Home | Friday 7th October 2011 | Issue 791
WELLING UP
On Monday all nine defendants in the second Welling Blood&Honour case were found not guilty of conspiracy to violent disorder. The first trial saw seven guilty verdicts and six defendants sent down (see SchNEWS 779).
The charge related to fight between anti-fascists and Blood&Honour skinheads on Welling train station platform in March 2009. The German fash were in the area to attend a neo nazi gig in a local pub. Anti-fascists had counter mobilised. The actual confrontation was brief and to the point – the two boneheads were attacked by a small group and run along the length of the platform. This minor incident – neither of the fash were hospitalized and neither made a statement - was seized by the police and CPS as a chance to put militant anti-fascism out of action.
Altogether 23 arrests were made in a series of dawn raids across the country – huge amounts of evidence was seized, some of it anti-fascist propaganda, but most of it relating to social interactions. The defendants in the first trial had nearly 4,500 pages of evidence presented against them – histories of text messages, e-mails facebook postings etc. This was intended to be the backbone of the evidence for a ‘conspiracy’.
In the end the prosecution in both cases relied heavily on CCTV from the station platform, and of the defendants in the few hours before and little else - meaning that the raids had effectively been a huge fishing expedition.
Twenty-three arrests were made – three had their charges dropped before the case went to court but the others had to wait for 2 ½ years on bail. SchNEWS spoke to one defendant: “It was mental in there when we got the verdicts, everyone was jumping around and screaming – obviously it’s a huge relief but now our job is to support the other guys who are inside.”
