M11 road demonstrators take to...

M11 road demonstrators take to..., originally uploaded by londoninflames.

Monday 28th November 1994. I'm in the first year of VI form. For some reason, probably related to lack of money, I've wandered home at lunchtime or during a morning free period, and discover on the news that protesters are massing at Claremont Road for the eviction. [It is worth pointing out here that a wise person might ask how come the protesters knew there was going to be an eviction - wouldn't it not be better for the eviction to be a surprise? The answer lies in police overtime payments, which are pretty generous, leading to tip offs - after all a well defended eviction means lots of overtime.] So i rinsed my mum for information as to why I didn't know about this beforehand and gained the admission I had expected. Yes, there had been a phone call last night but she had neglected to inform me. So what did I do. Well, here I made one of my more regular errors of judgement and went back to school to rustle up some numbers. After all, a lot of my fellow students had attended occupations and protests there in the past. But in the end, the sum total of people willing to join me was one. We headed for Leyton, disembarked, and along with a few hundred others, milled around.

It was an hour or two before the police and security really showed up. The first you heard was the howls and hoots from the rooftops as the protesters up there observed the dozens of police vans blocking off Grove Green Road. People on the streets were now scurrying up ladders into the upper windows or roofs of the houses, as the doors have long since been barricaded - generally hammered shut, then wooden or corrugated iron sheets nailed against the frame, then massive amounts of rubble and concrete behind them. Inside the houses a warren of lock-ons, security gates, barricades, false corridors, obstacles designed to slow the eviction. The first thing the cops have to do is clear the open end of Claremont Road, which they do with remarkable speed, removing the piles of rubble that block the street. Now people are in nets spread between trees and rooftops, like giant hammocks. Some are carabinad to aerial walkways. Hard to shift safely, yet possessed of an ease of movement....

http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html

Background to the Bill

Background to the Bill, originally uploaded by londoninflames.

It wasn't meant to be this way, apparently. Well, I guess it depends on what way it was meant to be. A thoroughly nasty bit of legislation.

NO POLICE STATE

NO POLICE STATE, originally uploaded by londoninflames.

oh the irony.

we are, of course, not living in a police state yet. but it's on its way.

criminal justice bill, page two

criminal justice bill, page two, originally uploaded by londoninflames.

Another page from the same source., complete with ranks of riot police. It was against the CJB that I attended my first protest march. On my own, because no-one I knew cared about politics (or if they did, they didn't care about my idea of politics). It think it must have been 1993. I don't really remember much of it - this wasn't the protest that ended in mass violence, this was one that ended in dull speeches from newspaper-salesmen. But as we walked up Whitehall there was a bit of a crush, and some noise. I joined the throng, and watched as a couple of black-clad crusty types attempted to scale the gates of Downing Street (incidentally, until Thatcher was in power Downing Street was ungated. Until Churchill's time the phone number was listed in the phone book). The crowd were watching, mostly applauding though of course there were a fair few jeers. Then the crowd shifted and I went down as some old girl with a bike was pushed or fell on top of me. Her bike pedal ripped my trouser leg, but of more concern to me was the fact that as I pushed myself up I saw, rather than heard, the police horses. The hooves were a couple of metres away from my head. The charge had dispersed the crowd alright, and I don't think there were any injuries. But I never heard a warning if any was given. At the time i remember being somewhat shocked - like even though I was on the demo i was clearly participating in a democratic peaceful action, and I was merely observing the gate-climbing. Why should my health have been put on the line then? Of course, now I know better.

The Criminal Justice Bill...

The Criminal Justice Bill..., originally uploaded by londoninflames.

Where's this from I wonder? Never mind, the underground press was full of this sort of stuff in 93 and 94, desperately trying to point out to as many people as possible what the CJA actually meant. In many ways it was the precursor of the erosion of civil rights that has gone on since then. In these less innocent days it seems bizarre to have the freedoms that we had before the CJB, and whenever I hear anyone carping about the smoking ban and the nanny state and the thin edge of the wedge whatnot, I find myself wondering where they were fifteen years ago when this all began. The thin edge of the wedge came when this bill was proposed (although some would say it began when Thatcher smashed the Unions), smoking is only somewhere in the middle. After all, you can't legitimately protest against the smoking ban any more innit!

Stonehenge 2000

Stonehenge 2000, originally uploaded by londoninflames.

Advert for Stonehenge solstice party 2000. Even though in 2000 you were still banned from the stones there was still an annual party there. In 1995 this fucked things up for the M11 protesters as a whole load of them went down to Stonehenge, leaving very few people guarding one of the camps, which was promptly taken by security (though if I recall correctly, one bloke managed to hold them off from his tree house for many hours single-handedly). Another case of hippy activism failing the non-hippy activists sadly - there were quite a few debates on this sort of thing.

Squall... ewoks?

Squall... ewoks?, originally uploaded by londoninflames.

While unable to fit the whole of this magazine on the scanner, i think this covers everything. Crusties wrapped up like ewoks? check. The Secret Service? Check. Raving in war-torm climes? Check. Asylum, poverty, pirates? Everything changes, everything stays the same!

Festival Eye Summer 1996

Festival Eye Summer 1996, originally uploaded by londoninflames.

Festival Eye has been going for over 20 years now. http://www.festivaleye.com/ In the earlier days it was a bit more political, as we can see here!

Claremont Road, No M11 Campaign

Claremont Road, No M11 Campaign, originally uploaded by londoninflames.

Another one of those pics that isn't one of mine and that I can't remember where I got it from. An aerial view looking west down Claremont Road. I can remember fascinated by the squatter communities in the area for years. As the Central Line Train into London rose out of the tunnels at Leytonstone and shook their way towards Leyton you'd see the houses with the odd paintwork, the famous two houses that had 'why bother?' and 'why not?' painted on the side. Then as the protest took off, more and more garishly painted properties, more banners, the beginning of that wonderful tower. By that time I had discovered my own politics (or the beginnings thereof), and can still remember my first visit there, all alone, in the summer of 1994. A geeky shy 15 year old used to heirarchical structures and waiting to be told what to do. Instead I was invited to wander around and see if anyone needed any help, had my phone number taken to put on the phone tree, and told not to try and do anything on my own, but some of the crane sitters might fancy some relief. Off I wandered, in search of someone to help. I found building site and fence sitters, but also security guards in abundance. When I finally discovered a site I could reach, the crusties happily whiling the hours away up a crane were adamant that they didn't need any help. Satisfied the world was safe in my absense, I went home.

The Wanstead Chestnut Tree

The Wanstead Chestnut Tree, originally uploaded by londoninflames.

Firstly, this isn't my picture. I copied it from someone on the internets and forget where from. But it's a great picture and represents my earliest experience of activist politics. I grew up a couple of miles down the road and found myself captivated by what was going on here. So I asked questions, and the answers I got made me agree with the protesters. Some facts about the Chestnut Tree - it was legally recognised as a dwelling based on the fact that the local postman delivered letters there. It was subject to firebomb attacks by local nazis. The remains of it still lie on George Green in Wanstead, a sick memorial to a tree that had bee the focal point of a pretty suburban green. I wasn't there at the time it was evicted, it was before I had joined up, though I occupied the post-Chestnut Tree site plenty of times in the next couple of years. If you were there drop me an email with your memories.



What's next? Well, this is from London Student magazine. It is, as you can see, a minor analysis of the Criminal Justice Bill 1994 - a bill that basically outlawed a fuck of a lot of things that we took for granted back then - and most famously (though perhaps not most importantly) targeted repetitive beats - making the very playing of most music (though they aimed at techno) in public a potential criminal offence. Wikipedia covers it well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Justice_and_Public_Order_Act_1994, and my adotted online hometown www.urban75.com was set up partially as a response to the use of legislation to target gatherings of football fans.

I apologise for the missing words in this scan (and others to come) but this was all scanned very quickly to facilitate my return of the docs before the lovely boohoo moved.