Press Release (For Imme­di­ate Release):
THREE ARRESTED @ COMMON GROUND!

At 11am on Mon­day 5th Novem­ber, three peo­ple were stopped by police in an unmarked police car whilst remov­ing board­ing from the entrance of the Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den in Kates­grove. Carl, one of the arrestees, explained that he told the police offi­cer he was “remov­ing the board­ing of the com­mu­ni­ty gar­den so that the com­mu­ni­ty could use the gar­den”. “The police offi­cer then called the coun­cil,” said carl, and “I over­heard that the coun­cil offi­cial want­ed the police to arrest us so that they could have a pho­to of our faces”. The three young men were arrest­ed for ‘attempt­ed bur­glary’ and ‘going equipped’, hand cuffed and tak­en to Read­ing police sta­tion where they were added to the ever grow­ing Police DNA data­base and then held in cus­tody cells for almost eight hours. One of them com­ment­ed that he could see his teach­ing career go down the drain as he sat in the cell.

The Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den Col­lec­tive had decid­ed to reopen the gar­den despite coun­cil oppo­si­tion. Since the coun­cil regained con­trol over the gar­den site it has returned to being van­dalised and crim­i­nal groups have been enter­ing the derelict hous­es to steal cop­per pip­ing and lead from the roofs. “We want this dam­age to stop” said local res­i­dent Stu. “Hav­ing the com­mu­ni­ty gar­den open here stopped 5 years of crime, van­dal­ism and decay. Two weeks of coun­cil con­trol threat­ened to reverse that. So on Sun­day we repaired the fences and bench­es, secured the build­ings and tidied the lit­ter up. Open­ing up the front entrance was the last thing we need­ed to do to reopen the gar­den for pub­lic use”.

After eight hours in cus­tody the young men were ques­tioned. “When the police final­ly under­stood that we were gain­ing access to the gar­den from the road, not one of the build­ings, they dropped the case and let us go”. One offi­cer said to Carl “we dont have a prob­lem with you doing good things for the com­mu­ni­ty”.

This is a prime exam­ple of how impor­tant it is for peo­ple to know their legal rights in the face of police offi­cers and oth­er author­i­ties who often do not know or care.

Com­mon Ground Col­lec­tive now have new plans to con­tin­ue our fight, to find out more or get involved or offer your help please email us at:

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk

Thanks!

http://www.myspace.co.uk/common_ground_garden

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In Read­ing, as the entire town is flogged off to inter­na­tion­al mon­ey-men and and the needs of the peo­ple go ignored, its dif­fi­cult to make the pri­or­i­ties and forces run­ning our neigh­bour­hoods and our world, and the injus­tice that results, more obvi­ous. But two ongo­ing strug­gles in the Kates­grove area of the town do just that.

Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den was cre­at­ed ear­ly this year by local res­i­dents, squat­ters and activists on derelict coun­cil owned land. For five years the coun­cil had left three build­ings and the sur­round­ing land in Sil­ver Street as a junk­yard, filled with trash and nee­dles. When a cut in coun­cil fund­ing meant that the vol­un­tary ‘Wom­ens Infor­ma­tion Cen­tre’ next door also became derelict, squat­ters moved in, and quick­ly decid­ed to do some­thing about the site next to them. From Jan­u­ary to May, they worked direct­ly-demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly, using recy­cling and the gen­eros­i­ty of neigh­bours and fam­i­ly to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den.

Two days before the open­ing day on May 19th, Read­ing Coun­cil began to respond in the same way they planned to car­ry on: with crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and threats. Of course, the col­lec­tive also set their tone: resis­tance! The coun­cil secured an injunc­tion ban­ning the open day and up to 200 local res­i­dents ignored it, enjoy­ing the gar­den, live music and a BBQ. The coun­cil then secured an injunc­tion ban­ning the dai­ly open­ing of the gar­den and the hold­ing of com­mu­ni­ty events. Yet every day for the next five months the gar­den was open to all, and has been enjoyed by many local res­i­dents of all ages and colours. Some even took the ini­tia­tive to reg­u­lar­ly work in the gar­den, weed­ing and cut­ting the grass. Mean­while more com­mu­ni­ty BBQ’s were held through­out the sum­mer. The coun­cil then obtained an evic­tion order to evict the squat­ters and close down the gar­den. Twice, in June and August, local res­i­dents and activist friends mobilised to defend the gar­den, and both times the coun­cil chick­ened out. Final­ly, on Octo­ber 18th coun­cil offi­cials and bail­lifs, backed up by cops, evict­ed the squat­ters and dragged one local res­i­dent (also an AFer) from the gar­den, before board­ing the site up.

How­ev­er, it aint over yet! Since that day, the build­ings have been repeat­ed­ly re-opened by squat­ters and re-sealed by builders, piss­ing the coun­cil off no end. Less-pos­i­tive­ly the gar­den began to return to the state of dis­re­pair it was in a year ago, as van­dal­ism and theft crept back in. So, this week, peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground decid­ed to re-open the gar­den — an act which is not ille­gal. How­ev­er, since when has the law ever mat­tered to peo­ple in pow­er? Cops in an ummarked car arrest­ed the three gar­den­ers half way through their task. When they phoned the coun­cil to ask if they want­ed the gar­den­ers arrest­ed, the reply over­heard was “yes, so we can get a pho­to of their faces”. The three were nicked for ‘attempt­ed bur­glary and going equipped’ before being added to the DNA data­base and held in the cells for eight hours. Even­tu­al­ly, after explain­ing to the inter­view­ing cops that they wer­ent break­ing into a build­ing, but open­ing the gar­den (as they had orig­i­nal­ly explained to the arrest­ing offi­cers!), the three were released with­out charge.

The rea­sons for the coun­cils attacks on this won­de­ful com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive are obvi­ous: They want to pri­va­tise the site, dump­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ty to use land to ful­fill social needs and facil­i­tat­ing a devel­op­er mak­ing huge prof­its. The com­pa­ny in ques­tion is named Unite, and plan to build pri­vate stu­dent acco­mo­da­tion (renowned for rip­ping stu­dents off), despite the uni­ver­si­ty hold­ing two stu­dent halls build­ings emp­ty round the cor­ner so they can flog them for devel­op­ment into more unnaford­able flats — its all about prof­it over peo­ple. Despite this, Com­mon Ground aim to offer their ser­vices to the author­i­ties as ‘care­tak­ers’ for the site, while plan­ning a cam­paign against the devel­op­ment and for a direct­ly-demo­c­ra­t­ic process for the com­mu­ni­ty to decide what hap­pens to the site long-term. In addi­tion, they plan to re-open the gar­den next week­end for a one-day com­mu­ni­ty event.

Mean­while a lit­tle way down the road, sim­i­lar process­es are at work, as prof­i­teer­ing boss­es are seek­ing the evic­tion of up to 40 squat­ters. Townsend House is a 53 bed­room build­ing, in the same area as Com­mon Ground which was orig­i­nal­ly run by a char­i­ty as a shel­ter for vul­ner­a­ble women. How­ev­er, in what looks like a seri­ous­ly dodgy deal, the build­ing was ‘inter­nal­ly’ sold in 2006 to the char­i­ties par­ent com­pa­ny for less than £100,000 and the women were re-housed by the coun­cil! The prop­er­ty then stood emp­ty for a year before being squat­ted in June this year. Since then it has become home to a diverse com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple, includ­ing migrants, fam­i­lies with chil­dren, unem­ployed or retired work­ers and assort­ed young peo­ple. It is organ­ised through week­ly assem­blies, and though def­i­nite­ly not per­fect, it is an inter­est­ing exam­ple of a self-man­aged com­mu­ni­ty.

Of course, now the cor­po­ra­tion wants it back, iron­i­cal­ly claim­ing they want to ‘house vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple’! A recent court hear­ing gave the squat­ters a three week adjourn­ment, but no doubt the law will pro­tect the boss­es ‘prop­er­ty rights’ over the needs of the res­i­dents in the end. How­ev­er, it looks pos­si­ble that the res­i­dents could resist evic­tion through direct-action if legal means fail, and local activists could lend their sup­port.

For more info or to offer your sup­port and help to either of these projects please con­tact

katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk
defendtownsendhousehotmail.co.uk