As of Sunday 3rd (i.e., the day after tomorrow!) don’t expect much activity either on this blog or my photoblog for a few days. Well, prob’ly closer to a coupla weeks actually.
For I be off on my rambles again. This time to the Climate Camp that’s even now in process of being set up near Kingsnorth Power Station in northeast Kent.
Well, I say “in process of being set up”. That’s when they can manage to do the setting up in between bully-boy incursions by the local Gestapo… um, sorry, I meant political police. Um… no, what I actually meant was “officers of Kent’s constabulary”.
Apparently, within 24 hours or so of the site being “claimed” the local boys in blue swarmed all over the place, searching, using pepper spray, arresting, and generally being a bit intimidatory. Nothing new there then.
No doubt they saw it as payback time for when a police incursion was made at the Climate Camp last year, situated near Heathrow.
A detachment of cops marched on… and were very promptly marched off again by the assembled campers, who quite rightly objected to such arrogant tactics. A few red faces in the cop canteen that night probably.
In fact, thinking about it, the cops didn’t have a very good time of it last year. What with being unceremoniously ejected from the Camp and then, in Harmondsworth village, the lovely Chief Inspector Pendry sending a detachment of riot cops away with a flea in their ear (see this), they’ve got a lot of ground to make up.
Which is to say nothing of one cop being thrown from her horse in the “Battle of the Beanfield”.
So, this time around they have apparently managed to seize a number of items that they claim could be used to cause criminal damage, including such offensive things as kids’ crayons and a couple of board games. Wow!
And that’s to say nothing of their seizure of stuff intended to help construct the camp and make it a relatively comfortable, safe, and hygienic place for later arrivals. (Bearing in mind its not just your hardened activist that comes to Climate Camp, but also folk who simply want to find out about the issues, or learn the skills required to develop an environmentally friendly and sustainable lifestyle, and elderly people, and disabled folk, and kids… in other words, a fairly representative cross-section of society as a whole.)
This article on Indymedia has the full story.
Yet the Camp’s not toally without supporters in the Establishment. Check out this article by the parliamentarian Chris Davies published in today’s Guardian newspaper, which also gives some background to the issues that the Camp’s all about.
Of course, there’s a subtext to this recent escapade by the cops. Quite aside from any “legitimate” reason they may claim to have for such heavy-handed policing, one can’t help but wonder whether part of their ploy is not just to “assert their authority” but also to deter others from coming to the Camp.
That motivation (i.e., the suppression of political dissent and activism) quite clearly has a large part to play in their deployment of FIT officers at “political” events, so its reasonable to suppose that such motivation may well have informed this recent “raid”.
So when are they gonna wake up and realise that if anything it just makes the committed activist even more determined to act, as much in protest against the repression as against the issue at hand.
And talking of FIT, fitwatch have today circulated a callout for fitwatchers to come to the Camp. I quote:
“please forward x
Celebrate Fitwatch’s 1st Birthday at Climate Camp
This year’s Climate Camp will also celebrate Fitwatch’s first outing to a major protest. Since then we have gone from strength to strength.
Use Fitwatch tactics all week, and join us to celebrate our anniversary on the day of mass action (9th August). Together we can render the FIT ineffective, and you too can experience the pleasure of forcing a cameraman to retreat.
During the year, we have received criticism on our blog for being “professional protesters”. However, we agree. We take protest seriously. We want to be effective, and to do this we need reclaim our anonymity.
Fitwatch - bring the professional back into protesting!”
Needless to say, this heightened cop activity right from the off won’t deter me from my plans, as I suspect goes for a lot of other folk as well.
So there you have it. Blogging silence from me for at least a week or so (who was that who just said “Phew, thank heaven for that”?).
Oh, almost forgot to mention… the Climate Camp website’s here!
