A Palestine Action (PA) activist was released from Foston Hall prison after a 37-day hunger strike soon after our last issue went to the printers, on 23 July.
Yogi Bear had been remanded to prison on 17 June after refusing to accept extremely restrictive bail conditions following a PA occupation of the Arconic Factory in Birmingham. (See PN 2655.) They were released after the conditions were reduced to simply remaining in one fixed abode, which they were willing to accept.…
Before the start of the DSEI arms fair in East London on 14 September, there were several arrests as many protesters attempted to blockade the two service roads used by vehicles carrying military hardware into the ExCeL Centre.
A great variety of groups organised a great variety of actions against DSEI this year, though numbers overall were smaller than in recent times.
This year, the mostly autonomous protests were co-ordinated by a coalition called ‘Stop the Arms Fair’ (STAF…
On 16 September, two Faslane Peace Campers had the case against them thrown out of Dunbarton justice of the peace court. One of them had spent nearly six weeks in prison on remand, waiting for the trial.
Willemien Hoogendoorn and Jon had been arrested for ‘breach of the peace’ on Hiroshima Day, 6 August, after blockading the North Gate of Faslane nuclear submarine base from 6.30am till around 12 noon.
According to the Helensburgh Advertiser, ‘tailbacks were reported in…
On 24 September, Paralympic gold medallist James Brown, 56, was sentenced to 12 months in prison for an Extinction Rebellion (XR) action at London City Airport during XR’s October 2019 ‘Rebellion’.
This first custodial sentence for an XR action was imposed for the offence of causing ‘a public nuisance’.
Alanna Byrne, of Extinction Rebellion UK, said: ‘We are shocked and devastated by this news.’
Human rights activist Peter Tatchell tweeted: ‘It’s an excessively harsh…
On 27 July, former US air force intelligence analyst Daniel Hale was sentenced to 45 months in prison by a court in Virginia, USA.
Hale, 33, had plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act by sharing government documents relating to targeted drone killings and other abuses in the ‘war on terror’.
Hale spoke in court before sentencing, saying: ‘I believe that it is wrong to kill, but it is especially wrong to kill the defenceless.’ He said he shared what ‘was necessary to dispel…
Most of us aren’t going to COP26, but for those who are thinking about it, here’s some information that may be useful.
Walking to Glasgow
A+E (an eco-art group based at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh) are organising a Pilgrimage for COP26, ‘a walk and a learning journey’, from Dunbar to Glasgow from 17 – 31 October. Participating organisations include: Deep Time Walk Project; Interfaith Edinburgh, Glasgow and Scotland; John Muir’s Birthplace; North Light Arts and…
Whether or not you’re going to Glasgow, here are some actions you can take for climate justice this year.
You can join or set up a COP26 Coalition local hub (see p1) and take action on 6 November: cop26coalition.org There are #DefundClimateChaos protests on 29 October, mostly in London at the time of going to press: defundclimatechaos.uk You – and your group – can sign this petition asking COP26 to…
At the end of August, the climate action group Extinction Rebellion (XR) struck a new note, politically, when it began its latest two-week ‘rebellion’ in London. It put a much more achievable demand at the centre of its protests: the UK government must stop all new fossil fuel investment immediately.
The actions mostly focused on disrupting the heart of finance in the UK, the City of London, though there were also occupations of the Science Museum, Oxford Circus, and (in Woking) the…
As part of the two weeks of protest against the Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair held in London’s ExCeL Centre, Stop the Arms Fair organised a Festival of Resistance on 11 September. They were joined by activists from Extinction Rebellion (XR), Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), Trident Ploughshares and others – there were even jointly-produced flyers available in the information tent (along with copies of PN). The XR activists I talked to all spoke…
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) revealed in mid-September that it had been a target of the Metropolitan police’s undercover Special Demonstration Squad during the 1980s.
Two undercover police officers were involved, according to the long-running Undercover Police Inquiry (UCPI).
‘John Kerry’ worked in the CND office in London between 1981 and 1984.
‘Timothy Spence’ inserted himself into a CND group in East London (as well as defence campaigns against the…
Climate change could flood Faslane naval base, home to Britain’s Trident nuclear missile submarine force. That’s one conclusion of Climate Impact – UK Nuclear Military, a report released in September by the independent research institute, the Nuclear Consulting Group (NCG).
Climate Impact says that; ‘Present UK coastal military nuclear infrastructure is profoundly vulnerable to flooding from sea-level rise, storm intensity and storm surge – with inland nuclear…
‘People shout “have a wash”, “get a job” but I have a full-time job’. Curly, one of the Cardiff Red Rebel Brigade who performed in Porthcawl on 5 June, explains that the Rebels are ‘everyday, regular people’, taking action for change.
‘We’re urging world leaders to act now. Out politicians and our governments are failing us all at the minute and we need them to act now on the real causes of the crisis. We need them to act on global inequality, unchecked corporate profiteering and…
Image A CND ‘NHS Not Trident’ banner was at the head of a large Palestine/peace/anti-war bloc.
PHOTOS: NHS WORKERS SAY NO TO PUBLIC SECTOR PAY INEQUALITY (TOP) LONDON CND (BOTTOM)
Do you remember the case of Ahmed Al-Batati, the British-Yemeni soldier who was arrested across the road from Downing Street on 24 August last year? (PN 2646 – 2647)
We have only just discovered Ahmed’s fate from the very wonderful Declassified UK group, who interviewed Ahmed last December.
It turns out that the authorities decided not to take action against Ahmed, and he was allowed to leave the army in December.
If you remember, Ahmed stood in his uniform next…
Somerset and Avon police and the Metropolitan police have been heavily criticised by an group of MPs for their handling of ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstrations in Bristol in late March and the Sarah Everard vigil in south London on 13 March.
The all-party parliamentary group on democracy and the constitution also condemned the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill, the focus of the ‘Kill the Bill’ campaign.
In a report published on 1 July, the group of MPs found that ‘the police…
On 25 June, Britain’s supreme court set an important legal precedent when it ruled that protesting can be a ‘lawful excuse’ for deliberately disruptive action that obstructs the highway. It made this ruling as it confirmed the acquittal of four Christian anti-arms trade campaigners.
The case dates back to the 2017 DSEI arms fair in East London, when Chris Cole, Henrietta Cullinan, Joanna Frew and Nora Ziegler were arrested (while locked-on to each other in pairs) on the ‘No Faith in…
Extinction Rebellion (XR) reports that 1,000 climate ‘rebels’ descended on Cornwall in mid-June to try to influence delegations at the G7 summit.
On the first day, 11 June, activists from the Global South carried letters to G7 leaders, which security at the summit venue refused to take.
On the second day, rebels marched to the G7 summit media centre in Falmouth and demanded that the press report more effectively on climate change (see photo).
On Day 3, dozens of…
On 7 July, 500 people came to Parliament Square, London, to launch the ‘Drive2Survive’ campaign.
Drive2Survive is a coalition of Romany Gypsy, Irish Traveller, nomadic activists and community organisations opposed to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
The bill would create a crime of ‘residing or intending to reside on land without the permission of the owner or occupier’.
Drive2Survive says the bill threatens to ‘criminalise, demonise and ultimately…
There have been at least seven Palestine Action (PA) actions in the last two months – and a PA prisoner, Yogi Bear, was entering their fifth week on hunger strike in Foston Hall prison as we went to press.
In the latest PA action, at 6am on 12 July, two campaigners smashed windows and property inside a factory in Tamworth, Staffordshire, owned by a subsidiary of the Israeli drone manufacturer Elbit Systems. Two others occupied the roof, spraying red paint.
The activists aimed…
On 14 July, the UK government announced proposals to end all prosecutions for crimes committed during Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ – and all related civil cases, inquests and complaints about police wrongdoing.
One effect would be that no British military personnel – or loyalist or republican paramilitaries – could be prosecuted for murdering civilians, so long as their crimes were committed before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Out of the 3,600 people killed during the…
