Reports from protest against the Co$, Brighton, UK, May 22nd, 1999

Report by Hartley P.

Present: Dave, Roland, Jens, Duke, Martin, myself and one new picketer.

Town: a seaside resort around 30 miles south of London.
Weather: windy, some sun.
Beer: pub just by the Org with real ale. Since no Scientologist drinks more than once a month, I guess they wouldn't know.

Location: An org not visited by pickets for a while, presently located on the third floor of an older building just by a shopping mall in the centre of town, very convenient for clipboarders.
Police: present most of the time.
Shopping Mall Security Guards: polite but protective of their property!
CoS: observed and photographed picketers but no comm, no counter leafleting, one 'I'll attack by tearing up a leaflet'. It is my impression that no central policy exists for dealing with pickets in the UK, Orgs are left to sink or swim by themselves.

Reception: more interested and friendly than large cities. 250+ leaflets went from 12.00 to 15.00.

Report by Roland R-B.

I attended a picket in Brighton, England, on Saturday. There was me (Roland), Dave Bird, Jens, Martin P, Hartley P and Richard. We were expecting a strong show by the clam since we were informed that they had opened up a new place in a shopping centre after closing down their place on the London Road. What we found instead was a sign on a side door to a Travel Agents indicating that they were on the third floor. Although they are better placed like they were before they were kicked out of Mitre House on the same road, they have clearly shrunk back again. I would guess that they owned the place on the London Road and they had to sell it. Now they are just renting a crummy third floor and hoping the money will come in. It won't. The public were very supportive of our demo and were surprisingly hostile towards the clams. We ran out of leaflets after we had given out 250 of them. The clams sent out their usual guy who we had seen before (looks like David Seaman, the Arsenal goalkeeper) and an emaciated Sea Ogre in standard Sea Ogre blue and grey civvies. They talked to a policeman on the beat who clearly wasn't bothered about our presence and was expecting us in any case. The clams claimed we were stopping people entering their premises. The policeman asked us if were were and we replied that we were not. SO FOR THE FIRST TIME, the clams left their door open. After 5 minutes when the policeman had walked off, they closed the door again.

There were some children outside who got interested and were shouting comments at the clams like "you lot are nuts". They used the microphone a few times to relay their message from Xemu's Boom Box. We played our tape with Hubbard's quotes about DC-8s and "The Man on the Cross" and BTs.

There was a girl in the upper window who was looking out and talking on the phone all the time. No doubt to St Hill or OSA.

Quite frankly, Scientology is a good as dead in Brighton. It's as good as dead in London. It's as good as dead in Poole. But all these places have core staff and may well continue to survive. The only place of any size is Birmingham which is where Dave Bird lives and that keeps going through referrals, rather than body routing. Well a few Xemu leaflets got into their hands should collapse that.

There is always St Hill though. We cannot get to their customers since they tend to come from mainland Europe and they can't hear our pickets from their gate. A few of them drive through though.

On an aside, Richard told me that the clams have changed their leaflets from the Einstein one to a really paranoid one like "Tick box A if you would like to find out for yourself about Scientology by ordering the book WIS or tick box B if you are happy to be told what to do by psychologists and ....." Something like that. I have asked him to send me the exact text and will post it here. If it realy is as paranoid as that then this is a sure sign that the cult is cracking up internally.

Report by Dave B.

I came into London on Saturday morning with Roland and met 'X', (an ex-member not on the Internet), at the station. We narrowly missed the early train and got the second one. London is Southeast, we go due south via the London South (Gatwick) airport at Crawley fifty miles to Brighton which is on the South Coast. We got in a little before noon and met Jens and Hartley, later MartinP. We walked about 150 yds/mtrs downhill along the Queens Road, turned right at the Clock Tower into Western Road and stopped at the Churchill Square Shopping Precinct: maybe 20 yds/mtrs square of open paved squared, and lots of nice professional shop-fronts behind it. This was where the clams told us on the phone they had moved the bOrg to. But where were they? Aha.... outside the precinct and paved square was a travel agents shop, 1st floor empty, 2nd floor empty, third floor Church of Scientology. No shop-front. A security door, most times left closed.

We had a go for a bit, but they barely emerged and wouldn't come out to play much. There were only four of them in the whole Org. One was the miserable looking bastard with a thin black twenty-to-eight moustache who has been there since our first picker. Another was a S.O. smurf in his off duty blues, and I sung him....

                Why do you all clutch tin cans?
                  we're auditing for our engrams
                And why do you all snap your hands?
                  remembering when we were clams
                Why DO you work for peanuts pay?
                  to feed the poodle in L--A
                And why do you all dress this way?
                  we're Sea Org smurfs from O--S--A.  La la....

We had the banner held up at one end by an inflatable space alien, Duke the Dog with water-wings, the boom box, etc. When they wouldn't do much (and being as we'd gone straight from station to Org) we stopped off at the Lamb and Flag for a lunchtime drink after all. Lots of fun with the local kids who were going on the mic and calling the clams weirdos. After lunch some Hubbard tapes, then a variety of songs -- "they're drowning my doggie in the pool", "cult of the grasping clams", "little ghosties up your nostrils little ghosties up your ass", and so forth.

Much friendly interaction from passers by, and several hundred leaflets distributed so that we ran out mid afternoon. One guy was excellent, he had been stopped by the clams with the simplified "your ambitions" questionaire:
"what job would you like to do?" "computer programmer"
"and what job do you have?" "computer programmer" (pause)
"do you feel you have any defects in your personality?"
"yes: I ought to be totally scornful of idiots. But sometimes I have this impulse to stop and talk to them just to wind them up..."

The clams tried to cause problems with the local beat policeman, who pretty much told them to get lost. One woman was most annoyed that the clams took her picture without permission, but there was nothing much could be done about it. Towards the end of the afternoon 'X' went on the mic describing his experiences in the cult. He was very good, had an audience of 4 or 5 stopped and listening to him most of the time as well as impact on the passing public.

Roland went back to the pub early, and the rest of us joined him later, to watch the cup final on TV. But the Lamb and Flag, and the pub near the station, were moderately empty for a Saturday; Brighton is the seaside playground of London, and many people had stayed home to watch the match. But we went on this day because it was the announced Torronto picket, which we hoped a few other places would pick up on, and because it gave us more preparation time to put it back a week from its original planned date. Then back on the train to London.

But we returned for further, different clambusting activities the next day.