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....

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