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Fire Station Eviction

maat | 30.03.2006 16:46 | Free Spaces | Repression | Social Struggles | London

Fire Station Squat in Docklands under eviction threat because of local pressure groups

URGENT CALL FOR SUPPORT
The Millway FireStation on the Isle of Dogs, Westferry Road 461, had been squatted since
November last year, and it was shelter for 25 people.

As the Isle of Dogs is an area with a strong right wing lobby (it had a BNP councillor elected once), policy of the occupants was from the very beginning to be as quiet and polite as possible. They only had 2 parties in 5 months, both of them not using any P.A. sound system, but acoustic music instead.

That did not help. Apparantly, pressure groups from the business around Canary Wharf, House Owners and Media have been using the squat as a pretext for a petition to establish a proper police station in the area. According to the attached article in the Docklands (a local weekly paper, pretty much law-and-order paper), they collected 1000 (!?!) signatures to pressure the owner to speed up eviction. None of the residents ever complaint at the occupants directly, only one night a drunk man coming from the nearby pup ("Lord Nelson") kicked in the front door.

The eviction will take place on Friday 8am. It shows that it is again the weakest parts of society being used to create fear, no matter how their real behaviour is.

The eviciton is likely to be done with a lot of force, because both media, police, and pressure groups have an interest in a violent eviction.

This is a call to support the 25 occupants of the building, most of whom will be thrown into homelessness. They are currently looking for somewhere else to squat.

Any help will be appreciated.

THE FIRE STATION OCCUPANTS

maat