Emergency Open Meeting - stand up to these new attacks

THURS 5 MAY, 6.30PM

Room 10-11-12, Friends Meeting House, 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ

With some introductions by

• ALFIE MEADOWS - arrested protester
• JOHN McDONNELL MP
• FORTNUM & MASONS OCCUPIER and defendant
• NINA POWER- Senior Lecturer Roehampton University
• LAURIE PENNY - Journalist
• CHARLIE VEITCH - Love Police
• JIM WOLFREYS - London Region UCU/Education Activist Network
• UK UNCUT

Plus everyone invited to come and discuss what is happening and our collective response.

Click here to download a flyer you can print and photocopy

Click here for the event on facebook

“These raids and arrests are outrageously disproportionate and demonstrate the decline that has taken place in the protection of civil liberties in this country.. Those arrested must be defended and supported by us all”. JOHN McDONNELL MP

“This appears to be a worrying extension of police using powers pre-empively to stop people protesting. They claim to be independent and facilitate peaceful protest its difficult to see how they can justify those statements in light of what they are doing” MATT FOOT CAMPAIGNING LAWYER

MORE

A series of raids and “pre-emptive arrests” in the days leading up to the royal wedding represent a dangerous clampdown on our hard-won right to protest. A new campaign to Defend the Right to Protest aims to bring together opposition to this new wave of political police actions.

Squats have been raided by large teams of officers. Students including Alfie Meadows, arrested after the tuition fees protests, have had their bail hearings moved forward and been charged and banned from the City of Westminster. Activists have been arrested on the bizarre charge of “conspiracy to cause public nuisance and breach of the peace” for trying to organize street theatre on the day of the royal wedding.

This follows the kettling and police violence against student protests and the mass arrest of over 100 protesters who peacefully occupied Fortnum & Mason on March 26.

Politicians rightly condemn regimes in the Middle East that do not allow their citizens to speak out against their rulers (some of whom, including the royal families of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, are attending the royal wedding today). Yet the political policing that has preceded the royal wedding threatens to do the same in Britain, making it a crime to be a protestor on high profile state occasions. If this can happen for the royal wedding, how can we be confident that we will be allowed to protest at the opening of Parliament, the Tory Party conference or Chancellor Osborne’s budget announcement?

On Thursday 5 May speakers including Alfie Meadows, John McDonnell and one of the Fortnum & Mason occupiers will address a public meeting on the need to defend the right to protest. This is part of an ongoing Defend the Right to Protest campaign, supported by MPs, trade unionists, academics, student groups and others. The campaign is also organising a protest at the first hearing of Fortnum & Mason occupiers.