Peckham – May 2nd
When anti-raids activists heard that a coach was going to transfer asylum seekers from an immigration centre in London to the Bibby Stockholm prison barge in Portland, Dorset, they mobilised quickly, and hundreds blocked the road. The coach’s tyres were deflated, Lime bikes were pushed under the vehicle, and people sat in the road.
The action was part of widespread community resistance over several months at immigration reporting centres in Peckham, Elephant & Castle, and also in Croydon and Hounslow.
It took police hours to eventually escort the coach away, and they made dozens of arrests.
London – November
Earlier this month five defendants, who had been waiting for six months in a legal limbo, finally faced trial at Stratford Magistrates Court, where they were cleared after the prosecution case collapsed.
This morning, another four were greeted by a solidarity protest outside the court, where Tim Crosland spoke on behalf of the Free Political Prisoners campaign.
The Free Political Prisoners campaign was originally set up after climate protesters weren’t allowed to give evidence to the jury, and over the particularly harsh sentences (four/five years) handed down for planning disruptive but peaceful roadblock protests.
Tim explained that climate prisoners are pleading not to be treated as a special case, because they are finding that most people in prison are there because of a broken system. Calling for simply more lenient sentences for protesters traps us into believing the whole system just needs some small changes but otherwise works fine. That’s not the case – most prisoners are in some way or another political prisoners, and the treatment of asylum seekers and the abusive immigration system is yet another example of that.
The UK plays a massive role in climate change, exploitation and extractivism, and providing support and weaponry to conflict zones, all of which helps create the refugees who then seek our help. But the previous government both closed down safe routes to apply for refugee status, and they cut staff who were processing asylum claims, thus creating a massive backlog and manufacturing an “illegal immigration” crisis.
The Bibby Stockholm was an inhumane cramped prison, with rancid food, bed bugs and outbreaks of serious disease. There were several attempted suicides and one successful one.
During the long wait for a decision, asylum seekers are not allowed to work (which would contribute to the system) so they end up living in poverty and destitution and are also scapegoated in our increasingly unequal society, as we saw from the horrendous race riots this summer.
This is why communities come together to resist the violent and inhuman detention and removal system, and as Tim said today, they are on the right side of history.
This week, the last inmates were moved off the Bibby Stockholm in preparation for its decommissioning, and today the four defendants were acquitted after the prosecution case collapsed. Several more trials are planned over the coming months. Dates and suggestions for support can be found here.
