War An intelligent, cultured

War

An intelligent, cultured man, he claimed to be broadly sympathetic and to see us as a nice bunch of people butopenly admitted that there are very powerful people putting pressure on him to act. Nobody could deny, however nicely he phrased it, that our right to peaceful protest was being curtailed. With so many new people, we ran out of Bust Cards to distribute but no one let the threat of further politicised arrests dissuade them. Undaunted we set off to Oxford Circus to pay a visit to some of our old friends. Topshop, BHS, Vodafone, Boots: it was like a UK Uncut Greatest Hits Tour. Dozens of speeches were made, thousands of leaflets distributed, hundreds of remarks and gestures of praise and solidarity received from passers-by. And the response from the press? Silence. Not a line of copy anywhere. No arrests, no broken windows no story. UK Uncut protesters have been watched and followed by undercover officers for months now. It must be perfectly obvious from their own intelligence that Sunday s police presence was totally unnecessary and completely over War top. The government keeps telling us we re short of money so why is so much being wasted on unnecessary, political policing? We individuals who take to the streets week after week to act under the banner of UK Uncut and take a stand against tax avoidance by rich corporations do so because we care about this country. Everything that is great about Britain, including the NHS and the welfare state which helped this country recover after the Second World War, is being destroyed by a small group of rich individuals who are using the consequences of the recklessness of their backers to launch an ideological assault on the most vulnerable in society. We will not be intimidated, neither by press smears nor by press silence, neither by political arrests nor by the condemnation of David Cameron in Parliament. We take strength from the support of Neal Lawson, chair of Compass, who has signed a joint statement with the heads of NGOs and Trade Unions backing the right to protest. We take strength from the support of the MPs who refused to remove their names from an Early Day Motion praising UK Uncut when told to do so by the Prime Minister. The police are being used by the state as a tool to clamp down on dissent but we will keep coming back. We are winning the argument and we will not give up. Education, childcare, the NHS, pensions, Disability Living Allowance, the libraries, the EMA, rape crisis centres all of these things, and many, many more, are too important to abandon in the face of rich thugs making cuts that Margaret Thatcher could only have dreamt of. It s business as usual for the War tax avoiders and the friends of the Conservatives. It has to be business as usual for those willing to take a stand to stop them. You cannot stop an idea. Great piece Tim! I had not realised just how many police there were attending Sunday s demo. I certainly hope this won t be an escalation in the way UKuncut or similar demonstrations are policed. Someone recently pointed out the aggravated trespass laws were tightened for use in policing animal rights activists and the police certainty don t go easy on them. We must continue however, not escalating the issue as police have done, but as has been put so rightly business as usual. Funny isn t it, a peaceful protest and the media is nowhere to be seen. Sounds like the cops and the state are clamping down, think Matt Foot makes a very pertinent point when he says the UK Uncut arrests could be the start of the end re peaceful protests. Thankyou for this. As a UK Uncutter away from the capital, I am very interested to see our local force s response to our next demo this weekend. I m glad no one got arrested this time and also glad that at least the police were honest and informative, instead of underhand trickery. It is incredibly scary how the protestors in Fortnum and Mason s were treated, as you say pure political policing. Someone posted the text of Neil Kinnocks famous speech to me recently and it is chilling in how relevant his warnings still are today. His section relevant to protesting is: I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light. I warn you that you will be quietwhen the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient. So much for being strong on civil liberties, same old Nasty Party! This political policing is so counter productive I can see a lot of people thinking as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb and rather than being put off protesting as the gov. hopes, will get a lot more direct. Why do they think they can bully like this with no consequences? Where is the publicity regarding UK Uncut s campaign in the media? When the Fortnum and Mason demonstration was high-jacked by the hooligans at the front, my family and friends were convinced UK Uncut were involved as they were listening to and watching the TV reporting which said so. Only through Twitter did I realise what was going on and was able to put them right. Maybe the reluctance of the mainstream press to report on UK Uncut s actions, goes a little further than not reporting a well-behaved protest? Maybe they have an unwillingness to keep positive stories about UK Uncut out of the press? It makes me wonder As the media don t want to publicise this we have to do it for them! So get tweeting, blogging, facebooking etc etc.