Reports from protest against the Co$, London, July 18th 1998

Report by Dave B.

Three men and a dog arrived 11:30am at the secret rendezvous near London bOrg which is at 68 Tottenham Court Road. We went round there noon on the dot and gave it some welly until ten past; no students were seen. We popped back for lunch, and resumed at 13:00. My self and Hartley were leafletting, Roland was photographer, and Jens arrived shortly afterwards with the boombox. The cops were great: one police man & one police woman were there for pretty much half a shift, propping up the "A"-boards of a nearby sandwich shop and scoffing coffee, while they viewed on us taking the piss out of the clams watching for potential trouble as a hilarious entertainment in which all that lacked was popcorn.

Jens arrived with the boombox and I gave it half an hour basic patter, then half an hour of Hubbard repeating his silliest remarks over and over on tape, then half an hour of me, than half an hour of Hubbard.

Highlights: a new clamspore ran to the cops "are the allowed to photograph me", not knowing or caring how much the clams photograph us. Later on there was a hilarious scene of Roland, versus Coco the Pencil Necked Geek, snapping back and forth at each other with cameras (watching me watching you watching....). I had my nice new teeshirt which had:

in read, green and black on white. The clams went to enormous lengths to make sure they got a good photograph of my back, which has the famous six lines of OT7-48 about talking to plants and trees until your communication is received. This was the stuff they sued the Washington Times for, and lost. Ironically it seems likely they had no standing to sue since the version of the O.T.Levels in the Fishman affidavit had been passed round widely in the freezone and adulterated, i.e. the six lines may be squirrel material added after it left CoS hands.

About ten ot twelve of them were tied up countering four of us. We carried on until 15:15 then went back down the pub, as this was an optional extra to our main action on Sunday. A further report follows on that.

Report by Dave B. from NCCL (Liberty) AGM

In article <yI4alBAm9is1EwL6@xenuislove.demon.co.uk>, Peter Lucey
<peterl@xenuislove.demon.co.uk> writes
>Jacques Vollet and other UK members of the Co$ put down a motion at the
>UK AGM of Liberty (The National Council of Civil Liberties) today. The
>motion expressly criticised the Federal Republic of Germany for
>religious persecution.

The Annual General Meeting followed on Sunday........ as detailed earlier on A.R.S:

In article <5lH63RAbmgo1Ewp6@xemu.demon.co.uk>, Dave Bird wrote:
|#######################################################################
|ANNUAL_GENERAL_MEETING of LIBERTY/the NationalCouncil for CivilLiberies
|at the L.V.S.C. by Holloway Road ==0== London, on Sunday 19th July 1998
|#######################################################################
|There is a vague general motion on the Internet with amendments down on
|CRYPTYO(against specific insecrure schemes) & CENSORSHIP(against RSACi)
|in my name.There is also a motion down by representatives of the Church
|of SCIENTOLOGY saying in disguised terms how hard done they are,    and 
|amendments down in my name correcting falsehoods in it  [.......]
|Details of attending and joining can be got from Liberty / NCCL at 21
|Tabard Street, London, SE1 4LA, 0171 403 3888 fone   407 5354 fax.

Present were Dave Bird, Jens Tingleff, and Peter Lucey. Two others were planned, but managed to go to NCCL admin office south of the river instead of to Holloway Road :-< :-< :-< The strategy against the Scientology motion was as in two parts. First, it was planned to put an "emergency motion" on develeopments in the Woods case. The CEC (agenda committe) had taken against this on the daft grounds that, although the case details were new and urgent, it happened to mention congratulating the staff on their work in the case which could have been submitted by the ordinary date. This didn't make much sense to me; but I couldn't persuade the meeting to alter their decision. Jacques Vollet and Paul Landon were sitting in the hall then, to the left of the aisle hidden behind a pillar. We were on the righthand edge of the audience right, at the front of the hall.

I'm not sure I can match the dress sense of Shelley's reports but I'll have a go. I was in neat dark trousers rather than jeans and my Ron+Tomato tee-shirt, with my long hair tied back. Peter had IIRC a casual leather jacket and a white-on-black OT3 teeshirt. Jens was in a smart grey suit and tie looking very business like. On the other side Jacques is a small sprightly man in his late sixties with grey hair and a grey suit, soft spoken but usually rather miserable looking. Paul Landon is a beefy chap of middle height apparently an ex-soldier, with brown eyes in a pasty white face like two chocoloate chips in a maryland cookie, and a brushy sort of moustache. Last time he was cunninlgy disguised as a neapolitan icecream -- a rugby shirt divided into the appropriate chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and lime coloured quarters -- so I suppose this time he wore something similar.

The setting is Holloway Road in N.E. London, halfway along the line between Leiceter Sq/Tottenham Court Road where the bOrg is located and Roland's place in Walthastowe. Turning left out of the tube and under a railway bridge, you find yourself on a broad pleastant boulevard with some trees and parkland along one side. In about 100..150mtrs you cross over to a long 1920s building---full 100mtrs in itself--- which contains in part a Waitrose supermarket, and in part the London Voluntary Services Centre; through a large oak-pannelled lobby and up a wooden staircase to the conference hall. Or down again at lunchtime :-> :-> and past Jacques and Paul talking to a couple of undertakerish characters in black suits.

Next door is a large cinema building retitled "the free house"... that means, it does belong to any one brewery but can sell all beers on equal terms. It is an old 1950s cinema with all the red carpets and red plush walls left intact. It belongs to a group called J.D.Wetherspoons who have an interesting story. Normally the big breweries will try to object if "anyone else" applies for a liquor license; but Wetherspoon was a barrister (senior attorney) and new how to argue the courts round. The other thing is, they won't sell readymade pubs to outsiders. But he got round that, too, by purchasing old bank branches, cinemas, etc, as they went out of use and converting them. It is a fanstastic looking place, and the price and choice of beers is excellent too.

Thus refreshed, we went back for the fray. John Lyons, the fat controller of NCCL/Liberty was in the chair. He has a tendency--- coincidentally, when he doesn't like what the natural outcome would be?---to dive in with 60 ot 90 seconds of lengthy waffle from the chair and throw things into confusion to see if they will go a different way. The structure of the order paper was like this. The clams' motion consisted of paragraphs (a) introduction, (b) about Germany, and (c) conclusions. There were amendemnts <A> from us to alter the intro, <E> from the executive to delete and <B> from us to amend the Germany bit, <C> from us to alter the conclusions, and <D> from us to add a new last para on the crimes of the clams. The aim was, overall, to turn a dog's breakfast into a sensible statement of principle which along the way did not reflect very well on them.

If you want to skip forward to the conclusions, we came to the fairly obvious outcome that we got out (a) and (c), (b) got deleted as the simplest option, and the attempt to list their crimes drew all the flack so didn't get through. There were also Internet and Crypto related motions that we participated in later. But it's getting late on Monday now, so I will sign off and give the full details in part two.