The MET police have threatened to raid UK website hosts who tried to host the website for this year's "Mayday Festival of Alternatives".

The content available at www.ourmayday.org.uk is information about the 2002 'Mayday Festival of Alternatives'. Running from 26th April - May 6th, the festival mostly includes community events such as music performances, film screenings, and workshops on a variety of issues and do-it-yourself skill sharing. The website also has details of protests with some for May 1st itself.

The website should have 'gone live' at the end of February, however at least four different website hosts were quickly approached by police, when the domain name 'ourmayday.org.uk' was pointed at their servers.

MET Police contacted the hosts demanding to know all of the personal details of the people behind the 'ourmayday' website. They have also told the hosts they must remove the site (or not host it) or be faced with a police raid during which their web servers could be seized. The Police have not said under what legislation they are making these demands and threats. As a result of the police threats the four web hosts decided not to host the website, with the result that the website was offline for almost two weeks.

Appeals have now been made for other servers to mirror the website and many offers to host the website have been made from both the uk and abroad, while online rights and privacy campaigners have expressed concern over the police threats. The actions of the police in requesting personal details and threatening to raid premises and seize web servers outside of any legislative framework and are a clear attack on the freedom of expression.

NOTES to Editors:

1. This year's Mayday Festival is an attempt to provide constructive ideas and alternatives to commercial and corporate Britain. It seeks to involve the wider community in community inspired events. Text on the website and on Mayday leaflets says:

"This Mayday we are responding to the frequently asked question 'What are you for? What do you actually want?' We aim to show our goals of creating a society based on solidarity, autonomy and co-operation - in practice. We want to show that there is a future beyond capitalism, wage-labour and the state."

2. Even activists have civil liberties: "Everyone has the right... to seek, receive and impart information through any media regardless of frontiers" Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

3. Under clauses of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIP) about to come into force, the Police will have much greater powers to demand information from Internet Service Providers under a joint threat of arrest and gagging order, as well as monitor email and website usage. Despite this the recent threats of server seizure by the Police could still constitute a denial of the rights to freedom of expression. Also since no crime had been committed there would be grounds for asking the Information Commissioner whether such requests for details was 'proportionate' and justifiable under the Data Protection Act.

4. The MET and City Police have been repeatedly violating the rights to free speech and free assembly, intimidating and photographing people attending public meetings, and putting pressure on landlords of venues that are being used.

5. The Legal Defence and Monitoring Group (LDMG) has recently uncovered secret Mayday Sentencing Guidelines that instruct Judges to hand down heavy sentences in connection with Mayday protests in both 2000 and 2001. The document titled “Mayhem” first came to the attention of LDMG in June 2001 at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court. The defence barrister Ed Rees QC originally asked to look at the document, but the court refused this on the grounds that it was secret! Sentencing in England and Wales is supposedly based on individual circumstances and the seriousness of the offence, but clearly in the case of Mayday protestors this is not the case. LDMG can be contacted at:  ldmgmail@yahoo.co.uk

6. More quotes from the website: "The Festival will consist of around 10 days of community-based events aiming at diversity of our movement, with the intention of building long-range sustained alternatives." "The Mayday Festival of Alternatives is inspired by a month of dissident art/culture events in France, held last year in response to the irrelevance and media saturation of the General Election 2001."

Planned workshops throughout the Festival of Alternatives include: *Allotments *Wildlife garden projects *Asylum *Biodiversity and food security *Journalism *Clothes making *Desktop publishing *Feminist History *Film *Flamenco *Gender *GM monoculture *Shiatsu *Sweatshop labour *Nuclear issues *Climate Change *Social Centres *Squatting *Plumbing *Tree climbing *What is Anarchism? *Yoga

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