Wales Social Struggles Newswire Archive

From the 26th May to the 1st June 2014 Anarchist Action Network is holding a week of Anarchist events dubbed the Anarchist Travelling Circus in Newport, South Wales. The week will include, workshops, discussions and skillshares and more. Emailo us to get involved!

The full programme of meetings, and list of stalls, for the 2014 Bristol Anarchist Bookfair, has been announced. There are 5 meeting spaces, including the Permanent Culture Now marquee, at the main Bookfair venue at The Trinity Centre. Plus just down the road we have the Radical History Zone at Hydra Bookshop

Stop Children Being Abused. NATIONAL ROAD BLOCKADE.

Parents Carers Grandparents. British Muslim Polish French Jews Christian

Children being stolen then abused.

WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH BRITAIN WILL BE ON ITS KNEES FROM.

Inverness to Plymouth Glasgow to Swansea and Aberdeen to London.

Monday 3rd February at 6pm

Da Vinci's Coffee Shop, 10 High Street, Newport, NP20 1FQ

Stick this in your diaries - The date for Bristol 2014 is Saturday 26 April, at the Trinity Centre, Trinity Road, Bristol BS2 0NW

Coming soon: callout for workshops/meetings & stall bookings.
Watch this space for more info…

A protest took place outside the Wrexham Jobcentre at lunchtime today against changes to the benefits system.

Co-inciding with the Bonfire Night protest in London, and numerous demos and actions against austerity elsewhere, a protest called by Anonymous took to the streets of Cardiff on Tuesday night, ending in attempts to occupy the Senedd (Welsh assembly building).

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.

Anonymous made an appearance in Blackwood on Tuesday, protesting against profiteering moneylenders as part of an international day of civil disobedience.

Curos's head of service development David Clarke said staff were dealing with very angry and upset tenants every day of the week.

Ed Davey the Sec of State for Energy and Climate Change has argued that with a robust regulatory and planning system there will not be environmental damage from Fracking. Here, this view is challenged, by using an example of environmental damage caused by opencast mining at the Westfield site in Fife. This example demonstrates how impotent the planning system is when systems of control break down

This press release from The Loose Anti Opencast Network, about what is currently happening in Scotland, where company bankruptcies have left up to 25 un-restored opencast mines, including Westfield, the subject of a recently published LAON report

On Thursday 8th August, at approximately 10am, High Court bailiffs showed up to join United Welsh representatives, police and contractors booked to secure buildings, in an attempt to evict Rumpoles, Moira Terrace, Cardiff, CF24 0NE (aka: prison squat / 0ne squat). By 12pm, without even attempting to enter, they left the occupiers in possession of the building.

An article, in essence, asking autonomists to consider, as and when possible in their local area, to be a part of, what is in effect there's already - from the Zapatistas, to Los Indignados, to those in Greece, Istanbul, Iceland and Brazil - the People's Assembly movement is alive and we could make it something incredible here in the UK.

A report of the rooftop occupation of the Shell petrol station in Pontprennau, Cardiff on 29th June 2013.

Bristol Defendant Solidarity (BDS) was formed in the aftermath of the street resistance in Stokes Croft in late April 2011. That resistance occurred when the state acted to defend a newly opened Tesco shop on Cheltenham Rd which had been the focus of widespread community opposition.

Now after 2 years of active solidarity work since its formation, Bristol Defendant Solidarity, with a little help from Kebele Sound Collective, present a benefit night of international radical hip hop, rap and conscious beats.

BGSG presents a solidarity event in Bristol to raise awareness and funds in an attempt to support social struggles and social movements in Greece.

Solidarity gig in West Wales, All welcome!

This review updates information on planning developments affecting new English Opencast sites. In addition, it has information on the sites that would be affected if UK Mine Holdings / UK Coal Operations were, as recent press stories indicate, to go into administration. In addition it has news on the the land slip at Hatfield Colliery, latest developments over the Helsley Wood Tip and opencast mining on the Canobie Coalfield.

On Friday 20/4/13, Scotland's largest producer of surface mined coal, Scottish Coal went into liquidation. LAON's press release suggests that reasons other than those which have dominated news items about this event, lie behind this collapse. This press release aims at putting the record strait. In so doing, it raises questions as to whether large scale opencast mining operations, under present circumstanace will ever be profitable in Scotland again.

Thatcher may be dead but now we need to kill off her legacy. Come and dip into the activist toolbox this Saturday, for all the tools you'll need to join the struggle against capital and the state. Then let's go to work...bring on the north west European spring!