Category: South West England

7.05.2010
The Black Cat, Bath, has sad­ly been evict­ed this morn­ing from the Porter Butt build­ing on Lon­don Road.

We lost in court this morn­ing, and rather than wait for an evic­tion order to come through, the land­lords came right round the house and barged in with the full sup­port of local police.

We’re cur­rent­ly nego­ti­at­ing for the release of our pos­ses­sions from the build­ing, and are intend­ing to keep fair­ly qui­et until those nego­ti­a­tions are con­clud­ed in our favour. Once that’s done, thought — or if it does­n’t hap­pen — then we’re going to raise some mer­ry hell!

Sat­ur­day’s Open Mic may find a new home, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Thanks to all our sup­port­ers, and apolo­gies to those of you who should have got emails about this, rather than hav­ing to see it on indy — the only per­son who can spell our email pass­word is off play­ing D&D…

Sol­i­dar­i­ty and Strug­gle,
The Black Cat Col­lec­tive

5th May 2010
After enter­ing the Eco Vil­lage site this morn­ing, bailiffs per­sist­ed through the day in their attempts to evict all Eco Vil­lagers from the St Wer­bergh’s site. Local res­i­dents joined vil­lagers in an increas­ing­ly des­per­ate attempt to pre­vent this. Although a cher­ry pick­er was turned away, a dig­ger was final­ly brought on site. Attempts had been made to pre­vent this by climb­ing onto it, but the dig­ger oper­a­tor evad­ed this by aggres­sive dri­ving, throw­ing at least one per­son to the floor.

A mound of earth was then pushed against the build­ing giv­ing bailiffs access to non-tri­pod sit­ting vil­lagers. The bailiffs then pro­ced­ed to low­er the tripods whilst the sit­ters were still in them, with no regard for their well being and safe­ty, As a result of this treat­ment one tri­pod sit­ter was sun­se­quent­ly tak­en to hos­pi­tal with poten­tial­ly seri­ous injuries to his legs.

Dur­ing all of this police ignored cries of pain and calls for help, they did, how­ev­er, act to pre­vent vil­lagers attempt­ing to re-enter the site over the fence.

The bailiffs then pro­ced­ed to demol­ish the on site build­ing, ignor­ing requests to damp­en the earth to pro­tect the native endan­gered newt pop­u­la­tion.

The site own­er has since con­tact­ed local res­i­dents to talk about non indus­tri­al use of the land.

The bailiffs firm act­ing on behalf of the High Court were Con­stant & Co.

Con­stant & co. are respon­si­ble for the some of the most vio­lent and hor­rif­ic evic­tions across the coun­try, spe­cial­iz­ing in bru­tal­iz­ing Gyp­sy, Roma, and Trav­eller com­mu­ni­ties. (one quick exam­ple, but there are loads more out there: http://www.wombles.org.uk/article2009075558.php)
One could inform them in a vari­ety of for­mats that their activ­i­ties are oth­er than desir­able mak­ing use of the details below:

Con­stant & Com­pa­ny
66 Harpur Street,
Bed­ford,
MK40 2RA

(t) 01234 340091
(f) 01234 301299

bedford@constantandcompany.co.uk

–

Eco Vil­lager Hos­pi­talised: update and request for footage and wit­ness­es

Just a quick update to you all on Kevs con­di­tion and a few details about what actu­al­ly hap­pend. Six bailiffs ille­gal­ly low­ered the tri­pod he was on, crush­ing him bitweed the polls. They then pro­ceed­ed to sit on him to pre­vent peo­ple from seeing/filimng what was going on, caus­ing the polls to act like giant blunt scis­sors and bad­ly dam­ag­ing the left side of his body.

Whilst try­ing to remove him, they also yanked his left leg vio­lent­ly from side to side, caus­ing bad lig­a­ment dam­age to a pre­vi­ous knee injury. The docs at the hos­pi­tal have giv­en him some pret­ty hefty pain killers and hes com­plet­ly zonked out next to me as I type.

If any­one has any footage of what hap­pend, or would like to act as a wit­ness, could you please please please get in con­tact with us as we WILL be press­ing charges.

5th May 2010
This morn­ing Bailiffs moved onto the site at St Webergh’s Bris­tol. Res­i­dents are resist­ing and at present there are still four peo­ple on site plus two Tri­pod sit­ters, one on the roof of the build­ing and one on the gate. In a dis­turb­ing move how­ev­er, bailiffs sre threat­en­ing to remove the tri­pod sit­ters and and peo­ple on the roof with­out climb­ing teams and spe­cial equi­ment, claim­ing that these are not nec­es­sary.

Loca­tion BS2 9SH: http://wtp2.appspot.com/wheresthepath.htm?lat=51.46909913993294&lon=-2.5699142096996144&gz=18&oz=10>=1

–

Most­ly still a stand-off but some updates..

The own­er has now showed up appar­ent­ly to talk to res­i­dents about the site. Mean­while the vil­lagers remain up tripods over the main gate to the site and on the roof of an on-site build­ing. A cher­ry-pick­er has showed up but as I under­stand it the local res­i­dents have occu­pied the pick­er … awe­some!!

This is not over by a long shot. Please get down to the vil­lage as there is every­thing to be won today. Bailiffs are still dis­cussing the poten­tial of just tip­ping tripods with peo­ple up in them. Any video cam­eras that can be tak­en down there are VITAL to stop the bailiffs from going nuts.

Local res­i­dents have put their bod­ies on the line by join­ing with Vil­lagers to link arms and block­ade the gates to pre­vent access by machin­ery.

Lift­ed from the Black Cat cen­tre blog [blackcatcentre.blogspot.com]:

“The Black Cat occu­pied com­mu­ni­ty social cen­tre is cur­rent­ly homed at the
for­mer Porter Butt pub­lic house on Lon­don Road, Bath, oppo­site the E$$o
sta­tion and next door to Mor­risons. We still have a lot of work to do,
clean­ing and set­ting things up — vol­un­teers always appre­ci­at­ed to the lev­el
of mad, over­bear­ing pup­py enthu­si­as­tic ado­ra­tion, slob­ber and all (nap­kins
pro­vid­ed) — but already have a cou­ple of events lined up:

Tues­days, from 6.15–7.30pm, week­ly free yoga class­es are back on, so come
soak up the authen­tic wood floor­ing and chilled late spring sun­light,
spir­i­tu­al one-ness an’ all

Wednes­day 5th May will present ‘Nev­er Mind the Vote, Here’s the Folk’: an
evening of anti-folk, folk-rap & faux folk with ‘The Casu­al Ter­ror­ist’
(anar­cho anti-folk from New­cas­tle), ‘Clay­ton Bliz­zard’ (Briz­zle’s own chub­by
gui­tar-wield­ing, word­smith vir­tu­oso), and ‘Madame Hat­ter’ (the Black Cat’s
own miss-fit, deca­dence plumb­ing, answer to a very sil­ly ques­tion); run­ning
from 7.30pm-11pm, £3 sug­gest­ed dona­tion entry (though no one turned away for
lack of funds), there will also be cheap veg­an food, and a poten­tial free CD
of one sort or anoth­er for every punter

Sat­ur­day the 8th of May will fea­ture the sec­ond incar­na­tion of Madame
Hat­ter’s ‘Scabrous Cabaret’, at 21.03 hours, free entry, a wide open stage
night for what­ev­er per­for­mances peo­ple can bring, with DJish col­lab­o­ra­tion
from DJ Stoney Mon­ster and DJ Beav­is — dub/dancehall/Balkan beats: “Should
you be prud­ish pud­dings, freak frogs, veg­an vul­tures, break­fast brutes and
funky fruits, bang poets or junk poets or even plain poets, blue cab­bages
and pink trum­pets, mer­ry-go-round trav­ellers or mag­ic round­about surfers and
hul­la-hoop singers, stu­dious stu­dents and naughty rodents, squat­ter­pil­lars
or passers-by, fun­ny flap­ping flow­ers or bloom­ing but­ter­flies, par­ty peo­ple
or burst­ing bub­bles, the usu­al crows and so many more if you’re hun­gry for
the encore, you are all invit­ed to the new edi­tion of Madame Hat­ter’s
scabrous cabaret for a night of sweet delir­i­um open to all sorts of
per­form­ers, artists, poets, sto­ry-tellers… She’s slim and slimy and could eas­i­ly break into your pipery, Beware of Madame Hat­ter coz’ of deca­dence she’s the plumber…”

And fol­low­ing on from that friv­o­li­ty, but in no way less­ened by it, will be
the Bris­tol & Bath Ris­ing Tide meet­ing — a cam­paign­ing group mak­ing a name
for itself tak­ing direct action against the root caus­es of cli­mate
injus­tice, from 7pm — all wel­come

Events at this cur­rent loca­tion will prob­a­bly come to a close fol­low­ing this, as we are due in Bath Coun­ty Court defend­ing against Julian Richer’s pos­ses­sion claim on Fri­day the 7th May. C’est la vie

love, rage and kit­ty lit­ty”

The baliffs, hav­ing been served notice that their attempt­ed evic­tion would be ille­gal under com­mon and crim­i­nal law, failed to show. How­ev­er, response to the emer­gency call out was good. It is expect­ed that there will be anoth­er attempt in the not too dis­tant future, which will also, of course, resist­ed.

Thanks to every­one who did respond, and please be ready to respond to future calls.

20.4.10
There will be an ille­gal evic­tion attempt on the Bris­tol Eco Vil­lage tomor­row morn­ing at about 11, just 5 days after site was set up. This will be resist­ed. We need as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble down there to wit­ness the ille­gal attempt and help resist. For prac­ti­cal rea­sons there must be no vio­lence or even abu­sive behav­iour.

They’ve screwed it up mas­sive­ly so IT IS ILLEGAL. Because of this there are mas­sive­ly pow­er­ful legal chan­nels to go through — all of which are com­pro­mised con­sid­er­ably if there is any vio­lence or even abu­sive behav­iour (includ­ing yelling at bailiffs). Please please as a spe­cial request from the vil­lagers DO NOT BE VIOLENT OR ABUSIVE as this may com­pro­mise the legal sit­u­a­tion which could well save the vil­lage. Pas­sive resis­tance is warm­ly encour­aged. Please under­stand this is not an ide­o­log­i­cal attack upon vio­lence, this is a prac­ti­cal reac­tion to the sit­u­a­tion we are in.

Evic­tion is sched­uled for 11 but it’s always a good idea to get down there long before the giv­en time. Loca­tion BS2 9SH: http://wtp2.appspot.com/wheresthepath.htm?lat=51.469250…oz=10>=1