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Round-Up December 2007-January 2008
Rock Around the Blockade!
RATB activists in Newcastle have been increasing the tempo of their work, both on the streets and in educating themselves, in preparation for the Cuban Speaking Tour on February. An education meeting on the ideas of Che Guevara on 2 December and a Celebration of Resistance in the centre of Newcastle on 29 December, with music from DJ Stres, were just two of the highlights of the recent period.
Democratic Rights
FRFI activists continue to fight attempts by Newcastle city council and police to ban donations at campaign street meetings. The court case of four activists charged with participating in an unlicenced collection at an anti-deportation event on 5 May 2007 is due to take place on 11 March. Regular organizing meetings have been held to bring together activists from different groups to unite against these attacks. Councillors have been contacted, and petitions are being collected on the streets and online to submit to a full meeting of the council on 5 March. A rally will be held outside the council meeting. To sign the online petition click here
Victory to the Intifada!
VTI activists in Newcastle have maintained regular lively pickets of Marks and Spencer, with Christmas shoppers on 22 December woken from the spell of the consumer wonderland by activists’ carols of resistance.
Anti-racism
On 29 November activists working with Northumbria FRFI Society mobilised in support of the union executive’s No Platform motion against the BNP, in response to the standing of the BNP National Student Organiser in union elections. The meeting to discuss the motion had the highest attendance ever recorded by the union, with a strong representation of black and international students, and passed the motion by 135-54 votes. The FRFI society followed this up with a public meeting on racism on 12 December. On 19 December FRFI activists had a stall advertising TCAR’s 19 January anti-racist march at a Love Music Hate racism gig in Newcastle. The promoters organising the gig gave permission for the FRFI stall, but comrades were later thrown out on the insistence of a leading SWP member.
Since the successful Pledge of Resistance mobilisation against two dawn raids in Fenham in October, there have been no reported raids on Tyneside, and more people continue to sign up to the pledge to resist raids in their area.
Approximately 150 people took part in a militant demonstration organised by Tyneside Community Action for Refugees (TCAR) from the West End of Newcastle to the City Centre on 19 January, demanding Freedom to Work, Freedom to Stay, and end to the criminalisation of immigrants, the end of the NASS system and decent housing for all. TCAR campaigns in support of asylum seekers' rights and against policies which divide the working class by inciting British people to blame immigrants for cuts in services and lack of access to housing instead of blaming the Labour government which is making the cuts and which attacks all the poor in this country, immigrant and native.
Marchers included asylum seekers from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cote d'Ivoire, Malawi, Kurdistan and elsewhere. Several people who, with the help of TCAR, have successfully fought the government's attempts to deport them came to show their support for those still confronting the racist British government's asylum and immigration policies, including Joy Bowman, whose campaign against her deportation to Jamaica received national publicity, and Kurdish asylum seeker Guler Akdogan, who learned in December that her long fight against the deportation of her family to Turkey had been successful.
The demo stopped outside the Government Offices North East where speakers from TCAR and the UDPS opposition party from DRC spoke about the mistreatment of asylum seekers and immigrants in Britain. People whose only 'crime' is to flee oppression or poverty are criminalised, detained and deported. Those who are waiting the outcome of decisions on their cases are banned from working, which means they are further criminalised if they then do work illegally, while ironically becoming the but of media abuse for not working and 'scrounging off the state'.
Speakers at the end rally at Grey's Monument included TCAR, Newcastle Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!/Revolutionary Communist Group, North West Asylum Seekers' Defence Group, South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group, Support the Harmondsworth 4 Campaign, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Tyneside Stop the War, the University and College Lecturers' Union and Tyneside Socialist Forum.
The demo was also attended by contingents from Durham, Carlisle, Doncaster, Sheffield, Manchester and Middlesborough, and by members and supporters of No Borders, Antifa, Amnesty International and the Socialist Workers Party.