Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Political Apartheid: Policing of the Climate Camp Protests.

Fitwatcher | 20.08.2007 19:09 | Climate Camp 2007 | Repression | London

"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.

"A RIOT cop restrains a protester": The Sun (1)
"A RIOT cop restrains a protester": The Sun (1)


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 carpark, and ended up being forced to abandoin 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

Fitwatcher
- e-mail: defycops@yahoo.co.uk
- Homepage: http://fitwatch.blogspot.com/

Comments

Display the following 4 comments

  1. The powers that be? — Itsme
  2. WHAT!!! — Joan
  3. Direct response — fitwatcher
  4. All resistance will be squashed... — Krop
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech