Police actions & (counter-)surveillance at the climate camp; FITwatch

See also oth­er reports of direct actions & police vio­lence.

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Eye in the sky sur­veil­lance at cli­mate camp

Thurs 16th — a police heli­copter drones over­head cir­cling the camp while since the morn­ing a large crane / cher­ry pick­er has had cctv cam­eras mount­ed on it (& pos­si­bly direc­tion­al micro­phone) and hoist­ed high over the camp.

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Pics of vio­lent arrests this after­noon at around half three / quar­ter to four near A4 — Sat 19th (cli­mate camp)



New­ly deployed riot police start chas­ing two peo­ple down the street, push­ing them over and tack­ling them to the ground then vio­lent­ly restrain­ing them.

good news!

the 2 peo­ple in those shots were arrest­ed, but let go once they were out of site of the cam­eras. The police were well aware that no offences had actu­al­ly been com­mit­ted, and they would not be able to get some bol­locks like pub­lic dis­or­der to stick with legal­ly clued up cli­mate campers.

There is noth­ing fake about the the pics tho — they were dealt with com­pre­hen­sive­ly. The first had a shield thrown at him and the sec­ond was not tack­led but pushed into a wire fence then stood on by three offi­cers. Nei­ther of the detained are unused to con­fronta­tion, they are seen cov­er­ing their heads due to phys­i­cal and ver­bal threats that were being made by the offi­cers. Both had cuts and bruis­ing but noth­ing seri­ous — unlike the camper tram­pled by a riot horse.

They aren’t at all sur­prised or intim­i­dat­ed by the arrests — the police did the usu­al schizo act:
“DON’T FUCKING MOVE!” “GET THAT ARM BEHIND YOU!” “MOVE AND I’LL BATTER YOU”
.…

“You alright mate? Any injuries? We’re just here to help Mr –, as long as you protest legal­ly we’re all for it. Help us to help you. Ok mate, on you go.”

- Which unsur­pris­ing­ly has not changed their feel­ings towards Her Majesty’s finest.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those arrest­ed and injured — we still made it!

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Polit­i­cal Apartheid: Polic­ing of the Cli­mate Camp Protests.

“If you go over there, I will facil­i­tate your law­ful protest” said one of the com­mand­ing cop­pers out­side the action that took place at Agrex­co on Sat­ur­day after­noon.

His idea of a “law­ful protest” became clear very quick­ly as his offi­cers pushed us into a ket­tle and held us there until peo­ple were tak­en out one by one and searched under Sec­tion One of PACE, before being sent on our mer­ry way. FIT pho­tog­ra­phers were on hand to pho­to­graph each indi­vid­ual as they were searched. That 40 campers man­aged to get off site and to a known tar­get in the mid­dle of the heav­i­ly policed area is some­thing else that FIT will have a hard time explain­ing to the pow­ers that be.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly the main stream media have all but ignored the wide­spread (ab)use of Stop and Search pow­ers that Cli­mate campers were sub­ject­ed to over the dura­tion of the camp.


The wide­spread use of stop and search is of course extreme­ly dodgy, and it was also appar­ent that wide­spread abuse of the pow­er had been sanc­tioned at a high lev­el.

When searched on Sun­day morn­ing the offi­cer (XB 125) failed to give me his name, and then pro­ceed­ed to hand a half fin­ished wit­ness state­ment that I had in my pock­et to DM167, who pro­ceed­ed to “look after it” by read­ing it. I point­ed out that it was beyond their pow­ers to read my per­son­al doc­u­ments as they were search­ing me for items asso­ci­at­ed with crim­i­nal dam­age, and a flim­sy piece of paper just was­n’t good enough for any kind of crim­i­nal dam­age, but DM167 ignored me and read the whole thing.

Oth­er searched I wit­nessed or heard of, includ­ed:

-Numer­ous peo­ple peo­ple out­side the main gate being forcibly detained after their search­es were over, until the FIT pho­tog­ra­ph­er arrived to take their pic­ture. Phys­i­cal force was used to make peo­ple com­ply with being pho­tographed, despite the fact that noth­ing had been uncov­ered in the search.

-Peo­ple being arrest­ed when they were searched under Sec­tion One of PACE, tak­en to a van and ‘de-arrest­ed’ once they had giv­en their names and address­es. (Hint: Tell them you will only give it to the cus­tody seargeant — that cre­ates more of a dilem­na for them)

An activist well known to FIT being held up for ages whilst they checked the IMEI num­ber of her phone — (remem­ber the basis of the search is sus­pi­cion of being equipped to com­mit crin­i­mal dam­age). Whilst she was on her enforced wait, a plain clothes used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make threats to her. She was with her tod­dler at the time.

-Activists wait­ing for the release of the arrest­ed from the Agrex­co action being searched a num­ber of times in the carpark out­side West Dray­ton nick on Sarur­day night. When they went into the near­by pub cops fol­lowed them in, searched them and then got the pub to bar them.

-An activist had a FITWATCH spot­ter card con­fis­cat­ed because “it might be used in the com­mis­sion of a crime” — ie the cop thought it might be used to sin­gle out an indi­vid­ual cop at a demo.

Need­less to say, the search­es did noth­ing to pre­vent the actions — the major­i­ty of campers left in blocks which weren’t searched, and in any case peo­ple knew when search­es were hap­pen­ing and when they weren’t, so (just as Pales­tini­ans do with their equiv­a­lent — mov­ing Israeli road­blocks,) any one intent on get­ting some­thing in or out of the camp just had to wait for the right moment. Fur­ther­more, few if any arrests were for crim­i­nal dam­age, and cer­tain­ly it would have been less than 1% of those on camp (even if the num­ber on camp was only 1000 as claimed by the cops).

For many of the locals this will have been their first expe­ri­ence of the polit­i­cal apartheid that pro­tes­tors expe­ri­ence on a con­stant basis at the hands of the Met. Any reas­sur­ance they might have had about the PACE Code of Prac­tice, will have been dis­pelled as they wit­nessed the heavy hand­ed use of the tac­tic which was quick­ly backed up by the use of phys­i­cal force if any­one object­ed to the abuse of the process.

Being stopped and searched can be a very dis­em­pow­er­ing expe­ri­ence, where your most per­son­al space is trashed and your (alleged) rights are com­plete­ly sus­pend­ed, while the cops sur­round you, threat­en you and abuse their pow­ers. One per­son I spoke to was keen that com­plaints should be made about the indi­vid­ual offi­cers who abused their pow­ers, so that they were inves­ti­gat­ed, and the com­plaint would be left to sit on their file. If too many com­plaints sat on a cop­pers file, it could affect pro­mo­tion prospects in the future. It may also be of assis­tance to future vic­tims of these mind­less, order fol­low­ing thugs in uni­form. And ulti­mate­ly it may make cops more inclined to do things by the book in the future.

Hope­ful­ly a hap­pi­er les­son could be learnt from the events of Tues­day night, when an inva­sion of cops was repelled by campers. It is clear that if we show each oth­er sol­i­dar­i­ty and work togeth­er, we can more effec­tive­ly take on, and beat the repres­sive tac­tics of cops. And boy does­n’t it feel good when we do!

FITWATCH activ­i­ties received wide­spread sup­port on site, as FIT teams were sub­ject­ed to the very same tac­tics that they have them­selves employed on activists for years. On the whole the tac­tic used was to get up close and per­son­al, and to make every pos­si­ble attempt to obstruct the civil­ian cam­era­men from tak­ing their intru­sive and abu­sive up close and per­son­al pho­tos of peo­ple doing noth­ing ille­gal. FIT teams were forced to focus their atten­tion on those obstruct­ing the camer­men, leav­ing oth­ers alone to get on with what they were doing. See­ing a FIT cam­era­man drop his long lens was a very sat­is­fy­ing moment for me, as was each time I saw him with his short­er alter­na­tive lens. If the tac­tic is to be more effec­tive, then plans for actions and meet­ings where FIT are like­ly to be present should include plans to tack­le and neu­tralise the FIT teams. It only takes a very small group to keep a team busy for hours!

The usu­al bull­shit was used to smear cam­paign­ers, with talk of “vio­lent activists linked to J18”, and “crim­i­nal ele­ments invad­ing the camp” “a secret group called ‘The Elders’ ” and “sus­pect bomb pack­ages” and the media lapped it up. At the end of the camp, when arrests and vio­lence by pro­tes­tors can be seen to have been much low­er than the nor­mal events in many towns on a Sat­ur­day night, the media con­tin­ued to talk of pro­tes­tors “scuf­fling with police” and “clash­es between pro­tes­tors and the police”, even when such events were real­ly pro­tes­tors being attacked by heav­i­ly tooled thugs, as is even evi­denced by the medias very own pho­tographs. And journos won­der why we don’t trust them and did­n’t allow them to freely roam the site!

Com­man­der Joe Kaye also made the claim that “If we frus­trate them, then they will go in for con­fronta­tion because their aim is anti-state. We are talk­ing about anar­chists.” If you aren’t an anar­chist then pre­sum­ably you just lie down for the kick­ing when the cops go out of their way to frus­trate your so-called rights accord­ing to his fee­ble thought process.

At the end of the day, the bul­ly boy tac­tics were frus­trat­ed and failed. As one of the first to arrive at the BAA build­ing yes­ter­day, I am pret­ty cer­tain that they sim­ply did­n’t expect pro­tes­tors to arrive there, and there was a mad flur­ry to form lines around the build­ing as we sat down to pic­nic on the verge right out­side the build­ing. Get­ting there was sim­ple enough, we just hung back when they went in to form the ket­tle, and then strolled back down the road as cop atten­tion was divert­ed by clowns mak­ing a break for it over the fields. There were so few cops, that when they tried search­ing after our pic­nic, they missed a whole group of new arrivals run­ning to the car park, and end­ed up being forced to aban­don the search­es in order to deal with oth­er stuff

For a long time protests in Britain, and espe­cial­ly in Lon­don have been unpleas­ant expe­ri­ences, with the cops call­ing the shots most of the time, and search­es and pet­ty arrests being the order of the day. Those who have gone to express their anger and dis­gust at the greedy mil­i­taris­tic fuck­wit­tery of the rul­ing class­es and cor­po­ra­tions, have end­ed up being boxed in, abused and crapped over by sheer force of num­bers and a will­ing­ness on the part of cops to abuse their pow­ers, whilst being cheered on by the journos.

Whilst Com­man­der Kaye’s polic­ing oper­a­tion went out of its way to give even more peo­ple rea­sons to hate the state, it seems that his cops were not up the task of total­ly repress­ing the activ­i­ties of the camps, and once again the Met was shown to be less than use­less when they are con­front­ed with a field. We won some vic­to­ries at the camp, and we should build on those in the near future. We are devel­op­ing new tac­tics, and must com­bine these with our expe­ri­ence of the usu­al tac­tics to ren­der them even more inef­fec­tu­al in the future.
(1)http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0„2–2007380547,00.html — pho­to by Get­ty images

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Traf­fic Jams on M4 as Police Set up Check­points

Police set up check­points on both car­riage­ways of the M4 yes­ter­day (Sat­ur­day 18th August) caus­ing traf­fic tail­backs through­out the evening. The dis­rup­tion was cov­ered in the Guardian and oth­er news out­lets.

The motor­way was closed down to one lane, first in one direc­tion and then the oth­er, as police scanned vehi­cle num­ber plates with cam­eras mount­ed inside vans. Once past the num­ber plate recog­ni­tion cam­eras, vehi­cles were fun­nelled down to one lane where Police could flag down the vehi­cles they want­ed to stop. Such road­side setups are used to catch out dri­vers with­out insur­ance or up to date vehi­cle tax or MOTs. They can also be used to check reg­is­tra­tions against lists of stolen vehi­cles, or vehi­cles on watch lists.

Sim­i­lar tech­nol­o­gy was deployed against pro­tes­tors last year at the Camp for Cliamte Action which took place in the shad­ow of the Drax coal fired pow­er sta­tion in York­shire.

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Polic­ing the Police at Cli­mate Camp — a per­son­al account of FIT Watch

FIT Watch was set up a cou­ple of months ago to oppose and mon­i­tor the activ­i­ties of the For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams. These are cops who rou­tine­ly harass and intim­i­date pro­test­ers (for full back­ground see www.fitwatch.blogspot.com). Whilst we’ve had a pres­ence at a cou­ple of pub­lic meet­ings, Cli­mate Camp has been our first oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice our tac­tics in a protest sit­u­a­tion

And it’s been work­ing. FIT are being made to feel uncom­fort­able. They’ve been forced into a reac­tive sit­u­a­tion and it is empow­er­ing because we have seized the ini­tia­tive.

FIT Watch can be done by any­one and can be as pas­sive or as con­fronta­tion­al as you wish. Here are some tac­tics we have found to be effec­tive:

1. Hold­ing large ban­ners in front of pho­tog­ra­phers. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive with dou­ble sheets on sticks which can block a cam­era from a dis­tance. This is the least con­fronta­tion­al way of block­ing pho­tog­ra­phy.
2. Tak­ing pho­tos of them. They real­ly don’t like this but it isn’t ille­gal. With any pho­tos it’s always good to either try and get the cop’s num­ber in the shot, or note it down.
3. Fol­low­ing the FIT. Pick a team and tail them. Turn their tac­tics onto them – every­thing time they send a text mes­sage look over their shoul­der, lis­ten to their phone con­ver­sa­tions, look at what they’re writ­ing in their note­books.
4. Watch out for group hud­dles, espe­cial­ly with senior offi­cers and go and unob­tru­sive­ly stand by them. This dis­rupts their brief­in­gs and there’s always the pos­si­bil­i­ty you might learn some use­ful infor­ma­tion.
5. Upload any infor­ma­tion gath­ered about the FIT to www.fitwatch.blogspot.com or email to defycops@yahoo.co.uk
6. Put your­self phys­i­cal­ly in the way of the cam­era men by stand­ing con­stant­ly in front of the cam­era and con­stant­ly shad­ow­ing them. This has been the most con­fronta­tion­al tac­tic used so far and has there­fore been the one peo­ple have been arrest­ed for. How­ev­er it has also been pos­si­ble to do this with­out arrest.

CAUTIONARY NOTE: ANY ACTION INVOLVING THIS LEVEL OF PROXIMITY TO FIT TEAMS MEANS THEY WILL TRY AND ENGAGE YOU IN CONVERSATION. DO NOT ANSWER THEIR QUESTIONS.

Two peo­ple have been arrest­ed for Obstruct­ing the police in the course of their duty this week. They were both charged and plead­ed not guilty. Any wit­ness­es should con­tact defycops@yahoo.co.uk

There have been many rumours as to why the FIT teams made their incur­sions into camp on Tues­day night. Some peo­ple say it was a response to being pissed off with FIT Watch, oth­ers that it was a test to see how we would react. Anoth­er the­o­ry is they were try­ing to kick some­thing off as shown by the pres­ence off vans of TSG and ambu­lances.

How­ev­er they weren’t expect­ing the strong response from the camp and vio­lent­ly pushed, kicked and hit peo­ple. A com­bi­na­tion of strength of num­bers and peo­ple will­ing to push them back forced them off site and peo­ple felt empow­ered by this vic­to­ry. How­ev­er it was not the non vio­lent vic­to­ry report­ed in many places. Peo­ple right­ly act­ed in self defence and we would not have got them off site if we had sim­ply walked towards them with our hands in the air as has been described in some places. Some peo­ple did raise their hands, but this was only after the cops had backed off the site.

FIT Watch is work­ing, but we need more peo­ple. The next big event is DSEi and it’d be great if peo­ple car­ry on the FIT Watch tac­tics.

defycops@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.fitwatch.blogspot.com

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inter­view with fit­watch at cli­mate camp

ear­li­er this week, a fit­watch sup­port­er was arrest­ed for ‘obstruct­ing a police offi­cer in the course of their duty’. but what exact­ly is the duty of the har­rass­ing, inva­sive for­ward intel­li­gence team phot­g­ra­phers and offi­cers? do they get off on watch­ing campers pee­ing?

Video fit­watch mp4 — video/mp4 1.3M

Video fit­watch wmv — video/x‑ms-wmv 1.5M

emi­ly was arrest­ed on the obstruc­tion charge, and although it’s an offence attract­ing a max­i­mum one month sen­tence, she was unnec­es­sar­i­ly held in cus­tody overnight. at uxbridge court the next day she had bail con­di­tions set ban­ning her from the cli­mate camp site from 2pm.

at 2 pm she gave this inter­view out­side the camp about the rea­son and aims of fit­watch and about her arrest and bail con­di­tions.

the film is just one minute long and is avail­able in two for­mats.

mp4 can be viewed using the free vide­olan vlc play­er avail­able for free down­load from the vide­olan web­site for all plat­forms. this play­er han­dles lots of dif­fer­ent vid codec for­mats and is worth check­ing out.
wmv is avail­able if you real­ly must use cor­po­rate soft­ware

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Cli­mate camp and ter­ror­ism

It should come as no sur­prise that police are apply­ing dra­con­ian anti-ter­ror­ism ´leg­is­la­tion´ to com­bat eco-pro­tes­tors at the Cli­mate Camp. For the author­i­ties net­works of dis­sent are the real ter­ror­ists.

To under­stand why police, cor­po­rate spokes­peo­ple and politi­cians should attempt to con­flate protest with ter­ror­ism means real­ly get­ting to grips with what con­sti­tutes ter­ror­ism for those in author­i­ty.

What comes to mind when you think of ter­ror­ism? Expolo­sions, muti­lat­ed bod­ies, dis­traught bystanders? Yet these have been ever-present when we wit­ness airstrikes and hear accounts of the behav­iour of coali­tion forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. If ter­ror­ism was all about vio­lence then this years airstrikes by the US on Soma­lia could not fail to be cat­e­gorised as such.

But none of this is ter­ror­ism because it does not threat­en the worlds lead­ers and their inter­est­ed fol­low­ers. By exten­sion, what threat­ens the sta­tus quo is not just vio­lent attacks by the likes of Al‑q´eeda but the break­ing of crim­i­nal as opposed to moral law and civ­il dis­obe­di­ence.

It is worth focus­ing on civ­il dis­obe­di­ence for a moment or two. What makes civ­il dis­obe­di­ence effec­tive is its rejec­tion of dis­ci­plines imposed by author­i­ties. It is use­ful to think of the exer­cise of pow­er in three stages- a)informal, uncod­i­fied rules or oth­er mech­a­nisms of con­trol, (for exam­ple some cin­e­mas ban the con­sump­tion of food that has not been pur­chased from the cin­e­mas own out­lets, b) for­mal rules cod­i­fied in law such as those that pro­tect prop­er­ty c) when these fail to obtain the desired results then force is applied. It is the infor­mal rules that civ­il dis­obe­di­ence fre­quent­ly tar­gets. For exam­ple Heathrow is a maze of infor­mal injunc­tions. Inside the air­port pas­sen­gers must sub­mit to var­i­ous pro­ce­dures even those that seem ridicu­lous such as only car­ry­ing 100ml of flu­id onboard flights as if it would make any dif­fer­ence if you were car­ry­ing 125ml. The air­port is a fan­tas­tic exam­ple of the Panop­ti­con where you are watched and ordered through­out by seem­ing­ly innocu­ous pet­ty rules that exist to dis­rupt mass­es of peo­ple in order to exert con­trol. This helps to explain why the camp itself is so unpop­u­lar with the author­i­ties. It is a mass which is ordered pri­mar­i­ly from with­in which cre­ates an autonomous space where plots can be hatched.

For those seek­ing to pre­vent the vio­lent forms of ter­ror­ism it is essen­tial to main­tain con­trol through sur­veil­lance of the air­port and its out­er perime­ter. The author­i­ties explain patient­ly time and time again that anti-ter­ror­ist leg­is­la­tion is for our own good- they are seek­ing to pro­tect free­dom not to cur­tail it. (Inter­est­ing­ly this was a stance Hitler took by claim­ing to be pro­tect­ing the Ger­man peo­ple from a Jew­ish led con­spir­a­cy to enslave them). The camp is they claim an obsta­cle to such pro­tec­tion- it obstructs their abil­i­ty to detect ter­ror­ists or to respond to ter­ror­ist events once they hap­pen. Per­haps they sug­gest ter­ror­ists are hid­ing with­in the camp qui­et­ly sub­vert­ing naive and ide­al­is­tic pro­tes­tors to Jihad. Or per­haps even the pro­tes­tors are for­mu­lat­ing a new ide­o­log­i­cal threat to free­dom- pro­pos­als for some kind of eco-caliphate ruled by George Mon­biot rebrand­ed as a druid mar­tyr come back from the dead.

Yet none of these claims stand up to the mer­est scruti­ny. Hence the bemuse­ment of campers and sec­tions of the ´lib­er­al media´at the smears. Yet things become clear­er once we inter­pret anti-ter­ror­ism leg­is­la­tion as a response to the sup­posed threat to hier­ar­chi­cal forms of order posed by net­work forms of organ­i­sa­tion. it is theme net­works of dis­sent that threat­en the dom­i­nant sto­ry of social strength and progress through eco­nom­ic growth.

Of course the fig­ure­head is Al-qée­da and its impos­si­bly dense maze of inter­con­nect­ed units and affil­i­ates unit­ed by a counter-dis­course of Anti-west­ern sen­ti­ment. Yet the anti-ter­ror­ist response must be extend­ed to oth­er net­worked forms of oppo­si­tion that reject the dom­i­nant par­a­digm through civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and dis­repect for pri­vate prop­er­ty rights. First the ´loonies´are tar­get­ed such as ani­mal rights pro­tes­tors, next will be the envi­ron­men­tal­ists, then the human rights activists.

The extent to which anti-ter­ror­ist pow­ers giv­en to the police and oth­ers can be described as laws is lim­it­ed. Many have had lit­tle debate in par­lia­ment and they are fre­quent­ly deliv­ered in response to con­sul­ta­tions with senior police offi­cers. They seem in real­i­ty more like anti-leg­is­la­tion mask­ing the use of arbi­trary coer­cion — a clear retreat from UK law as it has devel­oped over the cen­turies and a des­per­ate attempt to ´cor­rect´ dis­senters before a final resort to vio­lence.

This is all good news real­ly. The ridicu­lous cam­era mount­ed on a crane over­look­ing the camp shows how scared they are. It is amus­ing to watch the spec­ta­cle of the camp run­ning along­side dai­ly accounts of crash­ing stock mar­kets- some­what rem­i­nis­cent of a J G Bal­lard nov­el.

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Press release from Cli­mate Camp Media: Police attack pro­test­ers

For Imme­di­ate Release

UPDATE: Police attack pro­test­ers’ march towards BAA










Riot police armed with trun­cheons backed by mount­ed police wad­ed into pro­test­ers slow­ly march­ing from the Camp for Cli­mate Action towards BAA head­quar­ters. The march was part of the day of mass action which had been pub­licly announced the yes­ter­day. On-site medics have treat­ed at least five peo­ple who sus­tained head injuries and one per­son who had been trod­den on by a police horse.


The fact that the major­i­ty of the cor­po­rate media had been cov­er­ing the children’s demon­stra­tion at a sep­a­rate loca­tion meant that the police could act with rel­a­tive impuni­ty in vio­lent­ly assault­ing the pro­tes­tors. One reporter from Chan­nel 5 who was present at the attack said that they had been kicked by the police.

Despite the heavy hand­ed attack, around three hun­dred peo­ple man­aged to reach the BAA head­quar­ters and pro­ceed­ed to occu­py the entrance and car park, string­ing up ban­ners denounc­ing the com­pa­ny. Dozens of police vans and lines of riot police cor­doned off the area and pre­vent­ed hun­dreds more from enter­ing the site, effec­tive­ly blockad­ing the site on behalf of the Camp for Cli­mate Action.

Pro­tes­tors had tar­get­ed the BAA head­quar­ters in order to high­light the cor­po­rate prof­i­teers of cli­mate change rather than choos­ing to dis­rupt the pas­sen­gers at Heathrow. As promised by the camp, the mass action made no attempt to dis­rupt Heathrow.

In a sep­a­rate action ear­li­er on in the day, three teenaged women, aged 14, 15 and 16 occu­pied a roof at the BAA-owned Heathrow Busi­ness Acad­e­my oppo­site the BAA head­quar­ters and dropped a ban­ner that said “Make Planes His­to­ry.” Their protest con­tin­ues.

There have been 6 con­firmed arrests and 6 more that are cur­rent­ly uncon­firmed today. Today’s arrests bring the total of con­firmed Cli­mate Camp-relat­ed arrests to 56.

ENDS

Notes to edi­tor:

The teenagers who dropped the ban­ner are cur­rent­ly on the roof of the Heathrow Busi­ness Acad­e­my and can be con­tact­ed on 079821 04537

For fur­ther enquiries, con­tact the camp media team on 0777 286 1099 or 07858 177 178

For a pho­to of the teenagers on the roof, con­tact Mike on 07966 372 890

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Late after­noon march to BAA — Cops go crazy

When the group left from the rear of the camp, at first mount­ed police tried to ride into peo­ple but soon backed off and allowed them to stream across the field. As the peo­ple approched the oppo­site side of the field there were many vans of riot police arriv­ing in adja­cent streets and deploy­ing to meet the pro­tes­tors. There were even van loads of police get­ting changed into their riot gear on the M4 motor­way before scram­bling up the bank. As pro­tes­tors moved along the fence or tried to climb out of the field the police attacked them with batons and shields. I saw sev­er­al hit, punched, repeat­ed­ly thrown to the ground, pushed into ditch­es, and sworn at. Over the next 15 min­utes more and more riot police kept arriv­ing (some­thing like 100), many run­ning into the field fol­low­ing mount­ed police that had gal­loped into a gap in the fence. Police pre­vent­ed media from enter­ing the field and a high hedge pre­vent­ed them film­ing the scenes in the field.

The police offi­cers were clear­ly hyped up after days of sit­ting around wait­ing for this demon­stra­tion. They lashed out against peace­ful demon­stra­tors with­out cause or provo­ca­tion. Many pro­tes­tors man­aged to keep skirt­ing the field try­ing to get away from the chas­ing riot police, althouth two groups got sur­round­ed and detained for sev­er­al hours. Many man­aged to get over to the BAA build­ing for the demon­stra­tion there.

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FIT Watch Spot­ter Card

Here is the spot­ter card used by FIT Watch at cli­mate camp. We had sev­er­al requests for the coloured orig­i­nal, so here it is.

Hope­ful­ly we should be pro­duc­ing a new one for DSEi with some of the love­ly pho­tos we’ve been tak­ing at camp. If any­one has any pho­tos they think would be good to be includ­ed, please email them to us at defycops@yahoo.co.uk

defycops@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.fitwatch.blogspot.com