56 windows broken in “goodbye” Bayer action, North Yorkshire

A (belat­ed) action report from the Stop Bay­er GM cam­paign.

The Bay­er Crop­science build­ing at North New­balds had all 56 of it’s win­dows bro­ken. The mes­sage “No GM — Not Now, Not Ever” was spray­paint­ed on a wall. The win­dows were dou­bleglazed so although only the out­er panes were smashed the whole lot will prob­a­bly have to be replaced. One win­dow had both panes bro­ken and a litre of white gloss paint was thrown through to add to the dis­rup­tion and expense. Let Bay­er be aware — if they become the main GM offend­er again, we’ll be back.

This was one of 4 actions against Bay­er that hap­pened over the last month as a warn­ing to Bay­er to stay out of GM crops.
The 4 actions were the clos­ing of a suc­ces­ful cam­paign using direct action against Bay­er AG — who WERE the major GM play­ers in the UK and are still major the world over. This cam­paign saw over 50 var­ied and diverse actions in a few months, part of a 17 year his­to­ry of direct action against GM crops the world over.
See www.stopbayergm.org for par­tic­u­lars of the oth­er Bay­er actions.

2 more Bayer actions

There have been reports of more actions to send notice to Bay­er, just before their AGM, that if they DO con­tin­ue to push GM crops in the UK they will be hit again.

Here are the first 2 reports in.

Date: Thurs­day 22 April 2004

On the night of Thurs­day 22nd April, New­bury town cen­tre sur­round­ing Bay­er Plc’s UK head­quar­ters was fly­post­ed and stick­ered with ‘Don’t Buy Bay­er’ stick­ers to let them know that although the cam­paign is end­ing, they are being watched and any fur­ther attempts to grow GM in the UK will be met with direct action.

The poster read as fol­lows:

BAYER OUT OF BIOTECH!

Bay­er were push­ing for GM Maize to be the first GM crop com­mer­cialised in the UK, but thanks to a cam­paign of direct action and sab­o­tage and years of GM field tri­als being trashed, they have aban­doned their plans to grow the Maize and will not car­ry out any fur­ther tests of GM crops.

AND STAY OUT

This is a vic­to­ry for direct action and if Bay­er try to intro­duce GM crops in the future they will be met with increased resis­tance.

NO GM!

Date: 29th April 2004

Bay­er’s whol­ly owned sub­sidary, HC Star­ck, was vis­it­ed on Thurs­day night for a quick spray­paint­ing. THe mes­sage Bay­er — STAY out of GM was spray­paint­ed on the front wall as a gen­tle reminder that if they do intend to ever plant in the UK we will tar­get them once more!

Another Bayer Stay Out Action, Essex

Two Bay­er facil­i­ties in Essex were hit in a night-time raid by anti-GM activists in the ear­ly hours of Fri­day 23rd April 2004.

As part of the send-off to Bay­er after their deci­sion to pull out of GM crop tri­als in the UK, locks were glued, win­dows smashed and slo­gans paint­ed at two sep­a­rate instal­la­tions belong­ing to Bay­er Diag­nos­tics in Hal­stead, Essex.

The mes­sage of the graf­fit­ti was loud and clear: “BAYER OUT OF GM — AND STAY OUT!!” Bay­er be warned: you know what to expect if you attempt to pur­sue GM in the UK in the future…

see mani­la indy­media for a report of a Bay­er action in the Philip­pines.
also see www.boycottbayer.org

Bye Bay­er
e‑mail: contact@stopbayergm.org
Home­page: http://www.stopbayergm.org

Genetix Update issue 26 out now

8 pages of news of GM actions and cam­paign­ing in the UK and beyond.

UK news
Amaiz­ing Grace — Bay­er aban­don Chardon LL
Wot no tri­als — only one UK GM field tri­al in 2004
Off with their heads — Bay­er sack bio­science boss­es
Whine and Cheese par­ties (a Super­mar­ket spe­cial) — reports on super­mar­ket actions, stop­ping GM ani­mal feed and spot­ting new­ly labelled GM foods
British Biopira­cy — Eng­lish Nature to allow bio­prospect­ing in UK nature reserves

Inter­na­tion­al news from
Aus­tralia (Bon­za no canola!), New Zealand, US, Cana­da, India, Phillip­ines and the CBD in Malaysia

pdf down­load: http://www.geneticsaction.org.uk/news/XUpdate/GUissue26.pdf
txt down­load: http://www.geneticsaction.org.uk/news/XUpdate/GUissue26.txt

More infor­ma­tion on the Genetix Update, the Genetix Update archive and how to sub­scribe to the paper ver­sion of the update go to http://www.geneticsaction.org.uk/news/genetixupdate.htm

Linslade anti-bypass protest need people; plus injunction details

Linslade anti-bypass protest site near lon­don (leighton buzzard/milton keynes) urgent­ly need peo­ple. They have start­ed cut­ting trees and a site has been estab­lised.

Look at www.roadalert.org.uk for more infor­ma­tion.

Before you come please call vic­to­ria har­vey 01525 385097 or 07815 817108 AND some­one from the site 07868740689, 07854631024, 07799816888.

We real­ly need you, the site is get­ting quite sort­ed but more pro­tes­tors will be a very wel­come relief.

I don’t have time to go into great detail about the protest but you can get this off road alert. We are abot 30 miles south of lon­don, near leighton buz­zard and mil­ton keynes.

There is an injunc­tion against any­one who goes to the site to protest against the road (per­sons unknown!) This goes to the high court tomor­row (tues­day 8th feb­ru­ary), it used to cov­er the pub­lic road­way but we won the right to stand there. There are peo­ple squat­ting in the zone with the injunc­tion on it.

I’m very sor­ry about the lack of detail, time is very lim­it­ed, please look on the protest web­site, road­alert and tele­phone us.

We need you. You can help!!!

www.linsladeprotest.org.uk

 

 

Bucks Coun­ty Coun­cil applied for the catch-all secret Injunc­tion ban­ning ‘Per­sons Unknown’ from any form of protest at the site of the road, at a secret hear­ing on Fri­day 28th Jan­u­ary, with­out pro­test­ers being able to chal­lenge it. It banned any form of protest. There was a Hear­ing today, Tues­day 1st Feb­ru­ary, at the High Court in Lon­don, and a com­pro­mise was reached.

The terms of the Injunc­tion have been changed. I haven’t seen the injunc­tion, but I under­stand it now allows observ­ing and protest­ing on the foot­paths and B4032 road — so the local protests against the road can con­tin­ue on the B4032. Locals are also very con­cerned that they are not allowed close enough to get evi­dence of alleged breach­es of the Habi­tats Direc­tives, as they are felling trees with bat roosts in, with­out Ecol­o­gists on site, or licences from DEFRA.

The way they got the orig­i­nal Injunc­tion was appalling, and shows their atti­tude to free speech. It was served at the camp at 7pm, so no one could seek legal advice over the week­end (no-one knew the impli­ca­tions of it, so that is why there has been a silence over the last cou­ple of days!). They applied for a secret hear­ing and a fast track process and were grant­ed that. Any­one wish­ing to con­test the Injunc­tion was giv­en until 4pm on Mon­day 31st Jan­u­ary to seek Legal Advice and file a Defence (7 work­ing hours!).

Direct action is still pos­si­ble! Today cam­paign­ers hung a ban­ner say­ing “Chal­lenge Car Cul­ture” oppo­site the Ayles­bury HQ of Buck­ing­hamshire Coun­ty Coun­cil. This occurred at the same time as Gar­rett Emmer­son, Head of Trans­porta­tion, was hav­ing meet­ings with Bed­ford­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil about the Bypass! See  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/02/304619.html

Bilston Glen Protest Site update, spring 2004

Here’s a short update from our camp:

Here at Bil­ston Glen Anti-Bypass Protest Site we get more sort­ed for every day that pass­es by. More defences are com­ing up con­stant­ly and the stan­dard of the camp is steadi­ly improv­ing. We have a new kitchen, a new info-space, a well sort­ed and cosy com­mu­nal, a new guest house and a new show­er. We’re cur­rent­ly build­ing a huge com­mu­nal tree-house and some oth­er tree-hous­es are also under­way. For three months we’ve been orga­niz­ing “Sun­day Free Cafes” (open days) the first sun­day every month, which we intend to con­tin­ue with. Spring is here, the birds are singing and the leaves are com­ing out, we’re look­ing for­ward to the sum­mer. The 1–4 of July we’re invit­ing like-mind­ed for a green anar­chist gath­er­ing to dis­cuss how to fight the mega­ma­chine and learn prim­i­tive skills.

The plan­ning per­mis­sion for the road is still there. PPL, the com­pa­ny who where gonna finance the road have gone bust (way-hey!) though, so as it looks now it’s up to the local coun­cil to pay for the road. But PPL has been bought up by Bay­er, the enor­mous bio-tech mon­ster, so they might very well finance the road. Cen­tral gov­ern­ment mon­ey might also come in as Tony & co want to see the biggest bio-tech clus­ter in Europe here out­side of Edin­burgh, and a road for the trans­ports to and from it.

So we still want and need more peo­ple to fight against this part of the hor­ri­ble destruc­tion of our world. You and every­one else who sup­port us is very wel­come to join us!

Save Bil­ston Glen! No More Roads! For a life wild and free!

by Bamse, part of the Bil­ston Glen col­lec­tive

e‑mail: info@bilstonglen-abs.org.uk
Home­page: http://www.bilstonglen-abs.org.uk

Phone and Email Blockade of Bayer Cropscience

Mon­day 22nd of March saw a phone and email block­ade of Bay­er Crop­science, aimed at under­min­ing their com­mu­ni­ca­tions and dis­rupt­ing the smooth run­ning of their offices.

The direct line of Paul Rylott, the head of Bio­science, was cho­sen along with the main Crop­science email address. Unfor­tu­nate­ly Rylot­t’s line appeared to have been dis­conect­ed so for the rest of the day it was the back­up num­ber — for the bio­science depart­ment — which was called instead. It is not known how many peo­ple took part in this action but we must have caused some both­er as the oper­a­tor was tak­en off the phone ear­ly in the day and the answer­phone switched on instead. Hope­ful­ly when they lis­tened to it it was full of anti-gm mes­sages. Hun­dreds of emails were also sent.

This was the lat­est of sev­er­al phone, fax and email block­ades, and a ‘vir­tu­al sit-in’ to have tak­en place against Bay­er over the last 6 months. There will no doubt be more in the future. To be kept informed of them sub­scribe to the Stop Bay­er’s GM Crops email list — you can do this at www.stopbayergm.org.

Bay­er Crop­science are tar­get­ed as they only remain­ing com­pa­ny try­ing to get approval to grow gm crops com­mer­cial­Ly in the UK.

PHONE AND EMAIL BLOCKADE — AGAINST GM & BAYER

Phone 01223 252514 — direct line of Paul Rylott, head of Bay­er Bio­science.
Email ukinfo@bayercropscience.com

Paul Rylott may have been sacked by Bay­er but he’s not gone yet! And he is still one of the key play­ers in the attempt to bring GM crops into Britain.
Please take the time to phone in and let them know what you think of their plans to grow GM crops in Britain. It does­nt take very many peo­ple doing this to affect their com­mu­ni­ca­tions and dis­rupt the work­ing of their offices. (And it only takes 20p!)
If you can’t get through on these then try
01223 252557 or tech@bayercropscience.com

NB — it’s best to use a phonebox and dial 141 before the number.…just to keep your­self safer!

Or try me direct­ly on paul.rylott@bayercropscience.com

How­ev­er, please dont keep hang­ing up after one ring, and sav­ing your 20 pences, you cheap­skates. I real­ly upsets me when peo­ple do that repeat­ed­ly. Some nasty peo­ple keep doing that for hours on end so we end up hav­ing to dis­con­nect our phones. So dont do it, cos it’s real­ly not nice.

And if I’m not around con­tact my col­league Julian
Tel: 01223 252426
Fax: 01223 252427
Email: julian.little@bayercropscience.com
.….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…..
THE GM PHONE BLOCKADE — CHANGE OF NUMBER: 01223 252557

Paul Rylot­t’s land­line has been dis­con­nect­ed: recep­tion claims he is no longer employed there.
So keep ring­ing and email­ing, but use the recep­tion phone: 01223 252557
or ukinfo@bayercropscience.com

More sabotage of Bayer

Locks jammed at Bay­er Crop Sci­ence in North York­shire

On the 30th of Jan­u­ary the Bay­er Crop Sci­ence facil­i­ty in North New­balds, North York­shire had all its locks jammed with met­al and super­glue.

This is the 3rd or 4th time this has hap­pened at this build­ing.

The jam­ming of locks is a quick and sim­ple action which can be car­ried out very safe­ly at pret­ty much any Bay­er loca­tion in the coun­try. It can also have an effect dis­pro­por­tion­al to the effort put into it — when work­ers are unable to get to work pro­duc­tiv­i­ty will sure­ly suf­fer.