UK Indymedia | Actions In Support of John Bowden

Actions In Support of John Bowden – Friday 13th July

Friends Of John Bowden | 02.07.2007 08:37 | Repression | London | South Coast

Solidarity with long-term prison-resister John Bowden

As part of the 2nd International Day of Solidarity in support of John Bowden and in defence of the Anarchist Black Cross (see main feature on UK Indymedia), various solidarity actions and events are already being organised. A list of the UK actions we know about follows. If you are unable to attend one of these events we strongly urge you to organise your own protest or to spend a few minutes writing out some postcards or making a few phonecalls. John Bowden needs and deserves our fullest possible support.

London

Solidarity Picket of the Parole Board HQ, Grenadier House, 99-105 Horseferry Road, London, SW1P 2DD. 12.30-2.00pm. Please bring placards and banners.

Edinburgh

Solidarity Picket of the Scottish Parliament. Commencing 3pm. Please bring placards and banners. Also see Scottish Indymedia for details of a support meeting to be held in Edinburgh the previous week.

Brighton

A day of solidarity at the Cowley Club, which will include card-signing, letter-writing, and access to a phone provided by Brighton ABC. 12.00-5.30pm

Leeds

Solidarity actions will take place plus a get-together at The Common Place to sign cards, write letters, etc starting at Noon and running throughout the afternoon. Copies of John’s pamphlet Tear Down The Walls! will also be available.

Useful addresses:

John Bowden, 6729, HMP Glenochil, King O' Muir Road, Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, FK10 3AD. Scotland. (Please sends letters and solidarity cards, SAEs, postal orders made payable to ‘The Governor’.)

Audrey Parks, Governor, HMP Glenochil, King O' Muir Road, Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, FK10 3AD. Phone: 01259 760471. Fax: 01259 762003. (Messages of protest.)

Social Services Department, Perth & Kinross Council, 2 High St, Perth, PH1 5PH. Phone: 01738 475000. Fax: 01738 475710. (Complaints about social-worker Matthew Stillman.)

Scottish Prison Service HQ, Communications Branch, Room 338, Calton House, 5 Redheughs Rigg, Edinburgh, EH12 9HW. E-mail:

gaolinfo@sps.gov.uk Phone: 01259 760471. Fax: 01259 762003. (Postcards reading ‘Hands Off John Bowden!’ and other forms of protest.)

Additions

Scottish Prisoner Support - ABC Scotland - 7/7/7

02.07.2007 10:16

ACE Location

The first meeting of the new Scottish prisoner support group will be at ACE in Edinburgh on Saturday the 7th of July from 6pm - 8pm. 7/7/7 wasn't chosen as an auspicious date, it was the only time ACE was free to be booked !

This is a new group, and unfortunately many people who have expressed an interest in joining can't be there on that date though they will join later. Those who can be there will be able to shape the group. We need to choose a name, a structure, a platform, an agenda, all that boring stuff. I'll introduce everyone then sit at the back quietly until we get onto the proposed actions.

People have been trying for years to start such a group, but nothing has happened yet. I have been informed and inspired by the Leeds ABC demo for John Bowden outside the Scottish Parliament. I hope we can network with ABC but you don't need to be an anarchist to support Scottish prisoners, please come along and help decide what form we take, what we can and should do to help.
If anyone needs a lift from anywhere in Scotland then email me.

Danny
mail e-mail: criticalmess@riseup.net
Homepage: http://www.autonomous.org.uk

Update from John

04.07.2007 10:45

20 June 2007

On the 29th May, less than a week after a demonstration staged outside the Scottish Parliament in protest at my treatment, the administration at Castle Huntly Open Prison, from where I had been transferred at the pretext of having ‘links with a terrorist organisation’, hurriedly held a ‘case management’ meeting to decide on a strategy of neutralising further protests on my behalf and prolonging my time in prison on less obviously vindictive and politically motivated grounds.

The meeting, held at Glenochil high security prison, where I’m currently being held, was attended by an array of prison service employed social workers, psychologists and governors, and chaired by the Deputy Governor of Castle Huntly Prison, James McKay. No-one at the meeting dissented from the view of McKay that although my stay in maximum security should be prolonged and intended to negatively influence the decision of a Parole Board hearing to consider my release in August, in terms of trying to nullify further protests on my behalf and adverse opinion of the prison system it was no longer expedient to maintain the lie that my removal from an open jail had been as a result of my contact with a ‘terrorist’ group on the outside. The public protestations of the group concerned, Anarchist Black Cross, a perfectly legitimate and non-violent prisoner support group, now rendered the lie untenable. It was therefore considered necessary to fabricate other, less potentially counter-productive justifications for sabotaging my chances of parole and keeping me buried in a maximum security prison. Unfortunately for McKay, who had obviously not anticipated the storm of protest that followed my ghosting from Castle Huntly, he had written a report to accompany my transfer in which he explicitly stated that I was being returned to a maximum security prison pending an investigation into my ‘ongoing contact with an extremist group’. I had been provided with a copy of the report which I then passed on to my lawyer Simon Creighton.

I was called briefly before the ‘case management’ meeting and informed by McKay that because of suspicions that I had formed an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with a social worker whilst at Castle Huntly the previous year, I would soon be transferred to Perth maximum security prison and required to do a course in ‘personal relationships’ before being allowed to return to an open prison. When I asked why an allegation without evidence had not been investigated and acted on at the time I was confronted by a hostile silence. It was clear that everyone at the meeting, social workers, psychologists, senior prison staff had colluded in supporting and providing legitimacy for what was in reality a blatant stitch-up; a senior psychologist from Perth prison who was also at the meeting agreed that I should be transferred to Perth for a course that in fact did not exist. No prison in the Scottish Prison Service provides any such courses in ‘personal relationships’ and everyone at the meeting must have known that. The real purpose of the meeting of course was to rubber-stamp my continued stay in maximum security conditions to coincide with my parole hearing in August.

A fortnight after the meeting I was informed by a senior member of staff at Glenochil that because the ‘personal relationship’ course had been a fiction I would remain in high security conditions to be ‘psychologically risk-assessed’ instead. In fact, I had already been ‘risk-assessed’ by a senior forensic psychologist in 2003 and his opinion was that I presented absolutely no danger or risk to the public and should be transferred to an open prison in preparation for complete release. Nothing whatsoever had occurred between that ‘risk-assessment’ in 2003 and my removal from Castle Huntly open jail in April this year to justify either my ghosting back to a maximum security jail or yet another ‘risk assessment’. Nothing that is apart from the rubbish written about Anarchist Black Cross by the reactionary American social worker Matt Stillman.

There is now little doubt that a suitably compliant prison system hired psychologist will be used to provide yet another pretext to extend my time in prison and shore up with a degree more apparent plausibility the absurd lies of the now discredited Stillman.

The solidarity shown towards me by supporters on the outside, however, has produced cracks and divisions in the ranks of prison officialdom, and Audrey Park, the Governor of Glenochil, has now broken rank and insisted that the inexorable intensification of protest on my behalf be defused by returning me to an open prison. On the rock of solidarity their wave of repression is being broken and there is now a mood of desperation characterising their attempts to keep the cell door closed on me. In the face of their deceit and inhuman attempts to deny me freedom after 25 years in prison my defiance remains implacable and unyielding, and I will continue to fight their vicious abuse of power as I’ve done for the last quarter of a century. In the words of the Uruguayan poet and writer Eduardo Galeano, “We are as small as the fear we feel, and as big as the enemy we choose”.

John Bowden
June 2007

Leeds ABC
mail e-mail: leedsabc@riseup.net

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Actions In Support of John Bowden – Friday 13th July

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Scottish Prisoner Support - ABC Scotland - 7/7/7

Update from John

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