Report back from Anti Shell actions in London — Gluaiseacht, RoR, anonymous

Glu­aiseacht mem­bers along with Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers, friends and British sup­port­ers took part in 3 dif­fer­ent actions over the week­end of St Patrick in Lon­don. Here is a sum­ma­ry of their sto­ry!
..
Hav­ing start­ed at Ennis in Coun­ty Clare at 11am on Fri­day the 14th pick­ing up peo­ple along the way a full coach load of bewil­dered peo­ple arrived on Ram­part street home of the The Ram­part Social Cen­ter. It is soon to be evict­ed so we felt lucky to be there.

Hav­ing found a place to set up our var­i­ous air beds and sleep­ing mats some put the head down for a few hours kip while most went out and about look­ing to do some site see­ing, watch the rug­by or catch up with friends or rela­tions in Lon­don town.

The rest of the Day was made up of cook­ing food the mass­es and hav­ing plan­ning meet­ings for the week­ends actions.

THE ACTIONS

Hav­ing assem­bled at the giv­en point on Sun­day morn­ing for our part in the Parade it was decid­ed to keep our ban­ners fold­ed for the first few min­utes until the parade got under­way as he had received warn­ing that organ­is­ers weren’t hap­py with pro­test­ers in their parade and may ask police to con­fis­cate polit­i­cal ban­ners.

After about 5 mins of walk­ing we unveiled the ban­ners and began singing songs and pass­ing out leaflets to the crowds. We were well received for the most part and the songs stream­ing out from our many mega­phones seemed to lift the crowd on what was a wet and cold lon­don day.

Just as the parade was near its end police did indeed try to take out ban­ners but we were too fast for them. The were quot­ing the new SOCPA laws which pre­vent any protest at all with­in a mile of any point around West­min­ster Par­lia­ment build­ing.

We had heard that Enda ken­ny and John Gorm­ley were to make speech­es at Ken Liv­ingston’s St Patrick­’s par­ty in Trafal­gar square lat­er so we head­ed on up there. As we arrived Mr Gorm­ley was mak­ing his speech. We were unable to get near to the stage so instead unveiled ours pipeline and ban­ners at the top end of the square and some mem­bers of our group spoke on the mega phone to the assem­bled crowd about why they were there.

Wet but sat­is­fied we made our way back home to the Ram­part.

The SHELL HQ

The fol­low­ing morn­ing we head­ed over to Water­loo home of Shell in Lon­don. The pipe was unwrapped again and pre­sent­ed at the Door of Shell by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the dif­fer­ent sec­tions with­in our group. John from Mayo protest­ing the coer­cion of the local com­mu­ni­ty, Bro Antho­ny from Lim­er­ick protest­ing the Rob­bery Irish nat­ur­al resources and Lau­ra from Italy protest­ing Shells record of crimes and against human­i­ty and the envi­ron­ment world wide. Despite calls for a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to receive the pipe om Shells behalf none were forth­com­ing. Then the par­ty start­ed and musi­cians and mobile sound sys­tem cranked out the tunes and the crowd danced Irish jigs out­side the build­ing. This helped to keep us warm and our spir­its up.

Watch RTE footage here http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0317/corrib.html

The SHELL INVESTORS MEETING

This meet­ing was one for Shell to sell them­selves to poten­tial investors. We decid­ed to remind these investors that it would be unwise to receive stolen prop­er­ty or to become acces­sories to world­wide human and envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion. With this in mind we went off to The Lon­don Tow­er bridge hotel where the meet­ing was to take place. The group repeat­ed the ear­li­er per­for­mance of music and danc­ing while parad­ing the pipeline out side the hotel and around the assem­bled police. Hav­ing found the con­fer­ence room where the meet­ing was tak­ing place mem­bers of the group advised any poten­tial investors of the record of shell world­wide and asked police to arrest those inside for there mur­der­ous activ­i­ties.

With that we all piled onto the bus again to head for home exhaust­ed but exhil­a­rat­ed at the same time.

http://www.gluaiseacht.ie
http://www.corribsos.com/
http://www.mayogasinfo.com/faq.html

—

old street shell garage evening of 17th march

Mem­bers of Rhythms of Resis­tance Sam­ba band vis­it­ed Shel­l’s old street petrol sta­tion around 8pm on the evening of 17th March to spread infor­ma­tion about the pipeline to passers by and dri­vers vis­it­ing the petrol sta­tion.
We decid­ed not to actu­al­ly block the entrance/exit but instead to play on the fore­court (love­ly accoustics!).
On arrival we noticed a tanker on the fore­court fill­ing up the pumps. As he atemped to leave we decid­ed to sand in front of his lor­ry and stop him leav­ing, and gave him a fly­er explain­ing why we were present.
Sev­er­al times the irate dri­ver moved his vehi­cle for­ward attaempt­ing to squash/scare those peo­ple stand­ing in front of the lor­ry.
Even­tu­al­ly when he failed in run­ning us over he decid­ed to make a phone call instead,(we pre­sumed to the police), and at this point we moved away from in front of the lor­ry but he just con­tin­ued to sit there.
At this point we decid­ed to leave before the police arrived and return once he had left and the police had been and gone.

On our return some 20 minu­ites lat­er we again went onto the fore­court and com­menced drum­ming, but this time two police appeared with­in some minu­ites.
We were asked to move to the pave­ment and com­plied, all the time drum­ming.
Soon the police returned from their car again and asked us if we’d promise to not go back onto the fore­court so they could leave and deal with 5 rob­beries!?
We said yes, of course.
So they left.
We con­tin­ued for a while longer, wit­ness­ing a ‘biodiesel’ taxi enter the fore­court and fill up with reg­u­lar diesel.
On talk­ing to the dri­ver he told me ‘you got­ta put diesel in it and there’s nowhere to buy biodiesel’ and when i said ‘so the fact it says on the side “run on biodiesel” is a lie then?’ he replied “yes’.

Shell Sells Sui­cide
Some words:

there’s a bird dressed in black
there’s a world near­ly cracked
there is me, there is you
what the hell shall we do?

it’s not hard to explain
all the ways we can gain
from a world with­out oil
no more spills, no more spoils

Shell smells sweet gas off the seashore in Mayo
they think it’s theirs just ‘cos the gov­ern­ment says so
but they for­got about the will of the peo­ple
and the peo­ple of Mayo say ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no -
it’s Shell that’s got to go!’

Shell sells sui­cide on the fore­court
Shell sells sui­cide
Shell sells sui­cide with such fore­thought
or
Shell smells sweet gas over in Ross­port
or
Shell smells sweet oil in Port Har­court
Shells sells eco­cide

Shell buys South Bank silence com­plete­ly
Shell sells wild lies
Shell kills wildlife and still smiles so sweet­ly
Shell kills wildlife (and some­where the future qui­et­ly dies…or is reborn?)

here’s a bird dressed in black
there’s a world near­ly cracked
there is me, there is you
what the hell shall we do?
— can we start anew?
— say farewell to Shell
— say no to oil etc.

—

From an anony­mous tipoff call very ear­ly in the morn­ing two Shell ser­vice sta­tions were found to have been D‑locked and shut down for sev­er­al hours on the morn­ing of Mon­day 17 March 2008.

To coin­cide with the Shell Day of Action and vis­it­ing mem­bers of the Shell To Sea cam­paign from Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land, although no con­nec­tion apart from sol­i­dar­i­ty, some activists took it upon them­selves to shut down two of Shel­l’s garages.

The ser­vice sta­tions remained closed for sev­er­al hours as frus­trat­ed staff used hack saws to remove the D‑locks clamped around petrol pumps.

The Day of Action also saw Irish pro­tes­tors deliv­er 20 metre pipeline to Shell HQ on South­bank Lon­don, and gave a live­ly protest.

Shell recent­ly declared record prof­its for the sec­ond year run­ning, the sec­ond time the cor­po­ra­tion has bro­ken all UK records for prof­it made by a British com­pa­ny, this year declar­ing £13.9 bil­lion.

But the dam­age from this com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to span the globe from Coun­ty Mayo in Ire­land, where the unfin­ished gas refin­ery con­struc­tion has pol­lut­ed the local water sup­ply with high lev­els of alu­mini­um, to the con­tin­u­ing eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion of the Niger Delta, where death and dis­ease from pol­lu­tion and pipeline acci­dents has become a week­ly occur­ance.