15th February Rally BANNED!!

by Stasi Wed Jan 29, 2003 23:21 mail at tayadscotland dot fsnet dot co dot uk

Yep, I'm afraid the banning is true. Below is an excerpt from an article in today's Guardian newspaper about this. You can get the full story by logging onto www.guardian.co.uk

Keep off the grass: minister bans Hyde Park war protest
======================================
Jamie Wilson
Wednesday January 29, 2003
The Guardian

Organisers of a massive stop the war rally yesterday vowed that it
would go ahead despite a decision by the culture secretary to ban the event
from London's Hyde Park.
A spokeswoman for the Stop The War Coalition said it would vigorously
contest the decision, taken with the direct authority of Tessa Jowell,
to outlaw the event on health and safety grounds.
The manager of the royal parks, Steve Edwards, wrote to the STWC on
Monday to say that an emergency liaison team had decided that Hyde Park
was not a suitable site for a rally at this time of year because of the
condition of the ground and the number of people involved.
But a spokeswoman for the STWC, which expects that about 500,000 people
will attend the February 15 event, said it was a direct attack on the
right to demonstrate and a denial of freedom of speech.
"This is the most important issue facing people in the world today. We
are not going to accept this," the spokeswoman said.
A spokesman for Department of Culture, Media and Sport confirmed that
the decision to ban the rally from the park had been approved by Ms
Jowell after the Royal Parks Authority checked to make sure she was happy
with it.
"The fact is no rallies of any size are allowed in the royal parks at
this time of year," the spokesman said. "As anybody with a garden knows,
the grass is completely waterlogged and if you have 100,000 people
milling about it will become a swamp. It is not just about the cost of
repair, but also the health and safety of the people who are there,
especially as the rally is likely to finish after dark."
The London event is one of 33 planned in cities across the world for
the same day.

by Kevin-Scott Thu Jan 30, 2003 05:17

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience... Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

by iosaf = o as if Thu Jan 30, 2003 11:14

Democracy can not be said to exist in any form without Protest.

Democracy will not be achieved without Protest.

The British Constitution needs to reflect Democracy. We have obviously not finished with the British Constitutional review process.
-do they have little blue books?
-no we must make some for them.

get out of your houses away from your TVs and out on to the street.
The Street is where Democracy is made real.
Reclaim it.

by Intransigent Thu Jan 30, 2003 13:11

With 400,000 people attending the previous march in London and many more expected on the 15th you have a mass movement. What will Tony Blair do if 500,000 people show up on the 15th. Will he order in the army to 'maintain order.' The protest must go ahead as planned. There is no other way. We are standing in defiance of the state. Of course they will attempt to place obstacles in our way. We must learn to defeat these obstacles. Without his public what can Tony Blair achieve?

by Andrew Thu Jan 30, 2003 15:22

Not sure why you think the addition of an extra 200,000 people will get Blair to call out the army. I suspect he'll do what he did last time, ignore the demonstration and get on with preparing for war in the hope that the outbreak of war will get the liberals back supporting 'our boys'.

A suggestion for an alternative end point. Northwood Military HQ is on the edge of London and could easly accommodate 500,000 people. You'd need to organise some stewards to cut down the fence but once inside as well as listening to speeches the partipants could tear up or down the base and its airfield. Now that should get Blairs attention as well as making a rather direct impact on the war itself.

A few hundred have already been doing this already, see http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=51074
but a few hundred are easy to spot.

by King Mob Thu Jan 30, 2003 15:36

For starts have you not figured out the difference between the summary and the story box yet? Christ it's been a year now. Do we really need to read everything you say twice?

Secondly again with the tabloid hysteria, the march hasn't been banned it's been banned from hyde park big difference.

Thirdly this kind of shite is similiar to the gibbering of Garret Lambert Symth (Richard BB) over having the IAWM march banned from travelling up grafton st on Dec 8th. It was an idiotic idea and people could have been injured if the march had tried to barge it's way up grafton st on the busiest shopping day of the year was fucking moronic and could have led to injuries. but no according to garret it's about repression of civil liberties ala rts (where was Garrett that day anyway, missed the social event of the year, didn't stop him getting his gob on the late late).

I've been in hyde park recently and it's a mess, and 200,000 would trash the grass, this makes sense.

Grow up.

by chris Thu Jan 30, 2003 17:48

Jaysus... did you even bother reading the article? They don't give two shits about the protest. They just don't want the grass in Hyde Park getting destroyed.

Save the paranoid conspiracy theories.

chris