SHAC TAKES THE FLAK: FLIMSY PRETEXT FOR COUNTRY-WIDE ARRESTS OF ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

4.5.07
In yet anoth­er ham­merblow aimed at the ani­mal rights move­ment, police made 32 arrests across the UK in the ear­ly hours of Tues­day morn­ing in ‘Oper­a­tion Achilles’. Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Adri­an Lep­pard of Kent Police says the arrests are “one of the largest, if not the largest, police oper­a­tion that has tar­get­ed ani­mal extrem­ism in the UK.” Three prop­er­ties were also searched in Bel­gium and the Nether­lands.

4.5.07
In yet anoth­er ham­merblow aimed at the ani­mal rights move­ment, police made 32 arrests across the UK in the ear­ly hours of Tues­day morn­ing in ‘Oper­a­tion Achilles’. Assis­tant Chief Con­sta­ble Adri­an Lep­pard of Kent Police says the arrests are “one of the largest, if not the largest, police oper­a­tion that has tar­get­ed ani­mal extrem­ism in the UK.” Three prop­er­ties were also searched in Bel­gium and the Nether­lands.

700 police were involved as homes and ani­mal sanc­tu­ar­ies were raid­ed, with police seiz­ing com­put­ers, mobile phones and cash. The whole oper­a­tion was designed with max­i­mum pub­lic­i­ty in mind — the press were tipped off in advance and duti­ful­ly report­ed on the lat­est crack­down on ani­mal rights ‘extrem­ism’. Almost all those arrest­ed had some con­nec­tion with the SHAC cam­paign

Of course what did­n’t hit the head­lines was the num­ber of prop­er­ties raid­ed with­out arrests being made and the fact that 24 hours lat­er only nine of those arrest­ed had been charged — two with black­mail and the oth­er sev­en with ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’. Twen­ty were released on bail and one with­out charge. Two of those nicked, main organ­is­ers in the SHAC cam­paign, have been held for fur­ther ques­tion­ing.

Cru­cial­ly, the police inves­ti­ga­tion — in a nod to cor­po­rate mar­tial law — used intel­li­gence and foren­sic sup­port from the pri­vate sec­tor. The phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech­nol­o­gy indus­try greet­ed news of the raids with glee: “News of today’s oper­a­tion will act as a great fil­lip to the med­ical research com­mu­ni­ty across Europe,” said a state­ment issued by Ais­ling Bur­nand, chief exec­u­tive of Britain’s BioIn­dus­try Asso­ci­a­tion.

One source close to SHAC told SchNEWS, “This has all the hall­marks of a fish­ing expe­di­tion, designed to cause mas­sive dis­rup­tion to ani­mal rights cam­paigns and show Big Phar­ma here and abroad that the police are mak­ing strides against the ani­mal rights move­ment.”

NETCU CLOSES IN

As details emerged of the botched raid on Fresh­fields Ani­mal Sanc­tu­ary in Liv­er­pool, sanc­tu­ary head Dave Cal­len­dar told SchNEWS, “At 5.30 they kicked in the door and seized three staff mem­bers. At 6.20 they seized two oth­ers as they turned up for work. There were about six­ty cop­pers — they set up a cor­don and refused access to any­one. Those seized were held in vans but not arrest­ed. My farm man­ag­er had his col­lar­bone bro­ken after he was grabbed by three police when he climbed the back wall to check on our pigs. He was held in a van for three hours and refused access to med­ical atten­tion. Although the police brought an RSPCA inspec­tor with them it was clear that when we regained access to the site that noth­ing had been done for the ani­mals. Also they allowed ani­mals to escape, which we’re still look­ing for. They took every sin­gle piece of hard­ware, mobile phones, pho­to­copiers, you name it — but they did­n’t take a sin­gle piece of paper­work. It’s dif­fi­cult to see it as any­thing oth­er then delib­er­ate intim­i­da­tion and dis­rup­tion — nobody here is involved with the Hunt­ing­don cam­paign. We’re a pro-active com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tion and we’re not going to let them walk all over us.”

The raids come against a back­drop of a decline in crim­i­nal inci­dents relat­ed to ani­mal rights and demon­strate that the Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­nat­ing Unit’s (see www.netcu.org.uk) efforts are now aimed firm­ly at the ‘legit­i­mate’ above ground ani­mal rights move­ment. With SHAC once again able to con­duct demos out­side HLS (see SchNEWS 581) and activism spread­ing across Europe, Britain’s polit­i­cal police seem intent on decap­i­tat­ing the A.R. move­ment, by any means nec­es­sary.

* See www.shac.net for more
* Fresh­fields Ani­mal Sanc­tu­ary see www.freshfieldsrescue.org.uk

The Basement Fire / Flood Update. WE NEED YOU!

The Base­ment is a social cen­tre in Cen­tral Man­ches­ter with a veg­an cafe, activist library, book­shop, com­put­er hub and exhi­bi­tion space. We have been bad­ly affect­ed by the mas­sive fire on Mon­day and we are appeal­ing for help so we can get back open again as soon as pos­si­ble.

The Base­ment is a social cen­tre in Cen­tral Man­ches­ter with a veg­an cafe, activist library, book­shop, com­put­er hub and exhi­bi­tion space. We have been bad­ly affect­ed by the mas­sive fire on Mon­day and we are appeal­ing for help so we can get back open again as soon as pos­si­ble.

The Base­ment Social Cen­tre in Man­ches­ter was bad­ly dam­aged in the huge fire which start­ed on Dale Street on Mon­day morn­ing. It is now closed for essen­tial repairs but we hope to open again in the near future, In the mean­time apolo­gies to all our user groups, cus­tomers and friends.

Luck­i­ly we did not go up in flames; how­ev­er we have suf­fered smoke dam­age and more sig­nif­i­cant­ly severe flood dam­age from our sprin­kler sys­tem

Some of us were able to briefly go in and sal­vage impor­tant items; the scene that greet­ed us was grim but rather less apoc­a­lyp­tic than we first feared. There were pud­dles of water rather than the 2 metres we were warned about but many books, leaflets and art works are well beyond repair. Ceil­ing tiles have come down and we can not yet be sure how bad­ly affect­ed the IT hub and kitchen are.

We are not cur­rent­ly able to gain access to start the clean up or even ful­ly assess the dam­age, this is because the area is still deemed unsafe until adja­cent build­ings are demol­ished. Lat­est reports sug­gest we will be able to get in some­time next week. This is incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing and obvi­ous­ly damp things will fes­ter so we are fac­ing a huge chal­lenge,

When we are able to start we would be huge­ly grate­ful for any help with the clean up. Its going to be a mas­sive task and the more vol­un­teers the bet­ter. We will also need finan­cial sup­port because although we do have some insur­ance it will not cov­er all our loss­es. Exten­sive ren­o­va­tion and restock­ing will be nec­es­sary and we real­ly do need you.

We have all been touched by many mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port we have received. Thank you every­body. Cheers also to the Fire Brigade who have been ace.

We now ask that you think about turn­ing kind words into action. We have a new web­site which includes a place to reg­is­ter offers of prac­ti­cal help and also an online dona­tion facil­i­ty. Any con­tri­bu­tions you can make, phys­i­cal or finan­cial will be much appre­ci­at­ed.

Please go to http://thebasement.clearerchannel.org/new/

The Base­ment will rise, phoenix like, and be stronger and more glo­ri­ous – but we will need the help of our friends and sup­port­ers to do so

Love and under­wa­ter kiss­es

The Base­ment Col­lec­tive
mustsocial@yahoo.co.uk

critical masses of people in manchester cm!

last fri­days crit­i­cal mass had well over a hun­dred peo­ple rid­ing through the streets of man­ches­ter.. it was an amaz­ing feel­ing, we chat­ted and sang along to the soundsys­tem and rode around in the sun..it was ace.. loads of peo­ple cheered and we had no both­er what­so­ev­er.. after­wards we went to hang out in the park it real­ly was fan­tas­tic.

Manchester Critical Mass April 07last fri­days crit­i­cal mass had well over a hun­dred peo­ple rid­ing through the streets of man­ches­ter.. it was an amaz­ing feel­ing, we chat­ted and sang along to the soundsys­tem and rode around in the sun..it was ace.. loads of peo­ple cheered and we had no both­er what­so­ev­er.. after­wards we went to hang out in the park it real­ly was fan­tas­tic.

see some pho­tos here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spinneyhead/476759467/in/set-72157600155903889/

the next one is fri­day 25th may meet 6pm cen­tral library

Plane Stupid mark ten years of Blair — BAA HQ blocked

2.05.2007 Green activists today marked the tenth anniver­sary of Tony Blair com­ing to pow­er by vis­it­ing his best friends in indus­try to high­light the revolv­ing door between Labour and the avi­a­tion indus­try and his fail­ure to tack­le cli­mate change. (1) A team of pro­tes­tors from cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, (2) are block­ing the ‘revolv­ing door’ to BAA’s Heathrow HQ to oppose gov­ern­ment and indus­try plans for air­port expan­sion.

BAA 10 years of Blair2.05.2007 Green activists today marked the tenth anniver­sary of Tony Blair com­ing to pow­er by vis­it­ing his best friends in indus­try to high­light the revolv­ing door between Labour and the avi­a­tion indus­try and his fail­ure to tack­le cli­mate change. (1) A team of pro­tes­tors from cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, (2) are block­ing the ‘revolv­ing door’ to BAA’s Heathrow HQ to oppose gov­ern­ment and indus­try plans for air­port expan­sion.

The activists have chained up the front doors to the offices and have dumped copies of the sci­ence of cli­mate change, reports from the UN and from the Tyn­dall Cen­tre, into the recep­tion area. The activists have pledged not to allow the staff out until they’ve read the sci­ence. Oth­er cam­paign­ers have unfurled a ban­ner out­side the build­ing stat­ing, “Read the sci­ence. www.planestupid.com”

Cam­paign­er for Plane Stu­pid, Leo Mur­ray, explained:

“In years to come, Blair will be remem­bered for sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly approv­ing cli­mate-wreck­ing projects like air­port expan­sion. But it might not have hap­pened if it weren’t for the fact that the revolv­ing door between Labour and BAA just hasn’t stopped spin­ning.” (3) (4)

He added:

“We can’t believe that if BAA had read the sci­ence, they’d still be push­ing ahead with their cli­mate-crazy plans for air­port expan­sion. With Blair prepar­ing to leave office, UN cli­mate sci­en­tists gath­er­ing in Bangkok, and the hottest April on record, it’s time BAA used their enor­mous influ­ence to tell Blair to ditch expan­sion plans or leave with a lega­cy of fail­ing on cli­mate change.”

This Friday’s IPCC report on mit­i­ga­tion of cli­mate emis­sions, a draft copy of which has been obtained by Plane Stu­pid, con­firms, “Land use plan­ning and trans­port demand man­age­ment can make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion.”

Plane Stu­pid are one of the groups behind the adver­tise­ments in today’s nation­al news­pa­pers head­lined, “Vote for cli­mate change.” (5)

Notes for Edi­tors:

(1) The BAA/Labour revolv­ing door:
— In advance of the government’s 2003 avi­a­tion white paper which paved the way for their expan­sion pro­gramme, BAA was the main sup­port­er of lob­by group, “Free­dom to fly.” This group is thought to be the brain child of Steve Hard­wick, Direc­tor of Pub­lic Affairs at BAA who took time out to work on the Labour elec­tion cam­paigns of 1997 and 2001.
— “Free­dom to fly” was direct­ed by John Prescott’s for­mer per­son­al polit­i­cal advi­sor from 1999–2001, Joe Irvin. When, after a year, Joe Irvin resigned, he was replaced by Dan Hodges. Hodges is the son of Glen­da Jack­son MP, who hap­pens to have been Labour’s first avi­a­tion min­is­ter.
— Joe Irvin has this week been appoint­ed as one of Gor­don Brown’s top advi­sors (4)
— BAA’s “Free­dom to Fly” was chaired by Labour peer, Bren­da Dean.
— The gov­ern­ment appoint­ed Avi­a­So­lu­tions to assess the respons­es to its con­sul­ta­tion on expan­sion. Avi­a­So­lu­tions is run by for­mer high-fly­ers from BAA, Sea­mus Healey, Paul Eden and his wife, Liz. Also on the company’s board was Lyne Mered­ith, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as BAA’s direc­tor of plan­ning and envi­ron­ment.
— BAA hosts from its West Lon­don offices, “Future Heathrow,” an indus­try lob­by group chaired by Labour peer, Lord Soley. Launched per­son­al­ly by then-trans­port sec­re­tary, Alis­tair Dar­ling, it was estab­lished to ensure that the third run­way and sixth ter­mi­nal is built.

(2) Plane Stu­pid is Britain’s first nation­al direct action group against the unsus­tain­able avi­a­tion growth. www.planestupid.com

(3) For more details and sources on the revolv­ing door between BAA and Labour: http://www.turnuptheheat.org/?page_id=24

(4) http://news.independent.co.uk/people/pandora/article2483864.ece and http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0„2–2007180865,00.html

(5) For more on the ads, includ­ing the press release, see www.spurt-aviation.com

For interviews/info:

press@planestupid.com
www.planestupid.com

- ENDS –

At 5.30pm — four peo­ple were arrrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass after BAA refused to read the sci­ence.

Squaf: Sheffield Squat Café and Social Centre

Open­ing tonight, 1st May 2007, for a lim­it­ed time only (depend­ing on input), is a new squat­ted social cen­tre and café in the for­mer Tramway pub on Lon­don Road, Sheffield. The first event is a Open Mic Night from 8pm, oth­er planned events include:

Squaf logoOpen­ing tonight, 1st May 2007, for a lim­it­ed time only (depend­ing on input), is a new squat­ted social cen­tre and café in the for­mer Tramway pub on Lon­don Road, Sheffield. The first event is a Open Mic Night from 8pm, oth­er planned events include:

# Café
# Freeshop
# Bike Work­shops
# Gigs
# Work­shops
# Wom­en’s day
# Dis­cus­sions
# Bar-B-Qs’

For more info see the SQUAF web site: http://www.squaf.aktivix.org/

End of the line for coal: Protestors blockade coal trains, New Zealand/Aotearoa

Press release: Save hap­py Val­ley Christchurch
Sun­day 29th April 2007

Save Hap­py Val­ley mem­bers have locked onto the train tracks near Christchurch to call for an end to new coal mines in New Zealand. Oth­er mem­bers have hung a twen­ty-two metre ban­ner – ‘Sol­id Ener­gy: Govt Spon­sored Cli­mate Chaos – along two of the coal wag­ons. They are on Kirk Road, Tem­ple­ton.

Press release: Save hap­py Val­ley Christchurch
Sun­day 29th April 2007

Save Hap­py Val­ley mem­bers have locked onto the train tracks near Christchurch to call for an end to new coal mines in New Zealand. Oth­er mem­bers have hung a twen­ty-two metre ban­ner – ‘Sol­id Ener­gy: Govt Spon­sored Cli­mate Chaos – along two of the coal wag­ons. They are on Kirk Road, Tem­ple­ton.

“Cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mat­ic events are already occur­ring; cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now,” said Gra­ham Jury, Save Hap­py Val­ley Christchurch spokesper­son. “Ear­li­er this year New Zealand final­ly reached the end of the line for coal fired pow­er sta­tions. It must also be the end of the line for coal min­ing.”

Two activists are locked onto the tracks, while a fur­ther twen­ty are on the tracks by the train. Save Hap­py Val­ley works for the pro­tec­tion of Hap­py Val­ley, pro­posed site of Sol­id Ener­gy’s next open­cast mine on the West Coast of the South Island. The group also cam­paigns for a just and swift tran­si­tion away from coal min­ing.

“Sol­id Ener­gy is ever increas­ing its pro­duc­tion, leav­ing dec­i­mat­ed ecosys­tems and water­ways in its wake. Already, they are respon­si­ble for annu­al car­bon diox­ide emis­sions approx­i­mate­ly equiv­a­lent to New Zealand’s entire trans­port fleet. Say­ing “no” to new coal mines would be an easy first step in actu­al­ly address­ing cli­mate change,” said Simon Rid­del, one of the activists locked to the tracks.

“The world’s cli­mate is becom­ing increas­ing­ly unpre­dictable and human-induced green­house gas emis­sions are evi­dent­ly respon­si­ble. The fos­sil fuel indus­try is a pre­ventable cause,” said Gre­go­ry Curline, the sec­ond activist ‘on the line.’

“Half of the coal extract­ed is sent off shore, gen­er­at­ing emis­sions out­side of our Kyoto Pro­to­col oblig­a­tions. How­ev­er, New Zealand is respon­si­ble for the coal it exports. The Gov­ern­ment must pull its state owned enter­prise back under con­trol,” said Mr Jury.

// ENDS

Media Con­tact
Gra­ham Jury, Save Hap­py Val­ley Christchurch spokesper­son, 0273070448

Notes
In March 2007, Mighty Riv­er Pow­er, anoth­er SOE, announced that it had dis­card­ed its plans to turn Mars­den B into an oper­a­tional coal fired pow­er sta­tion.

http://savehappyvalley.org.nz

Cambridge Climate Camp meetup

Hey all. There will be a meet­ing on Sat May 5 at 7pm for any­one in Cam­bridge and East Anglia gen­er­al­ly who is inter­est­ed in going to the Camp for Cli­mate Action on August 14–21, 2007. Peo­ple who were at last year’s camp will talk about what it was like, and we will have a chance to get to know each-oth­er and talk about going as a group to the cli­mate camp.

Hey all. There will be a meet­ing on Sat May 5 at 7pm for any­one in Cam­bridge and East Anglia gen­er­al­ly who is inter­est­ed in going to the Camp for Cli­mate Action on August 14–21, 2007. Peo­ple who were at last year’s camp will talk about what it was like, and we will have a chance to get to know each-oth­er and talk about going as a group to the cli­mate camp.

The meet­ing is in the McCrum Sem­i­nar room in Cor­pus Christi Col­lege. The direc­tions to Cor­pus are here: www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/about/directions.htm To get to the McCrum Sem­i­nar room, head to the McCrum lec­ture the­atre off Benet St (marked on the map — its next to the Eagle pub); but turn right in front of the lec­ture the­atre, up some stairs. Direct­ly ahead are some more steps going down to the left, go down those into a pas­sage­way and the McCrum Sem­i­nar room is to the right.

The Camp for Cli­mate Action (www.climatecamp.org.uk) is a week-long event that will include work­shops about cli­mate change and oth­er top­ics, enter­tain­ment, alter­na­tive tech­nol­o­gy, low-tech liv­ing, and direct action against some of the indus­tri­al pol­luters that cause cli­mate change.

Please invite any­one who might be inter­est­ed.

cambridge@lists.riseup.net
http://www.cambridgeaction.net

Call for Submissions: Zine on Property Destruction

Enter­ing the rad­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, many quick­ly find them­selves con­stant­ly hear­ing about debate over prop­er­ty destruc­tion. Is it vio­lence? Does it mat­ter if it’s vio­lence? Is it effec­tive? Is it alien­at­ing? And on and on. I’ve been hear­ing this argu­ment pret­ty much since I reg­u­lar­ly start­ed attend­ing protests. At this point, I almost don’t want to deal with the sub­ject. Nat­u­ral­ly, you’re ask­ing, “Then why the hell do you want to make a zine about it?”

Enter­ing the rad­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty, many quick­ly find them­selves con­stant­ly hear­ing about debate over prop­er­ty destruc­tion. Is it vio­lence? Does it mat­ter if it’s vio­lence? Is it effec­tive? Is it alien­at­ing? And on and on. I’ve been hear­ing this argu­ment pret­ty much since I reg­u­lar­ly start­ed attend­ing protests. At this point, I almost don’t want to deal with the sub­ject. Nat­u­ral­ly, you’re ask­ing, “Then why the hell do you want to make a zine about it?”

The answer is sim­ple: I may be sick of the debate, but that’s just me. As the war in Iraq drags on (drag­ging blood­ied Iraqi corpse upon blood­ied Iraqi corpse with it) and dis­con­tent and dis­il­lu­sion­ment with this whole socio-polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic sys­tem increas­es, more peo­ple are get­ting involved in the fight against cap­i­tal­ism and its machines of war (both the armies abroad and the police at home). For many, when they start going to protests and demon­stra­tions, they have at best mixed feel­ings about things like prop­er­ty destruc­tion, vio­lent­ly resist­ing the police, or even just march­ing in the street with­out a per­mit. And some appre­hen­sion about these tac­tics is com­plete­ly under­stand­able. After all, every­thing in this sys­tem is designed to teach us that prop­er­ty (or per­haps more accu­rate­ly, cor­po­rate prop­er­ty) is sacred, that police should always be obeyed (or else) and that break­ing the law, even small laws, is moral­ly and eth­i­cal­ly wrong and can nev­er be jus­ti­fi­able.

And so, this is a call for arti­cles, sto­ries, art, or any­thing else about the tac­tic of prop­er­ty destruc­tion and its mer­its for a zine that seeks to give those on the fence about this issue a gen­tle nudge (and maybe con­vince them to rip down the fence!). Since this is meant to be a zine for peo­ple new to social move­ments, I respect­ful­ly ask that the tone of the arti­cles keep that in mind when choos­ing their words. To put it plain­ly, please no anti-lib­er­al rants–they piss me off too, but this is sup­posed to be the case for prop­er­ty destruc­tion, not the case against lib­er­als (maybe next time!).

When I say arti­cles, I mean pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished or unpub­lished arti­cles argu­ing for the valid­i­ty or effec­tive­ness of prop­er­ty destruc­tion. It does­n’t even have to be some­thing you wrote. If there’s an arti­cle that you think is real­ly great and think that it should be includ­ed, tell me about it (things like, where I can find it, who wrote it, and how I can get ahold of them). There’s two kinds of sto­ries that would be real­ly great to have for this zine: per­son­al accounts and “his­tor­i­cal” accounts. Per­son­al accounts would be some­thing talk­ing about wit­ness­ing or even com­mit­ting an act of prop­er­ty destruc­tion, how it made you feel, what impact it had, etc. Obvi­ous­ly this is very sen­si­tive, so try­ing to be rel­a­tive­ly vague is best (and also see the next para­graph for the best way to sub­mit things like that). A “his­tor­i­cal” account would be more of a gen­er­al sto­ry (prefer­ably con­tem­po­rary) of how prop­er­ty destruc­tion put pres­sure on an insti­tu­tion to win a con­crete goal. Art would be any­thing that would be an image. A car­toon, a cool draw­ing, what­ev­er.

If you have any­thing to con­tribute, please send an email to tacticaldiversity@gmail.com. I may want to edit some of your sub­mis­sion for var­i­ous rea­sons (most like­ly space). Any edits or cuts will be run by you first. If for some rea­son you can’t or don’t want to sub­mit some­thing online, send an email and we can dis­cuss oth­er meth­ods of sub­mis­sion. As was said above, send­ing per­son­al accounts about prop­er­ty destruc­tion over email is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a good idea. In fact, for both our sakes, it’s a bad idea. Any per­son­al accounts should be sub­mit­ted will an anony­mous email ser­vice like www.willselfdestruct.com (be sure to make it at least 1 view). If you want me to respond some­how, you can leave an email address in the will­selfde­struct mes­sage and I can respond in kind. If you don’t leave a way to respond to you, I may make edits with­out run­ning them by you first. Also, a major goal is to make sure that every piece pub­lished is pub­lished with the cre­ator’s per­mis­sion. This zine isn’t going to be sold any­where and will be dis­trib­uted for free, but I still don’t want to use oth­er peo­ple’s stuff in this zine with­out their express per­mis­sion. So yeah, don’t sub­mit oth­er peo­ple’s work act­ing like it’s your’s and get peo­ple pissed at me. If you run an infos­hop or any oth­er rad­i­cal space that could dis­trib­ute this zine upon com­ple­tion and are inter­est­ed in receiv­ing copies, drop a line and you’ll be kept in the loop when it comes time to pub­lish.

In love and rage,
Casey Ford

Critical Mass reports

Police charge cyclists at Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass
29.04.2007

Last night the police com­mit­ted a sur­pris­ing u‑turn in their approach to deal­ing with Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass. The Mass has pre­vi­ous­ly been accom­pa­nied by cycle offi­cers “to ensure the safe­ty of the cyclists” how­ev­er there has been no police pres­ence since last Sep­tem­ber. This changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly with the April Crit­i­cal Mass.

Police charge cyclists at Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass
29.04.2007

Last night the police com­mit­ted a sur­pris­ing u‑turn in their approach to deal­ing with Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass. The Mass has pre­vi­ous­ly been accom­pa­nied by cycle offi­cers “to ensure the safe­ty of the cyclists” how­ev­er there has been no police pres­ence since last Sep­tem­ber. This changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly with the April Crit­i­cal Mass.

Last night the police com­mit­ted a sur­pris­ing u‑turn in their approach to deal­ing with Glas­gow Crit­i­cal Mass. The Mass has pre­vi­ous­ly been accom­pa­nied by cycle offi­cers “to ensure the safe­ty of the cyclists” how­ev­er there has been no police pres­ence since last Sep­tem­ber. This changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly with the April Crit­i­cal Mass; the 50–70 cyclists were tailed by a police van for the major­i­ty of the ride with the police stop­ping some of the rid­ers at the front of the mass and warn­ing them not to con­tin­ue else they may face charges. In the midst of the cycle run, while the Mass duti­ful­ly wait­ed at a red light, the two offi­cers (A303 and A628) made their way to the front of the mass and select­ed three cyclists, appar­ent­ly at ran­dom. It should be not­ed that these three were not the cyclists spo­ken to by the police ear­li­er. These arbi­trar­i­ly cho­sen cyclists have been charged with “Cycling with­out due con­sid­er­a­tion for oth­er road users” under sec­tion 29 of the 1988 Road Traf­fic Act (exact word­ing: If a per­son rides a cycle on a road with­out due care and atten­tion, or with­out rea­son­able con­sid­er­a­tion for oth­er per­sons using the road, he is guilty of an offence.In this sec­tion “road” includes a bri­dle­way). They were informed that a report will be sub­mit­ted to the Procu­ra­tor Fis­cal for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion. Watch this space.

http://www.glasgowcriticalmass.org.uk


Crit­i­cal Mass Lon­don 13th Anniver­sary ride.
16MB film — mp4
The very well attend­ed Mass got off to a good start, despite a spelling mis­take on the kind­ly donat­ed t‑shirts. There was the usu­al large police pres­ence with its usu­al intim­i­dat­ing video­ing of rid­ers. Pity they can’t take their own med­i­cine and try to con­ceal their faces.

The police returned to their pre­vi­ous tac­tic of block­ing the front of the ride, thus adding to traf­fic con­ges­tion. At the entrance to Par­lia­ment Square the front of the ride was blocked for sev­er­al traf­fic light cycles. Final­ly, in frus­tra­tion, and after some boo­ing at the block­ers, rid­ers decide to go around on the pave­ment to enter the Square. At some point the ride split into two but man­aged to join up again in the Strand. Video­ing stopped at the couri­ers’ pub, while the ride con­tin­ued on into the night head­ing East­wards.

All in all very enjoy­able and mer­ry ride.

Autonomous Environmentalists Bockade RNAD Coulport

On Thurs­day, 26th April, a group of autonomous envi­ron­men­tal­ists shut down RNAD Coul­port, the MOD muni­tions depot where Britain’s nuclear weapons are stored, for a two hour peri­od. The activists used two 15 ft tripods each with a con­crete lock-on round one of the tri­pod legs, to block­ade the two roads lead­ing to the main gate of the base. The action was part of the Faslane 365 Envi­ron­men­tal­ists Block, com­mem­o­rat­ing the 21st anniver­sary of the Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter, and in protest at the upgrad­ing of Britain’s Tri­dent nuclear sys­tem.

Coulport eco blockade 1Coulport eco blockade 2On Thurs­day, 26th April, a group of autonomous envi­ron­men­tal­ists shut down RNAD Coul­port, the MOD muni­tions depot where Britain’s nuclear weapons are stored, for a two hour peri­od. The activists used two 15 ft tripods each with a con­crete lock-on round one of the tri­pod legs, to block­ade the two roads lead­ing to the main gate of the base. The action was part of the Faslane 365 Envi­ron­men­tal­ists Block, com­mem­o­rat­ing the 21st anniver­sary of the Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter, and in protest at the upgrad­ing of Britain’s Tri­dent nuclear sys­tem.

The two activists on the tri­pod blockad­ing the north­ern access road were even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed after the cut­ting team had removed the lock-on, and the climb­ing team had removed the activist at the top of the tri­pod, and charged with obstruc­tion of the high­way, part of the Roads Scot­land Act 1984. They were held in the Faslane police cells for a three hour peri­od before being released out­side on the North Gate on cau­tion and pend­ing court dates.

The two activists on the sec­ond tri­pod blockad­ing the shore road even­tu­al­ly unlocked after the north­ern access road had been cleared, although the activist locked on around one of the tri­pod legs had time to cre­ate addi­tion­al dis­rup­tion by unlock­ing only to super glue their hand to the tri­pod leg. Cir­cu­lar saws and pneu­mat­ic drills were replaced with a bowl of warm, soapy water.

In response to requests from local res­i­dents and school chil­dren prepar­ing to sit exams, and a local MSP Jack­ie Bail­lie, Coul­port was cho­sen as the tar­get of the block­ade instead of Faslane to max­imise dis­rup­tion to Britain’s nuclear pro­gramme and min­imise dis­rup­tion to local peo­ple. It is the opin­ion of the activists that the polic­ing is respon­si­ble for long traf­fic delays and that police tac­tics are exac­er­bat­ing and even cap­i­tal­is­ing on the dis­rup­tion caused by the ongo­ing block­ades.

The activists encour­age oth­er autonomous groups to take decen­tralised direct action against Tri­dent and all mil­i­tary oper­a­tions through­out the UK in order to hold back the grow­ing tide of mil­i­tarism and the envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion that goes with it.