This is a bit of a retrospective of one of the first actions I was involved in, the occupation of the home office building site and a cautionary tale of police surveillance and bad directions.
The case was simple, the plywood used in the hoardings of a building site came from the Indonesian rainforest, was illegally felled, illegally exported and then landed at Tilbury, became legal once more? And bought by Government contractors contrary to a great deal of Government policy.
As an action it was a near disaster, the police were waiting, knew everything and clearly had an infilitrator on the team. Somehow in the face of 100+ police coming our way, the climbers sprang over the fence and up the crane without a snag. The rest of us found ourselves dogged at every turn by big burly offices of the Met.
Hypothetically I might have done some fly posting, but this seemed suicidal cheeky and so instead a somewhat more sedate role leafleting government buildings – in this case MI5, some considerable walk away.
Well a considerable walk later, and some leafleting outside a charismatic building in Vauxhall, a nice security chap asked us to move on, as we were drawing attention to their secret HQ. Seemed a bit odd, as the building was in a bond movie, but he did nicely clarify that we were outside the wrong building and MI5 was back the way we’d come. So much for my direction sense.
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