No Borders!
The WOMBLES protest camp at Campsfield Immigration Prison, coinciding with Genoa, was foiled by a paranoid over-reaction on the part of the police, as up to 500 cops shut down the nearby town of Kidlington, persuading pubs to close and stopping any ‘suspect’ (i.e. scruffy) vehicles or individuals. The Home Office joined in by transferring 50 detainees away from Campsfield.

Despite the state-fostered tension, a group was able to get inside the cordon and set up a small camp, but the police immediately moved in, first confiscating the keys to their vehicle, claiming they thought it was stolen, then evicting the camp under Criminal Justice Act laws, claiming it was preparing for an illegal rave.

Undeterred, the demonstrat-ors regrouped and a planned Critical Mass cycle ride from Oxford railway station to Campsfield was transformed into a samba-led march round Oxford city centre - followed by half-a-dozen riot vans and deafened by a police chopper.

Given that the last protest camp at Campfield, led by local campaigners, was very lightly policed, the paranoia the WOMBLES’ plans invoked only goes to show how much the powers-that-be are scared by anything with the words ‘anti-capitalist’ attached, even if the tactics are the same as those used by other groups.

Contact: Campaign to Close Campsfield, 01865 726804

Genetix RoundUpTM
It’s turning into a busy summer for GM campaigners. Across the UK, actions both covert and overt have kept the pressure on GM companies. The Genetic Engineering Network (GEN) reports 40 trials in the UK either destroyed/severely damaged by protesters, withdrawn, or failed. These include: 21 farm scale trials: (5 spring oil seed rape (OSR), 4 winter OSR, and 12 maize); 2 winter OSR research trials, all 13 OSR National Seed list trials, 1 barley research trial and 3 potato trials. 25 of these were deliberately decontaminated, including trials at Wivenhoe in Essex, the scene of a rally involving over 100 people in June, which were severely damaged by two covert actions in the following weeks.

Essex and Dorset campaigners also celebrated court victories for activists accused of aggravated trespass. Both cases were thrown out by magistrates on legal technicalities.

Further afield, there have been decontaminations in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, but on the minus side the EU Commission has just introduced rules on GM contamination in food, which allow up to 1% unlabelled contaminationwith unapproved GMOs as long as it is regarded as ‘adventitious’ or ‘technically unavoidable’. In other words, the StarLink contamination incident in the US last year (see article on Aventis CropScience, p.5) would be perfectly legal under the new EU rules.

Outside Europe, Sri Lanka has announced a ban on the import and growing of GM crops; Thailand has banned field releases and there are increasing moves to tighten labelling regulations across Asia. The US is threatening Sri Lanka, Thailand and other countries under WTO rules if they refuse to import US GM products or impose strict labelling.

Meanwhile, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has just released its annual report, claiming biotechnology is the way to feed the world. NGOs across the South are condemning the report by what used to be seen as a neutral organisation. Pesticides Action Network Asia-Pacific (PAN-AP) have described it as ‘a PR dossier full of pro-corporate technology propaganda’, while in India, the Karnataka State Farmers’ Association is threatening a ‘Burn UNDP 2001’ campaign to follow up its ‘Cremate Monsanto’ actions.

The Genetic Engineering Network is now at: Archway Resource Centre, 1a Waterlow Road, Archway, London, N19 5NJ 0207 272 1586 gen@gn.apc.org

Toxic Waste for Kids
Parents and children at twoWelsh schools are getting increasingly concerned about their health - and the health of the democratic process - in the light of plans to move the schools to sites previously used for dumping toxic waste.

In Llandudno, Conwy, a secondary school, Ysgol John Bright, is to be moved from its current site, which the council is selling to Walmart/Asda for a new supermarket, to the site of an old gasworks - known to be contaminated with heavy metals, waste oil and explosive levels of methane. Just to make matters worse, it’s on a floodplain, increasing any risk of chemicals escaping. Meanwhile in Newport, Durham Road Infant and Junior School is being transferred to the site of a former municipal dump, which locals remember was previously used by Monsanto for dumping drums of - well, nobody’s quite sure what, but apparently when soil samples were taken there were some small explosions. Monsanto cannot be held responsible for cleaning up the site as there is no official record of their dumping. An alternative, relatively uncontaminated site had been proposed, but after soil testing the council decided to sell the clean site to housing developers and put the school and attached nursery on the toxic waste dump.

Both new schools will be built under the private finance initiative (PFI) - the new Ysgol John Bright is to be built by McAlpine while a preferred bidder has yet to be found for Durham Road School. Local campaigner Lesley McCarthy pointed out, ‘People are being exploited on three levels here - there’s the companies that made the mess in the first place, like Monsanto, the companies profiting from building the schools, like McAlpine and then the companies that buy up the alternative sites, like Walmart.

Local campaigns are underway and parents in Newport have already persuaded the new Children’s Commissioner for Wales, Peter Clarke, to investigate the cases of both schools. If the new schools in Llandudno and Newport are built on the planned sites, the potential dangers are unthinkable. The main possibilities would be a long-drawn-out nightmare of chronic illnesses and possibly deaths caused by leaking toxins, or a major disaster caused by gas explosion. As Lesley McCarthy put it, ‘We don’t know whether this will be a thalidomide or an Aberfan - or both.’

Contact: Lesley McCarthy mcCarthylesley@aol.com 02920 711232