Wales Policing Newswire Archive

CCTV from Cardiff mayday demonstration 2015 -  https://vimeo.com/152097015

In response to a call for a week of actions against the North Wales mega prison, some anarchists in Sydney made some small actions.

Campaigners inspired by a Reclaim the Fields action camp demonstrated their opposition to the building of a new mega-prison near Wrexham with a visit to a company involved.

From Reclaim the Fields Bulletin 10

Police are harrassing, bullying and arresting Newport's homeless people even more than usual, telling them that they will be clearing them out of Newport. They are using the 1884 Vagrancy Act and imposing impossible bail conditions. This stinks of a clean-up ready for the opening of a new shopping centre in November. A mass sleepout has been organised so that we can help these exceptionally vulnerable people.

The Armed Forces Day 'family fun' extravaganza in Colwyn Bay's Parc Eirias went ahead on Saturday in intermittent drizzle and behind a prominent banner near the main gate stating what you'd have thought would be bleedin' obvious, but apparently to many punters wasn't: 'WAR IS NOT FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT'. As you'd expect of any attempt to disguise the brutal reality of war as fun and games, the event was at best conflicted and contradictory, at worst downright dishonest. With the stated aim of "recognising and honouring our armed forces and veterans" AFD is designed to leave no space open to question the legality or morality of the wars they've been off fighting in recent years, to ask whether warfare offers any real solutions for the problems we face, nor indeed to consider whether our various wars of aggression might conceivably be an aggravating factor in these problems.

In the end it was down to a handful of protesters to pitch up and create this space, right by the main entrance, and to break the illusion that everything in the military garden is rosy.

This event was held a week before official Armed Forces Day on 27 June. There's time to organise a presence at an AFD event in your area and it's well worth doing, however small. Even one person standing vigil at the gate can have a big impact.

Mark “Marco” Jacobs was unmasked as an undercover police officer in 2011.
 https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472122.html
 https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472349.html

6pm @Cardiff Central Police Station on the 24th of March 2015

In the midst of a period of intensified police harassment of some anarchists & other radicals in & around Bristol, the Bristol Defendant Solidarity project and numerous other groups have issued a statement of defiance, mixing support & solidarity for those who need it, with legal advice & rights info.

Last month, the Manning solidarity crew in Wales and Ireland were back in action, organising a visit to Dublin for Chelsea Manning's Welsh-Irish mother during which Afri (Action from Ireland) hosted a memorial evening for the late Gerry Conlon who died this summer and who met members of Manning's family during a previous trip to Dublin last year.

Report of solidarity with imprisoned Welsh-American whistleblower Chelsea Manning in August and September in Wales before, during and after the NATO summit.

Full article with links here:

 http://wp.me/p42I6Q-fU

Here are some photos from outside the bank while the two hour die-in/occupation was taking place inside.

Background & pics from inside/arrests:  https://indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/09/517985.html

Here are some more photos taken during the march on Celtic Manor as it passed through the suburbs of Newport.

Gerard (Gerry) Conlon, framed for the Guildford pub bombings in 1974, illegally rendered from Ireland and tortured by the British state and who served nearly 15 years in English jails, died in his native Belfast at the weekend, aged 60.

"On the 29 November 2013, an event was held in Trinity College Dublin to mark the visit of the family of Chelsea Manning to Dublin. During the evening Gerard Conlon gave a speech that nobody who was there is ever likely to forget. It was Gerard Conlon at his best: fiery, courageous and compassionate. May he rest in peace." Dave Donnellan.

Watch Dave's video of the speech by following this link to full article or on Vimeo.

I thought I'd take a trip to Rowley Hill, Kingsmarsh, Farndon today, to check out and take a few photos of the site where Dart Energy is now drilling with a view to exploiting coal bed methane reserves, one of three sites in the immediate local area. Dart is experiencing fierce resistance to its extreme energy operations across the globe and is not doing well, reporting a loss of $32.7 million in the six months to December 2013, compared with a loss of $11.4 million for 2012.

This Sunday, 16 March from 1-5pm, there's a national demonstration at the site so I thought it might be useful to get an idea of how the land lies beforehand.

Resistance to s.144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) 2012 that outlaws squatting in residential buildings is growing. Ultimately, the law may prove unworkable and unenforceable.

Ten days ago, squatters occupied a residential council property in Southwark in protest at the sell-off of council houses and the criminalisation of squatting under s.144. Last week, a Brighton squatter was acquitted on appeal as the prosecution failed to prove he was living at the property. His two co-defendants had previously been acquitted on the same charge.

Yesterday, another case collapsed when the Crown Prosecution Service presented no evidence at Mold Crown Court against Tristan Dixon who was appealing his conviction under s.144.

Tristan's supporters set up a protest about homelessness and squatting on the court forecourt, complete with cardboard, sleeping bag, visual statistics about empty homes, teddy bear and a friendly dog on a piece of string. Flyers were offered to everyone entering or leaving the court. The protest proved very timely as no fewer than ten repossession cases were being heard that day in the County Court in the same building, four of them brought by the local Flintshire County Council.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, we entered and occupied Canton Police Station. We did not ask for permission, as it is our legal right to do so. Given Cardiff Police abandoned the building over a year ago, kindly leaving twelve different open windows for us to choose our entrance from, permission seemed a bit of a formality anyway.

The Special Branch has been an integral part of Britain’s police since 1887. Early officers of it make claims, familiar justifications of the Special Branch today, the Special Branch being an, “essential guarantor of stability in Britain”. According to these early sources back then it single handedly prevented dynamite atrocities, protected royalty and forestalled revolutions.

South Wales (Heddlu) Police officer (collar number) 3896 has his photo taken with ex-EDL activist and Nazi Wayne Baldwin...

The big pink 'FREE BRADLEY MANNING' banner has been displayed, without incident, all over the place in the past 18 months or so: Wrexham, Cardiff, Bala, Haverfordwest (where members of Brad's family still live), Chester, Liverpool, Oswestry, north Yorkshire, London, the summit of Snowdon. It's designed to be re-used, attached to railings with easy-to-undo tapes.

In Bristol yesterday, at the start of a five day solidarity effort leading up to Bradley Manning's trial which begins in the US on Monday, this banner and another - 'TRUTH ON TRIAL' - were seized by cops who told me they would be destroying them. In fact they had already badly damaged the banners by hacking them off the railings with a knife and ripping them instead of undoing the bows, having refused my offer to remove them. Since the incident led to an arrest and threat of summons, the banners are now in police custody as exhibits A and B, with the arresting cops announcing as they escorted me to the exit door of Trinity Road police station: ' and when it comes to court we're going to apply for a destruction order.'

Activists from different networks in Cardiff, including No Borders South Wales, South Wales Anarchists, Gremlins, Travellers groups, Cardiff Migrant Solidarity and the new Network of Cardiff Squatters came together to continue the support shown for migrants in recent months.

Several activists decided to use International Migrants Day this week to respond to a call-out from French activists for actions outside French Embassies and Consulates in solidarity with a recent day of action that aimed to highlight the continued state repression against sans-papier, Roma, the homeless and anti-airport activists in France despite a change of government to a party that spoke out against such actions before they were in power.