Category: London

Lon­don

How to Fitwatch

Fit­watch meet­ing — Sat­ur­day 8th March at the LSE (Con­naught House, Ald­wych) at 2pm. Room H103.

Fit­watch has proved to be a high­ly effec­tive tac­tic against sur­veil­lance by pub­lic order police.

Although real­ly, it is bet­ter described as a range of tac­tics. Some are as sim­ple as tak­ing a pic­ture, or mak­ing a note of police num­bers. Oth­er tac­tics are more con­fronta­tion­al and active­ly pre­vent the police accu­mu­lat­ing the data they use for their ‘pre­ven­ta­tive’ pub­lic order polic­ing. There is a tac­tic for every­one, and all of them are very effec­tive.

Fit­watch meet­ing — Sat­ur­day 8th March at the LSE (Con­naught House, Ald­wych) at 2pm. Room H103.

Fit­watch has proved to be a high­ly effec­tive tac­tic against sur­veil­lance by pub­lic order police.

Although real­ly, it is bet­ter described as a range of tac­tics. Some are as sim­ple as tak­ing a pic­ture, or mak­ing a note of police num­bers. Oth­er tac­tics are more con­fronta­tion­al and active­ly pre­vent the police accu­mu­lat­ing the data they use for their ‘pre­ven­ta­tive’ pub­lic order polic­ing. There is a tac­tic for every­one, and all of them are very effec­tive.

To get involved, you need only bring a cam­era, plac­ard or ban­ner to your next demo or meet­ing, and get fit­watch­ing. But you would also be very wel­come at the Fit­watch meet­ing on Sat­ur­day so that we can share expe­ri­ences, devel­op tac­tics and cre­ate an effec­tive response to FIT and pub­lic order polic­ing.

Just as an aside, it seems that even secu­ri­ty firms have tak­en notice. The fol­low­ing tes­ti­mo­ni­als are tak­en from a Group 4 Securi­cor brief­ing, and from the web­site of the secu­ri­ty out­fit Inker­man, who make it their busi­ness to pro­tect com­pa­nies from the atten­tion of trou­ble mak­ing pro­tes­tors. Accord­ing to Inker­man, we are ‘counter-sur­veil­lance’. Sounds posh innit?

8 March 08 – Lon­don – The anar­chist group, Fit­watch, is arrang­ing a series of meet­ings that begin in Lon­don to dis­cuss the nature of polic­ing at protests and demon­stra­tions. Fit­watch are an active group that pre­vents Police For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams (FIT) from gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion dur­ing protests and demon­stra­tions. Fit­watch insist FIT are an oppres­sive reflec­tion of the state’s atti­tude towards protest groups. Fit­watch aim to use the meet­ings to dis­cuss ongo­ing tac­tics and to attract sup­port. The first meet­ing is to take place at the LSE (Group 4 Securi­cor)

Anoth­er protest group against the use of cam­eras and sur­veil­lance of activists has been estab­lished and holds grow­ing weight with­in activist move­ments. FITWATCH is a counter-sur­veil­lance group, who take pho­tos and try to obtain the per­son­al details and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­bers of the offi­cers in FIT. Pho­tographs of the offi­cers con­cerned have been post­ed on activist web­sites.”
(Inker­man. See http://www.inkerman.com/static/files/1197479765-theinkermanmonitorecoterror.pdf for their report on ‘eco-ter­ror­ism’.)

defycops@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.fitwatch.blogspot.com

Camp for Climate Action to target Kingsnorth power station

3.03.2008
Today it was announced that E.ON’s Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion in Kent will be the site of this summer’s Camp for Cli­mate Action, run­ning from 4 th to 11th of August 2008.

Com­ing on the back of last week’s actions against the pro­posed third run­way at Heathrow, with activists occu­py­ing the tail­fin of a jet and the roof of the hous­es of par­lia­ment, cli­mate activists promise that 2008 will be “the year of direct action on cli­mate change”.

3.03.2008
Today it was announced that E.ON’s Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion in Kent will be the site of this summer’s Camp for Cli­mate Action, run­ning from 4 th to 11th of August 2008.

Com­ing on the back of last week’s actions against the pro­posed third run­way at Heathrow, with activists occu­py­ing the tail­fin of a jet and the roof of the hous­es of par­lia­ment, cli­mate activists promise that 2008 will be “the year of direct action on cli­mate change”.

The protest will begin with a one-day event at Heathrow, the site of the pre­vi­ous year’s camp, before march­ing across Lon­don to Kingsnorth. This is one of eight cli­mate camps tar­get­ing coal across the world this sum­mer.

Cli­mate change activists will con­verge on Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion where own­ers E.ON plan to build the UK’s first coal fired pow­er sta­tion in 30 years. Sat­ur­day 9th August has been named a ‘day of mass protest and direct action’ against Kingsnorth to high­light its impact on cli­mate change.

Mov­ing from Heathrow to Kingsnorth high­lights gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate col­lu­sion to expand the fos­sil fuel econ­o­my when the sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus demands the oppo­site. The camp will bring togeth­er thou­sands of activists for sev­er­al days of work­shops and direct action. The camp will also chal­lenge busi­ness­es set to prof­it from false solu­tions to cli­mate change such as agro­fu­els. A day of action tar­get­ing the agro­fu­el indus­try will be an inte­gral part of the week long camp.

Natasha Edle­man said: “Build­ing a new coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in the mid­dle of a cli­mate cri­sis is mad­ness. The sci­ence shows that we only have a few years to avert cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. If we let this hap­pen then there are sev­en more pow­er sta­tions com­ing. This must be stopped.”

Char­lie Owens said: “Bio­fu­els have been pro­posed as a solu­tion to cli­mate change. But new stud­ies con­firm that they are just as dan­ger­ous as fos­sil fuels. And they cre­ate the illu­sion we can car­ry on as usu­al. In the end we can only stop cli­mate change if we chal­lenge the growth econ­o­my and start putting peo­ple and plan­et first.”

For more infor­ma­tion see:

http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/
http://www.StopKingsnorth.org/

* Like Heathrow, Kingsnorth is await­ing the approval of the gov­ern­ment. The deci­sion on whether to hold a pub­lic inquiry into the pow­er sta­tion will be tak­en by John Hut­ton, at BERR, in the next six weeks. As with Heathrow, there are accu­sa­tions of col­lu­sion between EON and the gov­ern­ment. For more infor­ma­tion see: www.greenpeace.org.uk

* Kingsnorth will pro­duce twice as many cli­mate-harm­ing emis­sions as a third run­way at Heathrow. Accord­ing to the World Devel­op­ment Move­ment, flights from a third run­way at Heathrow will pro­duce as much green­house gas as the whole of Kenya.

* If Kingsnorth is built it is like­ly to open the way to new build coal. Up to sev­en oth­er sim­i­lar projects are planned. Growth in coal-pow­er will under­mine invest­ment in renew­able ener­gy.

* Last year’s camp was on land which is intend­ed for the build­ing of a third run­way at Heathrow. The eight-day camp brought togeth­er 2000 peo­ple on land next to the vil­lage of Sip­son and shut down BAA’s head­quar­ters for 24 hours. The camp also organ­ised up to 20 small­er actions on oth­er avi­a­tion and cli­mate change relat­ed tar­gets. There were 70 arrests over the week.

* E.ON has tried to green­wash their plans to build a new plant at Kingsnorth by claim­ing that it might one day be upgrad­ed to use car­bon cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy. Even by the most opti­mistic stan­dards, such tech­nol­o­gy will not be ready until 2020.

* In the weeks before last year’s camp, BAA applied for an injunc­tion to stop the camp tak­ing place. The injunc­tion cov­ered two mil­lion mem­bers of envi­ron­men­tal groups from the RSPB to Green­peace. The injunc­tion was suc­cess­ful­ly defeat­ed in the courts.

* In addi­tion to the camp, days of action on cli­mate change are planned for the 1st April (Fos­sil Fools Day), 1st May (May­day), 3rd June (high­light­ing issues to do with food and cli­mate change)

* “Agro­fu­els” are liq­uid fuels pro­duced from agri­cul­tur­al crops. These are also referred to as “Bio­fu­els”.

Parliament rooftop protest against Heathrow 3rd runway

27th Feb­ru­ary 2008

Paper planes on parliament 1Plane Stupid on parliament 227th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Cli­mate cam­paign­ers hang ‘NO 3rd RUNWAY’ ban­ner before PMQs

Cam­paign­ers opposed to Heathrow expan­sion have scaled the roof of the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment and hung protest ban­ners from the build­ing before Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tions is due to begin.

The three men and two women from cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, opened an out­side door before walk­ing along the roof and drop­ping two ban­ners. The non-vio­lent direct action comes on the day a gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tion into Heathrow expan­sion ends. The pro­test­ers are mak­ing paper aero­planes out of con­fi­den­tial White­hall doc­u­ments that reveal the process is fixed, and glid­ing the planes into the MPs’ car park below.

The doc­u­ments – obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act — prove that air­port oper­a­tor BAA wrote parts of the con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment and that the gov­ern­ment has already decid­ed to build a 3rd run­way and 6th ter­mi­nal at the world’s biggest inter­na­tion­al air­port.

One of the ban­ners, fac­ing Par­lia­ment Square, brands the House of Com­mons ‘BAA HQ’ while the oth­er says ‘NO 3rd RUNWAY’. Richard George, 27, from Lon­don is on the roof. He said:

I’m stand­ing on the roof of Par­lia­ment because the demo­c­ra­t­ic process has been cor­rupt­ed. The avi­a­tion indus­try has tak­en full advan­tage of a weak Prime Min­is­ter to get the Heathrow con­sul­ta­tion fixed. It does­n’t even con­sid­er glob­al warm­ing, despite every­thing Brown has said about the envi­ron­ment and despite the mas­sive impact that avi­a­tion has on the cli­mate.

He con­tin­ued:

This Prime Min­is­ter does­n’t even have the courage to ask Lon­don­ers the very sim­ple ques­tion, do you want a third run­way? Instead his gov­ern­ment pub­lished a con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment full of gob­bledy­gook and indus­try spin. Now the con­sul­ta­tion is over we can safe­ly ignore the fixed result and get on with the job of stop­ping this new run­way being built. A huge coali­tion of local res­i­dents, Lon­don­ers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists is com­ing togeth­er, sup­port­ed by all the major may­oral can­di­dates, to stand against Gor­don Brown and say ‘no more’.

BAA and Brown want to see a sixth ter­mi­nal and third run­way built over homes, schools and church­es in the vil­lages of Sip­son and Har­mondsworth. This would increase the num­ber of flights from 480,000 a year to at least 702,000. Two mil­lion Lon­don­ers face increased lev­els of noise, while CO2 emis­sions from the air­port would shoot up despite claims by Brown that he’s com­mit­ted to fight­ing cli­mate change.

The rooftop occu­pa­tion comes two days after Green­peace pro­test­ers scaled an Air­bus A320 which had just touched down at Heathrow from Man­ches­ter.

The pro­test­ers have brand­ed Par­lia­ment ‘BAA HQ’ because of the extra­or­di­nary lev­el of col­lu­sion between the avi­a­tion indus­try and gov­ern­ment. Secret doc­u­ments obtained under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion leg­is­la­tion reveal the exis­tence of a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown body called the ‘Heathrow Deliv­ery Group’ – com­prised of gov­ern­ment and BAA offi­cials. The group is charged with get­ting the new run­way through the con­sul­ta­tion process and neu­tral­is­ing ‘risks’ to the project such as Lon­don­ers who oppose Brown’s avi­a­tion pol­i­cy.

BBC news video 1

BBC news video 2

http://video.publico.es/videos/0/4705/1/recent

15 Actions to Topple the Fossil Fuel Empire

Ris­ing Tide has just fin­ished pro­duc­ing two new resource book­lets …

1 — 15 Actions to Top­ple the Fos­sil Fuel Empire — per­fect to help plan your action for up and com­ing Fos­sil Fools Day — more on that at http://risingtide.org.uk/node/241

Topple Fossil Fuel Empire coverRis­ing Tide has just fin­ished pro­duc­ing two new resource book­lets …

1 — 15 Actions to Top­ple the Fos­sil Fuel Empire — per­fect to help plan your action for up and com­ing Fos­sil Fools Day — more on that at http://risingtide.org.uk/node/241

2 — Cli­mate Action Pop­u­lar Edu­ca­tion Pack — packed with tools to help you run engag­ing, inter­ac­tive work­shops on all aspects of cli­mate change for a wide range of peo­ple.

Both resources can be down­loaded from http://risingtide.org.uk/resources/other

Paddy´s Day of Action Against Shell

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

Glu­aiseacht, the Irish envi­ron­men­tal net­work organ­is­ing the trip, are call­ing for peo­ple to join them at the shell head office in Lon­don, or there is also a call out to take sol­i­dar­i­ty actions at shell garages and offices, St Paddy´s day parades and Irish embassies all over the world to coin­cide with the vis­it from 15th-17th March.

The shell cen­tre is locat­ed on the South Bank in front of Jubilee Gar­dens (SE1)
right next to Water­loo train sta­tion and across from the Lon­don Eye.

What´s Wrong With shell? — The Cor­rib Pipeline Project

Since 2000 the small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land have been engaged in an epic bat­tle try­ing to pre­vent Shell, Sta­toil, and Marathon from build­ing a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing tox­ic onshore gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

Shell are the biggest stake­hold­er and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the project, so have there­fore been the main tar­get of protest.

Com­mu­ni­ty Strength

From the sum­mer of 2005 mass pick­ets shut down the refin­ery con­struc­tion site after five Ross­port res­i­dents were impris­oned for refus­ing to allow Shell’s
sub-con­trac­tors access to their and their neigh­bours’ small farms which the pipeline is to go through. But in Octo­ber 2006 the Irish state came to the aid of shell by bring­ing in a mas­sive two hun­dred strong police unit to phys­i­cal­ly force a path for Shell to com­mence work. A large police pres­ence, con­sist­ing of Gar­dai (Irish police) from all over Ire­land, has stayed at the site to aid the work to con­tin­ue undis­rupt­ed.

The costs to the Envi­ron­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty & Health

Since shell start­ed build­ing the refin­ery, Car­row­more Lake, which is a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion as well as the local water sup­ply to 10,000 peo­ple, has been pol­lut­ed with dan­ger­ous­ly high lev­els of alu­mini­um com­ing from the build­ing site.

The gas pipeline is to oper­ate at such high pres­sure that accord­ing to the
government’s safe­ty study if rup­tured could poten­tial­ly kill peo­ple and destroy build­ings for hun­dreds of metres around.

The waste from the refin­ery is to be dumped into Broad­haven bay, where 220 sight­ings of sev­en whale and dol­phin species, plus sight­ings of two seal species have been record­ed.

This is all not to men­tion the irrepara­ble dam­age fos­sil fuels, like gas, are hav­ing on desta­bil­is­ing the glob­al cli­mate.

Although the resis­tance to shell in Coun­ty Mayo is strong, the Irish state & shell´s tac­tics of bru­tal­i­ty, repres­sion and intim­i­da­tion has paid a price on the peo­ple fight­ing the pipeline project.

So mark St Paddy´s day by show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with their fight!

For more info:

http://www.indymedia.ie/mayo — Reports of news and actions about the pipeline
http://www.struggle.ws/rsc — Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp set­up to aid the cam­paign against shell
http://www.corribsos.com — Cam­paign group Shell to Sea

http://gluaiseacht.nologic.org/wordpress — Glu­aiseacht web­site

Weird Load visits leafy Chiswick

23.02.2008
After Jan­u­ary’s thou­sand strong meet­ing against Heathrow expan­sion, protest con­tin­ues apace.

Chiswick heathrow protest 1
Chiswick heathrow protest 2Chiswick heathrow protest 3Chiswick heathrow protest 4
23.02.2008
After Jan­u­ary’s thou­sand strong meet­ing against Heathrow expan­sion, protest con­tin­ues apace.

This week saw a 50,000 leaflet door­drop, and today local cam­paign­ers were joined by Baroness von Reichardt, part­ner Mr Spunky and mem­bers of her World Famous Treat­ment Rooms.

WEIRD LOAD

Sat­ur­day morn­ing shop­pers — more accus­tomed to bump­ing into Richard Briers or Ant’n’Dec than an anar­chist art troop — were hand­ed leaflets head­lined “Last Chance to Stop This”, encour­age­ment to turn up and show their oppo­si­tion at West­min­ster’s Cen­tral Hall this Mon­day at 7pm

A straw poll out­side Marks and Spencer indi­cat­ed a like­ly show­ing of around 500 res­i­dents promis­ing to meet up at Turn­ham Green Sta­tion for a mass move on West­min­ster. Past expe­ri­ence of active oppo­si­tion in W4 how­ev­er means that might well be an under­es­ti­mate.

They join res­i­dents from all over Lon­don and the Heathrow vil­lages — 6 coach­es have been reserved from Sip­son already — trav­el­ing to hear speak­ers as diverse as Lib Dem top banana Nick Clegg, Green MEP Car­o­line Lucas, Cli­mate Change guru Mark Lynas and Plane Stu­pid­’s Leo Mur­ray.

This is a bat­tle that can and will be won by the peo­ple, but only if the peo­ple act togeth­er. Do every­thing you can to be there on Mon­day and show the gov­ern­ment and the cor­po­ra­tions what they’re tru­ly up against.

‘Not An Eviction Party’ at the secret social centre

21.02.2008

Today, the back­up venue for the ram­pART social cen­tre faced a court hear­ing as the own­ers sought an inter­im pos­ses­sion order which would have seen the occu­piers giv­en just 24 hours to back up and leave. How­ev­er, as luck would have it, only the squat­ters turned up to court so the case was adjourned. No evic­tion tomor­row and we guess not for at least anoth­er week…

21.02.2008

Today, the back­up venue for the ram­pART social cen­tre faced a court hear­ing as the own­ers sought an inter­im pos­ses­sion order which would have seen the occu­piers giv­en just 24 hours to back up and leave. How­ev­er, as luck would have it, only the squat­ters turned up to court so the case was adjourned. No evic­tion tomor­row and we guess not for at least anoth­er week…

It was intend­ed that we’d be hav­ing a day of resis­tance on Fri­day to see off the bailiffs, start­ing from 2pm with a veg­an cafe and trans­form­ing into an all night par­ty to get at least one big event out of the place we’ve put our blood, sweat and tears into since the new year. How­ev­er, now there is no evic­tion threat tomor­row we’ve decid­ed to par­ty any­way with the RAMpart2 ‘Not An Evic­tion Par­ty’

If you don’t already know the address, phone a friend. Any­one who reg­u­lar­ly attends the ram­pART should know the address by now but we’re not post­ing it here.

Wan­na per­form or DJ? give us a call (you’ll have to be very self suf­fi­cient in terms of equip­ment).

This won’t be the last event at RAMpart2, but almost.

Free Paper War — LONDON LITtEr

15.2.2008
Ten tonnes of waste per week is gen­er­at­ed by the free news­pa­pers in West­min­ster alone, which is not a prob­lem that can be solved just by recy­cling. The only solu­tion to the prob­lem is to remove it — stop print­ing the papers.

Recycling is not answer insert15.2.2008
Ten tonnes of waste per week is gen­er­at­ed by the free news­pa­pers in West­min­ster alone, which is not a prob­lem that can be solved just by recy­cling. The only solu­tion to the prob­lem is to remove it — stop print­ing the papers.

In an attempt to get this mes­sage out, a group of intre­pid paper boys and girls decid­ed to use the tac­tics of The Lon­don Paper and Lon­don Lite, putting their own pro-recy­cling anti-waste pro­pa­gan­da into copies of the papers then aggres­sive­ly and relent­less­ly forc­ing them on the pub­lic.

At approx­i­mate­ly 5pm sharp, paper dis­tri­b­u­tion began. The Lon­don Paper and Lon­don Lite teams com­pet­ed for the atten­tion of com­muters, point­ing out the numer­ous dif­fer­ences between the papers and the qual­i­ty of their con­tents. The teams, while obvi­ous­ly agree­ing that they were both giv­ing away high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed and intel­lec­tu­al­ly stim­u­lat­ing pub­li­ca­tions, did­n’t agree on which one was in fact supe­ri­or. Sar­casm aside, this is anoth­er issue with the free news­pa­pers — that they are filled with sec­ond rate celebri­ty gos­sip, inane half-sto­ries, and above all, adver­tis­ing. Real­ly, do these news­pa­pers con­tain any actu­al news? Is what they have to say so impor­tant that it’s worth 10 tonnes of waste paper a week?

As the com­pe­ti­tion grew more intense, war paint was smeared and the bat­tle began. Papers were giv­en and replaced and giv­en again, with dis­trib­u­tors from each team com­pet­ing over indi­vid­ual mem­bers of the pub­lic, lead­ing to vio­lent con­fronta­tions with each oth­er. The offi­cial employ­ees of both free papers seemed baf­fled but amused, tak­ing pho­tographs of the event. How­ev­er, an employ­ee of The Evening Stan­dard, dri­ving up in his van, seemed to be less than impressed, attempt­ing to take away some of the papers and gen­er­al­ly behav­ing in a rather ungentle­man­ly fash­ion.

Then, as two oppos­ing team mem­bers were locked in com­bat, a police­man on a horse appeared and polite­ly and calm­ly request­ed that all the stu­dents just stop that and come and speak to him right now. As only a cou­ple of the group were stu­dents, the action most­ly con­tin­ued until he got a bit upset. When all the paper boys and girls were gath­ered around the horse, they were told “You just can’t do that!” “Stop it!” “I’ll arrest you!” “Just stop it!” and “Calm down!”.

After agree­ing that it was indeed rude to force news­pa­pers on unsus­pect­ing pedes­tri­ans, but that they would calm down, the paper dis­trib­ut­ing con­tin­ued a lit­tle less vio­lent­ly. Passers-by were offered ‘The Lon­don Lit­ter’, ‘free rub­bish’, and ‘news’ (though unfor­tu­nate­ly there was no news avail­able), and were assured that they could throw it away when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they liked. In fact, the more they threw away the bet­ter. Some peo­ple seemed quite keen to get their free rub­bish, some were irri­tat­ed and a few were gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in what was being said.

Sad­ly, some more police­men (who did­n’t have hors­es) turned up and told the paper girls and boys that real­ly it was time to stop it now. Mod­er­ate­ly aggres­sive at first, they were won over by the charm of the paper­ers, report­ed­ly even tak­ing some (100% recy­cled!) leaflets for their col­leagues. By this point all the news­pa­pers had gone and it was at least half past beer o’clock, so after a lit­tle chat with the police (and pick­ing up any lit­ter that may have been left), it was declared a vic­to­ry and they head­ed off.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

Charges dropped against 14-year old & dad who tied themselves to Japanese Embassy

A 14-year-old anti-whal­ing cam­paign­er arrest­ed at the Japan­ese embassy has con­demned a deci­sion to drop charges.

A 14-year-old anti-whal­ing cam­paign­er arrest­ed at the Japan­ese embassy has con­demned a deci­sion to drop charges.

Sophie Wyness was arrest­ed with her father Mar­tin, 50, after tying them­selves to a stair­case inside the Lon­don build­ing on 24 Jan­u­ary.

Crim­i­nal tres­pass charges against the pair, from Here­ford, were dropped for “evi­den­tial rea­sons”.

How­ev­er, the school­girl claimed the case was dropped to avoid dam­ag­ing com­mer­cial ties with Japan.

Sophie said: “If they have resources to spend on triv­ial pros­e­cu­tions like this, they should real­ly be putting them into the fight against Japan’s bar­bar­ic whal­ing indus­try, which is ille­gal under inter­na­tion­al law.”

A spokesman for the CPS said it had dropped the charges for “evi­den­tial rea­sons”.

He said: “After fur­ther review it was decid­ed there was no longer a real­is­tic prospect of con­vic­tion.”

But Mr Wyness, a shop work­er, said he and his daugh­ter were guilty and had gone to court expect­ing to be sen­tenced.

“This is clear­ly a trav­es­ty and is bring­ing British law into dis­re­pute.

“They’re say­ing lack of evi­dence and yet we were guilty. They have all the evi­dence they want for a con­vic­tion.”

Dis­trict Judge Quentin Pur­dy lift­ed an order at the City of West­min­ster Mag­is­trates Court ban­ning the pub­li­ca­tion of Sophie’s name, after legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the BBC.

After the court hear­ing Sophie and her father deliv­ered a let­ter to the Japan­ese embassy ask­ing the ambas­sador to put pres­sure on his gov­ern­ment to end whal­ing.

Secu­ri­ty staff at the embassy stopped the pair enter­ing the build­ing, but agreed to pass the let­ter on.

Hackney Social Centre Opens!

15.02.2008
Lon­don’s newest autonomous zone opened last night with a free cafe, music, and a series of short films.

15.02.2008
Lon­don’s newest autonomous zone opened last night with a free cafe, music, and a series of short films.

After three weeks of resist­ing ille­gal forcible evic­tions, the Hack­ney Social Cen­tre opened last night for an evening of food, music, films — includ­ing one, Train­squat­ting, about squat­ters and resis­tance to evic­tions in Slove­nia.

The social cen­tre grew out of meet­ings through the North­east Squat­ters Net­work, which seeks to strength­en sol­i­dar­i­ty and skill-shar­ing local­ly between the squats in north-east Lon­don. It is a non-com­mer­cial social space and plans to be home to activ­i­ties such as free lan­guage lessons, a dona­tions-only cafe, a free shop, meet­ings of local groups, skill-share ses­sions and a bike work­shop.

Gen­er­al Meet­ings for the social cen­tre are open to the pub­lic, and begin this Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 17th, at 3pm. Any­one inter­est­ed in get­ting involved, or learn­ing more, is wel­come. The social cen­tre is locat­ed at 231 Low­er Clap­ton Road, in Hack­ney.

Here you can down­load TRAINSQUATTING and its sub­ti­tles >
Enjoy

http://www.kiberpipa.org/video/Frontline/TrainSquatting/