THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!

Issue #30

free/donation

June ’10

“Fuck­ing Laws at your expense”

Elec­tile Dys­func­tion

As read­ers may have noticed, May the 6th’s hung par­lia­ment (no noos­es, more’s the pity) and sub­se­quent clam­our of back­room deals has led to a coali­tion fea­tur­ing the odi­ous ’18 of our MPs went to Eton’ Con­ser­v­a­tives and the almost-as-posh ‘Tory-lite’ Lib Dems. Now the dust has set­tled, it’s clear that no par­ties have a man­date for the cuts they will try to unleash. No par­ty dared to clear­ly set out what the Finan­cial Times dubbed the “bru­tal” eco­nom­i­cal deci­sions required. That is sim­ply because to do so would have been elec­toral sui­cide. If they had been hon­est about the cuts — the first stage being £6.2 bil­lion hacked from vital pub­lic ser­vices, hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs and harsh pay slash­es — then nobody would have vot­ed for them. The mar­kets and rul­ing class demand a vicious eco­nom­ic pro­gram (rather than ‘rich tax’) that will mean tur­moil. There will be resis­tance from unions, ser­vice-users and the com­mu­ni­ty alike, with the fight mov­ing from the bal­lot box to the pick­et lines and to the streets. Ordi­nary peo­ple can­not be expect­ed to pay for a cri­sis caused by cor­rupt politi­cians and bankers and, like the peo­ple of Greece, Ire­land, Spain and Roma­nia, we must be pre­pared to fight every cut, and pro­tect every job. Local­ly, B.A.N. and oth­ers are plan­ning to set up a ‘Pub­lic Ser­vices Defence Group’, and every­one is invit­ed to join — to pro­tect our rights, jobs, pay, pen­sions and ben­e­fits. Togeth­er, we can win.

Press­ing Their Luck?

Tesco are now dis­play­ing for pub­lic com­ment their plans to occu­py the for­mer Bath Press site and demol­ish the entire build­ing, leav­ing noth­ing but a wob­bly-look­ing front wall. The new site, to incor­po­rate a ‘com­mu­ni­ty hall’ — pre­sum­ably sim­i­lar to the social improve­ments promised at oth­er Tesco sites, which have almost uni­ver­sal­ly failed to mate­ri­alise — will be Tesco’s first major store in Bath. 650 ‘new jobs’ are also promised. The eco­nom­ics behind this claim are flawed, how­ev­er. As the mar­ket for food is already sat­u­rat­ed here — oth­er­wise there’d be a city-wide out­break of mal­nu­tri­tion — the new store won’t be cre­at­ing any new mar­kets, and so will just be tak­ing cus­tom away from exist­ing stores. As Tesco is renowned for their effi­cien­cy and high income-to-staff ratio, this will cause an over­all drop in employ­ment as oth­er busi­ness­es close or shed staff. In fact, stud­ies have shown that the open­ing of a large super­mar­ket caus­es an over­all loss of 276 jobs per new store opened.

For a more hope­ful out­look, look to Bris­tol, where the anti-Tesco cam­paign on Stokes Croft has left the coun­cil con­sid­er­ing plac­ing a Com­pul­so­ry Pur­chase Order on the site and hand­ing it over to the com­mu­ni­ty, as an indoor mar­ket incor­po­rat­ing local ‘Time Bank’ trad­ing schemes.

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

Schools Of Hard Cuts

Amongst the raft of cuts the Tories and their pet Lib Dems have unleashed on us, their plans for edu­ca­tion stand out for sheer idio­cy. Dressed up as ‘free­ing teach­ers from bureau­cra­cy and let­ting them teach’, their plans in fact boil down to sell­ing off the entire edu­ca­tion sys­tem whole­sale. Intent on send­ing our schools the same way as the rail­ways and ener­gy com­pa­nies, the Tories intend to auc­tion off schools to com­pa­nies and reli­gious groups. The plan has already been exposed as a fail­ure, with work­ing con­di­tions for teach­ers, attain­ment for pupils and bul­ly­ing man­age­ment all com­ing under scruti­ny in exist­ing acad­e­mies, and the coun­try’s largest acad­e­my group Unit­ed Learn­ing Trust (ULT) being banned from tak­ing on more schools. With sev­er­al schools in Bath explor­ing the acad­e­my route, we spoke to ‘Matt’, a teacher in a local acad­e­my about the prospect of spread­ing the acad­e­my love. “It would be a ter­ri­ble idea,” Matt tells us, “Work­ing in an acad­e­my, you are dri­ven by bul­ly­ing man­age­ment that aren’t bound to fol­low the same pay and con­di­tions that state schools are tied to. Unions are dis­cour­aged, and union mem­bers face ques­tion­ing and har­rass­ment. Every facet of school life is out-sourced to pri­vate com­pa­nies, often lead­ing to a sub­stan­dard pro­vi­sion of edu­ca­tion for the kids. As acad­e­mies are grades dri­ven, teach­ers are rou­tine­ly bul­lied into fak­ing course­work, and low­er abil­i­ty pupils are ignored in favour of C/D bor­der­line kids. On top of that, any­one with enough cash can spon­sor an acad­e­my, mean­ing that some real­ly unsavoury, and right wing reli­gious and cor­po­rate groups con­trol our kids edu­ca­tion. From per­son­al expe­ri­ence, the acad­e­my sys­tem is an unfair and fail­ing sys­tem, for staff and kids.” Four schools in the Bath area are already threat­ened with clo­sure, includ­ing Old­field, to be replaced by two acad­e­mies. With unions already gear­ing up for the fight­back, why not drop an email to your kids school and let them know how you feel about the future of your child being flogged to the high­est bid­der.

Con­sul­ta­tion Stitch-up On The Ken­net And Avon

About 20 trav­el­ling boat dwellers attend­ed the Ken­net and Avon Canal User Group meet­ing on the 29th April where the recent con­sul­ta­tion on set­ting up local moor­ing strate­gies was dis­cussed.

Although 73 out of 98 respons­es to British Water­ways opposed the idea, BW’s Dami­an Kemp told the meet­ing it will go ahead and start set­ting up the first strat­e­gy group on the Ken­net and Avon between Devizes and Bath. BW jus­ti­fied this by say­ing that many of the replies were from groups rather than from indi­vid­u­als, and gave the groups more cre­dence. Boaters chal­lenged this inter­pre­ta­tion as BW did not make clear at any stage that respons­es from groups would be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. Now, many boaters believe that the process was a com­plete sham and the results are being manip­u­lat­ed to sup­port BW’s agen­da of rid­ding live-aboard boaters from the Ken­net and Avon and replac­ing them with “the leisure indus­try”. This is demon­strat­ed by the com­ments of James Young, anoth­er BW employ­ee, describ­ing the process as “a work­ing par­ty to address the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with live­aboards.”

Dami­an Kemp, who was appoint­ed in mid 2009 to head the project imple­ment­ing moor­ing strat­e­gy groups on the Ken­net and Avon, inad­ver­tent­ly admit­ted the dis­crep­an­cy. Whilst telling the meet­ing at one point that the respons­es from indi­vid­u­als were giv­en less weight than those from groups, a few min­utes lat­er he con­tra­dict­ed him­self by say­ing that the results were not weight­ed. What is more, Mark Stephens, man­ag­er of the Ken­net and Avon, admit­ted at the meet­ing that there is no addi­tion­al mon­ey in the cur­rent bud­get for a local moor­ing strat­e­gy group, and that to set it up could cut fund­ing in oth­er areas. This all sounds com­plete­ly unwork­able. And why did BW hold a con­sul­ta­tion when Mr Kemp had already been appoint­ed?

These restric­tions will be decid­ed by a steer­ing group in which most of the boat­ing com­mu­ni­ty in this area will not have a say, even though they are the only group that is direct­ly affect­ed. Yet, if BW’s plans go ahead, many will be forced to make a tough choice: lose the home or lose the job. Plen­ty may also be forced to give up their homes to keep their chil­dren in school. BW has already worked with Bathamp­ton and Claver­ton Parish Coun­cils in Sum­mer 2009 to draw up these pro­posed moor­ing restric­tions, which will vast­ly reduce the avail­abil­i­ty of two-week moor­ings between Brad­ford and Bath. Boaters only dis­cov­ered this plot by acci­dent, and were nev­er invit­ed to these meet­ings or informed about them. The min­utes of these meet­ings, maps and asso­ci­at­ed cor­re­spon­dence are pub­lished in an arti­cle enti­tled ‘The Out­er Zone’, see http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk/wordpress/?p=77

The 1995 British Water­ways Act con­fers a statu­to­ry right for boats to cruise the water­ways with­out hav­ing a per­ma­nent moor­ing, so long as they do not remain in any one place for more than four­teen days, or a longer peri­od if there are excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances.

The next boaters’ meet­ing takes place on the 16th of June upstairs at the Geor­gian Lodge Hotel in Brad­ford-on-Avon. For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact info[at]boatingcommunity.org.uk.

http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk

Eco Vil­lage Of The Damned

Back on the 5th of May, after a maze of legal bat­tles, the first incar­na­tion of the Bris­tol Eco Vil­lage was evict­ed. The vil­lagers moved onto a dis­used plot of land in St Wer­burghs in April to set up a com­mu­ni­ty to exper­i­ment with sus­tain­able liv­ing on and improv­ing indus­tri­al­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed land.

The Lon­don-based landown­ers made sev­er­al ille­gal attempts to evict them before final­ly… wait for it… going through legal chan­nels to get their land back, so they could get on with devel­op­ing it at the expense of the local com­mu­ni­ty, the endan­gered newt pop­u­la­tion, and the wider envi­ron­ment. But a mass of local res­i­dents decid­ed they’d rather have a low-impact liv­ing project on their doorstep than prof­it-dri­ven devel­op­ment. On evic­tion day they block­ad­ed the gates that bailiff com­pa­ny Con­stant & Co were attempt­ing to enter the site by. Lat­er they occu­pied a cher­ry-pick­er as it attempt­ed to enter the site. Game on!

How­ev­er the over-arch­ing mem­o­ry of the day will be the sad hos­pi­tal­iza­tion of one vil­lager, cyn­i­cal­ly assault­ed by the bailiffs while atop a tri­pod. Bailiffs dis­re­gard­ed health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and col­lapsed the tri­pod, crush­ing the vil­lager’s leg between long stur­dy met­al poles, and then sit­ting on them. Vil­lagers are appeal­ing for any wit­ness­es to come for­ward, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with any video footage of the assault.

The Bris­tol Eco Vil­lage briefly took a new site on the 15th of May, near Tem­ple Meads train sta­tion. Rumours abound about the Eco Vil­lage’s next move, with a pos­si­ble pin­cer move­ment to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly occu­py land adjoin­ing the canal in Bath and a sec­ond site in Bris­tol, being on the cards.

Con­stant & Co are a noto­ri­ous­ly bru­tal col­lec­tion of pondlife (not newts) that proud­ly spe­cialise in forc­ing the vul­ner­a­bly housed onto the streets. Any ‘con­cerns’ can be ‘voiced’ to them at 66 Harpur Street, Bed­ford, MK40 2RA.

Short And Snap­py

Whilst the gov­ern­ment decid­ed on the 12th of May to scrap Heathrow expan­sion and addi­tion­al run­ways at Gatwick and Stanst­ed, at the end of May, North Som­er­set Coun­cil chose a dif­fer­ent path. Ignor­ing not only B&NES and Bris­tol Coun­cils, but also 5,000+ objec­tions, the lat­est find­ings on cli­mate change and World Health Organ­i­sa­tion noise and health guid­ance, they green­light­ed Bris­tol Air­port’s plan­ning appli­ca­tion. Stop Bris­tol Air­port Expan­sion are now look­ing to the Sec­re­tary of State, and are build­ing funds to mount a legal chal­lenge — con­tact them for info at email[at]stopbia.com

Despite expert sci­en­tif­ic advice, the gov­ern­ment has decid­ed to fol­low the Welsh lead (and unsus­tain­able indus­tri­al farm­ing lob­by) and push ahead with a nation­al bad­ger cull, par­tic­u­lar­ly in bovine TB hotspots like Devon and Corn­wall. The annu­al cull in Pem­brokeshire, repeat­ed for five years, costs £10 mil­lion so far, with bal­a­clava’d con­trac­tors aim­ing to kill off 80% of the local pop­u­la­tion. Your local ani­mal rights groups need you!

For the first time in 12 years, the EU has approved the growth of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered crops. A peti­tion might be all that stands in their way!: http://www.greenpeace.org/GEpetition

EDF’s bid for the pro­posed Hink­ley C nuclear pow­er sta­tion has just had its plan­ning appli­ca­tion delayed a sec­ond time, from ear­ly July to the 1st of Decem­ber. Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Chris Huhne has stat­ed that there will be no gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies avail­able for new nuclear build

Local cam­paign­ing group S.W.A.G. have formed to dis­suade Char­lie from sell­ing off roy­al green­belt land near New­ton St Loe, doomed for the con­struc­tion of 2,000 homes. How­ev­er, they won an unex­pect­ed overkill vic­to­ry when the Con­Dem alliance scrapped Neo-Labour’s plans for 21,300 homes in the local area, and poten­tial­ly the con­test­ed Bus Rapid Tran­sit route, too!

Cat­naps And Chin­wags

It’s been a strange time for Bath’s Black Cat inde­pen­dent com­mu­ni­ty social cen­tre. Thrown out in the rain from their for­mer opu­lent home at the old Porter Butt pub on Lon­don Road (after a storm­ing ‘Nev­er Mind the Vote, Here’s the Folk’ gig) on the 7th of May. Land­lord Julian Rich­er and a dodgy col­lu­sion of Bath police and Man­ches­ter-based JMW solic­i­tor (claim­ing to be a bailiff), rather than go to the trou­ble of legit­i­mate­ly attain­ing a War­rant of Evic­tion, instead just intim­i­dat­ed the res­i­dents to “vol­un­tar­i­ly leave”. Since then those frisky Black Cats have been home­less and gone through an inter­nal shake-up, team­ing up with the Snow Hill Skills and Enter­prise Ini­tia­tive (who have been patient­ly attempt­ing to work with the Coun­cil for four years to set up a grass­roots, pover­ty-break­ing and eco­log­i­cal­ly-sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for the local, deprived area) and help­ing birth the ‘Black Kit­ten’ anar­chist free lend­ing library in Stokes Croft, in Bris­tol. Though deter­mined to keep it real and rad­i­cal, the col­lec­tive are cur­rent­ly going through a spate of nego­ti­a­tions over premis­es with Coun­cil and polit­i­cal offi­cials. Who’d have thought it? In the mean­time, there’s every­thing to play for, and the Black Cat is very keen for new vol­un­teers to get involved: con­tact them at bathsocialcentre[at]gmail.co.uk.

http://www.blackcatcentre.blogspot.com

EVENTS

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

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628

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

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

Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 12th June, 12–4pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, http://www.bathford.net/broadlands.php

Pal­la­di­um Bridge Pic­nic: with the Nat­ur­al The­atre Com­pa­ny, Sat­ur­day 12th June, 6pm, Pri­or Park

AmnesTea fund-rais­ing cream tea, Sat­ur­day 12th June, 2.30–5.30pm, 6 Wid­combe Ter­race, BA2 6AJ, http://www.greenbath.org

Wid­combe Ris­ing fes­ti­val, Sun­day 13th June, 1.30–7.30pm, Wid­combe, http://www.widcombe.net

Bris­tol Naked Bike Ride, Sun­day 13th June, loca­tion tbc, http://bristolwnbr.blogspot.com

film: ‘Estab­lish­ing a Food For­est the Per­ma­cul­ture Way’, Sun­day 13th June, 7.30pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street, £5 entry, http://www.transitionbath.org

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 14th June, 8–9pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk

Boaters’ Meet­ing, Wednes­day 16th June, 8pm, Geor­gian Lodge Hotel, Brad­ford on Avon

film: ‘Pas­sen­gers’, Wednes­day 16th June, 8pm, Cube Cin­e­ma, Bris­tol, bristolnoborders[at]riseup.net

film: ‘Wel­come’, Thurs­day 17th June, 8pm, Cube Cin­e­ma, Bris­tol, bristolnoborders[at]riseup.net

Bathamp­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Grow­ers work­day, Sat­ur­day 19th June, 10am-dusk, Mill Lane, Bathamp­ton, e‑mail thelostplot[at]googlemail.com/ tel Chris 07792 444628

Coal Train Block­aders ben­e­fit defence gig, Sat­ur­day 19th June, 8pm, the Plough, Eas­t­on, Bris­tol, feat. Ceilidh Minogue, Hero­in Hero and DJs

Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair ben­e­fit punk & thrash gig and film, Sun­day 20th June, 6pm, feat. Guara­pi­ta, Pow­er Is Poi­son, Threat Man­i­festo and This Ends Here, £5, http://www.thebastardsquadcollective.wordpress.com

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 21st June, 7.30pm, Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street

talk: ‘Cli­mate Migrants: Feed­ing Back from the World Peo­ple’s Con­fer­ence on Cli­mate Change’, Wednes­day 23rd June, 7pm, St. Paul’s Learn­ing Cen­tre, 94 Grosvenor Road, Bris­tol

Tran­si­tion Bath Vis­it to Stroud Com­mu­ni­ty Farm, Sat­ur­day 26th June, 8.43am from Bath Spa train sta­tion, http://www.stroudcommunityagriculture.org

Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride, Sat­ur­day 26th June, 1pm, Kingsmead Square, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

Bath Ani­mal Action info stall, Sun­day 27th June, 2–4pm, Stall Street, e‑mail bathanimalaction[at]yahoo.co.uk

Tran­si­tion Bath Social, Mon­day 28th June, 7.15pm, the Love Lounge/ back room of the Bell, Wal­cot Street, http://www.transitionbath.org

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ing, Mon­day 28th June, 8–9pm, The Bell, tel Justin 07854 062336

Bath Social­ist Forum: ‘What is Social­ism?’, Mon­day 28th April, 8pm, upstairs at St James Wine Vaults, e‑mail ianjprior[at]aol.com

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 1st July, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade, http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

Earth Oven Cook­ing work­shop, Sat­ur­day 3rd July, 10am-4pm, Broad­lands Orchard­share, Box Road, Bath­ford, £25, http://www.bathford.net/broadlands.php

Bris­tol & South Wales Hunt Sabo­teurs punk & thrash ben­e­fit gig, Fri­day 9th July, 7.30pm, The White Hart, White­hall Road, Bris­tol, feat. Kismet H.C., Death Job, Mutiny Plot and This Ends Here, £5

Intro­duc­to­ry Per­ma­cul­ture Week­end, Sat­ur­day 10th to Sun­day 11th July, Bath City Farm, £50, http://www.transitionbath.org

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

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

Camp for Cli­mate Action, Sat­ur­day 21st to Tues­day 24th August, Edin­burgh, http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Ani­mal Cru­el­ty? Noah Way!

Activists from Bath and Bris­tol have been run­ning a con­cert­ed cam­paign against local ani­mal abus­ing nut­cas­es Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm. This shod­dy estab­lish­ment has a long his­to­ry of neglect towards ani­mals for ‘enjoy­ment’. The zoo has recent­ly been the sub­ject of a coun­cil inves­ti­ga­tion relat­ing to a cat­a­logue of ani­mal wel­fare vio­la­tions, includ­ing ill-treat­ment of the tigress Tira, lead­ing to the death of her and her cubs. To make mat­ters worse, the zoo were caught out hav­ing skinned, behead­ed and buried the moth­er on farm land. In addi­tion to this, the zoo trades ani­mals with the noto­ri­ous ‘Bob­by Roberts’, a cir­cus con­demned by many organ­i­sa­tions includ­ing the RSPCA for the hor­rif­ic con­di­tions and degrad­ing, painful per­for­mances its ani­mals are sub­ject­ed to. As if the dis­gust­ing dis­re­gard with which the zoo treats its ani­mals was­n’t rea­son enough to try and shut them down, the frankly nut­ty views of the zoos cre­ation­ist own­er make them a prime tar­get for any­one who gets annoyed at fairy tales being passed of as fact! The whole zoo is a homage to the pseu­do sci­ence of cre­ation­ism, and numer­ous dis­plays (includ­ing one that depicts the actu­al Noah’s ark as fact) try to con­vince bewil­dered vis­i­tors that the bible is the lit­er­al word of god, and that evo­lu­tion is a myth! While sev­er­al prime exam­ples of the miss­ing link can be seen oper­at­ing the zoo, num­bers of vis­i­tors have been dwin­dling as word of the dis­gust­ing ani­mal cru­el­ty and insane beliefs of the man­age­ment spreads. Activists are hold­ing week­ly demos against the zoo with the aim of clos­ing it down, and are con­fi­dent of suc­cess. To get involved, come along to a demo, or to find out more about the zoo, con­tact Bris­tol Ani­mal Rights Col­lec­tive at barc[at]hotmail.co.uk.

Greek Econ­o­my Crum­bles, Class War Erupts

Ear­ly May saw a mas­sive erup­tion of work­ing class anger greet the EU/IMF pro­posed bailout of the debt-rid­den Greek econ­o­my. The bailout of some 120billion Euros over three years requires the Greek state and ‘social­ist’ gov­ern­ment to enact strin­gent aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures and cuts across all sec­tors of the work­force, except of course for the rich and greedy. Whether this cash comes in time to avoid a Greek state debt default remains to be seen, but it sure has the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem wor­ried as shares crashed world­wide.

Equal­ly wor­ry­ing for the boss­es is the response from the Greek peo­ple. Mas­sive strikes, protests and riots erupt­ed across Greece on the 1st, the 5th and the 6th of May, and ongo­ing, as the work­ing class made it clear they have no inten­tion of pay­ing for the cap­i­tal­ist cri­sis, nor of accept­ing fur­ther for­eign inter­ven­tion in their affairs. Par­lia­ment was near­ly stormed, min­istry build­ings burned, and sym­bols of cap­i­tal­ism were attacked as strik­ers shut the coun­try down. Such active resis­tance also brings more tragedies to go with the long list of peo­ple from all back­grounds killed and bru­talised in the con­flict. Homes, cafés and social cen­tres were attacked by riot cops using gas, stun grenades and live ammo, and the mil­i­tary was put on full alert.

As the class war rages in Greece, the rest of the Euro­pean rul­ing class look on aghast, ter­ri­fied of the con­ta­gious effects of both the protests and the finan­cial cri­sis, such as the wave of anti-cuts protest sweep­ing Bucharest in mid-May (and the pub­lic ston­ing of econ­o­my min­istry offi­cial Mar­cel Hoara) and the Irish ‘Anglo Irish Bank’ occu­pa­tions and ‘Right to Work’ demos at the same time. They and we know that we too face such attacks on our liv­ing stan­dards as they seek to main­tain the prof­it sys­tem. What nobody knows is how far the Greek resis­tance will go in chal­leng­ing the pow­er of the rul­ing class, nor how far we will fol­low down the same path?

http://libcom.org/news

http://www.occupiedlondon.org

Dis­pro­por­tion­al Mur­der

The Israeli army has once again engaged in its favourite game: Inno­cent Peo­ple Mas­sacre! Last time we left them, the Zion­ists were busy crush­ing all Pales­tin­ian hope by build­ing a huge wall around Gaza, and not let­ting any­one out while killing the peo­ple inside under false pre­texts.

A bunch of civil­ians thought they’d be sneaky, pre­tend­ing to break the siege and all, by sail­ing to Gaza on a flotil­la of boats named ‘Free­dom Flotil­la’. But rais­ing a white flag did­n’t fool our brave sec­tar­i­ans: clear­ly, they were secret­ly work­ing with Hamas to kill Jews. Their instru­ments of death: aid, food, med­ical sup­plies, con­crete.

So, on the 31st, a brave bunch of guys killed 19 peo­ple (all Turk­ish) aboard the Mavi Mar­mara, and wound­ed anoth­er 60. The rest of the crew, some 800 peo­ple, were just kid­napped and deport­ed, Nazi-style, but with­out a camp at the end of the trip. That makes all the dif­fer­ence, you know.

Imme­di­ate­ly after news of the mas­sacre came out, demon­stra­tions were held in many Euro­pean coun­tries. 2,000 peo­ple in Lon­don gath­ered out­side the Israeli embassy to protest the slaugh­ter. If the Israeli army did­n’t kill them all, it prob­a­bly was because they were too far away. Some oth­er day, on a boat in inter­na­tion­al waters, maybe.

The usu­al emp­ty round of out­rage surged in the inter­na­tion­al polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. The com­mon theme of which was, that the Israeli attack was dis­pro­por­tion­al to the threat the boat was rep­re­sent­ing. That’s an under­state­ment, hint­ing at the white-wash­ing of crimes.

The attack was not dis­pro­por­tion­al, it was not self-defence gone awry, it was unjus­ti­fied. The Israeli forces have engaged in a crim­i­nal assault on the aid boat, in inter­na­tion­al waters, and they fired on inno­cent civil­ians. Nat­u­ral­ly, the lat­ter were said to have attacked the Israelis first. Sure, a bunch of civil­ians prob­a­bly thought they were going to beat up the Israeli army and break the siege by force.

More impor­tant than the insan­i­ty of such an ali­bi, even if they had used force against Israeli forces ille­gal­ly assault­ing their ship, it would still be right. The Israelis had no right to be on there. Nei­ther do they have a right to arbi­trar­i­ly pen in 1.5 mil­lion inno­cents like cat­tle. That is, even if this had been a mil­i­tary expe­di­tion to break the siege, by law this would have been the right thing to do.

Every time you focus on details in a con­tro­ver­sy, you end up con­ced­ing the larg­er point, which is the most griev­ous­ly false. This block­ade is ille­gal any­way, and that means force can be used to end it, nev­er mind that the activists were paci­fists engag­ing in aid.

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

BNPa­thet­ic!

For the aver­age per­son, the last mon­th’s elec­tions have been noth­ing to smile about — cuts, deep­en­ing reces­sion and a choice between twee­dle­dum, twee­dle­dumber and twee­dle-Eton edu­cat­ed toff twat. How­ev­er, one glim­mer of hope came from the dis­mal, yet enter­tain­ing elec­tion cam­paign of the fas­cist BNP. Their cam­paign got off to a cork­er when fuhrer Nick Grif­fin con­tact­ed the police to squeal on his press offi­cer, Mark Col­lett, who is alleged­ly plot­ting to kill him. After kick­ing Col­lett out of the par­ty, then sub­se­quent­ly let­ting him back in, the sec­ond blow came just days before the elec­tion. Simon Ben­nett, the bloke behind the BNP web­site, decid­ed he had had enough and took down the web­site. He then redi­rect­ed vis­i­tors to a page list­ing the dire finan­cial straits of the par­ty as well as numer­ous com­pelling rea­sons not to vote BNP! On the same day, Grif­fin got pelt­ed with rot­ten veg by an angry mob while out on the cam­paign trail. In the South West, the BNP fared no bet­ter, with a strong force of trade union­ists leaflet­ing against the BNP in Chip­pen­ham, Cor­sham and Swin­don, meet­ing a few deject­ed and iso­lat­ed fas­cists along the way. On elec­tion night, the BNP fared ter­ri­bly, los­ing both coun­cil seats of Bark­ing and Dagen­ham, even with Nazi Nick stand­ing as their prospec­tive MP in the area. Mean­while, in Here­ford, 20 anar­chists under a ban­ner read­ing ‘my grand­par­ents did­n’t vote for fas­cists, they shot them’ stormed the polling booth, chas­ing out the BNP can­di­date under a hail of boots and fruits! Local­ly and nation­al­ly, we have final­ly seen a clear indi­ca­tion that soci­ety has seen the BNP for what they are, a gag­gle of white suprema­cist thugs who have no place in civilised soci­ety. With­out gain­ing even a sin­gle seat on polling day, and with grow­ing calls from inside the par­ty for Nick Grif­fin to step down,it looks like we are wit­ness­ing the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the BNP. All they need now is a lit­tle push.

Steeeeerike!

Recent months have seen the unwel­come return of a trend not seen in many decades in this coun­try — the ban­ning of strikes. Both the recent BA cab­in crew, and Rail, Mar­itime and Trans­port work­ers (RMT) sig­nallers’ strikes have been banned by judges for var­i­ous dubi­ous ‘irreg­u­lar­i­ties’ and the fact that the strikes may cause finan­cial dam­age to the com­pa­nies involved (sort of the point of a strike!). With the reces­sion show­ing no sign of going away, and with mas­sive job, pay and ser­vice cuts loom­ing in the near future, this is a wor­ry­ing prece­dent for sti­fling work­ers’ right to raise col­lec­tive griev­ances. On top of this, the Tories hope to esca­late the class war by intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion which will all but ban strikes in the hope of chok­ing the mas­sive resis­tance that will inevitably fight back against the upcom­ing cuts. But it is not all doom and gloom. The last year has seen the resur­gence of anoth­er old trend — the wild­cat strike. Real­is­ing that boss­es do not lis­ten to polite requests, sev­er­al fac­to­ries were occu­pied by work­ers last year. If we hope to fight back against the anti-work­er poli­cies of the judi­cia­ry, the employ­ers and the rul­ing class, we need to be pre­pared to take the ini­tia­tive and flout oppres­sive anti strike and protest leg­is­la­tion. We are as pow­er­ful as we want to be. In the words of mar­tyred trade union mil­i­tant Joe Hill ‘If the work­ers took a notion they could stop all speed­ing trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains’. As some oth­er bloke said ‘when injus­tice becomes law, resis­tance becomes duty’.

Necks On The Line

On the 26th of April, the rail­way line from Ffos-y-Fran open­cast coal mine, near Merthyr Tyd­fil in South Wales, was closed by folk from Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide. The coal was due to sup­ply the near­by Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion, but nev­er arrived.

Once absolute­ly cer­tain the train would­n’t leave the sta­tion — as the com­pa­ny and work­ers had been informed — the activists locked them­selves to the track using chains and super glue. This sin­gle track is used only by the mine own­ers Miller Argent, and isn’t used by the pub­lic for trav­el.

It took some thir­ty South Wales cop­pers (plus a heli­copter) four and a half hours to remove those locked on. As this hap­pened the police received some incred­i­bly irri­tat­ing news: a sec­ond group had been hid­ing just round the cor­ner and were, as they spoke, emerg­ing and lock­ing onto the tracks with rein­forced lock-on arm tubes. Clear­ly too exhaust­ed from their hard work to take a quick stroll down the line to check this out, the heli­copter took to the skies once more. This swoop even­tu­al­ly con­firmed what it had failed to notice from hours of pre­vi­ous sur­veil­lance — the sec­ond group, now cheer­ful­ly wav­ing from the track. It took the cops until 8pm to arrest every­one and no coal left that day.

Local res­i­dents have been up in arms over the mine since it was first opened, just 30 metres from the near­est home, with many locals join­ing last year’s Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru next to the site. Not only is open­cast min­ing ter­ri­ble for local peo­ple’s health (with black rain and ris­ing lung com­plaints), it also destroys wildlife and local ecosys­tems and con­tributes mas­sive­ly to cli­mate change. In the UK alone, 43 new mines or exten­sions have been applied for or approved in the last three years.

We need to rapid­ly change our ener­gy sys­tems to avert cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos. This will take huge ambi­tion, which the gov­ern­ment is com­plete­ly unable to achieve with its hands in the pock­ets of cor­po­ra­tions. We can’t rely on their false solu­tions any more — it is down to ordi­nary peo­ple to devel­op work­er and com­mu­ni­ty con­trol of our ener­gy sup­ply and our soci­ety.

Mean­while, the 18 (one of which was hand­ed the olympic bail con­di­tions of hav­ing to reside in Corn­wall, and some­how make the dai­ly 150 mile return trip to sign on at Bath cop­shop, all with­out using trains) are back in court in Wales on the 8th of July to enter their pleas. They also have a ben­e­fit gig on the 19th June, 8pm, at the Plough in Eas­t­on.

http://www.risingtide.org.uk

http://www.stopffosyfran.co.uk

http://coalaction.org.uk

Politi­cians ‘Meet’ The ‘Peo­ple’

My dad told me that when he was a boy grow­ing up in the coal­fields before the war that any­one stand­ing for polit­i­cal office had to be able to do three things; do gen­uine pub­lic meet­ings, han­dle heck­lers and dodge turnips thrown from the audi­ence. How times change. Politi­cians now are wor­ried about meet­ing gen­uine vot­ers and dur­ing elec­tions, move around pro­tect­ed from the rab­ble by min­ders and the author­i­ties. Back on the 22nd of April, the three main par­ty lead­ers staged a so called pub­lic debate in Bris­tol, before a spe­cial­ly select­ed audi­ence who had to sit and ask preap­proved ques­tions, like good chil­dren. Out­side, the real elec­tors were being kept away from the meet­ing by lines of police. Around 300 peo­ple — a mix­ture of anar­chists, social­ists, ani­mal rights and anti-war pro­tes­tors one side and a group of sev­en pissed-up Eng­lish Defence Lea­guers on the oth­er — made their voic­es heard. The defend­ers of democ­ra­cy, the police, using batons and hors­es tried sev­er­al times to push the protest away from the Arnolfi­ni Cen­tre, the loca­tion of the debate. The crowd stood firm how­ev­er, and were able to deliv­er some suc­cinct opin­ions to the par­ty lead­ers as they drove in. Police made between sev­en and ten arrests, but were out­foxed at one time by anti-hunt­ing activists aboard a boat who pro­duced anti-blood­sports ban­ners for the ben­e­fit of Cameron and his blood­thirsty toff mates. How­ev­er, because of the secre­tive and con­trolled way this debate was run, who­ev­er won it, it was democ­ra­cy and the peo­ple who lost.

And now, to the dis­claimer: as any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly 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 nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the opin­ions of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor.