ULU president nicked and given extreme bail conditions

[ringo]

Union (UCU) email:

Subject: UCU London Region: UoL demo arrests 5 Dec - Statement - please sign and circulate


Dear UCU London Region colleague

Please consider adding your name to the statement below and forwarding it to branch lists and other networks.

This is getting out of hand! Colleagues may not be aware, but numbers of staff as well as students were kettled and arrested tonight.

This statement is purposely focused on UoL, although we are very conscious that students and staff are being targeted elsewhere.

Whether you are a trade union activist, academic, student or just concerned for the future of our universities and democratic rights, please add your name by emailing Molly Cooper <molly.cooper2@btinternet.com>

The aim will be to get this into the Guardian and get wider circulation. Names for the Guardian statement deadline will need to be in before 1pm on Friday.

Sean Wallis
London Region (HE) Secretary
---
DEFEND THE RIGHT TO PROTEST AT UNIVERSITY OF LONDONWe, the undersigned, unreservedly condemn the escalating use of police against peaceful protests at the University of London.

On 4 December, students were violently evicted from Senate House, University of London (UoL), by private security and police. On 5 December, a protest march in Bloomsbury in their support, calling for 'cops off campus', was attacked and kettled by police, and over 30 staff and students were arrested.

We believe this marks an escalation in the level of force against student-led protests at the University of London which threatens the ethos of the University.

It seems clear that UoL Management are not negotiating with students and staff who protest - including occupying students - but are simply attempting to suppress dissent. We condemn the blanket injunction brought by the UoL against demonstrations or occupations across their many campuses.

We call on all who care about the future of our Universities to object to this invited invasion of the police onto campuses. Police intimidation has no place in a seat of learning. Many staff and students have fled repressive regimes. We are horrified at supposedly 'liberal' university managements adopting these tactics.

We demand an immediate repudiation of the injunction by UoL Management, no more police on campus, and for UoL Management to engage with students and staff about the concerns that led to the protests in the first place.Signed
Molly Cooper, UNISON Service Group Executive
Sean Wallis, UCU NEC & UCL UCU President
+++
To add your name, email Molly Cooper <molly.cooper2@btinternet.com>

 

[Onket]

ringo, can anyone email that address to get on the petition?

 

[ringo]

Yes Onket , I believe this for anyone who wishes to join in.

 

[Onket]

Been emailed this-

--------------------
In light of several recent events involving violent actions taken by the Metropolitan Police against students in London, you are urged to sign this petition defending the right to protest at the University of London. As fellow students, academics and education workers, we need to defend our students, and our universities, from police intimidation: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/defend-right-to-protest-uni-of-london/
On Wednesday evening, around 100 students occupied managerial rooms at Senate House in the University of London. They had a number of demands, including providing support to outsourced workers who were recently on strike and objecting to the recent decision to sell student debt to private companies. Rather than dialoguing with their demands, the management of Senate House called the police, even though the sit-in was entirely peaceful. Between 1800 and 2030, riot police entered the building and violently evicted the students. Eyewitness accounts report police dragging students across the ground, hitting them with batons and even, as this video shows, punching them in the face: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/05/students-protests-police-repression-university-of-london
This incident was followed by another, last night, in which a “cops off campus” demonstration outside ULU was surrounded by police. Protestors were kettled, assaulted by police and arrested en mass, including legal observers and journalists. This video shows the kind of “robust” tactics the police were employing against students: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LyneEk5uMg&sns=tw . In total, some 36 protestors were arrested for breach of the peace. They were then given ludicrous bail conditions such as not being within 50 metres of SOAS and not assembling with more than four people in a public place: https://twitter.com/SHoccupation/status/408816808439717889/photo/1/large . As this article makes clear, this aggressive policing is part of observable trend, in which student activists have been targeted for incidents such as writing chalk messages in support of striking workers: http://indyrikki.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/copsoffcampus-protest-attacked-by-police-and-yet-another-mass-arrest/
Please support our students and defend the right to protest. Police intimidation has no place in a seat of learning.

 

[DrRingDing]

Sign a petition?!

FFS.

People need to be down there, occupying, organinsing.

 

[Onket]

I don't think the petition is instead of that.

 

[DrRingDing]

I don't think the petition is instead of that.

It's a device to make people feel like they've done something. When they haven't.

 

[Onket]

People who were going to do nothing can now feel like they have done something, then.

 

[DrRingDing]

Petitions are not an appropriate response to this.

 

[Onket]

I'd agree it's not appropriate as the sole response. But I have already made that point.

 

[free spirit]

Ever since 2011 and the student riots, the Met police (and the police elsewhere I imagine) have been using bail conditions to control protest and prevent protestors from protesting - it's a way of attempting to control people who haven't even been charged/convicted. It's happened with anti-fash demos, critical mass/the Olympics, student protests, the UK Uncut actions etc etc. Using bail is just another police tactic.

The current police strategy seems to be a) wait for a big protest, b) book a load of buses, c) kettle/round-up the protestors, mass arrest them, stick them on the buses and take them to the cop shop, d) give them bail conditions saying they can't protest. Hey presto, hundreds of people suddenly banned from the next demo.

I remember some of our lot getting bail conditions preventing them from entering Newcastle city centre following an RTS protest in 1999. As the main next protest we were planning was in London on J18 the next weekend it didn't do too much to prevent them protesting, but it was pretty much impossible for them to actually get to Uni by bus, or anywhere else really without passing through the centre.

I got an 18 month conditional discharge in 2001 that effectively meant if I attended any protests in that time I could be nicked and retried for the original charge.

So it's been going on a lot longer than 2011, though it may well be being used a lot more since then (not really involved so don't know either way).

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Hundreds of coppers gathered outside Holborn nick again...

 

[8115]

I'm just watching this on the BBC London news. The presenter is like disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.