Category: South West England

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #29
free/donation
Apr ’10

“An unstop­pable jug­ger­naut of jour­nal­is­tic intent”

Hard Pressed To Avoid ‘Em

As men­tioned back in the appar­ent­ly nigh-orac­u­lar Bath Bomb #11, Tesco have final­ly admit­ted their schemes for the old Bath Press site on Low­er

Bris­tol Road. The five-acre site was bought by Tesco’s Lon­don-based front group St James’s Invest­ments in 2008, though Tesco always straight-

faced­ly main­tained the devel­op­ers were noth­ing to do with them. After sniff­ing round the city for decades, they’ve now final­ly sub­mit­ted an

appli­ca­tion for a super­store in Bath, and spokesman Quentin Web­ster claims that a series of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions are on the cards for lat­er in the

year; although they pre­sum­ably won’t take “fuck off” for an answer.

Var­i­ous stud­ies spell out super­mar­ket encroach­ment as bad news for jobs and small retail­ers, as well as the envi­ron­ment: when large super­mar­kets

are built on the edges of city cen­tres, oth­er gro­cers lose between 13% and 50% of their trade – yet more shop clo­sures – and, accord­ing to the

Nation­al Retail Plan­ning Forum in ’98, each new super­store accounts for the loss on aver­age of 276 full-time posi­tions in an area. Mean­while,

whilst the city hous­es only 80,000 or so, the super­mar­ket plague is due an out­break soon: Sains­burys, Tesco and a Lidl all in one long row on

Low­er Bris­tol, two Sains­bury Express­es in the cen­tre, Sainsbury’s Local on Moor­land Road, a Tesco Express on Bath­wick Hill and anoth­er in West­on,

a Mor­risons on the Lon­don Road and yet anoth­er Sains­burys in Odd Down!

The hot­ly con­test­ed Tesco Express at Bath­wick Hill quick­ly closed down neigh­bour­ing indie Bath­wick Stores, as feared, but only time will tell for

the future of the unique, bustling vil­lage high street vibe of Moor­land Road; hope­ful­ly, there’s fight left in them yet.

Put Out For The Night

Anoth­er month, anoth­er move at the Black Cat, Bath’s increas­ing­ly itin­er­ant social cen­tre. Attempts to nego­ti­ate with the Coun­cil to arrange a

lease failed ear­ly in the month, with Coun­cil offi­cials dis­miss­ing the pro­pos­als out of hand – and throw­ing in some per­son­al insults to boot – and

tak­ing the cen­tre straight to court. The first evic­tion attempt, on Fri­day 26th March, was eas­i­ly seen off by a large pub­lic demo out­side. The

show of sup­port was suf­fi­cient that the bailiffs did­n’t even get out of their car before dri­ving off.

After a week­end of bar­ri­cad­ing (with help from the recent­ly evict­ed Tesco occu­pa­tion in Stoke’s Croft) and an excel­lent cel­e­bra­to­ry dub night,

bailiffs returned in force ear­ly on Mon­day morn­ing. With full police sup­port, a cher­ry pick­er and a pair of bolt crop­pers alleged­ly cost­ing £450,

it took them over two and a half hours to clear the build­ing – their biggest obsta­cle being a bleary-eyed but deter­mined rooftop occu­pa­tion by a

man in a dress­ing gown.

Although sad­dened, the Black Cat Col­lec­tive suf­fered no arrests and only minor injuries (sus­tained when bailiffs removed a vital escape lad­der

from the roof), and have tak­en a much-need­ed week out. They’re now back again with a new build­ing at 100 Wal­cot St, open 12–7pm every day from

12.04.10.

The pub­lic reac­tion has been vocal and strong, with many peo­ple crit­i­cis­ing the cost of the evic­tion – an alleged £30,000 – when the Cen­tre had

repeat­ed­ly offered to pay a small amount of rent. The Col­lec­tive have vowed to keep up pres­sure on the Coun­cil to pro­vide com­mu­ni­ty-con­trolled

social spaces. If that sounds like some­thing you sup­port, there’s a peti­tion online at www.petitionspot.com/petitions/
black­cat­bath, or drop by the cen­tre to find out how you can help out.

Prop­er Tea Is Theft?

Ethos Café of Wal­cot Street is yet anoth­er vic­tim of B&NES Prop­er­ty and Legal Ser­vices’ stitch-ups, of which the Black Cat also recent­ly fell

foul.

In the con­tin­u­ing greed-inspired trans­for­ma­tion of Wal­cot Street from its ‘arti­sans quar­ter’ char­ter ori­gins to Bland Iden­tik­it Shop­ping Strip

#43712, the Coun­cil have forced out Ethos in the same way as they did the Hat & Feath­er, Dool­lallys, Wal­cot Rec, Crock A Doo­dle Doo, Speak­ing

Tree, Wal­cot­mart, and indeed, even the much-loved Wal­cot Nation Day fes­ti­val. Rent for the petite, indie caff had shot up from £11K to £12K per

annum, with strings attached to an inflex­i­ble 12-year lease, kick­ing the charm­ing fair-trade Wal­cot reg­u­lar to the streets – even though its

high­er-turnover neigh­bours face only £10K each.

Com­plete­ly lack­ing in co-oper­a­tion and account­abil­i­ty as ever, unelect­ed Prop­er­ty Ser­vices’ Sarah ‘Iron Lady’ Marsh­man toed the Coun­cil line of

refus­ing to meet their clients even halfway; not only do they “not nego­ti­ate with squat­ters”, they appar­ent­ly don’t nego­ti­ate with what they view

as legit­i­mate busi­ness, either – unless they’re super­mar­kets. Nev­er mind the fact they’re refus­ing to reim­burse Ethos for the cen­tral heat­ing they

installed, or any of a host of oth­er improve­ments. But then again, they equal­ly mugged the own­ers of Glas­stone Records for the roof­ing, win­dows

and dis­abled toi­let they had to put in at River­side Busi­ness Park. The phrase ‘rob­ber barons’ comes to mind.

But with B&NES’ appar­ent going-out-of-busi­ness-as-usu­al plans for Bath’s small­er and less social­ly-destruc­tive com­pa­nies, and board­ing going up on

vacant units up and down Lon­don Road, Wal­cot Street and through­out the rest of the city, we won­der to our­selves: who’s next?

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­il­ly reflec­tive of each

con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat upon. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this

dis­claimer do not nec­es­sar­il­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor.

Maybe May­day Melee?

Ah, spring. A time of flow­ers, warmth, swal­low migra­tions and frol­ick­ing bun­nies. A time to look back and realise the class war is as alive as

ever, and the boss­es still screw us. Since before the Chica­go Hay­mar­ket Riot of 1886 when mar­tyred anar­chists and work­ers won the eight-hour cap

on the work­ing day, May­day has long been asso­ci­at­ed with work­place strug­gle. And today, with PCS civ­il ser­vants, Unite/BA cab­in crew, UCE uni and

col­lege lec­tur­ers (plus stu­dent sup­port), NASUWT and NUT teach­ing staff up and down the coun­try on strike or close (be it over low pay, insult­ing

redundancy/pension mea­sures, or edu­ca­tion cuts), things are no dif­fer­ent. Indeed, con­niv­ing man­age­ment at Net­work Rail struck below the belt at

the RMT and TSSA recent­ly, whin­ing to the High Court about the legit­i­mate strike votes being invalid; it just goes to show that whilst the rail­way

sig­nal work­ers and main­te­nance staff want a safe and effi­cient ser­vice, the boss­es just want prof­its — no mat­ter the cost, to work­ers’ rights or

even cus­tomers’ lives.

In light of all this, Bath Trades Coun­cil and friends plan a May­day cel­e­bra­tion/aware­ness-rais­ing day of protest on Sat­ur­day May the 1st. Meet­ing

at 12.30 out­side the Abbey, the event is still very much in the plan­ning stage, so please get in touch to help make it some­thing pow­er­ful:

bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk. Musi­cians are espe­cial­ly in demand! We may not be danc­ing round a Beltane may­pole, or danc­ing on the ruins of

multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, but you got­ta start some­where.

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

avail­able on request. And for more info on any of our sto­ries, check out http://www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

Bor­der­ing On Insan­i­ty

An agency of crazy white peo­ple in the UK pledges to kid­nap and deport brown peo­ple, unless they either have the one cor­rect piece of paper they

require, or they’re actu­al­ly Euro­peans: in which case it’s fine.
The Rajpoot cur­ry house in Argyle Street was raid­ed by these mob­sters on the 24th of March, with two peo­ple kid­napped and ques­tioned by white

nation­al­ists in a build­ing called a ‘police sta­tion,’ even though most things done there are ille­gal.

Thanks to some cun­ning inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, the Bath Bomb can now reveal that the cra­zies appear to work for an orga­ni­za­tion called the ‘UK

Bor­der Agency,’ a col­lec­tive of fanat­i­cal sta­tists who think their per­mis­sion is required in order to enter UK ter­ri­to­ry.

Although the Agency has not yet pro­duced evi­dence that it owns the 94,060 square miles of land stand­ing for the British ter­ri­to­ry, it still

behaves as if it was so. Region­al crazy white per­son Jane Far­leigh warns in the Chron­i­cle: ‘If peo­ple choose to flout the law, we will find them

and look to remove them from the coun­try.’

Appar­ent­ly unaware that the British ter­ri­to­ry is an open-field nat­ur­al resource and not the Bor­der Agen­cy’s pri­vate prop­er­ty, Ms Far­leigh wants

all of you to help her track down peo­ple who think lib­er­ty is a right, so she can then deport them, and the laws of Nazi Ger­many be final­ly

obeyed. But in Britain.

You can help that orga­ni­za­tion of cra­zies fail by feed­ing them false infor­ma­tion, at 01275 841500.

Beneath The Paving… The Beach?

A bizarre-Bath style crime­wave is strik­ing fear deep into the heart of Batho­ni­ans, alleged­ly. As report­ed in the Chron, a ring of illic­it,

pseu­do-Sit­u­a­tion­ist, pave­ment-thieves have struck the city, caus­ing rifts in the city’s crim­i­nal under­world. With 10m stretch­es of gran­ite

pave­ment slabs being prised up in Lans­down, Sion Hill, and through­out the city, is noth­ing sacred? Police, fear­ful of poten­tial bricks to the

skull, are urg­ing res­i­dents to report any sus­pi­cious work­men activ­i­ty or deliv­ery trucks capa­ble of shift­ing heavy loads in the area. What­ev­er

next – elder­ly women’s grand piano rob­beries? The tak­ing of lib­er­ties? The tak­ing of piss?

Come Shell Or High Water

As a fol­low-on from the nation­al ‘Fos­sil Fools Day’ of envi­ron­men­tal action against pol­lut­ing big busi­ness, mem­bers of Bris­tol & Bath Ris­ing Tide

vis­it­ed the Shell garage on Muller Road, East­ville, on the morn­ing of Sat­ur­day 3rd April, lay­ing tem­po­rary pipelines and hold­ing plac­ards. They

went there to high­light the repres­sion expe­ri­enced by com­mu­ni­ties in Ire­land, cur­rent­ly com­bat­ing Shell’s attempts to build an onshore

exper­i­men­tal high pres­sure pipeline and gas refin­ery.

The com­mu­ni­ty in Erris, Coun­ty Mayo, has seen con­tin­ued harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion by the Gar­dai police and Shell secu­ri­ty for over a decade. In

Feb­ru­ary, fish­er­man Pat O’Don­nell was sen­tenced to sev­en months for ‘breach of the peace’ and ‘obstruct­ing a Gar­da’, after his boat was board­ed

and sunk by masked men. Hys­ter­i­cal­ly, as Shell’s pipe-lying ship ‘the Soli­taire’ oper­at­ed off the coast, Irish Navy gun­boats and Air Force spot­ter

planes joined police and pri­vate secu­ri­ty to con­trol the 100-strong demo ashore. But the tales of dodgy shit just keep on com­ing: Shell secu­ri­ty

staff have been dis­cov­ered recent­ly in Boli­vian ter­ror­ist groups, try­ing to desta­bilise the region and kick-start civ­il war.

Con­struc­tion of the gas refin­ery has already result­ed in the pol­lu­tion of local drink­ing water, with untreat­ed waste chem­i­cals like lead,

mer­cury, arsenic and radon being pumped into Broad­haven Bay, despite its ‘Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion’ sta­tus. Yet despite the scale of state

repres­sion there, the cam­paign just won’t pipe down, hav­ing already set the pipeline’s com­ple­tion date back from 2003 to 2013.

http://www.shelltosea.com/node/21

http://risingtide.org.uk/node/336
www.indymedia.ie/article/96167

EVENTS

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

Debt advice drop-in, Tues­days, 4–7pm, Black Cat Cen­tre, http://www.blackcatcentre.blogspot.com

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

The Lost Plot work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Bathamp­ton

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

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­days, 10.30am, starts Abbey Church­yard, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble, easy-paced cycle rides,

http://www.bathrys.org.uk/ tel Hazel 01225 469199

Black Cat Cen­tre gen­er­al meet­ing, Sun­days, 1–3pm, Black Cat Cen­tre, http://www.blackcatcentre.blogspot.com

‘Fort­night of Shame’: two weeks of action against BP’s invest­ment in tar sands extrac­tion, now to15th April, con­tact bristol[at]risingtide.org.uk

FFI

Horse Rac­ing Aware­ness week demo, Fri­day 9th April, West­gate Street, con­tact bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk FFI

Bris­tol Indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World meet­ing, Fri­day 9th April, starts 7pm (8.30–10pm open to non-mem­bers), GWRSA, out­side Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads

train sta­tion, e‑mail bristoliww[at]riseup.net FFI

Bris­tol Eco-Vil­lage pub­lic meet­ing, Fri­day 9th April, 7.30pm, Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 10th April, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street

Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 10th April, 12–4pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford,

http://www.bathford.net/broadlands.php

talk: ‘The Chartists and Their Lega­cy’, Sat­ur­day 10th April, 2pm, New Room (Wes­ley Chapel), 36 The Horse­fair, Bris­tol, BS1 3JE

‘Defend our Pub­lic Ser­vices’ march and ral­ly, Sat­ur­day 10th April, Lon­don, tick­ets for coach avail­able, http://www.10410demo.co.uk

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 12th April, 8–9pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street

talk: (Steve) Mills & (Ian) Bone, Mon­day 12th April, 7.30pm, The Stag & Hounds, 74 Old Mar­ket Street, Bris­tol

AstraZeneca anti-vivi­sec­tion demo, Tues­day 13th April, 3.30–6pm, AstraZeneca Avlon Works, Sev­ern Road, Hallen, Bris­tol, BS10 7ZE; if you need

trans­port or fur­ther info, e‑mail barc[at]hotmail.co.uk

skill­share: ‘Freeskilling — Con­scious Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (Non-vio­lent Com­mu­ni­ca­tion)’, Tues­day 13th April, 7pm, Bet­ter Food Co. Cafe, St Wer­burghs,

Bris­tol

talk: ‘Thomas Spence — the For­got­ten Rev­o­lu­tion­ary’, Wednes­day 14th April, 7.30pm, The Scout Hut (Ben­jamin Per­ry Boat House), Red­cliffe Wharf,

Bris­tol

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 14th April, 8.30pm, the Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street

Rad­i­cal Debate Club: ‘Migrants and Bor­ders’, Thurs­day 15th April, 7pm, Black Cat Cen­tre, Wal­cot Street

ben­e­fit gig against home­less­ness in Taunton, Thurs­day 15th April, 7–11pm, the Road­house, Taunton, free, feat Clay­ton Bliz­zard, 51st State, Rat

Ban­dits and Two Minute Hour; http://www.anonpromo.co.uk

talk: ‘Vote, Protest And Riot’, Thurs­day 15th April, 7.30pm, GWRSA, out­side Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads train sta­tion

course; ‘Design & Build a Com­post Loo’, Fri­day 16th to Sun­day 18th April and Fri­day 23rd to Sun­day 25th April, Monk­ton Wyld Court, nr Char­mouth,

Brid­port, Dorset, DT6 6DQ, phone 01297 560342 or e‑mail info[at]monktonwyldcourt.org

Bris­tol Eco-Vil­lage BIG SWOOP!, Sat­ur­day 17th April, loca­tion tbc, e‑mail bitsofwood[at]riseup.net to get involved

Update and dis­cus­sion on the plan­ning process, Sun­day 18th April, 11–3.30pm, £5 ada­vanced book­ing essen­tial by 5th April, e‑mail afrelmira[at]

googlemail.com

Bris­tol Con­ven­tion of the Left plan­ning meet­ing, Mon­day 19th April, 6.30–8.30pm, Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol

Green Light lec­tures: ‘Ener­gy Futures and Glob­al Cool­ing’, Mon­day 19th April, doors open 7pm, BRLSI, 16–18 Queen Square, £3 entry/£1.50

con­ces­sions

talk: ‘Votes for Ladies: The Suf­fragette Move­ment 1903–1914’, Mon­day 19th April, 7.00pm, Hamil­ton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bris­tol

‘An Agen­da for Human­i­ty: Peace, Jus­tice and Envi­ron­ment’ meet­ing with elec­tion can­di­dates in Bath, Wednes­day 21st April, 7.30pm, Friends Meet­ing

House, York Street, e‑mail postmaster[at]bathstopwar.org.uk FFI

talk: ‘Every Cook Can Gov­ern: From Athens To West­min­ster?’, Wednes­day 21st April, 7.30pm, CWRSA, out­side Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads train sta­tion

‘Get Your Stick­er On’ Plane Stu­pid sub­ver­tise chal­lenge, Thurs­day 22nd to Fri­day 23rd April, loca­tion tbc, e‑mail info[at]planestupid.com

gig: ‘The Lib­er­ty Tree’, Fri­day 23rd April, 7.30pm, The Thun­der­bolt, The Olde Turnpike,124 Bath Road, Tot­ter­down, BS4 3ED, £7 door, feat Leon

Rossel­son and Robb John­son

Camp Against Nuclear New Build, Fri­day 23rd to Mon­day 26th April, Sizewell, Suf­folk, http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net

‘STOP The Cuts’ com­mu­ni­ty day and march, Sat­ur­day 24th April, 12 noon start, meet at Bar­ton Hill Set­tle­ment or Bea­con Cen­tre, Bris­tol

Bris­tol Rad­i­cal His­to­ry Walk, Sat­ur­day 24th April, start 7.30pm, Cen­tral Fer­ry Land­ing, next to the water­fall in-between Anchor Road and Broad

Quay, Bris­tol

World Day for Lab Ani­mals march in Lon­don, Sat­ur­day 24th April, coach 8.30am, leav­ing Bris­tol Tem­ple Meads train sta­tion, £10 tick­et

Mock Elec­tion bon­fire night and music, Sun­day 25th April, 7.30pm, Boil­ing Wells Project, St. Wer­burghs City Farm, Boil­ing Wells Lane, St.

Wer­burghs, Bris­tol, BS2 9YJ; feat The Blue Sequoias, Who’s Afear’d and the Surfin’ Turnips; bring and burn an effi­gy of your most despised pub­lic

fig­ure!

Bath Social­ist Forum, Mon­day 26th April, 8pm, upstairs at St James Wine Vaults

Ken­net and Avon Users Forum, Thurs­day 29th April, 7pm, Ken­net and Avon Canal Trust, Canal Cen­tre, Devizes Wharf, Couch Lane, Devizes, SN10 1EB

May­day demo, Sat­ur­day 1s May, 12.30 out­side Bath Abbey

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 6th May, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade,

http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

Intro­duc­to­ry Per­ma­cul­ture Week­end, Sat­ur­day 8th to Sun­day 9th May, £50, for book­ings e‑mail afrelmira[at]googlemail.com

Bris­tol Eco Veg­gie Fayre, Sat­ur­day 29th to Sun­day 30th May, the Amp­ithe­atre, Water­front Square, Bris­tol Har­bour­side,

http://bristol.ecoveggiefayre.co.uk/

‘Adapt­ing to Cli­mate Change’ week, 7th-11th June, see http://www.oursouthwest.com/climate FFI

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, Wednes­day 4th to Mon­day 9th August, Der­byshire, £20–30; five days of work­shops, skill shar­ing and plan­ning action,

plus low-impact liv­ing with­out lead­ers; e‑mail summergathering[at]earthfirst.org.uk FFI

Sheikh, Rat­tle And Roll

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Pales­tin­ian neigh­bour­hood Sheikh Jar­rah, cur­rent­ly being bull­dozed and fac­ing oth­er repres­sion, actions took place up and

down the coun­try on the 17th March; and Bath was no dif­fer­ent. From 12 til 2.30pm, a typ­i­cal­ly-Bathon­ian size demo (six peo­ple!) took place

out­side Bar­clays Bank on Mil­som Street. With Bar­clays being the UK’s largest investor in the arms trade, with hold­ings of over £7.3bn, they are

also man­u­fac­tur­ers of clus­ter bombs and deplet­ed ura­ni­um muni­tions, and invest in mur­der­ous out­fits like Thales and Raytheon, who arm the Israeli

Defence Force. To go on, they also pro­vide ‘mar­ket-mak­er’ ser­vices to everyone’s favourite ITT/EDO, home of the ‘Pave­way’ mis­sile laser-guid­ance

sys­tem that has so dev­as­tat­ed Pales­tine and Iraq. On the day, con­cerned folks from Bath Activist Net­work and oth­ers dis­trib­uted leaflets, with two

scal­ing a lad­der to the low­er roof to unveil a ban­ner claim­ing ‘Bar­clays: Glob­al Deal­ers in Death’, in the face of burly but con­fused secu­ri­ty

guards. Most of the pass­ing pub­lic received the demo well, with only a cou­ple of idiots advo­cat­ing war as a way of solv­ing argu­ments and as being

vital for human evo­lu­tion.

Bath Bomb Dic­tio­nary Cor­ner: mar­ket-mak­er (n) a cor­po­rate mid­dle-man, pur­chas­ing shares from a sell­er and hold­ing them until such a time as a

buy­er becomes avail­able

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights,

work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce the Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists,

lib­er­als and greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, email

bathactivistnet[at]yahoo.co.uk or see our web­site: www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

The­o­ry Cor­ner: On Law­ful Rebel­lion And Resis­tance

There’s been a lot of talk recent­ly about pro­duc­ing a claim of right and declar­ing our inde­pen­dence as indi­vid­u­als, which we can do under arti­cle

61 of the Magna Car­ta. This is an approach to resis­tance that was cho­sen, among oth­ers, by mar­ket anar­chist Mike Gogul­s­ki, who, after hav­ing fled

from fas­cist Amer­i­ca, decid­ed to send a form of cit­i­zen­ship renun­ci­a­tion. Oth­er renun­ciants include mem­bers of the nation­al­ist UK Inde­pen­dence

Par­ty.

While escap­ing the state’s grasp­ing hands is cer­tain­ly legit­i­mate, anar­cho-syn­di­cal­ist Michael Bind­ner has argued that this was far from enough in

the long term. One is free, an entire class remains in sub­jec­tion. Also at issue is the abil­i­ty of a per­son to renounce cit­i­zen­ship. Hence whether

arti­cle 61 is mean­ing­ful, for instance, for the poor who actu­al­ly need ben­e­fits to sur­vive?

This author is also annoyed at the pos­i­tivism of the whole affair. That is, one is allowed to be left alone, not because he has a right to, but

because it was writ­ten down cen­turies ago. What if it had­n’t been includ­ed in the Magna Car­ta? Too bad, let’s go get tea now?

Law­ful rebel­lion is a good tool if you already are a most­ly inde­pen­dent indi­vid­ual, like cap­i­tal­ist Gogul­s­ki above; but it is not found­ed in law

because gov­ern­ing with­out con­sent is not law­ful any­way. There­fore, the process is here stood on its head: where­as your con­sent should be required

before you get cit­i­zen­ship, you have to go to the length of renounc­ing it. Since liv­ing under the gov­ern­ment was nev­er val­i­dat­ed by any process

where refusal was pos­si­ble and mean­ing­ful, it fol­lows that no one is tru­ly a cit­i­zen, yet.

There­fore, renounc­ing cit­i­zen­ship is a recog­ni­tion that one was actu­al­ly a cit­i­zen – I’m a hostage; also, that the Magna Car­ta cre­ates our rights

– my rights are nat­ur­al and do not depend on an old piece of paper; final­ly, that the gov­ern­ment respects our rights – when what it does is

writ­ing down what we will have and what we won’t.

For those rea­sons, I find law­ful rebel­lion dis­turb­ing to say the least, and enjoin every­one to build up free com­mu­ni­ties instead; the very act of

which will make an actu­al cit­i­zen out of you, rather than a hostage pas­sive­ly pay­ing bills and insert­ing a piece of paper in a box every few

years.

Lap­pers­fort Gets Evict­ed — Who Threw The First Bank Note?

On the 4th of March, the Bel­gian author­i­ties evict­ed the occu­piers of the Lap­pers­fort for­est, in the name of the prop­er­ty rights of Fab­ri­com, the

‘own­er’ of that for­est. The for­est has been occu­pied since 2001. It was a strong­hold of activist resis­tance, and a won­der for all those who

cher­ish nature and self-suf­fi­cien­cy.

Beyond the pain and the rage, I would be inter­est­ed to know who Fab­ri­com ‘bought’ the for­est from? And how was it ‘their’ for­est? How do you even

sell a for­est? How do you own it? I wish we were back in the day when com­mon sense had a chance in this world.

Today, in the case of the Black Cat, we see the same fol­ly in the form of the pub­licly-owned Newark Works. I believe you will find this phras­ing

is incor­rect. The pub­lic stands in the same rela­tion to this build­ing as Fab­ri­com did to the Lap­pers­fort for­est: they are out­siders. They have

nev­er touched the Works and they prob­a­bly nev­er will, not in the col­lec­tive fash­ion that is entailed by the word ‘pub­lic’. Use and home­steading

being the basis of own­er­ship in land, it fol­lows occu­piers and squat­ters were more the own­ers than their remote (but wealthy) oppo­nents.

It is also wrong to assume that the pub­lic chose to buy this build­ing; the Coun­cil did. A minor­i­ty of indi­vid­u­als pre­tend­ing to rep­re­sent the

pub­lic, against the very plain fact that an indi­vid­ual is a world unto them­self, and there­fore unable to be ful­ly and accu­rate­ly rep­re­sent­ed by

any­one.

How did the Coun­cil get their hands on the two and half mil­lion pounds for the pur­chase? Well, they seem to have a sys­tem in place where­by they

sim­ply state the amount of mon­ey they need, and take it, with­out leav­ing the tax­pay­ers free to refuse, with only vague promis­es of change every

few years.

This act of theft obvi­ous­ly can­not be con­sid­ered legit­i­mate; there­fore, the Coun­cil does not own the mon­ey that was used to acquire the Newark

Works, even on the flawed rep­re­sen­ta­tive sys­tem terms. So let’s give a toast to the wealthy thieves who believe throw­ing bank notes at peo­ple

gives them a title in land.

And Now A Word From Our Spon­sors…

Anti-avi­a­tion cam­paign­ing group Plane Stu­pid have issued a ‘Get Your Stick­er On!’ 48-hour sub­ver­tis­ing com­pe­ti­tion to take place in towns up and

down the land from Thurs­day the 22nd to Fri­day 23rd of April. As cur­rent­ly con­test­ed over the pro­posed expan­sion of Bris­tol Air­port, the indus­try

loves to pre­tend that they are just respond­ing to the pub­lic’s desires by offer­ing ever more flights, ever more noise and ever more emis­sions.

But, like tobac­co adver­tis­ing, fly­ing pro­mo­tion needs to become a thing of the past. Until then, let’s sub­ver­tise! For the begin­ners amongst you,

you can down­load designs from Plane Stu­pid­’s Flickr site to stick over exist­ing adverts – or of course DIY­our­self. They then advise to take some

pics, set up a tem­po­rary anony­mous address at an inter­net cafe, and e‑mail your hand­i­work to info[at]planestupid.com. The group who stick­ers the

most images in 48 hours wins prizes!

And words from the wise: “Use your head, and remem­ber to dress well for the occa­sion – caps and scarfs are just the thing for sub­ver­tis­ing sea­son.

Some offi­cers of the law may be con­vinced that sub­ver­tis­ing is bor­der­line ille­gal, so take a friend as look­out, keep an eye open for CCTV and

don’t get caught.”

http://www.nobristolairportexpansion.co.uk/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/planestupid
https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/manchester/2007/12/388098.html?c=on
http://www.bugaup.org/

http://www.graphicattack.org.uk/