Lord Coe says he is confident balance can be struck between security and celebration as he unveils locations of the Olmpic torch’s 70-day journey around the UK to herald the start of the London 2012 Olympic Games.This article titled “London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame route” was written by Owen Gibson, sports news correspondent, for The Guardian on Wednesday 18th May 2011 16.03 UTCLondon 2012 organisers called on protest groups not to disrupt the 8,000-mile journey of the Olympic flame around the UK, after unveiling its route for the first time.Lord Coe, chairman of the London organising committee of the Olympic Games (Locog), said he was confident the balance could be struck between guaranteeing the safety of the 8,000 torchbearers and ensuring a celebratory atmosphere.“We will make sure that the torch flame gets around the UK in the safest and most secure way, but at the same time we want communities to celebrate it and not [put it] behind a cordon of steel. I think we’ll get the balance right,” he said.He appealed to protest groups not to target the route of the torch, which according to tradition will be lit on Mount Olympus before beginning its journey around the UK at Land’s End on 18 May next year.“This is friendship, this is respect, this is showcasing extraordinary talent in local communities. I really don’t sit here thinking this will be a catalyst for massive demonstrations. I think people get this,” he said.The Beijing torch relay in 2008, the last that ventured beyond the borders of the host country before the International Olympic Committee (IOC) changed its policy, was chiefly remembered for protests and heavy-handed security. In Vancouver, protesters disrupted the last few days of the event, sparking counter-demonstrations from those supporting it.Coe, unveiling the first 74 locations on the torch’s 70-day tour of the UK, said the relay would be vital in igniting enthusiasm for the London Games beyond the capital and insisted that it would not be a giant marketing exercise for sponsors.“I am proud and excited as I envisage the moment that really marks the start of our Olympic celebrations in the UK and far beyond,” said Coe, who ran with the torch ahead of the Vancouver Games.“As it made its way around Canada, it drew renewable power from every community it passed through. As it made its journey across that huge land mass, Vancouver’s Games became Canada’s Games.“That is London 2012′s intention too. Ours will be a Games that takes place on your doorstep.”The 8,000 torchbearer places are divided between Locog and the three “presenting partners” – Coca-Cola, Lloyds TSB and Samsung – who will help fund the events that will take place at each overnight stop.As the only part of the Olympics that can be branded, it is likely the sponsors will have a heavy presence but, like Locog, they have promised to make the vast majority of their torchbearer places available to members of the public.Coe said more than 90% of places would be taken by the public, with half of the torchbearers aged between 12 and 24.Locog has already launched its own nominations campaign, inviting the public to put forward members of their community with inspiring stories.The sponsors will take a similar approach in distributing the tickets to the public and staff. The cast of public torchbearers is likely to be augmented by athletes and celebrities.The announcement has also sparked speculation about the likely identity of the final torchbearer who will light the cauldron in the Olympic stadium at the climax of the opening ceremony, with bookmakers installing Sir Steve Redgrave as favourite.The final route will take the torch to within an hour of 95% of the population across England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and six outlying islands. It will visit the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey, Shetland, Orkney and the Isle of Lewis. Coe said Locog was also in advanced talks to take the torch to Dublin.British IOC member Sir Craig Reedie said the route would also pass UK sporting landmarks including Wimbledon, Old Trafford, St Andrew’s and Much Wenlock in Shropshire, the birthplace of the modern Olympics.The event will also be crucial to the cash-strapped British Olympic Association. Under the terms of its recent settlement with Locog after it backed down in a row over the division of any surplus from the Games, it will receive the royalties to two branded items of Olympic merchandise.In Vancouver, more than 3.5m pairs of red mittens were sold to those who lined the route to raise money for Canadian sport. The BOA will unveil its branded merchandise next year. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogLondon Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame routeRelated posts:London Olympic organisers defend ‘peculiar’ ticket payment processLondon 2012 Olympics countdown clock stopsIran claims London 2012 Olympics logo spells ‘Zion’
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London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame route
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May 18 2011, 11:57am | Comments »
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A misplaced May Day dream for the masses
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/29/a-misplaced-may-day-dream-for-the-masses
May Day by John Sommerfield describes a society on the edge. The parallels with today are obvious – but it’s the differences that make it worth reading.
This article titled “A misplaced May Day dream for the masses” was written by Sam Jordison, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 29th April 2011 14.15 UTC It might have associations with people in funny clothes performing arcane rites and with Oxford students getting smashed off their gourds, but most us don’t think about Tories when we think about May Day. As several union leaders have already pointed out, the party’s current desire to replace May Day with Trafalgar Day (supposedly to “lengthen the holiday season”) is not practical so much as ideological. May Day might feel like a natural part of the calendar – but it has only been marked by a bank holiday since 1978, introduced by a Labour government to mark international workers’ day. And that, of course, is why the rightwingers don’t like it. They’d like it even less if they picked up the book that I’ve just been reading: May Day by John Sommerfield. This was written in 1936, but has just been reissued, with excellent timing, by London Books. It describes a society on the edge. The rich are getting richer and the poor are paying for it. The authorities clamp down on protest with the cynical use of force. Someone on a march is killed in an “accident”. The success of a march leads someone to comment: “I don’t think there’ll be so much damned squeamish argument against arming the police.” The parallels with our current troubles are obvious – but it’s the differences that make May Day worth reading. Sommerfield describes a few days in the lives of dozens of different characters across London, showing them at work, at play, down the pub, in bed, making love, feeling regret the day after, giving birth, dying, plotting to overthrow the bosses, plotting to undermine the workers. It’s a broad, ambitious sweep, but it’s all heading in the same direction: the inevitability of a general strike and the exultant victory of the Communist point of view. By the time Sommerfield was writing, Stalin had embarked on one of the biggest murder sprees in human history, but Sommerfield pants for Soviet Britain. So much so that he frequently loses all restraint:
“Then into this sudden pool of quiet splintered an alien voice, a hoarse shout of ‘Workers, all out on May Day. Demonstrate for a free Soviet Britain!’ … This rang in a million ears. Eyes remembered the chalked slogans on walls and pavements. The slogans, the rain of leaflets, the shouts and songs of demonstrators echoed in a million minds.” He also gushes:
“The printing presses were spinning themselves dizzy. There had never been so many leaflets before. They fell like rain, they were scattered like machine gun bullets.” Sommerfield loved his leaflets. He was also absolute in his convictions. For him there are two races in the world – rich and poor and that is where all conflict will lie. “Soon a lot more people will be having to take sides,” he wrote. They did indeed – but not in the way he thought. They would be fighting against fascism, not for “Soviet Britain”. There are plenty of things to be said in the book’s favour, particularly in the ambitious way he looks into so many lives around London, explores their living conditions, and lays bare their pleasures and pains. There’s also plenty more to be said against his writing which veers from the ridiculous to the not-too-bad and never really gets close to the sublime. Yet it’s as an attempt at social realism that it is most fascinating – and most flawed. In 1984 Sommerfield wrote a new forward for the book acknowledging how few favours time had done for his “1930s Communist romanticism”, but also said he hoped the book could be read as “an historical novel – worth reading, now, I hope, in relation to our own times.” To an extent it can. But I read it more as a reflection on a lost past and an exercise in folly. Possibly, it is harsh to judge Sommerfield’s May Day, for getting things so spectacularly wrong. It’s a novel, after all. It deals in fiction, not fact. But then again, while I was reading May Day, I couldn’t help thinking of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novella with the same title. It’s just one mark of Fitzgerald’s genius that his reflections on the day – although written in 1920 – still apply. The protests he describes seem hopeless, futile, distorted by absurd mobs on both sides: “all crowds have to howl”. The rich are oblivious at best, unforgiving and condescending the rest of the time. The tragedies he depicts are universal – but also painfully personal. His lead, Gordon Sterett, is a penniless, struggling artist who has never found his feet since returning from the First World War, but who has found booze and bad company. He is drowning in the tide of history, but his problems are more individual than any Sommerfield manages to describe. He is more real. So too is the world around him. The clothes are smarter, the dancing is more formal and the drinks sound more exotic. No one has a smart phone and radicals print their views on paper. Otherwise, Fitzgerald could be writing about today – or forever. His despair and defeat for the small man rings far more true than Sommerfield’s misplaced dream for the masses. May Day is a crushed dream. It makes the Tory vendetta against the holiday seem even more than usually petty.
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April 29 2011, 9:47am | Comments »
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UK Uncut’s fears over clampdown on black bloc tactics
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/uk-uncuts-fears-over-clampdown-on-black-bloc-tactics
Activists from UK Uncut and the Black Bloc are concerned that Theresa May’s vow to curb further violence may impinge on the group’s direct action protests
This article titled “UK Uncut’s fears over clampdown on black bloc tactics” was written by Robert Booth, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 20.54 UTC TV news footage of last Saturday’s protests focused on anarchists using black bloc tactics to smash bank windows and attack shops, but the arrest of 145 activists from UK Uncut, a completely separate group who occupied Fortnum & Mason, grabbed the headlines. The result was a blurring in many people’s minds between the two groups, which threatens to hamper UK Uncut’s ability to operate, especially after the home secretary, Theresa May, ordered a review of police powers to handle public demonstrations following the weekend’s violent disorder. There are clear differences between the two groupings: black bloc anarchists condone violence and want to smash the system, while UK Uncut supporters promote peaceful direct action, with a particular focus on the reform of tax laws that allow avoidance by big business. Many UK Uncut supporters emerged from the Climate Camp movement. Their trademark tactic is a sit-down protest in a shop owned by an allegedly tax-avoiding company. Spiky v fluffy, some observers say, although Boris Johnson claimed the Uncut activists at Fortnum & Mason “stormed that building, terrified the staff, upset the customers and caused tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage”. Confusion with the black bloc was compounded when a UK Uncut spokeswoman refused to condemn violent direct action when she appeared on BBC2′s Newsnight. Now UK Uncut is worried that talk of a crackdown to curb further violence could impinge on its activities, which this weekend are planned in Bangor, Barnstaple, Edinburgh, London and Oxford. “Theresa May’s comments are quite worrying,” said a spokesman. “She seemed to imply that anyone who goes beyond marching would be criminalised and that would be dangerous. Our actions are direct but we consider them creative civil disobedience.
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April 1 2011, 5:53pm | Comments »
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UK Uncut arrests threaten future protests, lawyer warns
Matt Foot, a solicitor at Birnberg Pierce, says the detention of 145 UK Uncut activists will threaten the right to peacefully protest. Perhaps they did this because it’s easier to catch people sitting peacefully in a shop than people running round the streets outside. Perhaps they wanted to gather intelligence on a network of peaceful protesters. Either way the Met have serious questions to answer.
This article titled “UK Uncut arrests threaten future protests, lawyer warns” was written by Shiv Malik, for The Guardian on Wednesday 30th March 2011 08.05 UTC A lawyer at a leading civil liberties firm has expressed fears for the future of direct action protest after the mass arrest of UK Uncut activists during last Saturday’s anti-cuts demonstrations in London. Matt Foot, a criminal defence solicitor at Birnberg Pierce, said the detention of 145 activists during an occupation of luxury food store Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly was “unprecedented”. He has questioned the police’s motivation. After being arrested for aggravated trespass and criminal damage, scores of Uncut campaigners were dispersed to police stations around London as far apart as Harrow, Ilford and Romford and were held for up to 24 hours. The next day, the accusation of criminal damage was dropped but 138 activists were bailed on the charge of aggravated trespass. Foot, son of the campaigning journalist Paul Foot, said: “It is unprecedented to arrest so many people for simply protesting peacefully in a building. And then it is intimidating to keep peaceful protesters for so long at the police station and then charge them so quickly without reviewing the evidence first. “To rush to treat people in this way and charge them on such a scale suggests the police want to make a statement. This is going to threaten the right to peacefully protest through direct action.” Commenting on video footage obtained by the Guardian, in which a senior officer inside Fortnum’s was captured telling Uncut campaigners they were “non-violent” and “sensible”, Foot said: “It’s fascinating that the police clearly took a view that these were peaceful protesters.” He added: “Given the police’s public comments about violence on the demonstration, it is extraordinary that the overwhelming numbers of arrests and charges have been for non-violent protesters. One has to question the motivation behind this.” Replying to a Commons question on Monday about whether UK Uncut activists had been “misrepresented”, the home secretary, Theresa May, said the police were right to make the arrests. “I say to them [UK Uncut] that they certainly have not been misrepresented and I think that what we need to do at this point in time is make it absolutely clear; the police are right in what they were doing in trying to prevent violence for taking place in our streets,” May said. The Guardian has published further footage from the event showing that senior officers on the ground at Fortnum and Mason were confused as to whether UK Uncut activists would be arrested or not. Luke Heighton, a 32-year-old trainee journalist from East Dulwich, saw the exchange between police officers outside the store as he stood beside police lines with his girlfriend. “I was within a couple of feet of a police officer in a fluorescent standard issue jacket who I took to be one of the more senior officers there and I overheard what was being said. Speaking to an officer in black riot gear and a peaked cap, he said: ‘It’s you that’s stopping me from letting them out. What’s the problem?’” Heighton said a second officer in black riot gear and a peaked black cap replied: “We don’t want them let out yet. We want them detained and arrested.” “The officer [in the fluorescent jacket] didn’t contradict that. He looked baffled by the decision,” Heighton said. “You got the sense that he was being overruled but he immediately issued that order to other members of the Met. The whole conversation probably took less than two minutes.” A Guardian video producer, Cameron Robertson, who was at the protests with officers from the Met’s public order unit, the Territorial Support Group, captured a pre-demonstration briefing that made it clear senior officers wanted to draw a “line in the sand” over legal and illegal occupations. Adam Ramsay, a campaigner with UK Uncut who was detained for more than 20 hours, said the arrests might have been politically motivated or to faciliate information gathering on the group. “At the time, the chief inspector at Fortnum and Mason effectively told us there we had committed no criminal damage – that we were all ‘non-violent’ and ‘sensible’. But moments later we were all arrested for criminal damage – a charge later dropped. This certainly looks to me like political policing.”. “Perhaps they did this because it’s easier to catch people sitting peacefully in a shop than people running round the streets outside. Perhaps they wanted to gather intelligence on a network of peaceful protesters. Either way the Met have serious questions to answer.” In a statement the Metropolitan police said: “The matter is now sub judice. It would be inappropriate to discuss further whilst proceedings are active.”
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March 30 2011, 9:32am | Comments »
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Thousands march in London against spending cuts
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/26/thousands-march-in-london-against-spending-cuts
Turnout for the anti-cuts demo and march to Trafalgar Square has been revised upwards to around 400,000 as people take to the streets in London to protest against the government’s planned public service cuts.
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March 26 2011, 10:10am | Comments »
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