Home | 18th August 1995 | Issue 36

Wake Up! Wake Up! The World Is Under Attack!

SchNEWS
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CARRY ON PROTESTING!

ACTIVISTS TURN UP THE HEAT IN SUMMER SCORCHER

Don't believe the hype! Reports that the powers-that-be are NOT trying to use the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) to put down party and protest around the country are, well, wrong. Here's a week in the life of Britain 1995....

KENT
Last Thursday people opposing the Thanet Way road-widening decided to have a mass trespass followed by a Full Moon party. Kent police however, panicking at the thought of a large rave on their doorsteps, set up roadblocks and even trapped legendary festie band Tofu Love Frogs in a Tesco's car-park for hours! Later the squatted World War Two bunker was illegally evicted and seven people were arrested under the rave sections of the CJA, including one girl who was asleep in a car at the time. All were later released without charge. Eventually a party did kick off at midnight on the mouth of the tunnel of the new road and lasted a few hours before police broke it up. One organiser told SchNEWS: "It wasn't loud and will be nothing compared to the noise of the new road." But others at the party felt that the site was rather inconsiderate for nearby residents giving Kent police the ammunition they needed to come in and stop the party.

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
On Friday three members of Black Moon SoundSystem were up in court - the first people in the UK to be charged under the rave sections of the Act. BlackMoon were part of 'the Mother' - billed as the free festival of the summer in direct defiance of the CJA - when police mounted a huge operation to stop it involving phone-tapping, roadblocks and confiscating rigs back in July. Despite all this four smaller parties still went ahead. However 11 people in total were arrested, some charged with "conspiracy to cause a public nuisance" which carries a maximum life sentence. Black Moon face a £2,500 fine and/or 3 months in prison and could lose their £9,000 rig. Their next trial date is Friday 1st September 10am - be there and give support.
Advance Party 0181450 6929
United Systems 0181959 7525

NORTH YORKSHIRE, CUMBRIA AND NORTHUMBERLAND
Saturday and the so-called Glorious Twelfth where people go round blowing birds out the sky. Around 200 Hunt Saboteurs disrupted a total of 8 shoots. Interestingly, there were only 11 arrests, none of which were under the CJA despite North Yorkshire police (with a Chief Constable who lists one of his main hobbies as shooting!) being one of the main forces advocating the implementation of the Act.

AVON
Saturday ... 300 people closed down Bath City Centre for a couple of hours in a cross between a Critical Mass cycle action and a Reclaim The Streets party.

LINCOLNSHIRE
Brayford Road Action Group were in court after a roof top protest on the route of the proposed road in the heart of Lincoln. Three people faced charges for "aggravated trespass".

LONDON
Saturday and a small party of Sioux Indians disrupted the opening of the film Waterworld in protest at director Kevin Costner's decision to build a golf course on their ancestral land in South Dakota's Black Hills. On the same day 60 people demonstrated outside the American Disney Store - in solidarity with the jailed black activist Mumia Abu Jamal, on Death Row in the US for a crime he did not commit.

HAMPSHIRE
On Sunday 500 people chilled out on Soutsea Common in Portsmouth for the annual Smokey Rears Picnic. Under the CJA fines for the possession of cannabis has risen from £500 to £2,500. There were no arrests but police took car-owners registration numbers!

BERKSHIRE
The tree-people are still these in Windsor Great Park preventing the felling of 300-year-old Oaks being cut coz they don't look pretty! An open day Saturday week (19th) should be interesting - why not pop along?

STRATHCYLDE
Cheering protestors celebrated in court as Hunt Saboteur Derek McCulloch was acquitted when the Sheriff called an end to a farcical trial Derek and three others were nicked under the CJA for aggravated trespass last year when police launched a:£30,000 operation - and their helicopter - to stop an anti-hunt protest .... of nine people. Three charges were dropped and Derek's hastily reduced to 'breach of the peace'. One red-faced cop was heard muttering 'the bastard walked'. 'The bastard' is now suing the police for wrongful arrest.

ESSEX
Today in Brightlingsea 200 people have pledged to sit down in the road in front of the lorries - until they are arrested if necessary - in protest at the continuing live animal export trade through their town. It seems Essex police have had enough. One resident told the SchNEWS that word on the street is that "they've been given the nod from Home Office to go for it". At the last mass-sit down people were complaining they'd sat down umpteenth times but hadn't been arrested, and that only people who 'look funny' we're getting nicked. So one 'avin' it 80-year-old granny will be sporting a nose ring and bright green hair!

Party and Protest

SAT 26th Anti-vivisection protest Marian Brines, 70-year-old survivor of Belsen concentration camp to spend a week in a monkey cage to highlight plight of monkeys at Shamrock Farm 01273 857077

FRI 25th Towersey Village Festival, Oxon 01296 433669

FRI 25th-28th Green Student Camp Mid-Wales 01703 315643

SUN 27th Guildford Folk and Blues Festival 01483 444334 * Midsomer Norton Music Festival 01761 417831

SUN 27th-28th Notting Hill Carnival Mental!

MON 28th- 2nd SEPT Stop The Hawks Deal! Peace Camp 01618340295

MON 28th Sutton Green Fair, Surrey 01817155571

SUN 3rd SEPT Stop the Arms Fair Action against Royal Navy and British arms equipment exhibition, Aldershot, Hants 01712810297

For regular updates of road actions round the country ring Road Alert! 01635 521770

For updated anti-CJA activities ring Freedom Network Action Line 0171 501 9253

E

You lucky people. Here in Brighton it seems we are fortunate in having a police force that tolerates and even co-operates with the free party scene. The picture elsewhere is far from rosy. Channel 4 news last month compared the police action to prevent The Mother festival with Berlin's annual Love Parade. To German authorities, the repetitive beats of dance music are not the tattoo of a marauding army of itinerants, but the choreography of a national celebration.

The dance music scene as we know it began at the end of the 1980s with Acid House parties. Fuelled by the drug Ecstasy ravers danced to a seamless mix of highly rhythmical music. The music had originated in clubs in America but was mutated in Ibiza and the party spirit was brought back by returning holiday-makers.

Acid House parties often went on throughout the night in unlicensed venues. The parties were therefore not only the birthing ground of the Great British Ecstasy revolution, but also the beginning of a resurgence of DiY culture. Small groups got themselves organised, built up sound systems and arranged parties with no commercial motive. These people were doing it for themselves - providing people with the music they wanted to hear in a place that could stay open for as long as they wanted.

A swift tightening up of legislation meant party organisers had to use ingenious methods to outwit the police. The retreat into the underground paved the way for massive commercial legal raves in the early nineties. Merchandisers began mass production of a parody of the scene making souvenirs like tacky Acid House T-shirts.

To date the dance music phenomenon has infiltrated the lives of more people than any other youth subculture. The associated industry is reputed to have an annual worth of £20 billion. It is hardly surprising then that clubs, pubs, event organisers and drinks companies have been welcoming party goers with open arms realising the value of keeping in with the in-crowd. The Government has also rubbed its hands with glee at the increase in revenue and clamped down on alternatives.

The Criminal Justice Act was the Governments' biggest mistake. Ecstasy was the driving force behind the dance scene and to a lesser extent still is. The empathy its users felt created an atmosphere so radically different from that associated with the socially acceptable drug alcohol, new ways of behaviour were developed and cherished by its users.

When the Government decided such proceedings were unacceptable, the parties became political. Ecstasy has politicised its users in more subtle ways too. One journalist told me that younger clubbers are so fed up with the lies they read about Ecstasy that it has made them realise that not everything they read in the papers is true. In a country where there is such a politically biased media, this can only be a good thing.

Media hysteria about Ecstasy masks the truth about the drug. Risk of death has been estimated at 1 in 2.4 million (five times less risky than a skiing holiday). These risks would be dramatically reduced if environmental conditions where Ecstasy is used were modified. The media negates to tell us these facts nor the positive sides of the drug - reported drops in violence, increases in spirituality and the rest.

There are approximately 5 million users who understand the politics of Ecstasy. This gives free party organisers a very strong position to fight the commercialisation of their lifestyle. Exodus are a Luton-based collective that organise parties and use the takings from a collection box to fund their community projects. These parties with a purpose have so far allowed the development of a community farm and housing scheme in once derelict buildings. Rioting on Luton's Marsh Farm estate during July was quelled when Exodus put on a party.

"We called ourselves Exodus because what we are doing is knocking extortion out of our lives" says Glenn Jenkins, the collective's spokesperson. "Exodus indicates a large number of people moving from one way of life to another. Emancipate yourself from mental slavery."

"The Criminal Justice Act is about freedom - freedom to make profit, freedom to build roads without people interfering, freedom to siphon people into pubs and clubs instead of churches and fields. That is why it is heavily sponsored by the Tory party."

We shouldn't hold our breath for our own Love Parade. We may not even want the wholesale cash-in that is associated with the German dance scene. We should, however, be demanding our share of freedom - the freedom to look after ourselves, not to have to pay £1.50 for a glass of tap water. The freedom to create our own entertainment, not to have to pay £25 to dance in the middle of a fun fair.

* A police patrol chasing a car being driven with no lights was pelted with 100s of Ecstasy tabs last week. The car was eventually stopped at Sevenoaks, Kent, and officers found more pills worth £1,000s.

INSIDE SchNEWS

TREFOR HARRIS FH1875 who got 20 months for affray at last October's anti CJA Hyde Park rally writes: "Now that the Bill has passed it seems that a lot of people who spoke out against it have now let the matter rest:' Prove him wrong!

MARK SKELLY FH1589 is also inside for 12 months for his alleged role in the riot at last October's demo. "I threw a couple of banner sticks - no-one got hurt - but they put me down as a prime trouble maker." They're both at HM P Brixton, Jebb Ave, Brixton, London SW2 5XF

STUART EDWARDS PB1864 & JIM CHAMBERS PV2504 recently got 18 months apiece for alleged damage to a road construction site. HMP Pentonville, Caledonian Rd, London, N7 8TT

PHIL EJ3496 arrested at the antifascist demo in Welling HMP Elmley, Church Road, Eastchurch, Sheerness, Kent, ME12 4DZ

* Eight prisoners are on a 'dirty protest' at Whitemoor jail in Cambridgeshire. Opened in 1991 as a modern state-of- the-art jail it is known amongst prisoners as the worst long term prison in the country. "The place is at boiling point, with violence increasing and a never-ending catalogue of abuses of human rights. Now they even want to start searching the cleavages of female visitors and tape-recording and videoing the visits themselves."
More info: 0171937 1688.

DODGY DRUGS

What are you on? In an (illegal) chemical analysis of 30 street samples of Ecstasy half had no traces of MDMA, including: Yellow with dark flecks, fracture line on back- 10mm x 5.5mm. Caffeine, ephedrine and ketamine. Potentially dangerous
* Party Time (PT imprint) 196mg MDEA. Very high dose
* Diamond. 45mg amphetamine and unknown substance
* Sitting Duck. Crude bird motif. Ketemine, ephedrine and selegiline.
Monthly updates on E tested is on the Net: http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/bt22/
Taken from: Ecstasy and the Dance Culture by Nicholas Saunders & MaryAnna Wright published Sept 4 £9.95
Release: 24hr helpline 0171 729 5755

SchNEWS IN BRIEF

China conducted its second underground Nuclear blast yesterday at the main test site in the remote desert of western Xinjaing. The shock registered 5.6 on the Richter scale. Earlier this week six Greenpeace activists were arrested for unfurling their anti-nuke banner in Tianaman Square. The protestors, from the five nuclear states - Britain, France, Russia, US and China - were held along with seven Chinese reporters who witnessed the action. International pressure is building up against France which is due to start nuclear testing in the Polynesian Atoll Mururoa on September 8th.

* It's tenterhooks at Newbury where the govt have put out to tender the contract to build the bypass. This could give protestors another 6-9 months, however they are worried that what with the govt being taken to court over breaches of European directives, bulldozers might be brought in early to trash the site a la Twyford Down. So get on the action phoneline and join in the protest: 01488 682817.

and Finally

'UFOs CIRCLE BRIGHTON AS POLLUTION RISES' reports the front page of the Brighton Leader. Cigar-shaped aircraft with pulsating red lights have upped their visitations to help the planet in a time of crisis, says Larry Dean, 41, of Skysearch. He believes that "aliens are visiting the Earth to solve the problem of pollution". A white-streak which "turned into a triangular object and then separated into two spheres" was spotted over the Justice? Office! In London thousands of mysterious luminous green aliens this week invaded advertisement posters with the line "Beam me up, I can't breathe." "It's not us, " said spokesalien Sam from anti-pollution activists Reclaim the Streets.... Talking about being watched by alien beings - three new CCTV spy cameras are to be installed in Brighton's North Laines. Is that so they can watch the SchNEWS? Alien detection kits are available from SCHWA: Defence Station Europe, PO Box 148, Hove, BN3 3DQ @ £8.50 in extra-terrestrial proof bag.

DISCLAIMER

The SchNEWS warns all readers not to attend any illegal gatherings or take part in any criminal activities. Always stay within the law. In fact please just sit in, watch TV and go on endless Xmas shopping sprees filling your home and lives with endless consumer crap. you will then feel content. Honest.

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