yet another blog

Further to the totally disproportionate policing of this year’s Camp at Kingsnorth in Camp, the following Press Release has just been issued by the media people at the Climate Camp website…

Police spend £6 million on heavy handed policing of Kingsnorth Climate Camp

23 September 2008
For immediate release

A Freedom of Information request made by the BBC has revealed that the
cost of policing the Camp for Climate Action in Kent in August came to
£5.9 million.

The policing of the camp, including indiscriminate use of stop and search,
frequent use of helicopters and a number of violent incursions on to the
camp over the course of the week, was accused of being ‘heavy handed’ and
‘disproportionate’ by critics ranging from MEP Caroline Lucas to Labour MP
Colin Challen.

“This has been an outrageous waste of public money,” said camp participant
Kevin Smith. “It’s money that has been spent protecting E.On’s profit
margins, clamping down on people’s civil liberties and trying to prevent a
much needed public debate on coal and climate change from taking place.”

“This £6 million wasn’t just spent on the day of action against
Kingsnorth,” said Janie Shiraz. “It was mostly spent over the course of
the week in stopping and searching every man, woman and child entering the
site, it was spent keeping local residents awake with the helicopter all
night, and it was spent on police running around on site with nothing to
do as people sat in tents trying to talk about climate change.
‘Disproportionate response’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Wainscott resident Andy Rogers said: “I attended the camp and I feel that
the underhanded and incredibly intimidating use of political policing at
the camp was an out and out infringement of my human rights, including my
freedom of speech and the right under law to attend a peaceful protest.
Surely six million pounds of what is essentially tax payers’ money would
have been better spent introducing a moratorium on coal fired power
stations”.

Camp for Climate Action activists have vowed to target the power station
and its owners E.ON with an ongoing direct action campaign if approval is
given for a new plant.

ENDS

For more information, phone 07772 861 099 or 0793 209 6677, or email
press (at) climatecamp.org.uk

www.climatecamp.org.uk

Located this year at Kingsnorth in Kent, where it is proposed that a new coal-fired power station will be constructed by e.on, the energy giant.

And this year’s Climate Camp attracted a higher level of repressive policing than I’ve witnessed at any of the events I’ve attended over the past few years.
Policing that went way beyond what any reasonable person would consider necessary, and set against a backdrop of smear stories and inflammatory allegations (such as the supposed “discovery” of “caches of weapons”) that bore little resemblance to anything I saw “on the ground”.

Yet despite all that the Camp still attracted a record number of people, with estimates putting the figure at more than either of the previous two Camps (the first at Drax in Yorkshire, the second at Heathrow), and still managed to successfully launch a number of protest actions.

And, on-site, the people were as friendly as ever, and just as eager to share their knowledge and skills with those who are only know engaging with the issue of climate change and related problems.

Its such a shame that the police still haven’t yet realised that Climate Camp protesters are not the real criminals. That honour must surely lie at the door of the big corporations that continue to pollute and destroy our environment in the name of profit… and the governments that support them.

For my own personal account of my week at Climate Camp see this article at TawNews.
And photos are on Flickr, mirrored on Envirospeak.

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!