Street wardens in Haringey, north London, are taking the law into their own hands. On Saturday 25 February they violently got rid of people peacefully petitioning and leafletting and smashed up a paste table, under the watchful and complicit eyes of the police.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! were in the designated free speech area outside Haringey Library at Wood Green giving out leaflets for a meeting in London on 4 March on Imperialism, war and Resistance (email 
london@rcgfrfi.plus.com for more details) and petitioning against the war in Iraq and for the immediate withdrawal of British troops. Further down the road, another group were leafletting and on the megaphone about the atrocities being committed in Guantanamo Bay prison camps. They had been told to move into the free speech area by council street wardens who were gathering until there were about seven or eight of them. Suddenly they pounced on the other stall, seizing newspapers and leaflets, trying to take the table and being very rough with those who tried to stop them. These wardens were determined and soon began to smash the table up. The police arrived to back up the street wardens who then turned on our stall and stating that they had not liked our behaviour in support of the other group, they gave us two minutes to leave. The man in charge had the audacity to tell us that our behaviour had been out of order while he was snapping the wooden legs pulled off the confiscated table.
25 to 30 people gathered round and expressed their outrage at this blatant enfringement of civil liberties and free speech and the violent manner that all the officials and the police had acted in - all under the watchful eye of a CCTV camera (wot - no film guv!)
The Labour government is accumulating laws and still passing new repressive legislation against anyone who dares to challenge the status quo. Let us stand together to show that we will not be intimidated by such action, we will not be run off the streets, we will continue to highlight injustices at home and abroad.
Stand up for our rights!
Defend free speech!
london@rcgfrfi.plus.com for more details) and petitioning against the war in Iraq and for the immediate withdrawal of British troops. Further down the road, another group were leafletting and on the megaphone about the atrocities being committed in Guantanamo Bay prison camps. They had been told to move into the free speech area by council street wardens who were gathering until there were about seven or eight of them. Suddenly they pounced on the other stall, seizing newspapers and leaflets, trying to take the table and being very rough with those who tried to stop them. These wardens were determined and soon began to smash the table up. The police arrived to back up the street wardens who then turned on our stall and stating that they had not liked our behaviour in support of the other group, they gave us two minutes to leave. The man in charge had the audacity to tell us that our behaviour had been out of order while he was snapping the wooden legs pulled off the confiscated table. 25 to 30 people gathered round and expressed their outrage at this blatant enfringement of civil liberties and free speech and the violent manner that all the officials and the police had acted in - all under the watchful eye of a CCTV camera (wot - no film guv!)
The Labour government is accumulating laws and still passing new repressive legislation against anyone who dares to challenge the status quo. Let us stand together to show that we will not be intimidated by such action, we will not be run off the streets, we will continue to highlight injustices at home and abroad.
Stand up for our rights!
Defend free speech!
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Comments
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'Street wardens' are just another part of Blair's Gestapo
27.02.2006 20:21
Blair has ABSOLUTE power in the UK on 2 in 10 of the vote-enabled population. He is more powerful today than at any time, and is completely unopposed by any other political force within the UK. Despite being a full blown mass-raping mass-torturing mass-murdering psychopath, Blair now leads EVERY major nation of the West, including the US, Germany, France, Canada, Australia and Italy. His connections and influence over China and Russia are unprecedented.
Blair looks across a pending future of human atrocity that Hitler could not have imagined in his wildest fantasies.
Regardless, the rule for both monsters is the same. Both must advance their powers continuously. Blair has eliminated all freedoms in the UK, but is not yet ready to exercise full authority to ensure his new order is ruthlessly enforced. Instead, what we are currently seeing is wave after wave of suppression, each of which recruits and trains a new body of New Reich enforcers, and gives them opportunity to wield their fists and sticks.
There are those of you that will deny my words, saying that you still have freedoms defined in British Law. YOU ARE WRONG. Blair is now the only law the UK has. The courts and parliament are but an illusion, maintained for as long as Blair feels he benefits from it. Blair's people are now in power as the heads of EVERY significant body within the UK. Blair, like Hitler, fears ONLY the COMBINED will of the people, and like Hitler, ensures that combined will is kept correct by a mixture of complete control of the Mass Media message, and carefully arranged 'events'.
People protested Hitler in the 1930's, NOT because they had freedom to protest, but because it was not yet appropriate for Hitler to arrest and guillotine (look it up) them. Blair will move from smashing up stalls to executing HIS vocal enemies very soon.
It is ABSOLUTELY EXTRAORDINARY that probably not one of you reading this believe the bit about Blair executing his enemies soon. Why do I say this? Because history shows in 100% of similar cases, the executions are inevitable, and yet the success of Blair (and again, identical with Hitler during his early years in power) is in convincing his people that HE will not follow the guaranteed rule of history.
The article above describes the Gestapo thugs who proudly destroyed the protest stall. Recently, we have read about the Gestapo thugs that horrifyingly abused the actors from "Road to Guamtanamo". We all await Blair's approaching genocide of Iran (the date is set, the countdown begun). Is it not time for EVERYONE to refresh their knowledge of the last World War by reading in detail about Hitler's rise to power, and the state of Nazi Germany in the years preceeding Hitler's invasion of Poland. Blair does not have to begin by militarily expanding a 'homeland', since he has the advantage of merely needing political influence to control the power of the 'West'. Hitler had to 'conquer' many of his West European neighbours. Blair rules most of West Europe without even the need for an army.
Blair thanks god (well, whatever dark and vile god he serves) that his enemies focus on the crimes that he has so far carried out, and not the crimes that he is about to inflict on the World. When Blair begins his move on the Middle-East, leading a European army of occupation to deal with the 'aftermath' of the genocide of Iran (carried out almost exclusively by US military forces), his enemies will have all the ammunition they need, BUT THEIR TIME WILL HAVE RUN OUT.
We know the shape of the beginning of WW3. We know that the first phase will take millions of human lives (initially Iranian, but almost immediately afterwards those of many other muslim nations). We know that Europe will re-activate its military potential for the first time since WW2, with a massive integrated army lead by the French, Germans, and British and used initially to take control of the Middle-East oil fields. Once these events are underway, there will be no room for dissent within Europe.
Please remember that the events of WW1 were unthinkable to the people of 1913. Please remember that the events of WW2 were unthinkable to the people of 1938. If the events of Blair's WW3 remain unthinkable to most of the people of 2006, they are unstoppable. If Indymedia had existed in 1938, and you had the chance to read warnings about Hitler's crimes from the next 7 years, what would your response have been? For almost ALL of you, it would have been not disbelief, but total denial that such things could ever happen.
Will Blair be confronted with his genocidal crimes of tomorrow today, while he is still forced to allow some public dissent? Our future depends on the answer to this seemingly paradoxical question. It would have been far better for all of us had we stripped Blair of power the moment his wickedness shone through, but sometimes in history the very worst amongst us find that our social 'immune system' (with respect to evil) is severely damaged, and thus they rise to unprecedented positions of power with total ease.
twilight
i wish this news surprised me more
27.02.2006 23:58
we have to keep challenging these outrages, and we have to keep reporting and documenting them. thanks for your story. i hope you will all be back again in wood green next week, and please post details of future actions etc to see if you can build up numbers against this frightening repression.
on a parallel note, anyone noticed increasing police repression on public transport? my friend (an apparently straight, white, middle-class woman) was forced through a metal detector in a huge police operation at finsbury park last week, and then was approached at clapham by plain clothes officers this morning asking her for her oyster card for them to process where she had just come from.
when faced with these acts, we must keep asking what laws and powers are being used, defy them and refuse to co-operate wherever possible, fight them through the courts, publicise them, and scream from the rooftops about our ever-diminishing rights.
rikki
cctv
28.02.2006 17:39
.
Oyster card questioning
28.02.2006 19:11
well 1984 innit!!
ps weed green crew take cameras and video camera with you next time + document everything - good luck.
me too
Free speech zone?
03.03.2006 02:21
Substitute the phrase "street wardens" for "brownshirts" and you have a scene straight out of pre-Hitlerite Germany..
anon