As a constituent organisation of the Glasgow Against Atos Campaign Black Triangle will be taking this matter up with the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Justice Kenny MacAskill and we will also be making a deputation to Glasgow City Council’s Police Board at the earliest opportunity.
We will not be intimidated and neither will we be cowed into silence!
SOLIDARITY!
FRIDAY, 22 FEBRUARY 2013
GLASGOW DEFENCE CAMPAIGN – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TWO ARRESTS ON PEACEFUL GLASGOW AGAINST ATOS PROTEST
22 February 2013, Glasgow 19.06 hrs
Two supporters of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (Glasgow) were today violently arrested, Friday 22 February, shortly after 2pm outside the Royal Bank of Scotland on Gordon Street, Glasgow city centre.
They were taking part in a peaceful rolling picket organised by Glasgow Against ATOS, a campaign committed to opposing the French multinational ATOS and the government’s attack on welfare.
Both those arrested were taken to Stewart Street police station and were released at approximately 18:30.
They are facing charges of liberating a prisoner from custody, resisting arrest and using a megaphone.
Court date is set for Friday 22 March, for which solidarity protests are being organised.
In an outrageous attack on democratic rights, their bail conditions include a ban on attending demonstrations in Glasgow city centre.
This is the real reason behind these arrests: to disrupt and destroy political activity.
Up to 50 Strathclyde police officers on foot, bike, police cars and vans, together with Community Safety CCTV vehicles, were mobilised in a planned operation against a demonstration of 20 people, under the direction of Inspector Muir at Stewart Street police station (A-division).
The two supporters were arrested after aggressive provocation by police officers throughout the day.
Dominic Mulgrew is cuffed
The immediate excuse for arrest was use of a megaphone.
Hundreds of members of the public were left shocked as they witnessed officers violently attack peaceful protesters.
As one witness told the GDC:
“There was a peaceful protest outside the bank when the cops just waded in and started attacking people. I saw someone knocked to the ground and others shoved against walls. It was totally disproportionate.”
Despite the police violence, Glasgow Against ATOS demonstrators continued the protest to the headquarters of the Commonwealth Games, followed by up to ten officers with another police van already in position at the offices on Albion Street.
Today’s arrests were clearly planned.
As Glasgow Against ATOS has grown in strength and influence over the past six months – building solidarity with the poor, the sick and disabled – police presence on the protests has also grown.
The multinational companies, the banks and their political allies cannot allow the possibility of resistance developing to the government’s wholesale attack on welfare.
With Glasgow due to host the Commonwealth Games in 2014, and ATOS as lead sponsor, any disruption to the corporate PR machine cannot be tolerated.
Over the past three years, members of FRFI Glasgow have been repeatedly targeted by the police and Procurator Fiscal for their commitment to organising in defence of the working class and poor.
These latest arrests will again be met head on with a successful political defence.
Both FRFI Glasgow and Glasgow Against ATOS refuse to be criminalised for standing up for the rights of the poorest in society.
***Any witnesses to the arrests, or the events leading up to them,
contact: glasgowdefence@yahoo.co.uk***
PRO – Miriam Kelly, Glasgow Defence Campaign. 19:06
- Join Glasgow Against ATOS campaign – Facebook; Glasgow Against ATOS
- Public protest should not be driven underground at a time of international political upheaval.
- On the contrary, maintaining proper structures to ensure that legitimate political protest can find a voice is a positive duty of Government.
- Maintaining the freedom to express dissent remains a powerful indicator of the political health of a nation.
- In the middle years of this decade the challenges facing all those engaged in the public expression of political opinion are immense. It is possible, however, to rise to, confront and often overcome such challenges.
- Knowing your rights and having a good understanding of the scope of laws aimed at curtailing protest and restricting the expression of political opinion, and in particular how they intersect with Convention rights, are powerful tools. This is especially so if you find yourself negotiating with the police when planning a protest, or with a local authority over permission to distribute political literature. It is also wise to seek the advice of organisations, such as Liberty, that can provide advice and guidance on protest rights and public order issues.
- Right to Peaceful Assembly – Article 11
- Right to Freedom of Expression – Article 10
- Right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion – Article 9
- Right to respect for private and family life – Article 8
See: The Historic Right to Peaceful Protest by Liberty and
‘Too much of this sort of thing’ – ‘Atos Two’ pamphlet by Nottingham Defence Campaign Posted on April 29, 2012
21 Responses
One day, and maybe sooner then they think, they will answer for their crimes, and so will those ordering the cops to commit them for them!
“Kenny MacAskill”
http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/1695/Libyan_oil_business_links_to_MacAskill%27sbrotherdisclosed.html
“But then we read, ‘in order to effect a lawful arrest or to prevent escape of a person lawfully detained.’ Here, the 1950 Rome Convention begins to go pretty far indeed; and now we come to the following: ‘in action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection.’ Now think back to the events at Leipzig in 1989, or to any demonstration were there may have been violence, and that might be considered to constitute ‘riot or insurrection’.”
http://www.firmmagazine.com/features/388/What_have_I_done%3F.html
One word, NAZIS!!!
Disgraceful and Diabolical
Release the Victims
Defend the Right to Peaceful Protest and Stuff the Arrogant Politicians
I am Completely Pissed Off with the State of the UK and the Wrecking Politicians who Run it to Ruin
It is Evil that Squatting in an Empty ” Residential ” Property has been Made an
Offence that is a Crime against Civilisation
A Decent Government in Office will Seek to Home the Homeless Now Not Never
Use of a megaphone?! Terrifying! Look at the size of the cop in the white helmet arresting the young Dominic Mulgrew. I think I know who is the more terrifying here. What a bunch of thugs. A real over reaction by the police whose intention is to terrify and intimidate those who wish to peacefully protest. The protestors were harming no one.
Why is anybody surprised. People have short memories. Does no one remember the last miners strike when the police were Thatcher’s boot boys? Does no one remeber Orgreave.
“The Enemy within: Thatcher’s Secret War Against the Miners
Author: Seumas Milne ”
Product Description
“Margaret Thatcher branded Arthur Scargill and the other leaders of the 1984-5 miners’ strike ;’the enemy within’. With the publication of this bestselling book a decade later, the full irony of that accusation became clear. There was an enemy within. But it was not the National Union of Mineworkers that was out to subvert liberty. It was the secret services of the British state – operating inside the NUM itself. Seumas Milne revealed for the first time the astonishing lengths to which the government and its intelligence machine were prepared to go to destry the power of Britain’s miners’ union. Using phoney bank deposits, staged cash drops, forged documents, agents provocateurs and unrelenting surveillance, MI5 and police Special Branch set out to discredit Scargill and other miners’ leaders. Planted tales of corruption were seized on by the media and both Tory and Labour politicians in what became an unprecedentedly savage smear campaign. In this new edition, published for the twentieth anniversary of Britain’s most important postwar social confrontation, new material brings the story up to date – and, in the wake of the Iraq war intelligence scandals, highlights the continuing threat posed by the security services to democracy today.”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Enemy-within-Thatchers-Secret-Against/dp/1844675084
By the way, PLEASE don’t buy the book from Amazon, try another bookseller, thank you.
So for all the grand talk of a fairer Scotland in the next article it would seem the powers that be endorse this does not bode well, me thinks!
So for all the grand talk of a fairer Scotland in the next article it seems the powers that be endorse this curtailment of freedom! Does not bode well!
Acts of terrorism are now being used against the people by the government. You can legally shoot a Brazilian electrician on a train without recourse, smite a newspaper seller to the ground and formulate evidence to stifle investigations in a shootout.
Our country has been corrupted from top to bottom. Government will be looking at hastily drawn up proposals to quell civil unrest by utilizing firearms.
This will be their folly because, despite several gun amnesties, weapons in the uk are in abundance in the large cities.
Hate breeds hate. The only solution to dispel the hate is to tackle the root cause, namely the WELFARE REFORM ACT…..
It has been easy to turn man against man and breed ill feeling between workers, unemployed and benefit claimants. Rioting on an unprecedented scale across the major cities of the uk is a completely different scenario…..
There will be no winners but plenty of losers. History has a way of repeating itself.
In years to come, historians will be searching to find the cause of the unrest and how so many lost their lives, in effect, what went wrong?
” You can only kick a dog for so long till it bites back”
WE WOULD BE BETTER OFF LIVING IN RUSSIA, COMPARED TO THIS BARBARIC CAPITALISTIC DICTATORSHIP WE ARE PRESENTLY UNDER, IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE ALL HELL BREAKS LOSE IN THIS NOTHING TO LOSE SOCIETY THE POWERS THAT BE HAVE BRED,THE POLICE ARE NOW OUR ENEMIES!
What will they do when 20 become 200 and 200 become 2000+ and growing?
Twenty peaceful protestors attract a squad of fifty police officers. What an over reaction.
The Scottish government would do well to turn down this blood money sponsorship of the Commonwealth games.
If they don’t then they are tainted by association.
One hundred percent behind these protestors. The scots dont piss about, they have to be admired. They put into action all the time and dont give a toss about the old bill.
They are put there to frustrate actions and are following the orders of some arsehole with pips on his shoulders who stinks of piss and mothballs who achieved his rank by shopping his equals……..
I have benn an international powerlifter for over 30 yrs! In training handling weights on my back of 600 to 700lbs onca a day for all these years, 7 days a week,i got into the top 5 in the world ever, this was without drugs,Now im paying for it,but no regrets, when we are young, we have no experience, i am now suffering disc collapse from top to bottom, I was put on dla and recently carer allowance because of this, and have had consultant orthopeadic surgeons reports to back it up.This was in 2003, it is incurable and irriversable, I was told 9yrs ago it would get worse which it has, thats not my problem! The problem is iv told Atos about this, but if you see the stats? this is not a medical about you, the assessers who are paid a fortune to strike you off are getting paid megabucks, 44,000 gps have put their petition in against their methods and actions, including nurses, and semi qualified staff. The only way to sort these people out is by mass, and i mean mass protests at the dwp, everybody together, im not condemming these posts, but words mean nothing, its action in mass that will make these corrupt political legal criminals take note! Iv been through this before, but sadly everybody that talks, dont exactly walk the walk. Its great shouting about it? But instead do something about it, sorry i dont have faith with most of you! Only the creaters of this Website who have the guts to create it. Its always been said from 1000s of yrs ago, the only strengh we have is numbers!
1 person would just get arrested. 100 people would just get arrested. 1000 people would cause them a little trouble. 10,000 people could protest and they coulden’t arrest them, 100,000 + and even the DWP would have to take notice. But some people physically can’t protest, others are too scared, others too busy and others don’t care.
This is why we are such an easy target for these Tories and Lib Dems, and New Labories pretend to go blind and deaf! We are unimportant collateral damage in a war of the classes, while the Murdoch’s and ilk, lead the charge!
does anyone know of a site where i can get dates for other protests thankou