 head­ing South. Get off at the cor­ner of Har­ling­ton High Street and walk West along Sip­son Lane about 600 metres.

OR

About a 2 mile walk — south into Har­ling­ton vil­lage then as above.

OR

Go one sta­tion fur­ther on to West Dray­ton and take the 222 bus to the West­ern (Sip­son) end of Sip­son Lane.

Loca­tion Map

Staines is quite far away — if you want to make your own way to the site don’t go to Staines!

But what we do know is that if is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! Staines rail­way sta­tion is very small so the Wel­come Desk and pick­up bus­es will be run­ning from Spelthorne Leisure Cen­tre, 5 min­utes walk from the station.(There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week).

If you get lost try­ing to find the sta­tion or any oth­er enquiries then call 0207 3779088 . There will be some­one man­ning the phone at the Lon­don Action Resource Cen­tre 10am to 6pm from 2nd August who will be able to help you.
There will prob­a­bly be police­man film­ing you at the sta­tion and else­where. Do not be intim­i­dat­ed

===

The police are very pissed off that they did­n’t find the site for around 2 hours despite being very near­by. They’re demand­ing to search every­thing enter­ing the site and even copy­ing every piece of avail­able infor­ma­tion from mobile phones, such as ser­i­al num­bers and phone num­bers stored in the address book. No news on the arrestee oth­er than that its a ‘known activist’ who the police decid­ed would make a nice token ges­ture of force. Any­one want­i­ng to get down to work on the site is very much wel­come to get down and get work­ing.

Remem­ber your legal rights & the fun I Spy card (links above & from main arti­cle

2nd Arrest

Some­one has been nicked for walk­ing on the road. Legal observers were present. Search­es becom­ing a lit­tle less thor­ough, though even the back route into the site is being heav­i­ly policed.

New Earth First Action Update OUT NOW!

The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

EF! AU logo 1The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

The Action Update is pro­duced quar­ter­ly to aid the shar­ing of news, infor­ma­tion and ideas amongst those inter­est­ed in tak­ing action. The next newslet­ter will be out in Novem­ber. If you’ve got news to share about your groups, cam­paigns and actions post them straight onto this web­site and we’ll make sure they’re includ­ed in the next edi­tion.

You can also down­load and print out the PDF of the Action Update by click­ing here.

Rossport Solidarity Camp eviction latest

Update on evic­tion threat to Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

After over eigh­teen months of pro­vid­ing a base for activists sup­port­ing the local Shell to Sea cam­paign, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was served notice to quit by Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil two weeks ago. For the past year and a half the coun­cil has accept­ed the cam­p’s exis­tence with­out com­plaint. It seems no coin­ci­dence that the coun­cil’s moves to evict the camp come at a time when Shell has been exten­sive­ly sur­vey­ing the estu­ary that runs along­side the camp in prepa­ra­tion for pipeline devel­op­ment. It is like­ly that pres­sure has been applied on the coun­cil to evict now to min­i­mize the risk of dis­rup­tion to the lay­ing of the pipeline.

Update on evic­tion threat to Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

After over eigh­teen months of pro­vid­ing a base for activists sup­port­ing the local Shell to Sea cam­paign, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was served notice to quit by Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil two weeks ago. For the past year and a half the coun­cil has accept­ed the cam­p’s exis­tence with­out com­plaint. It seems no coin­ci­dence that the coun­cil’s moves to evict the camp come at a time when Shell has been exten­sive­ly sur­vey­ing the estu­ary that runs along­side the camp in prepa­ra­tion for pipeline devel­op­ment. It is like­ly that pres­sure has been applied on the coun­cil to evict now to min­i­mize the risk of dis­rup­tion to the lay­ing of the pipeline.

On Tues­day the 31st July, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the camp attend­ed a court hear­ing in Castle­bar. Fol­low­ing sub­mis­sions from the cam­p’s bar­ris­ter regard­ing due process and the lack of time giv­en to the camp to pre­pare a case, the judge reluc­tant­ly agreed to adjourn the case until Sep­tem­ber the 3rd. How­ev­er, in the mean­time he imposed an ‘inter­im order of injunc­tion’ which allows only two camp mem­bers to remain liv­ing on site. Notably, pri­or to the hear­ing, the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both par­ties had agreed terms for an adjourn­ment that allowed more peo­ple to remain on camp. The case is essen­tial­ly a civ­il dis­pute and the judge’s impo­si­tion of more strin­gent terms is indica­tive, once again, of the par­tial­i­ty of the judi­cia­ry with regard to Shell to Sea cas­es.

The pri­ma­ry func­tion of the camp is to pro­vide a space for peo­ple to sup­port the local cam­paign in resist­ing Shell. This can be done most effec­tive­ly if we have a secure base to work from. Con­se­quent­ly, at present, we have decid­ed to vacate the camp in accor­dance with the judge’s order. In an effort to be pre­pared for the dif­fer­ent poten­tial sce­nar­ios we could face, we have sought out pos­si­ble alter­na­tive loca­tions for the camp. Some peo­ple in the cam­paign will con­tin­ue to fight the evic­tion through the courts and after the hear­ing in Sep­tem­ber we will assess our options.

Com­mu­ni­ty sup­port fol­low­ing the evic­tion order has been over­whelm­ing. With­in a week an impres­sive fundrais­ing effort had been ini­ti­at­ed and we had offers of sev­er­al hous­es and fields to relo­cate to. We have also had help with mov­ing, clean­ing, dec­o­rat­ing and fur­nish­ing. Thanks to such incred­i­ble local assis­tance, one of these hous­es has been fixed up in the last week and is now being used as the tem­po­rary Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp base. Over the next few weeks we hope to make sev­er­al oth­er loca­tions inhab­it­able.

Two weeks ago our sit­u­a­tion seemed dire. Today, the spir­it of the camp is vibrant. It is clear that resis­tance here will not be ham­pered by repres­sion. So, while we’re sad to be tem­porar­i­ly giv­ing up our beau­ti­ful seashore home, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp lives on — albeit in a slight­ly less rus­tic form. As before, vis­i­tors are always wel­come.

BAA climate camp Injunction: What’s Happened At Court & legal briefing

Judge’s read­ing (reports from first two days below) —

Deliv­er­ing her rul­ing in a 90-speech this morn­ing, Mrs. Jus­tice Swift struck out most of BAA’s appli­ca­tion, point­ing out that much of their evi­dence was based on news reports and web sites, and rul­ing that, as there is a “diver­gence of inter­est” with­in the groups named, [with the excep­tion of Plane Stu­pid], they should not be tar­get­ed.

BAA injunction gagsJudge’s read­ing (reports from first two days below) —

Deliv­er­ing her rul­ing in a 90-speech this morn­ing, Mrs. Jus­tice Swift struck out most of BAA’s appli­ca­tion, point­ing out that much of their evi­dence was based on news reports and web sites, and rul­ing that, as there is a “diver­gence of inter­est” with­in the groups named, [with the excep­tion of Plane Stu­pid], they should not be tar­get­ed.

She said it is regret­table that Geral­dine Nichol­son was ever named in the appli­ca­tion, and that there had been no sug­ges­tion –despite par­tic­i­pa­tion in pre­vi­ous demon­stra­tions– that Joss Gar­man or Leo Mur­ray had ever harassed or intend­ed to harass any­one.

She has there­fore delet­ed the major­i­ty of BAA’s appli­ca­tion, sub­sti­tut­ing word­ing of her own, intend­ed to allow law­ful protest, [as enshrined by right in Arti­cles 10 and 11 of the Euro­pean Con­ven­tion on Human Rights], although pre­vent­ing unlaw­ful dis­rup­tion of air­port oper­a­tions, [as already cov­ered by Heathrow’s by-laws].

The word­ing of her draft is being stud­ied while the court adjourns for lunch. She is pre­pared to fine-tune the details, when the court resumes at 2 o’clock.
———————
1st August -
Please note: this is an arti­cle writ­ten after tele­phone con­tact with peo­ple out­side the court. Please see the oth­er report here.

The High Court in Lon­don was the scenery of some fun­ny encoun­ters today as BAA put for­ward their case for an injunc­tion they served indi­vid­u­als from cer­tain anti-air­port groups ear­li­er last week. We’ll spare you all the bor­ing details, so let’s jump to the excit­ing bits. Basi­cal­ly, the whole thing was bad­ly put togeth­er from BAA’s side. Tim­o­thy Law­son Crut­ten­den (TLC) was rep­re­sent­ing BAA in this case, inter­est­ing­ly enough the same lawyers firm that tried to slap injunc­tions on pro­test­ers at Brighton’s weapons man­u­fac­tur­ers EDO. This even­tu­al­ly failed mis­er­ably…

Any­how, the start of the hear­ing was brought back to the after­noon and once in full swing, BAA put for­ward some evi­dence to give their injunc­tion some sub­stance. Their evi­dence were some arti­cles from the Evening Stan­dard and the Times news­pa­pers and a chap­ter from the Eco Defence Hand­book. Anoth­er bit of evi­dence was an arti­cle about last years Cli­mate Camp in which it was said that local peo­ple had joined the pro­test­ers and men­tiones were made about rad­i­cal direct action tac­tics. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, the jour­nal­ist who actu­al­ly wrote that was in court today as well and said that some of the things in the arti­cle he had just ‘put in’ or made up. As one does…

Evi­dence like this is classed as ‘hearsay’ as it is no direct evi­dence and there­fore pret­ty irrel­e­vant in court.

It was unclear whether the injunc­tion applied to the named peo­ple with­in the var­i­ous organ­i­sa­tions they served the papers to, or all mem­bers from those organ­i­sa­tions. If it would apply to all mem­bers of the named organ­i­sa­tions (over 5 mil­lion), it would prob­a­bly be dif­fi­cult to enforce but if it only applied to cer­tain indi­vid­u­als, than the injunc­tion would­n’t have a lot of effect.

BAA was so unclear about this, the judge was said to be very con­fused and gave them until tomor­row morn­ing to get things straight: who are you ask­ing to be injunct­ed and for what rea­sons? The whole injunc­tion busi­ness seems to be a total joke, poor­ly pre­pared and main­ly used as a scare tac­tic. As things cur­rent­ly look, it won’t have any effect on the actu­al camp which is to take place from the 14th August. A spokesper­son for the Camp For Cli­mate Action was a lot clear­er than BAA: ’ This injunc­tion is total­ly irrel­e­vant to us. We won’t be intim­i­dat­ed or bul­lied. The camp is going ahead! ’

2nd August -
BAA used most of the morn­ing to put for­ward their case. It basi­cal­ly boiled down to a cou­ple of things. First­ly, BAA thinks that pos­si­ble dis­rup­tion caused by protests may high­t­en the risk of ‘Iraqi-style ter­ror­ism’ at the air­port. One of the exam­ples the BAA lay­w­er Tim­o­thy Law­son-Crut­ten­den used was that pro­test­ers might block­ade cars going to the air­port which in turn could ‘expos­ing them to a ter­ror­ist strike’. He added: ‘of course we see that in Bagh­dad every day’. Right.

The defence lawyer spent the after­noon putting for­ward that there are already far reach­ing laws in place as well as a com­pe­tent police force who will be able to take care of such events. An injunc­tion would just con­fuse the sit­u­a­tion, rather than add to it. The lay­w­er for Trans­port for Lon­don and the Lon­don Under­ground, agreed, urg­ing the court to throw out the injunc­tion, call­ing it ‘nei­ther nec­es­sary, desir­able nor clear’.

Sec­ond­ly, although BAA hint­ed yes­ter­day that they might not seek an injunc­tion for all mem­bers of organ­i­sa­tions sup­port­ing the camp for cli­mate action, it made it clear today that it is seek­ing to injunct the sup­port­ers besides the 4 named peo­ple on the injunc­tion.

The judge, Mrs Jus­tice Swift, said she will need the week­end to think things over, so a rul­ing can be expect­ed on Mon­day morn­ing. The hear­ing will con­tin­ue today (Fri­day) in the morn­ing, for a cou­ple of hours.

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Heathrow’s Injunc­tion — What it means

Every­thing you need­ed to know but did­n’t have a clue what to ask about Heathrow’s injunc­tion against pro­test­ers. Designed for the lay per­son, it is essen­tial read­ing for cli­mate campers.

Heathrow’s Injunc­tion – What it actu­al­ly means.

To say that Heathrow Air­port have shot them­selves in the foot with their mis­guid­ed attempt to impose an injunc­tion against all anti-air­ports pro­tes­tors, not just the Camp for Cli­mate Action, is an under­state­ment. There is an injunc­tion, but it is tooth­less. The main aim of the injunc­tion is to scare peo­ple off from com­ing to the camp and from tak­ing action at Heathrow Air­port so we want to explain what the injunc­tion real­ly means for Cli­mate Campers.

THE TERMS OF THE INJUNCTION

Who the injunc­tion applies to:
As well as a few named indi­vid­u­als, the injunc­tion has been grant­ed against a neb­u­lous group of ‘pro­tes­tors’, where pro­tes­tor means the anti-avi­a­tion protest group Plane Stu­pid, its sup­port­ers and those act­ing “in con­cert” with Plane Stu­pid to dis­rupt the oper­a­tion of Heathrow air­port.

What it restricts:
a) tres­pass­ing on Heathrow Airport’s land;
b) any activ­i­ty imped­ing, obstruct­ing or inter­fer­ing with the oper­a­tion of Heathrow Air­port;
c) incit­ing or help­ing oth­ers to do a) or b).

Noth­ing in the terms of the injunc­tion order exceeds cur­rent police pow­ers. Mrs Jus­tice Swift has based her order on exist­ing laws and bye-laws, and has not per­mit­ted the wide restric­tions that Heathrow want­ed.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE CLIMATE CAMP?
Noth­ing of sub­stance. The Camp for Cli­mate Action is not cov­ered by the injunc­tion. The Camp for Cli­mate Action is sep­a­rate from Plane Stu­pid. While it may be argued that there are links between indi­vid­u­als in Plane Stu­pid and the Camp, they are sep­a­rate organ­i­sa­tions. The Camp for Cli­mate Action exist­ed before Plane Stu­pid, and is a self-organ­is­ing enti­ty con­trolled by no oth­er organ­i­sa­tion.

ARE YOU COVERED?
The key phrase which deter­mines whether you become a ‘pro­tes­tor’ or not is whether you are act­ing ‘in con­cert’ with Plane Stu­pid and the three named indi­vid­u­als (col­lec­tive­ly called the Defen­dants) to dis­rupt oper­a­tions at Heathrow Air­port. Being part of the Cli­mate Camp does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly make you a ‘pro­tes­tor’ with­in the terms of this injunc­tion. You would need to do some­thing else in addi­tion which would link you with the defen­dants. Expe­ri­ence with oth­er injunc­tions indi­cates that to be act­ing ‘in con­cert’ with the Defen­dants would require you to:
a) be a known activist with Plane Stu­pid;
b) do an action explic­it­ly organ­ised by the Defen­dants for the pur­pose of dis­rupt­ing oper­a­tions at Heathrow Air­port;
c) use mate­ri­als pro­duced by the Defen­dants in an action which either tres­pass­es on, obstructs or inter­feres with Heathrow.

So to be safe we rec­om­mend that you don’t bring any ban­ners or leaflets or oth­er mate­ri­als with any ref­er­ence to Plane Stu­pid on them to the camp or on actions.

The injunc­tion comes to an end on 31st August. After that it dis­ap­pears alto­geth­er unless Heathrow can suc­cess­ful­ly apply to extend it.

SERVICE OF THE INJUNCTION
To be cov­ered by the injunc­tion you have to be served first. If you are not served then you can­not be cov­ered by its terms even if you fall under the def­i­n­i­tion of pro­tes­tor.

To prove you have been served Heathrow has to demon­strate that you were either
a) per­son­al­ly hand­ed a copy of the injunc­tion, or
b) seen / pho­tographed / videoed read­ing a copy of the injunc­tion whether on a web­site or the ones that are like­ly to be post­ed up on their prop­er­ty (this is called ser­vice by sub­sti­tu­tion).

We will deal with what to do about per­son­al ser­vice below, but ser­vice by sub­sti­tu­tion is very dif­fi­cult to prove. The injunc­tion requires Plane Stu­pid, HACAN and Air­port Watch to post the injunc­tion on their web­sites, and no doubt Heathrow will have it on theirs as well. How­ev­er, they still have to prove that you went to those web­sites and explic­it­ly viewed the terms of the injunc­tion – some­thing very dif­fi­cult to do, if not down­right impos­si­ble.

Heathrow will also dis­play the injunc­tion around its premis­es, in par­tic­u­lar on the fences and posts of its perime­ter. The pur­pose of this is to say that you must be aware of the terms if you were in the area. But it is an argu­ment like­ly to fall flat unless they have evi­dence to show that you actu­al­ly read the notices.

The court may decide that if you have been pro­vid­ed with the terms of the injunc­tion by some­one telling you (eg some­one shout­ing it over a mega­phone) then you have been served. How­ev­er there are any num­ber of prob­lems with prov­ing this in court (as has been show to be the case with the police using mega­phones to inform assem­blies of sec.14 orders).

PERSONAL SERVICE
It is very like­ly that, despite the hol­low­ness of their vic­to­ry that BAA will attempt to serve peo­ple per­son­al­ly with a copy of the injunc­tion order. The stan­dard tac­tic, prob­a­bly with the sup­port of the police, is to have spe­cial­ly appoint­ed indi­vid­u­als called ‘process servers’ whose job is to go around hand­ing out copies of the order to peo­ple they think are like­ly to be ‘pro­tes­tors’, and at the same time pho­to / video / record the fact with a descrip­tion of the per­son served.

To be served they must give you a copy of the order, but this can amount to tap­ping you on the body with it and drop­ping it at your feet, even as you are run­ning off. It is like­ly that these process servers will turn up at var­i­ous protests with copies to hand out. They are also like­ly to be out­side the cli­mate camp attempt­ing to serve it on peo­ple com­ing in or out.

You are not required to stand still and sim­ply wait to be served. As they are offi­cers of the court you are not sup­posed to active­ly inter­fere with them serv­ing peo­ple but there is no require­ment for you to make their life easy for them. If some­one dodgy look­ing comes towards you with a sheaf of paper don’t hang around and take it, or open your win­dow to accept it. Don’t let them into the camp – they have no right to be there. In the past peo­ple have been very cre­ative in pro­tect­ing those that have not been served, for instance, form­ing spon­ta­neous group hugs around them or sim­ply stand­ing in a line between them and the process serv­er – process servers are not allowed to break the law to serve the injunc­tion order.

If a process serv­er is being aggres­sive, take action and make com­plaints – the are not allowed to assault peo­ple or act aggres­sive­ly. Video their actions (though not faces of those being served) in case there are any sub­se­quent court cas­es – you have a right to video both process servers and police alike, regard­less of what they say.

And if you have been served with the injunc­tion this does not mean you are auto­mat­i­cal­ly cov­ered by it – you still have to fall into the def­i­n­i­tion of ‘pro­tes­tor’ giv­en above. Sim­ply being a cli­mate camper or involved in a cli­mate camp protest does not mean that.

WHAT IS A BREACH OF THE INJUNCTION
If you are a ‘pro­tes­tor’ with­in the mean­ing of the injunc­tion and you tres­pass on Heathrow Air­port Ltd’s land (there is a map attached to the injunc­tion) then you are in breach of the injunc­tion. You are also in breach if you block­ade any road or oth­er form of trans­port for peo­ple or vehi­cles reach­ing the air­port, as this would amount to inter­fer­ing with or obstruct­ing the oper­a­tion of the air­port. What it does not stop is action against com­pa­nies involved with the air­port being tar­get­ed in their own right. It does not stop leaflet­ing or oth­er law­ful protest activ­i­ties from tak­ing place in any place not cov­ered under the tres­pass clause.

It is not a crim­i­nal offence to breach the injunc­tion as it is a civ­il mat­ter only. You can­not be arrest­ed for breach­ing the injunc­tion, even if the police say oth­er­wise. Note, how­ev­er, you can still be arrest­ed for break­ing the law and local bye-laws relat­ing to tres­pass, etc.

Incit­ing peo­ple to tres­pass, or to impede / inter­fere with Heathrow’s oper­a­tion will also be con­sid­ered to be breach­es of the injunc­tion, but then, only if they can prove that you were served or had knowl­edge that it was breach­ing the injunc­tion. Note, incite­ment can be an offence in its own right depend­ing on what you are incit­ing oth­ers to do.

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU BREACH THE INJUNCTION
The injunc­tion does not give the police any pow­ers of arrest for breach of the injunc­tion (of course you may still be arrest­ed if you are sus­pect­ed of com­mit­ting a crim­i­nal offence). To pur­sue you for breach of the injunc­tion Heathrow must get the Court’s per­mis­sion, which is decid­ed at a ‘com­mit­tal’ hear­ing. Heathrow will need to first get your name and address in order to serve you with court papers about the com­mit­tal hear­ing. At that hear­ing they will have to prove that you had been served with the injunc­tion, and that you did some­thing that breached the terms of the injunc­tion.

Tech­ni­cal­ly a breach is con­tempt of court, and can car­ry a vari­ety of penal­ties depend­ing on the sever­i­ty of the breach, these range from a con­di­tion­al dis­charge, through fines and jail time. But jail time in par­tic­u­lar is very unlike­ly except for per­sis­tent breach­es. Tak­ing you to court for breach of the injunc­tion is an expen­sive and fair­ly point­less route for Heathrow, and some­thing they are unlike­ly to do as by the time they get you to Court the camp will be over. Most oth­er injunc­tions of this sort, such as the one at the cli­mate camp at Drax last year have proved unen­force­able and have been ignored by pro­test­ers with­out reper­cus­sions.

The pub­lic­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by these injunc­tion pro­ceed­ings has been a fan­tas­tic boost for the Cli­mate Camp itself and the cam­paigns against Heathrow and avi­a­tion in gen­er­al. You couldn’t pay for this sort of cov­er­age. We hope that no one will be deterred from com­ing to the Cli­mate Camp by the injunc­tion – that would be a sur­ren­der of our right to free­dom of protest and expres­sion. We can all be at the Camp, sure in our right to be there.

FINAL NOTES ON THE PROTECTION FROM HARASSMENT ACT
The out­come of these injunc­tion pro­ceed­ings is a vic­to­ry for pro­test­ers in the UK and has made a laugh­ing stock of Heathrow’s own­er BAA plc, as well as their lawyer Tim­o­thy Law­son-Crut­ten­den, the self-declared ‘mar­ket-leader’ in these types of injunc­tions. Mrs Jus­tice Swift threw out BAA’s appli­ca­tion for an injunc­tion under the Pro­tec­tion from Harass­ment Act (PHA) forc­ing BAA to fall back on the more tooth­less com­mon law option, so dam­ag­ing great­ly the abil­i­ty of cor­po­ra­tions to use the PHA to sti­fle legal protest.

For the last four years cor­po­ra­tions have been using the PHA to attack legit­i­mate protest. Orig­i­nal­ly designed to pro­tect peo­ple from stalk­ers, the Gov­ern­ment and com­pa­nies who are the tar­get of per­sis­tent protests have been rel­a­tive­ly suc­cess­ful in attempt­ing to declare oth­er­wise law­ful forms of protest such as march­es and leaflet­ing, the use of mega­phones, drums, whis­tles etc as amount­ing to harass­ment and there­fore have been able to obtain court orders restrict­ing or ban­ning protests out­right. The mis­use of this law has lead to a dra­con­ian infringe­ment of the rights to protest and assem­ble. It has also allowed cor­po­ra­tions to obtain court orders based on low­er stan­dards of proof than would be allowed in the crim­i­nal courts, yet the penal­ties for breach­ing the orders made are crim­i­nal in nature.

As a last point, we would like to dis­tance our­selves from the neg­a­tive com­ments by some fight­ing the injunc­tion in refer­ring to ‘ani­mal rights nuts’. The ani­mal rights move­ment has been at the front line fight­ing the dra­con­ian terms of injunc­tions under the Pro­tec­tion from Harass­ment Act for four years now. These injunc­tions have nev­er been about stop­ping ille­gal activ­i­ties, but about curb­ing the right to law­ful protest. The out­come of these cur­rent injunc­tion pro­ceed­ings is anoth­er step in that same fight.

legal.collective3@yahoo.co.uk

Gagged! 18 — South Wales Anarchist Newsletter

Heres the pdf — http://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged18.pdf
audio to fol­low in the next few days.

Heres the pdf — http://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged18.pdf
audio to fol­low in the next few days.

some last minute diary dates:
Sat­ur­day 6pm — Social Ecol­o­gy sem­i­nar ‑at the PAD, An intro­duc­tion by Social
Ecol­o­gy Lon­don
Sun­day noon — after the fry up at the PAD a pre­sen­ta­tion on this years
cli­mate camp, films, talks etc etc
Mon­day 8pm — South Wales Anar­chists forum — a net­work­ing gath­er­ing with
reports from all the local groups & cam­paigns. All wel­come. 8pm, Glam­or­gan
Staff Club, West­gate Street, Cardiff. If what you read in Gagged! inter­ests
you, why not come along!
Tues­day 7pm — at the PAD read­ing group sub­ject ‘Tur­bu­lence’ see
www.turbulence.org.uk

GAGGED! #18 • August 2007• www.gaggedanarchist.tk • FREE
Pro­duced by South Wales Anar­chists • southwalesanarchists.org

War on Ter­ror = War on Civ­il Lib­er­ties

South Wales cops have asked the Home Office for inva­sive pow­ers to stop & search peo­ple in Cardiff fol­low­ing ter­ror attacks in Lon­don & Glas­gow Air­port. In a move which echoes politi­cians’ calls to extend intern­ment with­out charge, the police here are using the ter­ror attacks as an excuse to extend their pow­ers & fur­ther strip away civ­il lib­er­ties. Sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act gives the plod unprece­dent­ed stop & search pow­ers & has already been mis­used to has­sle demon­stra­tors & oth­ers.
Speak­ing at the begin­ning of July Divi­sion­al Com­man­der for Cardiff, Chief Super­in­ten­dent Josh Jones said: ‘Com­mu­ni­ties defeat ter­ror­ism & I ask any­one who is stopped by a police offi­cer over the next few days to help us by engag­ing pos­i­tive­ly & pass­ing on any infor­ma­tion that they may have.’

How­ev­er, Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Giles York also said: ‘We have seen sev­er­al well inten­tioned calls to the police & I am very encour­aged at the vig­i­lance being shown by the pub­lic of South Wales , par­tic­u­lar­ly as there is no spe­cif­ic threat to the area.’

Does any­one else see a bit of a con­tra­dic­tion here? They’ve asked for pow­ers to stop & search peo­ple because of the threat of ter­ror­ism, while at the same time admit­ting there is no threat to peo­ple in Cardiff . This is oppor­tunist non­sense. The cops are yet again using people’s very real fear of ter­ror­ism as an excuse to get more pow­ers for them­selves.

Know your rights

If you’re stopped & searched under Sec­tion 44 of the Ter­ror­ism Act 2000 you have spe­cif­ic & clear rights that cops will ignore unless you make it clear you know them. They may try & get you to give them your per­son­al details, & they may attempt to pho­to­graph you – they are not allowed to do either. Here are some point­ers pro­vid­ed by the civ­il rights group Lib­er­ty:
• The police can only give you a pat down, remove out­er clothes (eg: jack­et, hat) search your bags, & have you emp­ty your pock­ets
• You do not have to give your name or address.
• You do not have to explain why you are there.
• You are not allowed to flee the search, but you are not required to be active­ly com­pli­ant. You are allowed to “go limp” as pas­sive resis­tance dur­ing the search if you do not wish to com­ply.
• There is no per­mis­sion to col­lect DNA data dur­ing the search.
• You do not have to com­ply with any attempt to pho­to­graph or record you (although you can­not wear a mask).
• Women can not be touched by male police dur­ing these search­es.
• Make notes about the offi­cers search­ing you — name, num­ber, & police force.
• Note the time & the events pre­ced­ing the search.
• Note the spe­cif­ic word­ing used by the police to explain their author­i­ty to search.
• Ask police for the rea­son that they are search­ing you. Specif­i­cal­ly, are they search­ing for ter­ror­ists or are they sim­ply try­ing to deter, delay, or incon­ve­nience you?
check out: www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk

Plod Spread Ter­ror Fears

South Wales Police have been bleat­ing to the press about the increased lev­el of calls from fright­ened mem­bers of the pub­lic about so-called ‘sus­pi­cious’ behav­iour. Instead of appeal­ing for calm or just keep­ing their mouths shut, they’ve encour­aged peo­ple to remain ‘vig­i­lant’ against unknown or non-exis­tent threats, & report every para­noid fan­ta­sy to the police.

Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Giles York said: ‘It is not only my offi­cers mak­ing South Wales a hos­tile area for any ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty, but also our com­mu­ni­ties. The pub­lic are our eyes & ears & we are grate­ful for the efforts they have tak­en to report any­thing which is slight­ly out of the ordi­nary.’
Exact­ly what are the best nuggets of ‘intel­li­gence’ a fright­ened pub­lic have passed on to York & his team?

‘We have received calls from busi­ness­es who are report­ing unusu­al pur­chas­es’, he said. ‘One super­mar­ket in South Wales noti­fied us of a group buy­ing a large amount of dig­i­tal cam­eras. In anoth­er call, the man­ag­er of a shop­ping cen­tre noti­fied us of a call he had received in which he was asked for maps of the cen­tre.’

Dig­i­tal cam­eras & maps of Cardiff ? Be afraid. Be very afraid.

York added: ‘Both of these calls turned out to have gen­uine expla­na­tions but I encour­age any­one to get in con­tact with us if they have any con­cerns, no mat­ter how triv­ial they may seem.’

Nobody is ille­gal

A Kebab-house was closed & 5 take­away work­ers arrest­ed when cops & immi­gra­tion bureau­crats raid­ed Cardiff’s ‘Chip Lane’ at the begin­ning of July.

One work­er at Dorothy’s Fish Bar said: “There have been lots of police here, at least 20 offi­cers. They sealed off Car­o­line Street at both ends & have been through all the take­aways look­ing for ille­gals. They checked all the staff’s pass­ports & their sta­tus.”

It isn’t known what peo­ple were nicked for, they could have been so-called ‘ille­gal immi­grants’ or asy­lum seek­ers await­ing Home Office approval to stay in the UK. Under cur­rent laws refugees are not allowed to work or earn mon­ey while their appli­ca­tions to stay are processed, hav­ing to live off tiny state hand­outs. If they work, they are forced into low-pay­ing menial jobs, & if dis­cov­ered they are arrest­ed & deport­ed.

Asy­lum seek­ers are often from coun­tries where there has been mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion by the West or regimes armed & sup­port­ed by the UK. Noth­ing can jus­ti­fy the suf­fer­ing that is imposed on inno­cent peo­ple like those arrest­ed in Cardiff in the name of ‘immi­gra­tion con­trols’. The rich will set­tle in whichev­er coun­try makes them pay the least tax, but the poor are forced to risk their lives to try & make a bet­ter life for them­selves. As Anar­chists we believe in com­plete free­dom of move­ment.

Pick­et lines

Roy­al mail staff in Wales took part in the 1st UK wide postal strike for 11 years on 29th June with anoth­er 24-hour strike begin­ning at 7pm on 12th July. Work­ers are angry at Roy­al Mails ‘mod­erni­sa­tion’ plans, which will result in the loss of 40,000 jobs & cuts in wages & pen­sions. It will also mean high­er stamp prices, less col­lec­tions, lat­er deliv­er­ies, cuts in week­end ser­vices & the clo­sure of even more post offices.

*****

A high school in Den­bighshire, north Wales, was forced to close as teach­ers staged a one day strike. Indus­tri­al action came fol­low­ing a long run­ning dis­pute over new pay arrange­ments intro­duced in 2006 & seri­ous con­cerns with work­ing prac­tices at the school with many staff feel­ing “demor­alised & under­val­ued”. Sound famil­iar? Ah the pre­dictabil­i­ty of cap­i­tal­ist work­ing rela­tions.

*****

Strike action at the trou­bled Grampian Food Group fac­to­ry, Llangefni, Angle­sey was can­celled at the last minute after work­ers accept­ed a 4% pay deal in a bal­lot on the 25th June. Work­ers were due to strike on 26th, 27th & 30th June because of dis­putes over pay, pen­sions & the grow­ing casu­al­i­sa­tion of the work­force.

*****

Health work­ers across the UK are still con­sid­er­ing strike action over a pay rise deal well below the rate of infla­tion. Ear­li­er this year health work­ers were offered a mis­er­able 2.5% pay rise. This was cut even fur­ther when both the gov­ern­ment & employ­ers said that in Wales, Eng­land & North­ern Ire­land this would be staged — with a 1.5% increase giv­en from April & the final 2.5% set­tle­ment paid from Novem­ber. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing work­ers com­plaints & union pres­sure the respec­tive gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies of Wales & North­ern Ire­land were forced to make u‑turns & health work­ers in these coun­tries will now receive their pay rise in full back­dat­ed from April. This does not yet apply to health work­ers in Eng­land. UNISON has con­duct­ed a bal­lot of its health work­er mem­bers (460,000 across the UK) for poten­tial indus­tri­al action sched­uled to take place in Sep­tem­ber 2007. Watch this space!

*****

Hos­pi­tal work­ers at Ysbyti’r Tri Chwm, Ebbw Vale held a demon­stra­tion out­side the hos­pi­tal in protest against £120-a-year car park­ing charges for staff, which were intro­duced in April. A spokesper­son for the Gwent NHS trust stat­ed that charg­ing for car park­ing was now stan­dard prac­tice at near­ly all NHS hos­pi­tals in south Wales & that there was a need to main­tain equi­ty with staff in oth­er hos­pi­tal sites who already pay charges. But many work­ers feel that they are being charged for the priv­i­lege of going to work & that park­ing should be free for all staff, patients & vis­i­tors. Too right!

“Wales?” Same old tory Sto­ry

David Cameron’s “New” Tories have appoint­ed an Eton-edu­cat­ed hered­i­tary peer who knows “absolute­ly noth­ing” about Wales as Welsh Affairs spokesman. Lord Glen­toran, who lives in North­ern Ire­land , said, “As far as the pol­i­tics of Wales is con­cerned, as of 48 hours ago I knew absolute­ly noth­ing. I now know noth­ing, plus a bit. I know noth­ing about the pol­i­tics but I know quite a lot about the geog­ra­phy.” he denied this was a prob­lem as he had once stayed with a “lit­er­al­ly work­ing class fam­i­ly in Bris­tol“ when he was 16, before join­ing the Army. You couldn’t make it up!

NO PIPELINE!

On the morn­ing of 19th June a huge num­ber of police & bailiffs arrived at the anti-pipeline tree camp in Sen­ny­bridge, Bre­con Bea­cons, to evict pro­test­ers from the trees.

The camp has suc­cess­ful­ly pre­vent­ed the destruc­tion of wood­land in the Bre­con Bea­cons Nation­al Park, on the route of the huge LNG pipleine, since Jan­u­ary this year. Pro­test­ers were tak­en to court in ear­ly June & had been await­ing the evic­tion. Some peo­ple were locked on high up in the trees whilst oth­ers were under­ground in tun­nels in order to delay Nation­al Grid’s mul­ti-mil­lion pound destruc­tive & dan­ger­ous project.The A40 road that ran past the camp was closed to traf­fic & police & bailiffs spent two days remov­ing the activists. Many peo­ple head­ed down to give sup­port but few made it onto site, most being kept in a police cor­don out­side with jour­nal­ists.

In total 12 peo­ple were arrest­ed, most receiv­ing cau­tions or con­di­tion­al dis­charge with a court fine. Nation­al Grid instant­ly began strip­ping away the land in order to pre­vent any­one occu­py­ing it again. Per­haps they for­get that the route of the pipe is 200 miles long…plenty of room for more resis­tance!
The camp was suc­cess­ful in rais­ing aware­ness of how the gov­ern­ment & cor­po­ra­tions are pri­ori­tis­ing mon­ey over the future of our envi­ron­ment. Any claim they make to be tak­ing cli­mate change & envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion seri­ous­ly becomes a joke when they hap­pi­ly over­rule objec­tions so they can destroy sup­pos­ed­ly ‘pro­tect­ed’ nat­ur­al land to make way for yet more fos­sil fuels. Check out: www.fightthepipe.co.uk

Who watch­es the watch­ers?

Five secu­ri­ty guards work­ing in Welsh Assem­bly build­ings, Cardiff were caught using CCTV cam­eras to look at near­by homes & hotels. While this has been going on for around two years, the voyeuris­tic secu­ri­ty guards have received noth­ing more than a slap on the wrist. An assem­bly spokesper­son claimed that these were “iso­lat­ed” inci­dences, which were not thought to have infringed any­one’s pri­va­cy. We bet the peo­ple whose hous­es were spied on feel a whole lot bet­ter now!

Wel­fare for the Rich

Work­ing class peo­ple in Wales are sub­si­dis­ing pri­vate indus­try not only through wage slav­ery (where the pay we take home is much less than the val­ue of the work we do), but also in huge pay­outs to busi­ness­es fund­ed by our tax­es.

Tax is meant to be cash we lend the state so that they can pay it back to us in essen­tial ser­vices, edu­ca­tion, health­care, & pen­sions. But politi­cians are giv­ing mil­lions to the rich so they can set up more busi­ness­es.

For 5 years the Welsh Assem­bly Gov­ern­ment has giv­en mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey to busi­ness in the form of Assem­bly Invest­ment Grants (AIG) & Region­al Selec­tive Assis­tance (RSA). Dur­ing the first 4 years of the scheme’s oper­a­tions, over 1504 offers of AIG with a com­bined val­ue of £45.8 mil­lion were made to busi­ness­es. In the 7 year peri­od to March 2006 1173 offers of RSA with a com­bined val­ue of a whop­ping £650 mil­lion were made to busi­ness­es under­tak­ing cap­i­tal invest­ment projects in Wales.

These bribes for boss­es are typ­i­cal of the way in which gov­ern­ments oper­ate. Sweet­en­ers for the rich might look attrac­tive to politi­cians, & might even boost the econ­o­my & cre­ate a few jobs in the short-term. But in the long-term the peo­ple of Wales lose out big-time: Once prof­its at these sub­sidised busi­ness­es start to fall they close down their fac­to­ries, sack the work­force & move on to places where the labour is cheap­er & new gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies are to be had.

Under “New” Labour the gap between rich & poor has widened mas­sive­ly. Pay­outs to the rich are a major cause of this inequal­i­ty, the wealthy few can enjoy lives of com­fort & extrav­a­gance while 3 mil­lion British chil­dren live in pover­ty.

COME CAMP WITH US!

Organ­is­ing & strug­gling in our local com­mu­ni­ties is key to build­ing strong social move­ments & bring­ing about last­ing social change. But we also need to con­tin­ue to come togeth­er in mass mobil­i­sa­tions. It is at con­ver­gence spaces like the ones at the recent anti-G8 protests (see Gagged! #17) that we get a glimpse of our col­lec­tive pow­er. They offer us the space to organ­ise & come up with solu­tions to social & envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems with­out the need for lead­ers, where togeth­er we can cre­ate new worlds in the shell of the old. This sum­mer there are at least two major protest camps in the UK — come camp with us: you know you want to!

CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION

On 14th-21st August, some­where near Heathrow the 2nd Camp for Cli­mate Action will take place, with 8 days of low-impact, sus­tain­able liv­ing, learn­ing, col­lec­tive deci­sion-mak­ing & direct action to high­light the prob­lems of cli­mate change & solu­tions to halt it.

Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now. Peo­ple are dying of starv­ing now. Envi­ron­men­tal refugees are mov­ing now & accord­ing to the Red Cross already out­num­ber those dis­placed by armed con­flict. The sit­u­a­tion is only going to get worse — unless we act now! If we car­ry on with busi­ness as usu­al sci­en­tists pre­dict a pos­si­ble 6 degree rise in tem­per­a­ture. Last time the plan­et expe­ri­enced this was 250 mil­lion years ago & 95% of all life was wiped off the face of the earth.

Our entire way of life is cur­rent­ly struc­tured so that almost every aspect of our lives pro­duces harm­ful car­bon diox­ide emis­sion — trav­el, work, hous­ing, food. In order to cut these emis­sions by the 90% that many sci­en­tists believe nec­es­sary, some very major changes need to occur. So where is this change going to come from? We believe that far from offer­ing any solu­tions to our cur­rent eco­log­i­cal cri­sis gov­ern­ments are part of the prob­lem. Nei­ther can we expect cor­po­ra­tions or the mar­ket to offer any real solu­tions. Although we all need to make changes in the ways we live, it’s not enough just to switch brands. We need to chal­lenge the log­ic of cap­i­tal­ism, which got us into this mess in the first place. Cap­i­tal­ism is based on a very sim­ple prin­ci­ple — per­pet­u­al eco­nom­ic growth. This leads to the con­stant over pro­duc­tion of goods & ser­vices that we just don’t need, the con­sump­tion of the world’s finite resources & ever grow­ing amounts of waste that our ecosys­tem just can’t deal with. Expect­ing cor­po­ra­tions to sort this out is absurd. They are designed for one thing & that is the max­imi­sa­tion of prof­it.

The avi­a­tion indus­try is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. The main rea­son why the camp will be at Heathrow this year is to high­light the mas­sive con­tra­dic­tion of the gov­ern­ment claim­ing to be work­ing to reduce emis­sions while set­ting the con­di­tions for huge growth in fly­ing, through air­port expan­sion & sub­si­dies on air fuel, which has stim­u­lat­ed a mas­sive increas­ing in cheap flights.
Last year’s camp was a huge suc­cess (see Gagged! #13). Activists from south Wales joined over 600 peo­ple to take direct action against Drax pow­er­sta­tion, the UK’s largest car­bon diox­ide emit­ter & explored, debat­ed & dis­cussed grass roots alter­na­tives to the cur­rent sys­tem. Let’s make this year’s camp an even big­ger suc­cess! Togeth­er we can build a bet­ter world now! Check out: climatecamp.org.uk

No Bor­der Camp 2007

On 19th-24th Sep­tem­ber will be the UK’s first “No Bor­der Camp”, con­tin­u­ing the tra­di­tion of No Bor­der protest camps across the world since the late 1990s. The gov­ern­ment has recent­ly announced its plans to build a new deten­tion cen­tre near Gatwick air­port. This will be anoth­er in a long list of such places around the world. Places where peo­ple are locked up indef­i­nite­ly & with­out tri­al, & from where they can be forcibly deport­ed. Such deten­tion pris­ons are an inte­gral part of a sys­tem­at­ic, racist, & bar­barous pol­i­cy of suf­fer­ing. Togeth­er we can stop this one being built!

The camp will be an exper­i­ment in self-organ­i­sa­tion. A chance to work togeth­er to stop the build­ing of a new deten­tion cen­tre & gath­er ideas for how to build up the fight against migra­tion con­trols. It will be an impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge & over­come the arti­fi­cial bor­ders of class, race, sex, sex­u­al­i­ty, & nation­al­i­ty which divide us from each oth­er, & act in sol­i­dar­i­ty with one anoth­er for a world with­out bor­ders.

‘Free­dom of move­ment’ is such a scary prospect for the wealthy few because migra­tion under­mines a cen­tral dimen­sion of con­tem­po­rary glob­al cap­i­tal­ism — that peo­ple liv­ing in dif­fer­ent parts of the world can be paid dif­fer­ent wages. Bor­ders, migra­tion con­trols, notions of cit­i­zen­ship & the ‘rights’ that these entail are all inte­gral mech­a­nisms through which this unequal, exploita­tive world sys­tem is main­tained. With­out them there would be no way of con­fin­ing peo­ple to a cer­tain place, a cer­tain set of work­ing con­di­tions & rate of pay. Check out: www.noborders.org.uk

COPWATCH

Cop Wankers Part II
Last month Gagged! report­ed how PC Richard Bowen got away with an 18 month sus­pend­ed sen­tence & avoid­ed jail after mas­tur­bat­ing in front of an arrest­ed woman in the back of a pan­da car. He was ordered to do 100 hours com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as a painter & dec­o­ra­tor on the estate where he grew up. Let’s hope he doesn’t run out of wall­pa­per paste. This month we can reveal that yet anoth­er UK rozzer, Essex Police’s Mar­tin Chap­man, has been sus­pend­ed for the same thing. It must be some­thing about the uni­form. There is a sil­ver-lin­ing though: a few more like this & they might all go blind.

Gwent Cops on Tax Pay­er-Fund­ed fun
Mem­bers of the Gwent Police were liv­ing it up at our expense at major events this sum­mer. Cops were sent on free trips to Glas­ton­bury & Wim­ble­don, alleged­ly to get hints & tips on how to police major events ahead of the Ryder Cup, to be held in New­port in 2010. Super­in­ten­dent Nigel Rus­sell denied any sug­ges­tions cops had been on a jun­ket to Europe’s biggest music fes­ti­val, claim­ing they did not see any bands. “You won’t catch the cops in the mosh­pit,” he said, try­ing des­per­ate­ly not to sound like a cock.

Police Num­bers Fall
Over­paid work-shy plod are retir­ing in their droves & not enough new ones are tak­ing their place, accord­ing to new fig­ures. For the first time in ages more police are leav­ing Welsh forces than are being recruit­ed, because of a rise in retire­ment & res­ig­na­tion rates. The num­ber of cops resign­ing from the four Welsh forces has more than dou­bled since 2002, while retire­ments have also shot up, from 110 in 2002 to 269 last year.

Cop Cars Trashed at Gyp­sy Camp
Two South Wales Police vehi­cles had their win­dows smashed in a dis­tur­bance at an offi­cial traveller’s camp. A Gyp­sy Coun­cil spokesman told the press he didn’t know any­thing about the inci­dent, but added: “I’m sur­prised the police left their cars unat­tend­ed. It doesn’t mat­ter where they go on hous­ing estates any­where in the coun­try, they shouldn’t leave them unat­tend­ed. I don’t know any police force that would leave their cars.”

Welsh Plod Ignored Male Rape Vic­tim
Police have apol­o­gised to a rape vic­tim after their han­dling of his case was crit­i­cised by the Inde­pen­dent Police Com­plaints Com­mis­sion. Geof­frey Cole, from Neath, was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed in Octo­ber 2005. When he report­ed the crime, police offi­cers didn’t take him seri­ous­ly, & failed to make ade­quate efforts to exam­ine the crime scene for evi­dence. Mr Cole’s attack­er has nev­er been caught.

Diary Dates ‑If you are unsure about attend­ing any of the events list­ed below, why not get in touch?

August
1–5 — Big Green Gath­er­ing — Sus­tain­able liv­ing, music & hip­pies. Som­er­set. www.big-green-gathering.com
6 — South Wales Anar­chists forum — a net­work­ing gath­er­ing with reports from all the local groups & cam­paigns. All wel­come. 8pm, Glam­or­gan Staff Club, West­gate Street, Cardiff.
11 — No Bor­ders Info-day & Social — to mobilise for the No Bor­der camp; with speak­ers, films, food & live music. From 1pm at the PAD.
14–21 — Camp for Cli­mate Action – near Heathrow air­port. www.climatecamp.org.uk
27–30 — Smash EDO Action Camp — Direct Action against the war machine. www.smashedo.org.uk
Sep­tem­ber
11 — Dis­arm Desi — actions against Defence Sys­tems & Equip­ment Inter­na­tion­al arms fair. ExCel Cen­tre, Lon­don. www.dsei.org
19–24 — No Bor­ders Camp, near Gatwick. www.noborders.org.uk

Got any news or an event you want us to cov­er? send details to news@gaggedanarchist.tk

An audio ver­sion of Gagged! is avail­able, just check out www.gaggedanarchist.tk, where you can also sub­scribe online. Five thou­sand copies of each issue are dis­trib­uted through­out the region, we always look­ing to get Gagged! into new places. If you are inter­est­ed in get­ting involved in any way, please get in touch info@gaggedanarchist.tk

Peo­ples Autonomous Des­ti­na­tion
a phys­i­cal space in Cardiff for groups & indi­vid­u­als who can­not or will not work with­in the con­straints of gov­ern­men­tal or cor­po­rate con­trol.
Veg­an fryup every sun­day from 12noon.
Not-for-prof­it-shop every wednes­day from 5pm. Plus free shop all the time.
meet­ings every wednes­day from 7pm.
& lots more, check our notice board!
118 Clifton Street, Cardiff CF24 1LW • www.thepad.org.uk

Cam­paign Groups
Cardiff Ris­ing Tide
is a grass­roots group com­mit­ted to tak­ing action & build­ing a move­ment against cli­mate change. Meet irreg­u­lar­ly, get in con­tact for details.
cardiff@risingtide.org.uk
www.risingtide.org.uk
No Bor­ders Wales
organ­is­es on migra­tion issues & acts to break down bound­aries that divide us. Meet thurs­days 7pm at PAD.
noborderswales@riseup.net
www.noborders.org.uk
Cardiff Read­ing Anti-Cap­i­tal­ism
is a study/reading group explor­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary vision & strat­e­gy. Meet 7pm last tues­day of the month at PAD.

Cardiff Anar­chist Net­work (CAN) is a col­lec­tive of peo­ple who want to pur­sue polit­i­cal demon­stra­tions through direct action. There are no lead­ers, just like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als. cardiffanarchists@riseup.net myspace.com/cardiffanarchists Meet 8pm mon­days at PAD.

Gwent Anar­chists are like mind­ed indi­vid­u­als believ­ing in auton­o­my, respect & jus­tice; against all forms of exploita­tion & big­otry. Aim­ing to increase the knowl­edge of, & cre­ate a resis­tance to gov­ern­ments & big busi­ness abus­ing peo­ple & the earth. gwentanarchists@yahoo.co.uk myspace.com/gwentanarchists Meet 8.30pm every oth­er mon­day at the Murenger House, High Street, New­port.

Pem­brokeshire Anar­chists is a group of like mind­ed peo­ple who believe in direct action, jus­tice, free­dom & auton­o­my, are against cap­i­tal­ism, exploita­tion & big­otry. pembrokeshireanarchists@riseup.net myspace.com/pembrokeshireanarchists

Rhond­da Cyon Taf Anar­chists are an autonomous group of free-think­ing indi­vid­u­als who reject cap­i­tal­ism & resist state con­trol through direct action. We work towards the cre­ation of a world based on jus­tice & free­dom. rctanarchists@riseup.net

For more news from all over the world like the sort you find in Gagged! take a look at: www.schnews.org.uk www.indymedia.org.uk www.libcom.org www.anarkismo.net www.infoshop.org

info@gaggedanarchist.tk
http://www.gaggedanarchist.tk

Tara’s Last Stand?

vio­lence on tara
7 arrests
court case today
urgent help need­ed

www.indymedia.ie click on ´watch revolt footage here‘

 faeryarmy@yahoo.co.uk

Tara’s Last Stand?

vio­lence on tara
7 arrests
court case today
urgent help need­ed

www.indymedia.ie click on ´watch revolt footage here‘

 faeryarmy@yahoo.co.uk

Tara’s Last Stand?

An open let­ter to all who are inter­est­ed in the defence of the earth and the stand­ing-up to pow­er.
Please for­ward, copy, or cir­cu­late.

Place: Tara Val­ley, Hill of Tara, Coun­ty Meath, Repub­lic of Ire­land
Time: NOW

His­to­ry: Tara Hill and Val­ley are part of an ancient tem­ple com­plex of earth­works, henges, raths (forts), and souter­rains (under­ground tomb cham­bers). Many of the works pre-date the pyra­mids. Tara was used as the crown­ing place of the old high kings of Ire­land. It is still in use for cer­e­monies today, and is par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Samhain (Hallowe’en).

Threat: The Irish gov­ern­ment have sanc­tioned a route through the Tara val­ley of the M3 motor­way. This road will be tolled, is the least-favourable of the five options avail­able accord­ing to prin­ci­ples of road-build­ing and eco­nom­ic sense, will ’save’ fif­teen min­utes of time to the M50 bot­tle­neck (British M25 equiv­a­lent) dur­ing the morn­ing rush hour to Dublin, and is being sit­ed on a stretch of road that is not even that busy. A gigan­tic com­plex of shop­ping malls is planned at an inter­change, due to be sit­ed 1000 yards from the Hill of Tara. Many ancient mon­u­ments have already been destroyed. Many more new and unusu­al find­ings DUG UP DURING THE EXCAVATION OF THE LAND FOR THE ROAD have been either record­ed by record’ (ie made a note of in a book and destroyed) or are being stored in ware­hous­es. Such ancient arte­facts dug up include human bones from old graves.

Actions to date: Around ten to twelve reg­u­lar peo­ple have tak­en it in shifts for the past year in keep­ing an unbro­ken vig­il fire and camp burn­ing on Tara Hill. These peo­ple have held up the progress of the road by direct action, includ­ing dig­ger-div­ing thus far.

Cur­rent Sit­u­a­tion: The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment (EU) has told the Irish Gov­ern­ment that the work they are doing is ille­gal and to cease imme­di­ate­ly. Just after this was announced in the press, many more dig­gers and machines were sent, on Wednes­day July 18th, to a mon­u­ment on the site known as ‘Soldier’s Hill’ for the road com­pa­ny to estab­lish a com­pound. Hav­ing recruit­ed many more dri­vers, and turned them into nom­i­nal secu­ri­ty guards for the day, the com­pa­ny deployed its staff to aggres­sive­ly remove all pro­tes­tors from site. Sev­en pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed for not fol­low­ing a policeman‘s orders and pub­lic order offences. Three were bailed at 500 Euros, with the con­di­tion they cease to go to the sites to protest. A fur­ther four refused those bail con­di­tions and were remand­ed on a week’s cus­tody at Clover Hill prison, Dublin, until a court case pend­ing Wednes­day July 25th. Inter­net footage of the high lev­els of vio­lence utilised by the road company’s men sur­prised even the long-term cam­paign­ers at Ross­port, used to deal­ing with such intim­i­da­tion.

The Last Stand: A court case is pend­ing in the EU court, but the road com­pa­ny, aim­ing to save on much lost time and mon­ey has start­ed a big push, and has now reached the part of the route where a gigan­tic WOODHENGE was unearthed dur­ing the exca­va­tion. This site is cur­rent­ly being ‘record­ed by record’ by state-appoint­ed archae­ol­o­gists. Their work is SAID to need anoth­er two to three weeks to com­plete. The EU court case is due mid-to-late August The Henge is look­ing like the site of the last stand. The com­pa­ny has draft­ed in round-the-clock secu­ri­ty. The Irish Police has said it will arrest any­one found on site, even if they are mere­ly mount­ing a peace­ful protest. The road com­pa­ny and the Irish Gov­ern­ment have con­tin­ued destroy­ing mon­u­ments, even before the ‘record­ing by record’ process has fin­ished. There are cur­rent­ly around ten to twen­ty pro­tes­tors on site.

A Plea: If any­one out there has it in their heart, time, space, trip, what­ev­er to come and lend a hand, the fol­low­ing three gen­er­al areas would love to be catered for:

1. DIRECT ACTION: any­one with any expe­ri­ence of, enjoy­ment in doing and a con­tin­ued desire to do lock­ing-on, tree-house build­ing, rope­way-sling­ing and so on are instruct­ed to make their way to the site as soon as pos­si­ble. This plea is espe­cial­ly direct­ed to those who are part of the vic­to­ri­ous Nine Ladies camp in Der­byshire, who may be at a loose end and may want to get involved in this action. It may only last a month, one way or the oth­er. Although Irish police has said it will arrest any­one on site, there is still the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dig­ger-div­ing and road-block­ing, pro­vid­ed the num­bers are increased.

2. MAGIC ACTION: as part of a psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare front, music, dance, song, par­ty­ing and all the rest of it are very wel­come at this time. This is not only a call for Direct Action peo­ple. The fes­ti­val of Lugh­nasa (Lam­mas or Har­vest Fes­ti­val) starts on Wednes­day August 1st and it is intend­ed to hold cer­e­mo­ny, play games, sing, recite poet­ry, and have a par­ty in the woods, from then and through­out the week­end of July 3rd to 5th, and on and on. Even if you can only make it over for a few days, do come for the par­ty any­way!

3. PRACTICAL ACTION: All man­ner of kitchen work­ers, camp-clean­ers, fire-ten­ders- you-name-it-ers, what­ev­er it takes to main­tain a decent camp. There are always things to do, and there are not real­ly enough there yet to make the stand that is required.

THE NUMBERS GAME:

Expe­ri­enced Direct Action pro­tes­tors reck­on that a good stand could be made at the Henge if there are AT LEAST ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE THERE. If there are TWO HUNDRED, then the posi­tion is that much stronger, while THREE HUNDRED would, it is reck­oned, tip the bal­ance against the road com­pa­ny.

In order for the road to be stopped, AS MANY AS POSSIBLE are plead­ed with to help in any way they can, to come to Tara AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Oth­er­wise, it may be too late.

Thank you for your time.

We Hope to See you on the Hill

yours, in love of the land,

THE FIANNA FAERY (Sol­diers of Faery)
TARA BRIGADE
HILL OF TARA

Camberwell squat centre dances on

Still no word on the evic­tion. No word from the alleged own­ers.

So… We decid­ed to press ahead with events… if we get evict­ed then yah boo. These are what we came up with… There is room for more events… if you have any ideas get in touch. Seri­ous­ly. There’s no point just con­sum­ing this space, make it hap­pen. Every mini-gig or par­ty, meet­ing or work­shop that hap­pens is a dance of defi­ance to the prof­i­teer­ing scum that boss this world.

Still no word on the evic­tion. No word from the alleged own­ers.

So… We decid­ed to press ahead with events… if we get evict­ed then yah boo. These are what we came up with… There is room for more events… if you have any ideas get in touch. Seri­ous­ly. There’s no point just con­sum­ing this space, make it hap­pen. Every mini-gig or par­ty, meet­ing or work­shop that hap­pens is a dance of defi­ance to the prof­i­teer­ing scum that boss this world.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Weds 25th: Film night… Film being arranged. 7.30pm

Fri­day 27th: Café/bar… 7.30 – 1.

Tues­day 31 July: Span­ish and Pol­ish Lessons, 7.30 and 8pm respec­tive­ly.
Begin­ners and slight­ly more expe­ri­enced wel­come. Bring pens and paper.
Home­work.

Weds 1 August: Film night. Film being arranged. 7.30pm

Thurs 2 August: Dis­cus­sion night: “Squat or Social Cen­tre”, idea is to dis­cuss squat­ted and social cen­tres in this coun­try and the world, issues around the dif­fer­ences between them, exam­ples of what peo­ple round the world are doing, we will also will try to get an exhi­bi­tion togeth­er of squat cen­tres etc. Maybe some slides. Hope­ful­ly a com­rade from Madrid will be here, to talk about La Alar­ma Squat and the Fac­ul­tad Oku­pa Auto­ges­tion­a­da squat­ted uni­ver­si­ty they recent­ly got togeth­er there.

Fri­day 3rd: Bar/café, hope­ful­ly a par­ty, with DJs… 7.30 – 1am.

Sun­day 5th: Ubun­tu install fest: Help and hints as to installing free user based soft­ware like lin­ux etc. 2pm. Lap­tops or hard dri­ves obvi­ous­ly would help if you want this stuff!

Tues­day 7: Span­ish and Pol­ish Les­son, 7.30 and 8pm respec­tive­ly.

Weds 8 August: Film night.

Thurs 9th: His­tor­i­cal talk on “Under­ground Lam­beth”, all the stuff hid­den beneath the streets and hous­es of South London’s finest bor­ough (ooh)… 7.30pm.

Fri 10th: Café/bar. 7.30 – 1am.

Sat 11th: Mini book­fair! We agreed to get 4 or 5 stall in, 56a, ele­phant edi­tions, past tense, last hours, maybe a cou­ple more, and do a big pub­lic­i­ty blitz. Mad or what? Could be great! Any ideas for stalls? Past Tense and Ele­phant con­firmed.

Fur­ther ahead: There are plans for a Span­ish par­ty, and also a jam ses­sion, in 3 weeks maybe. If we still here.

Also there will hope­ful­ly be a work­shop on how to build bike wheels, we’re wait­ing for some a deliv­ery of stuff before con­firm­ing.

We’re not fuck­ing dead yet!

CAMBERWELL VERSUS DEATH? WE’RE WINNING!

Cam­ber­well Squat­ted Cen­tre, 192 Warham Street, Lon­don, SE5,

Tube: Oval

Bus­es: P5, 36, 185, 436.

Boat: Dinghy to Ken­ning­ton Park, which will be flood­ed by the time you read this.

For more info check the web­site: www.56a.org.uk/warham.html

Siberian protest camp attacked by neo-nazis

In the ear­ly morn­ing of 21st July, neo-nazi skin­heads launched a vicious and unpro­voked attack on an anti-nuclear protest camp in Angarsk, Siberia, Rus­sia. The nazis vio­lent­ly attacked activists in their sleep­ing bags and tents with iron rods, knives and air pres­sure guns. 21 year old Ilya Boro­daenko from Nachod­ka suf­fered a head-frac­ture dur­ing the attack and lat­er died in hos­pi­tal from his injuries. At least nine oth­ers have been report­ed to be seri­ous­ly injured, one of which has had both their legs bro­ken. Tents were set on fire and sev­er­al belong­ings were stolen.

bloody antinuke T-shirtIn the ear­ly morn­ing of 21st July, neo-nazi skin­heads launched a vicious and unpro­voked attack on an anti-nuclear protest camp in Angarsk, Siberia, Rus­sia. The nazis vio­lent­ly attacked activists in their sleep­ing bags and tents with iron rods, knives and air pres­sure guns. 21 year old Ilya Boro­daenko from Nachod­ka suf­fered a head-frac­ture dur­ing the attack and lat­er died in hos­pi­tal from his injuries. At least nine oth­ers have been report­ed to be seri­ous­ly injured, one of which has had both their legs bro­ken. Tents were set on fire and sev­er­al belong­ings were stolen.
The camp start­ed last week and is aimed at protest­ing against a planned cen­tre of ura­ni­um enrich­ment in Angarsk. Ever since the arrival of the activists, the police have tried to intim­i­date them and have entered the camp in an attempt to gath­er infor­ma­tion about planned actions. The organ­i­sa­tion who planned the camp, the ‘Eco­log­i­cal Wave of Baikal’, had planned var­i­ous ral­lies in the sur­rond­ing area to inform locals about the plans and drum up sup­port for the cam­paign.
Finan­cial help and oth­er forms of sol­i­dar­i­ty are urgent­ly need­ed. Con­tact xmaki­max (at) gmail.com or ogo­po­gos (at) gmail.com if you are able to offer sup­port

Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh under threat

We have 12 days to sub­mit objec­tions to the plan­ning depart­ment.
please cir­cu­late wide­ly and respond asap.

The Autonomous Cen­tre of Edin­burgh is under threat as the land­lord has put in a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to turn the space into a flat. ACE is now the only social cen­tre left in scot­land.

We have recent­ly reopened after exten­sive ren­o­va­tions and con­tin­ue to be a valu­able resource

www.autonomous.org.uk for more infor­ma­tion on our cur­rent activ­i­ties

We have 12 days to sub­mit objec­tions to the plan­ning depart­ment.
please cir­cu­late wide­ly and respond asap.

The Autonomous Cen­tre of Edin­burgh is under threat as the land­lord has put in a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to turn the space into a flat. ACE is now the only social cen­tre left in scot­land.

We have recent­ly reopened after exten­sive ren­o­va­tions and con­tin­ue to be a valu­able resource

www.autonomous.org.uk for more infor­ma­tion on our cur­rent activ­i­ties

We need as many folk as pos­si­ble to write to the fol­low­ing address as soon as pos­si­ble — we have about 12 days left to object.

you can use the tem­plate let­ter below but it car­ries more weight if it is a per­son­al let­ter. please also include your name,address and the date:

kirsty.hope@edinburgh.gov.uk
Plan­ning and Strat­e­gy Depart­ment
for the atten­tion of Kirsty Hope
Waver­ley Court
Lev­el G2
4 East Mar­ket St
Edin­burgh EH8 8BG

with this sub­ject stat­ed:

Re Plan­ning Appli­ca­tion 07/02348/FUL

17 West Mont­gomery Place, Edin­burgh EH7 5HA

in sol­i­dar­i­ty
on behalf of ace
——————–

below attached let­ter

To the Head of Plan­ning and Strat­e­gy, City Devel­op­ment Depart­ment, City of Edin­burgh Coun­cil, 1 Cock­burn Street, Edin­burgh EH1 1ZJ

Re Plan­ning Appli­ca­tion 07/02348/FUL

17 West Mont­gomery Place, Edin­burgh EH7 5HA

Dear Sir/ Madam

I wish to object to the appli­ca­tion for plan­ning per­mis­sion to con­vert the above prop­er­ty into a flat. This would result in the loss of the valu­able com­mu­ni­ty facil­i­ty cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ed in these premis­es.

I con­sid­er that the ACE char­i­ty oper­at­ing in 17 West Mont­gomery Place pro­vides a very use­ful resource in this neigh­bour­hood, and serves a real local need.

I under­stand that the Council’s devel­op­ment pol­i­cy is to pro­tect local shops, com­mu­ni­ty halls and meet­ing rooms – I would urge that this pol­i­cy be adhered to, and that this plan­ning appli­ca­tion be refused.

Yours sin­cere­ly

SIGNATURE

Any addi­tion­al com­ment :

ace@autonomous.org.uk
http://www.autonomous.org.uk

If you could also send a copy of your mes­sage to the local coun­cil­lors for the Lei­th Walk ward, that would be great.
Here are their details.

Coun­cil­lor Angela Black­lock (Labour)
angela.blacklock@edinburgh.gov.uk

Coun­cil­lor Dei­dre Brock (Scot­tish Nation­al Par­ty)
deidre.brock@edinburgh.gov.uk

Coun­cil­lor Mag­gie Chap­man (Green Par­ty)
maggie.chapman@edinburgh.gov.uk
as she is on hol­i­day, please also send to
Coun­cil­lor Ali­son John­stone (Green Par­ty)
alison.johnstone@edinburgh.gov.uk

Coun­cil­lor Louise Lang (Lib­er­al Democ­rats)
louise.lang@edinburgh.gov.uk