Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

Protests continue at Trebanos

26.01.2007

At 2.00 pm today a group of cam­paign­ers against the con­tro­ver­sial LNG pipeline forced work to stop yet again on the con­struc­tion site in Tre­banos.

Pipe protest on footpath26.01.2007

At 2.00 pm today a group of cam­paign­ers against the con­tro­ver­sial LNG pipeline forced work to stop yet again on the con­struc­tion site in Tre­banos.

Cam­paign­ers occu­pied a foot­path run­ning through the site. They argued that the foot­path had been closed ille­gal­ly because the required sev­en days noti­fi­ca­tion had not been giv­en. Even local res­i­dents had not been informed of the clo­sure.

Ini­tial­ly, the police tried to stop pro­tes­tors gain­ing access to the foot­path, how­ev­er, they had to admit that they were uncer­tain of the legal­i­ty of the path clo­sure.

Pri­or to today’s action, work on the con­struc­tion site had been stopped for three weeks by cam­paign­ers occu­py­ing the foot­path. Resis­tance to the pipeline is grow­ing, with protest sites and actions against the pipeline increas­ing dai­ly. The lat­est direct action site is a tree camp in Bre­con occu­py­ing the route of the pipeline.

Come to Wales and be on the front­line of Britain’s eco-defence!

Con­tact Rachael (Tre­banos): 01792 830417
Bre­con Tree Camp: 07903152822

ex-vortex eviction thwarted this morning (pics and film)

dozens of sup­port­ers arrived this morn­ing to ensure that no ille­gal evic­tion could take place at the occu­pied social squat in the build­ing that used to host the vor­tex jazz club in stoke new­ing­ton church street.

dozens of sup­port­ers arrived this morn­ing to ensure that no ille­gal evic­tion could take place at the occu­pied social squat in the build­ing that used to host the vor­tex jazz club in stoke new­ing­ton church street.

there was much local sup­port as res­i­dents don’t want more lux­u­ry flats, a tesco, or a star­bucks, all of which are pos­si­ble plans for the site under own­er richard mid­da’s stew­ard­ship.

mid­da is so unpop­u­lar in the area that a pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio was sold to alex ross (the present own­er of the spence bak­ery) at under mar­ket val­ue, rather than allow mid­da to buy it, even although he was offer­ing far more.

a woman police offi­cer who attend­ed the scene was clear­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to the squat­ters, and after seek­ing advice and clar­i­fi­ca­tion, report­ed that the bailiffs would have to return once they had writ­ten clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the court (which may take up to two weeks).

one inde­pen­dent pho­tog­ra­ph­er was so tak­en with the offi­cer that he asked if she had a boyfriend — his hopes were dashed when she told him she was mar­ried.

quick­time — video/mp4 6.5M
flip4mac/wmv — video/x‑ms-wmv 7.1M

films attached in wmv and mp4 for­mats

if you can’t see the film just by click­ing on it (and wait­ing awhile, as these are sev­er­al megabytes of data), then right-clik-hold (ctrl-clik on mac) instead and ‘down­load linked file’ before watch­ing it on your view­er of choice
on mac or pc, i rec­om­mend down­load­ing vlc which is a free view­er from viedolan, or also mplay­er (free too)
on a mac, if you insist on watch­ing the wmv, then down­load ‘flip4mac’ so you can watch it on quick­time, as the win­dows media view­er itself puts all sorts of nas­ties on your sys­tem.

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Ear­li­er report:

From 8.30am around 70–80 peo­ple, the major­i­ty local res­i­dents, turned out to sup­port the resis­tance to the threat­ened evic­tion of the Vor­tex Occu­pied Social Cen­tre. The own­er, Richard Mid­da, a well known thug and prop­er­ty devel­op­er threat­ened to use force to evict the occu­piers if they did not leave by 9.00am.

But like the say­ing goes “they make plans we make his­to­ry”! After see­ing such a response, com­posed of all age ranges and faced with no few­er than 15 film and video cam­eras the police inter­vened and there­by start­ing a debate on the fin­er points of law. With the cops in the mid­dle of this legal debate a deci­sion was made to send one per­son from the Social cen­tre and the own­er, mid­da, to Stoke New­ing­ton Police sta­tion where inde­pen­dent legal advise is now being sort.

This is cur­rent as of 9.50am.

This occu­pa­tion has its roots in both the tra­jec­to­ry of occu­pa­tions from the Rad­i­cal Dairy (Stoke New­ing­ton) in 2002 and the sub­se­quent spaces (Occu­pied Social Cen­tre — Ken­tish Town,Ex-Grandbanks — Tufnell Park, Insti­tute of Auton­o­my — Blooms­bury, The Square — Blooms­bury), BUT also in last years occu­pa­tion of “Francesca’s Cafe” on Broad­way Mar­ket — Hack­ney and Daslton the­atre in Dal­ston.

It shows that rad­i­cal polit­i­cal inter­ven­tions in the form of occu­pied social cen­tres can res­onate with pre-exisit­ing social ten­sions and anto­gan­isms, espe­cial­ly around gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and “com­mu­ni­ty” issues and acti­vate peo­ple to self-organ­ise and take some con­trol on how their environment(and qual­i­ty of life) are shaped.
If your in the area come down, we have now occu­pied both sides of the pave­ment due to num­bers.
one of the Vor­tex Anar­chists

occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com
http://www.londonsocialcentre.org.uk

Unlawful eviction planned for Vortex Social Centre tomorrow (Friday 26th Jan)

We need as many peo­ple in the build­ing at to ensure the secu­ri­ty of the social cen­tre against the bailiffs. Please cir­cu­late this wide­ly and let as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble know.

We need as many peo­ple in the build­ing at to ensure the secu­ri­ty of the social cen­tre against the bailiffs. Please cir­cu­late this wide­ly and let as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble know.

Prop­er­ty own­er of 139–141 Church street Richard Mid­da was grant­ed a pos­ses­sion order by Shored­itch coun­ty court on wednes­day 24th Jan. The next stage legal­ly is for the courts to issue a bailiffs war­rant to court appoint­ed bailiffs who will car­ry out the evic­tion on a pre-arranged date. This date we should know about in advance. Only court appoint­ed bailiffs have the right to car­ry out an evic­tion.

Imme­di­ate­ly after the court hear­ing on wednes­day Mid­da, along with his own hired pri­vate bailiffs came round to the social cen­tre (where the parent/baby group were meet­ing) threat­en­ing peo­ple while demand­ing he now had the right to the build­ing any every­one must leave. He, nor his hired goons, have a legal right to repos­sess the build­ing.

This morn­ing (thurs­day 25th) he stuck a notice on the door say­ing his pri­vate bailiffs com­pa­ny (used pri­mar­i­ly to harass ten­ants for rent) will be return­ing at 9am on fri­day morn­ing to ensure we vacate the premis­es. He has no legal right to do this.

Not only then is this an unlaw­ful evic­tion any attempt by him to gain access, or attempt to forcibly remove peo­ple from the premis­es, will be a crim­i­nal offence.

We need as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble in, at, and around the social cen­tre to pre­vent him gain­ing access (this is still our social cen­tre!) and that any activ­i­ty he engages in will be doc­u­ment­ed by us.

Be at the social cen­tre at 8.30am. bring cam­eras, cam­corders, your friends. The more of us there are the stronger we are.

occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com
http://www.londonsocialcentre.org.uk

Gaspipe protest in Trebanos comes to an end

25.01.2007

Today the foot­path in Tre­banos has been closed, despite res­i­dents reciev­ing next to no noti­fi­ca­tion. Legal­ly Nation­al Grid had the right to close the foot­path tomor­row (fri­day 26th) but notic­ing a reduc­tion in num­bers the foot­path was sealed off today.

25.01.2007

Today the foot­path in Tre­banos has been closed, despite res­i­dents reciev­ing next to no noti­fi­ca­tion. Legal­ly Nation­al Grid had the right to close the foot­path tomor­row (fri­day 26th) but notic­ing a reduc­tion in num­bers the foot­path was sealed off today.

Despite hav­ing the equip­ment to prop­er­ly resist an evic­tion the activists decid­ed that they’d “made their point and it was time to move on”. Well actu­al­ly there was no need to risk arrest when we have anoth­er 115 miles of pipe to protest against.

The protest con­tin­ues, here in Tre­banos, Cil­frew, at the new tree-site in Bre­con, and every­where else along route, where local peo­ple are sud­den­ly becom­ing rad­i­calised and small actions are pop­ping up all over the place.

Radley lakes — eviction imminent — update 29th jan

Urgent call for help in Oxford­shire, where activists are occu­py­ing and intend to defend a squat­ted lake­side prop­er­ty in order to pre­vent the infill­ing of Radley Lakes with tox­ic ash from the burn­ing of cheap import­ed coal at the near­by NPow­er owned Did­cot pow­er sta­tion.

Radley Lakes squat
Urgent call for help in Oxford­shire, where activists are occu­py­ing and intend to defend a squat­ted lake­side prop­er­ty in order to pre­vent the infill­ing of Radley Lakes with tox­ic ash from the burn­ing of cheap import­ed coal at the near­by NPow­er owned Did­cot pow­er sta­tion.

The lakes are unusu­al in their clar­i­ty and the area con­tains local and nation­al rare and threat­ened species, with 115 species of birds record­ed and over1000 trees sur­round­ing the lake which will be felled. How­ev­er this has been ignored by pow­er com­pa­ny RWE npow­er, and has been rail-road­ed through by Oxford­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil.

The lake con­tains sev­er­al pro­tect­ed species, includ­ing a pos­si­ble sight­ing of otters, and despite a report paid for by local peo­ple con­firm­ing all this the local gov­ern­ment big­wigs have giv­en per­mis­sion for N Pow­er to fill the lake with fly­ash from Did­cot pow­er sta­tion, killing every­thing in the process. They have already been allowed to do this to 3 oth­er lakes in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty. The local coun­ty ecol­o­gist has dis­missed the report, despite a long term cam­paign and evi­dence from anoth­er ecol­o­gist prov­ing the lake is a wildlife haven. The whole thing stinks.

Please, please if you are free this week, (or even bet­ter, right now), get down there, lock on, and make sure they have a fight on their hands. The baliffs are due any minute and more peo­ple are des­per­ate­ly need­ed.

Get off the train at Oxford, then catch train to Radley, takes about 10 mins, then anoth­er 10/15 minute walk. For more info call the site mobile on: 07772055384.

TAT NEEDED!
PolyProp, air horns/ rape alarms, cement, aggre­gate, etc, BOATS (dingy/inflatables etc — lake­wor­thy!) bed­ding & PEOPLE! — even if you can just spare a day to help out with build­ing defences is is much need­ed and appre­ci­at­ed.
Thanks

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24.01.2007 — Npow­er have been grant­ed imme­di­ate pos­s­e­sion of San­dles, the squat­ted field cen­tre at Radley lakes. A call out to any­one to come down and bring cake and lock on tubes!
Call the site mobile 0777 2055 384
www.saveradleylakes.org.uk for more info on the npow­er plans to destroy this beau­ti­ful area

N London Social Centre needs help now!

24.01.2007

The squat­ted Vor­tex social cen­tre has been fend­ing off an ille­gal evic­tion attempt this morn­ing. There is a call out for folks to help tonight and tomor­row morn­ing

24.01.2007

The squat­ted Vor­tex social cen­tre has been fend­ing off an ille­gal evic­tion attempt this morn­ing. There is a call out for folks to help tonight and tomor­row morn­ing

Vor­tex Social Cen­tre
139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street
Stoke New­ing­ton
N16
Help need­ed Wednes­day night (24th) and Thurs­day morn­ing (25th)
Get on down there and see what help you can offer

Welsh pipeline protest — New tree camp set up near Brecon

22.01.2007

Fol­low­ing sup­port from local peo­ple in Bre­con at the week­end, a new protest camp has been set up right in the mid­dle of the phase two route of Nation­al Grids con­tro­ver­sial pipeline.

22.01.2007

Fol­low­ing sup­port from local peo­ple in Bre­con at the week­end, a new protest camp has been set up right in the mid­dle of the phase two route of Nation­al Grids con­tro­ver­sial pipeline.

The protest camp is up in the trees in ancient wood­land 4 miles west of Bre­con on the A40 close to Bet­tws Pen­pont church.It is locat­ed at Ord­nance Sur­vey nation­al grid ref­er­ence SN9728728525.
The ancient wood­land is sched­uled for dec­i­ma­tion by Nation­al Grid to clear a path for the 48″ high pres­sure gas pipeline. The pro­test­ers aim to stop the destruc­tion of yet more ancient wood­land by Nation­al Grid and it’s con­trac­tors.

There are over 15 peo­ple on site at the moment and they are request­ing any dona­tions. Please send sup­plies of all sorts, food, water, warm clothes and bed­ding, camp­ing and cook­ing gear, wood, rope, nails, etc etc etc. They would also like any peo­ple inter­est­ed to join them and show sol­i­dar­i­ty in this bat­tle to save our envi­ron­ment.
Map link

Sto­ries about recent stalls & sam­ba in Clydach Indoor Mar­ket and Bre­con

Events at the Vortex Social Centre: Jan 22nd to Jan 27th

Vor­tex Social Cen­tre
139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street
Stoke New­ing­ton
N16

MON 22 Jan
8pm — Olympic Action Group meet­ing
Con­cerned about the finan­cial cost and neg­a­tive devel­op­ment plans for Lon­don 2012? Feel strong­ly that 2012 will be dam­ag­ing to you, your com­mu­ni­ty or the envi­ron­ment?

Vor­tex Social Cen­tre
139–141 Stoke New­ing­ton Church Street
Stoke New­ing­ton
N16

MON 22 Jan
8pm — Olympic Action Group meet­ing
Con­cerned about the finan­cial cost and neg­a­tive devel­op­ment plans for Lon­don 2012? Feel strong­ly that 2012 will be dam­ag­ing to you, your com­mu­ni­ty or the envi­ron­ment?
Join our group of like-mind­ed peo­ple, with the aim of sup­port­ing each oth­er and devel­op­ing ways to chal­lenge the neg­a­tive Olympic effect.
All wel­come

TUES 23 Jan
7pm — Cafe and cin­e­ma night.
Hot food, drink and anti-copy­wright cin­e­ma. Dona­tion.

WEDS 24 Jan
10am — 12pm Babies@Play.
New parent/baby group, come along for tea/coffee chat and play­time for babies. Bring your toys and ideas to share. Every wednes­day. Free.
10.30am — Court appear­ance for the evic­tion of the social cen­tre.
Clerken­well and Shored­itch Coun­ty Court
29 — 41 Gee Street
Lon­don
EC1V 3RE
All wel­come to attend.
7pm — Social Cen­tre gen­er­al meet­ing.
Come and get involved in the run­ning of the social cen­tre, pro­pose new intia­tives and cam­paigns

THURS 25 Jan
7pm — No Star­bucks in Stok­ie.
Anti Star­bucks cam­paign meet­ing to ensure the social cen­tre isn’t demol­ished for Star­bucks. All wel­come.

FRI 26 Jan
7pm — Cafe and cin­e­ma night.
Hot food, drink and anti-copy­wright cin­e­ma. Dona­tion.

SAT 27 Jan
8pm — Live jazz Upstairs at the Social Cen­tre.
Old jazzers relive the glo­ry days of the orig­i­nal Vor­tex. Dona­tion on the door.

Pho­to­graph­ic exhi­bi­tion:

Lon­don Social Cen­tres in Picures
Pho­to­graph exhibiton of the last five years of lon­don social cen­tres and a brief back­ground to each one.

Protest
Small col­lec­tion of pho­tographs from acclaimed pho­tog­ra­ph­er Guy Small­man cov­er­ing major demon­stra­tions across Europe over recent years.

We hope to open dai­ly from mid­day onwards for cof­fee, tea, soft drinks, cake and bis­cuits. Volu­enteers are always need­ed to help out. If you are inter­est­ed pop in and speak to some­one. Alter­na­tive­ly come to the meet­ings on Wednes­day.
See you there.

occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com

Bloody report from Ballinaboy/ Rossport, Ireland

Fri­day 19th Jan­u­ary 2007.
Today a good crowd of pro­tes­tors gath­ered at the usu­al ren­dezvous, approx 60+ peo­ple. The crowd was buoyed by the pres­ence of a mem­ber of Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ty Mon­i­tor, over from the states, and a film crew trav­el­ling with him. At 7.30 peo­ple pro­ceed­ed up the road, some wear­ing white jump suits with chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants inscribed on the front, poi­sons which the Bal­linaboy ter­mi­nal would pol­lute the local area, fresh water and sea with. The crowd was lead with a large ban­ner read­ing Cor­rib Ter­mi­nal Ill­ness.

Fri­day 19th Jan­u­ary 2007.
Today a good crowd of pro­tes­tors gath­ered at the usu­al ren­dezvous, approx 60+ peo­ple. The crowd was buoyed by the pres­ence of a mem­ber of Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ty Mon­i­tor, over from the states, and a film crew trav­el­ling with him. At 7.30 peo­ple pro­ceed­ed up the road, some wear­ing white jump suits with chem­i­cal con­t­a­m­i­nants inscribed on the front, poi­sons which the Bal­linaboy ter­mi­nal would pol­lute the local area, fresh water and sea with. The crowd was lead with a large ban­ner read­ing Cor­rib Ter­mi­nal Ill­ness.

As the crowd passed over the nar­row bridge tem­pers frayed and to nobod­ies sur­prise the Gar­dai ploughed into the pro­tes­tors, shov­ing them every which way. At this point two Gar­dai held Pat’s arms while anoth­er punched him in the face sev­er­al times. Sim­i­lar­ly his broth­er Mar­tin was seri­ous­ly assault­ed, suf­fer­ing cut­ting and bruis­ing to face and eye. But as the dawn has not yet bro­ken cap­tur­ing any image of this is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly giv­en the num­ber of Gar­dai there to hide each oth­ers activ­i­ties and deny same.
It’s very hard to ascer­tain if there is any log­i­cal point to the Gar­dai activ­i­ties with regard to wad­ing in and assault­ing all around them as oth­er than to bul­ly and injure peo­ple it serves no prac­ti­cal pur­pose. Usu­al­ly their excuse for push­ing and shov­ing is to ensure your safe­ty and make sure you are on the oth­er side of the white line so none of Shells work­ers or trucks can pos­si­bly be delayed for even a sec­ond. How­ev­er as can be seen in the first pho­to some Gar­dai are near­ly on the oth­er side of the road, where there is no hard shoul­der as this is on the bridge, and still they are push­ing, shov­ing and assault­ing peo­ple.

Yes­ter­day after the Gar­dai head­ed off for their break­fasts, leav­ing the trucks to fend for them­selves, local res­i­dents blocked access to the site, hold­ing up stone trucks for a peri­od of time. Secu­ri­ty appeared to pan­ic some­what clos­ing and lock­ing the site gates before Gar­dai with out a com­mand­ing offi­cer appeared on the scene to ush­er in the stalled trucks.

Water qual­i­ty con­tin­ues to be a seri­ous issue, despite Co.Co. assur­ances that it is fine. Images below show water leav­ing the Bal­linaboy site, some clear­ly untreat­ed and look­ing very sim­i­lar to last year, sil­ver grey, when it was found to be heav­i­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with alu­mini­um. The main out­fall area from the site looks mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter, where the water is at least sup­posed to have been treat­ed by this point, how­ev­er it is also clear­ly looks noth­ing like drink­ing water qual­i­ty and exhibits some sil­ver grey colour­ing. Despite the fact that all water leav­ing the site is sup­posed to be treat­ed before leav­ing site you can clear­ly see the water from the truck wash at Gate 3 being pumped straight into exit­ing drains.
The past 3 days have seen mem­bers of Shell to Sea hand­ing out leaflets at the Shell green­wash events in Castle­bar and Bal­li­na. Very few peo­ple attend­ed these events, and num­bers must have been dou­bled or even tre­bled by the atten­dance of 2 school groups, 1 from sec­ondary school and 1 from pri­ma­ry school, nev­er to ear­ly to start brain wash­ing.

Our own pres­ence was wel­comed by many peo­ple pass­ing by and many who did go in to see Shells expen­sive PR work were firm­ly behind the stance of Shell to Sea. As we hand­ed out infor­ma­tion leaflets and chat­ted to peo­ple 1 passer­by even went into the hotel and brought out a tray of steam­ing hot whiskeys!

March on Worthing Police Station in support of Titnore, 17th Feb

A PROTEST march on Wor­thing Police Sta­tion has been called for Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 17 in the face of police intim­i­da­tion of Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers.

A state­ment from Tit­nore Emer­gency Action (TEA), released on Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 18, said:

A PROTEST march on Wor­thing Police Sta­tion has been called for Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 17 in the face of police intim­i­da­tion of Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers.

A state­ment from Tit­nore Emer­gency Action (TEA), released on Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 18, said:
“In the run-up to Christ­mas, sup­port­ers of the Tit­nore Woods cam­paign were try­ing to bring in food and cash dona­tions to the camp, for obvi­ous rea­sons.

“How­ev­er as you may have heard, on no less than two occa­sions Wor­thing Police offi­cers attend­ed the stall and threat­ened with arrest our friends mak­ing the col­lec­tions.

“This is noth­ing short of polit­i­cal harass­ment of Tit­nore sup­port­ers and flies in the face of local democ­ra­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly the fact that the cam­paign has won the sup­port of thou­sands of local peo­ple, who vis­it the stall to make their con­tri­bu­tion to the tree house heroes.

“In protest at this dra­con­ian and unnec­es­sary action, which has stopped vital fund-rais­ing at a vital time, we call for a MARCH ON WORTHING POLICE STATION on Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 17, head­ing off at 2pm from Hold­ers Cor­ner, Mon­tague Place [near Mac­Don­ald’s], Wor­thing.

“This will also be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to express ongo­ing sup­port for the camp and the fight to Save Tit­nore Woods.

“We hope as many of you as pos­si­ble will be there to lend your sup­port for the efforts of our our friends on the stall and in the woods.

Tit­nore Emer­gency Action (TEA)”

Mean­while, cam­paign­ers say they have received some infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that an attempt­ed evic­tion of the Tit­nore camp might be very immi­nent. The source also sug­gest­ed that Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Army per­son­nel would be involved.

Wor­thing eco-action added: “While we do not want to “cry wolf” by sound­ing the alarm bells too often, we thought peo­ple should be aware of this. If any­one has any oth­er infor­ma­tion either sup­port­ing or con­tra­dict­ing this rumour, please get in touch with us, Pro­tect Our Wood­land or the camp. Or come to Thurs­day night’s Wor­thing Alliance meet­ing (Jan­u­ary 25). If there are plans to evict soon, there may be a con­nec­tion with the recent heavy-hand­ed treat­ment of Tit­nore sup­port­ers.