Police raid eco-protest camp

16.08.2009
POLICE bul­lies have invad­ed Camp Tit­nore near Wor­thing and intim­i­dat­ed the pro­test­ers, who have been peace­ful­ly occu­py­ing the threat­ened Dur­ring­ton wood­land since 2006.

16.08.2009
POLICE bul­lies have invad­ed Camp Tit­nore near Wor­thing and intim­i­dat­ed the pro­test­ers, who have been peace­ful­ly occu­py­ing the threat­ened Dur­ring­ton wood­land since 2006.

Com­ing just a few weeks after Tesco got per­mis­sion for its dis­gust­ing new abom­i­na­tion on neigh­bour­ing fields, it is feared this her­alds an all-out attack on the camp by the usu­al unholy alliance of prof­i­teer­ing cap­i­tal­ist scum, cor­rupt local author­i­ties and the tax­pay­er-fund­ed thugs-in-blue.

Strong rumours are cir­cu­lat­ing that Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil plan­ners are to meet very soon to give the final go-ahead for the 875-home hous­ing devel­op­ment at Tit­nore Woods and that the camp will be cleared by force before work starts, pos­si­bly as soon as Octo­ber.

The campers are appeal­ing for all those who have sup­port­ed them dur­ing their three-year marathon protest to make the effort to come and vis­it them now — before it is too late — and show the author­i­ties that they can­not mis­treat them with impuni­ty as they enjoy pub­lic back­ing.

If peo­ple can go and stay at the camp for any amount of time, no mat­ter how small, that would obvi­ous­ly be even bet­ter.

The lat­est police raid on the camp came under the the pre­tence of a “health and safe­ty check”. Up to 18 tooled-up ‘offi­cers’ intim­i­dat­ed the envi­ron­men­tal­ists with video cam­eras, as they were in-ter­ror-gat­ed. This includ­ed a young woman with a 4‑year-old child who was vis­it­ing friends at the camp. The police then search and video’d all areas of the camp despite being told to leave the campers’ home.

Clear­ly even after all the crit­i­cism of the police by gov­ern­ment min­is­ters fol­low­ing their behav­iour in Lon­don in April they are still out of con­trol.

The campers now expect more harass­ment in order to get them to give up and leave.

Warn­ing of a pos­si­ble move to give the hous­ing devel­op­ment the OK immi­nent­ly, cam­paign group Pro­tect Our Wood­land! says: “A lot has to be done in a very short time. First please could you sign the peti­tion at: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/TitnoreWoods/ and ask all in your address book to do the same. Next it is still very impor­tant to send an e‑mail of objec­tion to the coun­cil, please find all the details at www.protectourwoodland.co.uk then if you’ve still got the ener­gy write to the papers.

“Yes we know there’s been very lit­tle report­ing in the local papers — except for the Tesco part of the devel­op­ment — that’s because edi­tors get fed up with the same old sus­pects writ­ing in end­less­ly. So let’s see if a new hand will get results. All the details are on the web­site.”

Mean­while the cam­paign­ing Dur­ring­ton and North­brook Times reports that work on the mas­sive new Tesco Extra will start tomor­row, Mon­day August 17, with res­i­dents’ con­cerns bull­dozed out of the path of the mon­ster that they like to call progress.

It report­ed in a spe­cial email bul­letin:

“At a pub­lic meet­ing in the Dur­ring­ton Com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, Robert Cur­tis Project Man­ag­er for builders Kier revealed that although dis­tur­bance to local res­i­dents would be kept to a min­i­mum there would be some incon­ve­nience.

“He admit­ted to a stunned audi­ence, that one max­i­mum weight mul­ti-wheeled truck would have to come through the exist­ing Tesco car park every 7 min­utes as nego­ti­a­tions had bro­ken down with the own­er of land north of Ful­beck Ave, pre­vi­ous­ly ear­marked. The route to the car park indi­cat­ed on the hand­out was through res­i­den­tial roads such as New Road (From the Lamb) and Romany Road.

“It was fur­ther revealed that apart from rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing NO oth­er sus­tain­able fea­tures are to be incor­po­rat­ed. Not even one solar pan­el.

“So there we are then, our coun­cil has allowed this mega rich con­glom­er­ate to build a shed that will be a blot on the land­scape, cre­ate a traf­fic night­mare, destroy local res­i­dents right to breathe clean air and enjoy peace and qui­et. Thank you coun­cil­lors you will be remem­bered at elec­tion time.

“What a shame not one reporter from either the Wor­thing Her­ald or Argus felt it nec­es­sary to be present to report on this. How­ev­er you can rely on The Dur­ring­ton and North­brook Times to report what’s going on to res­i­dents.”

http://www.protectourwoodland.co.uk/tea.htm