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Newsletter Issue 3 May - June 2001 |
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CAMPAIGN NEWS No Borders Close Campsfield Camp The Close Campsfield Campaign has set up a protest camp outside the Campsfield Immigrtion Detention Centre near Oxford. They are successfully putting the wind up Group 4, who run the centre, and have so far made several incursions into the compound, including several people climbing onto the roof of a building. A hole mysteriously appeared in the perimeter fence but was unfortunately noticed by Group 4 before it could be used. Noise demos and graffiti actions are ongoing - the signs leading to the site have been subverted to read 'Campsfield Prison' and there has been considerable local press interest. More people are needed to keep the camp going (it's in a pleasant field, with trees and access to running water, very nice), but donations of banners, useful tat, food etc. are also welcome. Site mobile: 0781 3552570 Balfour Beatty in hot water May 2nd saw a landmark victory for the campaign against the Ilisu Dam project in south east Turkey, with protesters dominating the annual general meeting of Balfour Beatty and some institutional investors supporting a Friends of the Earth resolution against the company's involvement in the scheme. The dam itself has been the subject of increasing controversy as it will displace 78,000 Kurdish people from their homes and destroy the ancient city of Hasankeyf. Protesting share-holders from a remarkable variety of groups turned up for the AGM. Questioning was dominated by protesters who massively outnumbered all other shareholders, the board and hotel staff. The first session was devoted to company matters other than the Ilisu Dam project. Shareholders asked searching questions on issues ranging from bribery and corruption charges in Lesotho and the United States, to the company's ethical and environmental policies (Balfour's ethical policy would easily fit on the back of a postcard), to the Birmingham Northern Relief Road. A separate session was set aside for questioning on the special resolution and the Ilisu dam. The resolution, calling on the company to adopt the recommendations of a report by the World Commission on Dams, would effectively bar Balfour from taking part in the Ilisu dam. At the end of the meeting, campaigners were overjoyed to learn that preliminary results suggested the FoE motion had around 14 million votes, and over 75 million had abstained - this would give it 16% of the vote, the largest proportion ever achieved by a shareholder resolution in the UK. But the story ended with a bizarre twist. Later that day Balfour announced that there had been a mix-up in the voting. The three institutional investors who supported Friends of the Earth's resolution had made a mistake, they claimed, having accidentally ticked the wrong box on the polling form. The alleged errors were quickly rectified after phone calls from Balfour's company secretary to the fund managers in question. No behind the scenes arm-twisting there, then. Ilisu Dam Campaign: www.ilisu.gn.apc.org, ilisu@gn.apc.org, tel. 01865 200550 Premier Oil AGM At Premier Oil's AGM on May 16th the board faced criticism from both institutional and private shareholders. After last year's challenges over human rights and environment issues in Burma, the company hired PR consultants EQ Management to conduct a social audit. No one was impressed by this move and the board was forced to admit that EQ was not actually qualified to carry out parts of it. EQ Management failed to take into account that that the audit was made in a repressive political environment and also failed to consult refugees displaced from the area of Premiers Oil's pipeline. Premier Oil was also criticised for plans to drill in a Pakistan national park. Contact www.burmacampaign.co.uk 0207 281 73 77. Feeding or Fooling the World? Some of the events that took place around the World Agriculture 2020 Conference at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. Tickets were £300 which made this debate on the future of agriculture rather an exclusive affair, so alternative events took place. Public meeting organised by the 2020 Vision collective Wednesday 18th saw a highly charged public meeting - 'Feeding or Fooling the World' - with speakers such as the Indian trade and agriculture journalist, Devinder Sharma, two women farmers from the Deccan Development Group from South India, Patrick Mulvany from the ITDG and surprise guest, Percy Schmeiser, the Canadian canola farmer who was successfully sued by Monsanto for supposedly planting GM crops on his land without a license agreement. Percy is appealling against the decision and plans to countersue for damage to his crops by Monsanto's genetic material. Further details on www.percyschmeiser.com On Thursday evening protesters assembled outside the dining room of the Sainsbury Centre at the University of East Anglia, where the John Innes Centre were wining and dining pro-GM conference delegates behind the Centre's huge plate glass wall. Protesters scaled the building and let down two massive banners, facing inwards towards the big window. One demonstrator reported how at one point during the evening, an African delegate was handed a bun, looked quizzically at it, then up at the big ‘bio-hazard’ banner, before finally exchanging a grin with protesters. Moon Bush in Gothenburg! The next European Council meeting will be held in Gothenburg in Sweden. The focus will be the enlargement of the EU and sustainable development. In connection with the EU meeting, US President George W. Bush will come to Gothenburg on the 14th of June for an EU-US summit meeting. Göteborgsaktionen 2001, a broad coalition of organisations, has been formed to protest against the militarisation of the EU; the constitutionalisation of the EU's neoliberal policies; the Schengen treaty and the development of ‘Fortress Europe’; the privatisation of services and the commodification of the environment. They are arranging a counter conference from 13th-17th of June with speakers from all over the world. On the 15th a huge protest meeting will be held 'as close to the EU meeting as possible' and on the 16th a demonstration with several blocks (divided up according to political focus) will go through Göteborg. There are also rumours circulating that the world's biggest mass mooning action will take place to honour the arrival of Mr Bush. If you are interested in joining be the biggest ever international protest gathering in Sweden, look at www.gbg2001.org, e-mail info@gbg2001.org or call 0046 736760525. Genetix RoundUp™ Two of the three planned GM farm-scale trials in Wales were called off last month after landowner Tony Marlow, a former Conservative MP, pulled out, citing 'misinformation' and mixed messages from the government. Marlow had faced massive objections from local organic growers who were worried about the prospect of cross-pollination damaging the status of their crops. The trial at Wolston in Warwickshire, just 2 miles from the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) experimental organic gardens at Ryton, has also been called off after an intense campaign which saw MP Alan Simpson calling for direct action against the crop if planted. Of the 13 National Seed List small-scale trials planted this year by Aventis, two have failed and a further six have been destroyed by pixies, leaving just five still in the ground. More info on GM crops and details of all farm-scale trials: www.gm-info.org.uk Hastings alliance launched Leading environment and transport organisations, backed by a combined membership of almost 2 million, have joined together to fight plans to build two bypasses around Hastings. The Hastings Alliance is calling on Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, (or his successor after the election) to refuse permission for the schemes to go ahead. As well as damaging three SSSIs and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the bypasses look set to make a nonsense of current traffic flows (diverting local traffic from main roads into residential areas) and do severe damage to local public transport - the ‘multi-modal’ study of the area’s transport needs concluded that building the bypasses could cut public transport use by up to 60%, leading to cuts in services and severe problems for those Hastings residents, particularly pensioners, who do not have cars. The Hastings Alliance is also opposing the planned out-of-town business park and large housing development which would accompany the bypasses and which are predicted to take jobs out of Hastings and Bexhill. Nick Bingham from the campaign said, ‘We're not just anti-bypass, we want real regeneration for Hastings. The bypasses would be a waste of public money which could be used elsewhere to benefit local people.’ Contacts: Nick Bingham (Hastings Alliance) 07768 193900, Exploited Cointreau workers occupy plantation Peasant farmers and union members working for Guacimal SA (a partly-owned subsidiary of French drinks manufacturer Remy Cointreau) are occupying the company's orange plantation in Northern Haiti. At the beginning of October 2000, the plantation workers registered as a union and sent a list of its grievances and requests for improvements in wages and working conditions to the Guacimal management. However, no negotiations took place. After a strike between mid December and the end of February, issues flared up again around the sharing out of plots of plantaion land for growing vegetables in the off-season from the end of April. At the close of the harvest season, the plantation overseer ordered the watchmen to discriminate against union members when the land parcels were distributed. After further provoocation, the union then allied itself with a recently formed planters' association composed of local farmers and occupied the Guacimal plantation on 27 April. They have declared they will no longer share half of their harvest with the plantation supervisors as had been the custom in the past, nor will they take orders from the present overseer or watchmen; and though they have no intention of cutting down the orange trees, the management of Guacimal SA would be wise to negotiate an agreement with them. ACTION: The Haiti Support Group is calling for people to write to Rémy Cointreau expressing the urgent need for the Guacimal SA management to negotiate a settlement with the Syndicat des Ouvriers de Guacimal St. Raphaël and the planters' association. Please write or email to: Dominique Hériard Dubreuil Rémy Cointreau 152, avenue des Champs-Élysées, 75008 Paris FRANCE Email: joelle.jezequel@remy-cointreau.com Full Editorial Control? A cautionary tale from media Babylon… A couple of months ago Bristol based video activists, i-Contact video network were approached by WarkClements (a Glasgow based production company headed by BBC 'Newsnight' supremo Kirsty Wark) to contribute a 3.5-minute film on the subject of subvertising. They were looking for 'anarchic' content for an alternative news pilot show called 'alt.news@4'. i-Contact say they were promised 'full editorial control'; the Channel 4 commissioning editor claimed they would never have offered this.  Whether or not they had been promised control, i-Contact quickly found it being eroded. They were told at the start not to target individual corporations for fear of redress, which they interpreted as an order not to pick on individual multinationals. It slowly emerged that they couldn't target any corporations at all. i-Contact submitted a list of corporate images for the film: C4's refusal makes interesting reading.Example 1- Image: Tory v. Labour - Reason: Coca Cola would probably take exception. Example 2 - Image: No Escape from Slow Death - Reason: Nescafe would freak It soon became apparent that only the most watered down images could be used 'just to be on the safe side'. Another idea - a montage of shots with billboards morphing from ads to digitally altered subverts was instantly vetoed with no discussion by the commissioning editor. At this stage i-Contact were still going along with it. Next they followed a bunch of Billboard Liberation folk in Bristol and filmed them at work. C4's legal department approved a roughcut of this version, including a shot in which a billboard was pulled down by a rope. A couple of weeks later a second roughcut, with only minor changes to content, was handed in. Just days away from the final edit the legal department wrote back requesting a two-page list of changes, some of them quite significant, including removing the shot of the falling billboard. WarkClements agreed that the changes should have been spotted first time round and C4's legal department had cocked up. i-Contact agreed to make all changes except removing the shot of the falling billboard, which they felt was crucial to the message of the film. No way, said C4. All changes must be made. i-Contact weren't impressed, ‘We felt that C4 had given us two options - comply with their demands and submit a shite watered down film or withdraw the film’. They decided to pull it, and to circulate the story on the web. One site where the story appeared was Indymedia, where commissioning editor Jess Search took the right to reply to present her side of the story. She pointed out that some of the cuts requested were to remove material not be permitted under the Independent Television Commission (ITC) regulations. A quick scan through the code suggests she was referring to article 5.1, banning material which appears ‘to encourage or incite crime’. The ITC code appears to have been written by the same people drafting Home Office legislation, for example, article 5.3 reads: ‘Terrorist or criminal activity Particular care is required with a programme which carries the views of people or organisations who use or advocate the use of violence or other criminal activity...to attain political or other ends. Programmes must not give the impression of condoning criminal activity, even (or especially) where its seriousness may not be accepted or recognised in every section of society. (See Appendix 4 - Terrorism Act UK 2000).’ The ITC guidelines were not the only issue. Ms. Search goes on, ‘given the nature of the item, [the legal advice] inevitably included advice on criminal behaviour, defamation, copyright and fairness.’ In other words, the i-Contact film, harmless though it appears compared to what you can see on TV any night of the week, would get C4’s asses sued off and probably lose them some advertising cash. Whichever way you cast this story: ‘Defiant video activists refuse to submit to mainstream sleaze’ or ‘Naïve vid-warriors “shocked” by media codes’, it demonstrates yet again that every second of content on mainstream TV is subject to the whims of advertisers and logo-owners, as well as to the paranoid dictates of the state. Objectivity, anyone? |
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