Some protesters scuffled with bailiffs as they were taken down from rooftops London Live
Campaigners occupying a London housing estate set to be demolished for redevelopment have been driven out of the homes by bailiffs wearing riot gear.
The Sweets Way estate, in Barnet, has been at the centre of a bitter stand-off for the past six months, with protesters refusing to leave until the plans are shelved and evicted families are allowed to move back in.
But on Wednesday morning they were awoken by High Court enforcement officers with a writ to clear the homes.
Occupiers with the Sweets Way Resists group filmed themselves trying to hold doors back as the bailiffs forced their way inside, and putting their faces against glass windows in efforts to stop them being smashed.
Update Sweets way n20 Totteridge n whetstone tube successfully resisted 1 block rooftop protest.bailiffs expected 6am tomoro network support bring people,sound systems tools n barricade materials.spread the word viva the resistance homes for all.resistance party sounds just started.people welcome overnight
Sweets way update: Bailiffs getting ready to evict whole estate. Protesters on roofs. Likely big police presence. PLEASE go show support. Legal observers needed.
ATTENTION !!!
Unfortunately, there is high Court baillef and police are there and they blocking the front entrance of sweets way. Spread the word for ppl who can support.
It could at a stretch be interpreted as the military’s first rebuke to Jeremy Corbyn. Four days after Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, the first sea lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, laid out the basic tenets of British defence policy, based around two large-scale and costly projects: the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent and the creation of a new aircraft carrier fleet.
Speaking at the opening of an arms fair in London, Zambellas said: “Together, I believe these two capabilities will define our nation’s strategic and maritime security authority for the next half century or more.”
Corbyn, during his leadership campaign, expressed his opposition to the renewal of Trident and to the present level of spending on defence, 2% of GDP, much of which is being eaten up by the carrier programme.
The armed and dangerous Right – not the bicycling bearded peaceful Lefties – are the terrifying danger to British democracy and security when we are told an Army commander is plotting what amounts to treason.
Either David Cameron and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon court martial the top brass mutineer if he fails to produce a viable defence or the martial Tories are turning the country into a banana republic.
There have been plenty of offbeat predictions following Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour party. Yet the most threatening came on Sunday with an unnamed army general raising the prospect of a coup should the 66-year-old become prime minister.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, the serving serviceman said a Labour government under Corbyn would face “mutiny” from the British Army should the veteran peace campaigner try to downgrade the military, threatening to "use whatever means possible, fair or foul” to maintain security.
The Ministry of Defence moved to condemn a serving army general who warned that Jeremy Corbyn could face “a mutiny” from the military if he became Prime Minister. In highly contentious remarks, the unnamed army commander said any attempt by Mr Corbyn to take Britain out of Nato, scrap Trident or cut the size of Britain’s forces would be fought by means “fair or foul”.
The general added that a Labour victory under Mr Corbyn in 2020 would result in “mass resignations at all levels” and there would be the “very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny”. While Labour publicly refused to comment on the views of what it described as an “anonymous general”, in private senior sources described the remarks as “pretty outrageous”.
“You can’t have serving officers effectively threatening a coup against an elected government,” they said. “This general seems to have forgotten that we live in a democracy.” A Ministry of Defence source said it was unacceptable for a serving officer to make political comments about a potential “future government”.
‘Re-Imagine Democracy - towards a Citizens Convention on the Constitution’
Called by Assemblies for Democracy and Occupy Democracy
Saturday, November 14
Doors open 10.15am
10.45am-4.30pm
Waterloo Action Centre
14 Baylis Rd, SE1 7AA
With John McDonnell MP, shadow chancellor, Liz Davies (Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers) and speakers from Occupy Democracy, openDemocracy plus others
Break-outs on:
Why do we need a new constitution? How would it address our democratic deficit?
Austerity as an issue of democracy
Beyond the “dis-united kingdom” – federalism, independence &
other models
Republicanism: a way forward?
Human/trade union rights and democracy
The European Union and democracy - are they compatible?
There is a hunger for democratic change, expressed in last year’s independence referendum in Scotland and in the wave of enthusiasm for renewal generated by Jeremy Corbyn’s stunning campaign.
Our votes count for less and less while our rights are under unprecedented assault. The planned abolition of the Human Rights Act, the destruction of legal aid and unlimited surveillance gives the state unparalleled powers over us, undermining the rule of law.
Draconian new anti-union laws will make it virtually impossible to take lawful strike action.
A state that demonises minorities in the UK and abroad lacks the democratic credentials it claims for itself.
Britain’s piecemeal constitution is broken and needs replacing with a 21st century democracy that works in the interests of the majority. A Citizens Convention on a new constitution can help bring this about.
Supported by Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, Unlock Democracy, Involve, Agreement of the People, Republican Socialist Alliance, A World to Win, NatCAN,
By criminalising squatting and begging the government is closing all the exits out of a low-wage and rentier economy: we must resist.
A number of families and children lived in the village.Britta Burger/ All rights reserved.A 15 minute drive from the elite environs of Windsor Castle and Eton College are the beautiful woods and water-meadows of Runnymede.
Until last week, if you had visited this historic site, you would have found 30-40 people living in an array of shacks and homes, many beautifully made from recycled materials. They lived sustainably there for three years: heating their homes with coppiced sycamore, using water from a spring and growing or ‘skipping’ their food. Now those people are homeless and all that remains of their lives there is some splintered wood, smashed up wattle and daub, and belongings strewn across the forest floor.
All the homes were built from recycled materials. Britta Burger/ All rights reserved.The destruction was unleashed by bailiffs on behalf of the Royalton Group- an off-shored luxury property developers- who bought the land for £47 million and intend to build a high-end gated community there called the Magna Carta Park. It’s not news that the wishes of global capital trump all others but we might pause and reflect how, in a Tory heartland, in the fifth biggest economy in the world, such a miniature shanty town came to exist.
Those on the right will no doubt claim this was simply a gathering of the chronically workshy finding a way to avoid their responsibilities as taxpayers. But then I suspect they have never lived in a wood in winter, negotiating freezing rain and knee deep mud, without utilities or sanitation.
The real answer is complicated: for some residents living there was an informed choice. They came from Occupy St Pauls and were offering a direct-action solution to government inaction on housing and climate change: reclaim disused land for low impact sustainable villages. But for others the village was a safety net that caught them in the freefall from an atomised society and self-harming State; a place of sanctuary from the brutality of our current economic system. Take Betty, who with her small child, was evicted with 24 hours notice from her Essex flat and arrived in the village ‘emotionally and physically shattered’. Or Shawn who found himself street homeless in Brighton when the state relinquished responsibility for him at 18, after over a decade spent in foster homes and mental health inpatient wards.
Residents like Vinny were made homeless by the eviction. Britta Burger/ All rights reserved.If we entertain the notion that there might be deeper forces at work here rather than people’s preferences or moral failings what do we find?
According to Crisis almost three quarters of the increase in statutory homelessness from 2010 to 2014 was attributable to private tenancy terminations. In London the figures are worse, with such cases rising from 925 to 5,960 in the same four years. It is worth remembering that whilst a month’s notice is the legal minimum for normal tenants, the “reasonable notice” required of resident landlords can be as little as 24 hours.
So why can’t these people just find another flat?
Perhaps the answer lies in the Homelet Rental Index which calculated the average UK rent for new tenancies this summer to be £992pcm. Most landlords require a month in an advance and a month’s deposit, and on top of this the average letting agent fees are now £337 . That totals up to £2321, for the average renter, before they can move in. Many cannot afford this initial outlay, especially in a context where rents rose 10.5% last year, but wages only 3%. With rents outpacing wages for the last 5 years this adds up to a serious squeeze. In addition to this there is simply not enough supply: Matt Hutchinson, director of the house sharing website SpareRoom.co.uk, said in some parts of London 13 tenants were competing for each room advertised. The government knows these realities but has failed to introduce legislation that would relieve the pressure. If a government fails to act on this information, surely it loses its legitimacy?
This is the argument of those living at Runnymede:
The times we live in, they argue, are corrupt; statute law no longer protects or serves the interests of the common man. It no longer guarantees access to affordable shelter or a reasonable wage and has allowed the wants of the rich and comfortable to trump the needs of the poor and destitute. We can see this in the convergence of other statistics: on any one night there are currently around 2700- 6500 people sleeping rough in the UK but 610 000 empty homes; however, the squatting of these properties- even if they are derelict- has recently been criminalised. No matter if a residential property had been empty for 5, 10 or 15 years, if a homeless person sought shelter there in cold or rain – they would now be committing a criminal offence.
Over 40 different dwellings were built in the woods. Britta Burger/All rights reserved.But they shouldn’t need to squat or live in a shack I hear you cry: the government have funded adequate hostel provision for people who have become destitute. Wrong again: there are only around 36 000 hostel placesavailable for the single homeless, and an estimated 185,000 adults experiencing some degree of homelessness each year in England.
So if there is not room for these people in government funded hostels, and they are forbidden to squat, then surely it is acceptable for them to sleep in parks or doorways?
Sadly not: rough sleeping has risen by 55% since 2010 yet is now being criminalized in many boroughs of London and elsewhere, as is begging. Under Operation Encompass Rough Sleepers are arrested and told if they return to the borough (where their entire social network might be) they will be issued an ASBO, and if they break that they face a fine or prison.
In short, the government is closing all the exits out of the wage-labour rentier economy.It refuses to regulate the hyper-inflation of the housing and rental sectors that are creating homelessness but then does legislate to criminalize the victims of those market forces (the homeless) and those who try to find solutions for themselves (squatters).
This encircling is nearly complete: the residents of Runnymede were told in the High Court last week they had no right to appeal and were evicted on Wednesday. They slept outside a public toilet that night and on Thursday opened a squat in a disused Adult Learning Centre. They have already been served notice to quit. So it goes on.
A 15 minute drive from the elite environs of Windsor Castle and Eton College are the beautiful woods and water-meadows of Runnymede.
The destruction was unleashed by bailiffs on behalf of the Royalton Group- an off-shored luxury property developers- who bought the land for £47 million and intend to build a high-end gated community there called the Magna Carta Park. It’s not news that the wishes of global capital trump all others but we might pause and reflect how, in a Tory heartland, in the fifth biggest economy in the world, such a miniature shanty town came to exist.
If we entertain the notion that there might be deeper forces at work here rather than people’s preferences or moral failings what do we find?
But they shouldn’t need to squat or live in a shack I hear you cry: the government have funded adequate hostel provision for people who have become destitute. Wrong again: there are only around 36 000 hostel placesavailable for the single homeless, and an estimated 185,000 adults experiencing some degree of homelessness each year in England.
A 15 minute drive from the elite environs of Windsor Castle and Eton College are the beautiful woods and water-meadows of Runnymede.
The destruction was unleashed by bailiffs on behalf of the Royalton Group- an off-shored luxury property developers- who bought the land for £47 million and intend to build a high-end gated community there called the Magna Carta Park. It’s not news that the wishes of global capital trump all others but we might pause and reflect how, in a Tory heartland, in the fifth biggest economy in the world, such a miniature shanty town came to exist.
If we entertain the notion that there might be deeper forces at work here rather than people’s preferences or moral failings what do we find?
But they shouldn’t need to squat or live in a shack I hear you cry: the government have funded adequate hostel provision for people who have become destitute. Wrong again: there are only around 36 000 hostel placesavailable for the single homeless, and an estimated 185,000 adults experiencing some degree of homelessness each year in England.