We’re going local – Tell us about a campaign near you

Hi 38degrees,

I’m campaigning with my local community against a Tesco development at the moment. There are many anti-Tesco campaign groups around the UK but generally they’re all working alone. It would be good to have a campaign to bring them all together about something – for example how they squeeze their supply chains, treat their workers or push through store plans against the wishes of local communities.

Ireland’s largest farmers co-op has just been forced out of business and workers at one of Tesco’s distribution centres have just been told to sign contracts freezing their pay for 7 years or face redundancy. Tesco have a 30% share of the grocery retail market in the UK and they’re abusing their power.

Tescopoly campaigners should be able to help with the campaign and George Monbiot is currently campaigning against Tesco in his local town so he might be good for some publicity. I have a feeling Tescopoly is run by Friends of the Earth, they certainly have some input into it.

I’m also good for some volunteer work myself, just drop me an email.

Kind regards, Oliver

Thanks for this suggestion. As you say there are many issues on tesco, but helping local people battling tesco applications in their area is probably a good place to start. Obviously http://www.tescopoly.org/ are already offering lots of advice and resources, so we’d need to get in touch with them. What sort of things do you imagine 38 Degrees could help with which would be extra to that? E.g. would hosting local online petitions / contact your councillor actions be useful?

I am campaigning to open up rail links that were closed down in 1968 along with appropriate stations, to help the environment and make them more accessible to all people. All the public information at railway stations should be standardised across the UK. I would also like all train companies to relocate buttons on trains, so that the top button will perform the same function. This will allow visually impaired and other passengers to locate quickly and easily buttons and make life more accessible for train users.

For more information please check my blogspot at
http://alexscottmbe.blogspot.com

Thanks!

Hm…I have some pertinent information regarding the tescopoly…I had a gig fairly recently doing some flyering for a company called ‘Natural PR’. They were conducting a ‘public consultation’ with the residents of London Road, Brighton. ‘Natural PR’ had hired an office space, tarted it up substantially and spent the day inviting members of the public to come and write down their suggestions for ways to ‘revitalise’ the area on little post-it notes and stick them to the wall.

I spent the morning happily promoting the event until over lunch, one of the other fellers working with me explained the truth behind the ‘consultation’. The company had apparantly been employed by Tescos to conduct surveys covertly (without disclosing their true purpose). Consulting the residents of the ‘area being considered for development’ is a stipulation of planning law.

This guy had done a few of these ‘consultations’ and despite tons of savvy residents leaving notes with ‘NO TESCOS THANKS’ written in bold and underlined, the planning departments have greenlit virtually every site Tesco has applied for.

Needless to say, I stuck my oar in after lunch and every resident I flyered got told about the impending development. By the end of the day the board was at least half anti-tesco…haven’t seen a development there yet (though I don’t go out much…) Natural PR are local to Brighton, so the M.O. seems to be; scout a site, employ local PR to consult thereby rigging planning process, (illegal/unlawful)? Backhander to local planning dept. or central Gov.plc to seal each application? Personally, I think the latter’s far more likely.

I hope this is of some use, perhaps as a mechanism to start legal action against these developments? I’m pretty sure the best way 38 could really help would be figuring out how this loophole works, then petition parliament for an appropriate change in legislation. Or maybe look at a broader anti-tescos campaign? I’m assuming you guys have also heard about the impending Tesco-RFID-Big Brother-Scandalgasm…?

Now, if you’ll excuse me I’d like to rant about an issue local to me, which could have a wonderful outcome for everybody, worldwide. It’ll be a controversial one for some of us, so apologies in advance, – I intend no disrespect to our brave men and women in the armed forces, – I am a conditional pacifist and understand the (current) need to arm our national military.

Brighton has become a warzone. Our local bomb manufacturer, EDOMBM now owned by ITT has become a significant frontline, hopefully one of the final frontlines in the real ‘war on terror’ – the war between a criminal corporate state and it’s concerned citizen activists. Brighton’s smashEDO campaign held it’s first demonstration outside EDO’s factory, Home Farm Road, Brighton in March 2004. The demonstrations are now a weekly fixture every Wednesday 4-6pm.

The activists’ ethos is guided by the 7th Recommendation of the World Tribunal on Iraq, (WTI) whose culminating session was held in June 2005;

“We recommend that people throughout the world launch nonviolent actions against US and UK corporations that directly profit from this war”

In the words of smashedo press spokesperson, Chloe Marsh;

”If, when millions of people were mobilised against the war across the UK, we had looked at who the companies were who were set to make a profit from the war and targeted them our resistance could have been far more effective”.

It is woth mentioning that the WTI’s website is currently innaccesible from UK IP addresses, – despite this, it would appear that the message is still getting out. By 2007 the smashedo decomissioners had, to all intents and purposes, bankrupted the company. In December of that year, American arms giant ITT bought EDO. This was a significant event, betraying how seriously those at the top are taking the campaign. EDO’s share price had just plummeted, forcing the company into bankruptcy, but ITT and their hawkish partners in crime are acutely aware that when these campaigns succeed, they will herald the end of illegitimate warmongering.

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, colusion between our Government and the arms manufacturers has been exposed. Increasingly Orwellian surveillance and militaristic policing tactics have been deployed in the UK and US to monitor and supress activism. The corrupt elements within the arms industry (and beyond) worldwide know that the veil is inexorably lifting and this terrifies them. The campaign to shut the factory has inspired activists worldwide with it’s unprecedented successes. Closing EDO in Brighton, or Raytheon in Bristol, or Heckler & Koch in Nottingham is clearly unnacceptable to the arms industry as such a closure would threaten their long-term profitability. To date, such a closure anywhere in the world is unprecedented.

Predictably, Brighton and Hove City Council ignored a petition demanding the closure of the bomb factory and refused a Green party motion to condemn the activities of EDO MBM/ITT. A green party leak reveals the city council convenor reasoned that ‘the issue is not directly related to Brighton and has no bearing on the wellbeing of the city’. Clearly, the manufacturers are a large cog in the industry as a whole, therefore they are collectively responsible for the perpetuation of countless atrocities around the world, which directly threaten our species’ very existence. Whether you are a Brightonian or not, I believe you should support this campaign. A second petition has been created, demanding that the council hear the motion:

”We, the undersigned residents of Brighton and Hove, believe that the refusal to hear the original motion was wrong and disagree strongly with the notion that what is being manufactured and sold in Brighton is of no concern or relevance to the city’s citizens. We urge you to accept the tabling of this new motion and to condemn the activities of EDO and their complicity in war crimes”.

- Sign it here: http://www.petitiononline.com/edoitt2/petition.html

You can also support the decommisioners who, on the evening of BHCC’s refusal, caused £300, 000 worth of damage to machinery on the site. Their trial has been adjourned until 2010.

- Sign it here: http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/petition-sign.cgi?decom1

More information @ http://www.smashedo.org.uk

If 38 degrees were to help manage the convergence of this movement, co-ordinate the various protesters around the country to work together at a political level – maybe co-ordinate with stop the war coalition – I couldn’t find a website for the groups in Nottingham or Bristol, maybe help them set something up? Some action definitely needs to be taken on the legislation curtailing our human rights, – ‘kettling’ ‘FIT’ teams and the like, our rights to freedom of speech/to protest are having the lifeblood literally kicked out of them and we’re going to need those…

A petition to end the illegal arms trade? (unrealistic chance of success) A petition to reinstate our civil liberties (slim chance of success) A rallying call to all peace activists/conscientious objectors/disenfranchised, disillusioned, grieving troops and families to move the frontline of the anti-war effort to parliament via 38degrees, DEMANDING the arrest of the war criminal Blair and his accomplices and an end to illegitimate warmongering? (moderate chance of success IMHO).

How big are our balls 38?

—thanks for reading—end rant—