FRFI 179 June / July 2004
On 15 April, after months of increasing harassment by the state, two Victory to the Intifada members were unlawfully arrested on a demonstration of Marks and Spencer in London. These arrests are a result of both blatant and subtle forms of intimidation used by the police.
The blatant intimidation included having 16 police officers parading around our picket, even at the start when there were fewer demonstrators than there were cops and the constant use of the Forward Intelligence Team who listen in on conversations and continually photograph people’s faces. When one Muslim demonstrator asked why she was having her photo taken she was told by the photographer: ‘because you look like a terrorist.’ The subtle intimidation has consisted of an accumulation of various restrictions which the police have tried to place under the Public Order Act and other laws. They’ve ranged from not tying flags and placards to the railings ‘should officers need to remove them in an emergency and hurt themselves,’ restricting the use of the megaphone and the chanting of the slogan ‘victory to the intifada,’ in case a member of the public should find it abusive. On all these points and others we have fought and won. The two arrests were made concerning the use of the megaphone – which they confiscated and then returned broken. We are awaiting for confirmation that no charges are to be brought.
The arrests and increase in harassment have had the opposite effect to that which the police had hoped for. The nightly news broadcasts of the horrific scenes of Israeli brutality and slaughter in Rafah during May have driven many new people to join the picket. As the Zionist onslaught against the Palestinian people has intensified, so has the British state’s harassment of those showing solidarity with Palestine. In regard to the racist counter-demonstration by Zionist extremists Betar Tagar which began eight months ago the police have shown open collusion. It is precisely because the Marks and Spencer’s pickets have been continuous, with the goal and potential of forming a strong solidarity movement, that we have faced such harassment.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign leadership, on the other hand, has not been willing to organise serious and continuous activities. Its main event in the last two months of bloodshed has been a passionless and small demonstration against the Wall in Trafalgar Sq on 15 May. When VTI members asked for the M&S pickets to be announced they were told by PSC chief Betty Hunter ‘no, I shall not be mentioning the Marks and Spencer pickets.’ She gave no reasons, even when we explained the harassment we were facing by Zionists. Such sectarianism and inactivity has also been matched by the STWC, who after the massacre at Falluja, took almost a whole week to call a pitiful demonstration of about 300 people in Whitehall. To try and combat the left’s inactivity, FRFI has continued to hold public meetings in London on topics ranging from ethnic cleansing and the apartheid wall to a dayschool where there was lively debate on Iraq, Palestine and the building of an effective anti-imperialist movement in Britain.
Recent events in Gaza show how vital it is to build a movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The VTI pickets of M&S in London, Manchester and elsewhere are the only activities being regularly organised to show that solidarity.
In Manchester the weekly pickets of Marks and Spencer have also continued, despite intermittent abuse from Zionists. FRFI members and supporters recently went to a meeting of Manchester City’s Labour Council to support a motion put by local Lib Dem and Green councillors to accept the democratic right to protest on the streets of the city centre. Debate on the motion was blocked by the local Labour councillors who deemed it too sensitive an issue to be discussed in public and voted for it not to be discussed at all until after the appeal hearing of Manchester FRFI members, unlawfully arrested, had taken place! The appeal date for the Manchester picketers has now been set for 4 June 2004. The accused were not informed of this hearing date directly by the police or the council though, but by Zionists who confronted them on a picket and who were privy to the news!
Regular pickets of Marks and Spencer have now begun to take place in Leicester and in Canterbury where both have met good support from the local communities. Demonstrations against Britain’s biggest Zionist sponsors are also continuing in Glasgow and the campaign against the war and Zionism has been spread by FRFI comrades to Strathclyde and Glasgow universities.
Fight in support of the Iraqi and Palestinian people!
Fight against police harassment and intimidation!
Protest against police murder
On 22 May FRFI joined the angry and determined crowd that marched from Camden Town, north London to Kentish Town police station in protest at the killing a week earlier of Kebba ‘Dobo’ Jobe, a 42-year-old Gambian man. Kebba Jobe died while being arrested on the bank of the canal in busy Camden Lock. The demonstration held up traffic in Kentish Town before ending with a militant rally outside the police station. Friends, family and supporters united to call loudly for justice, and have pledged to hold a picket/
vigil outside the police station every day from 6-8pm until some answers are provided as to how and why this murder was allowed to take place in broad daylight, with not one officer having so far been suspended for his part in it.
For more information contact Justice for Kebba Dobo Jobe Campaign on 07951 596 048 or 07949 158 898.
