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Rioting in Bristol, UK over squat eviction
Last night in Bristol, UK an unplanned protest turned into rioting and street fighting.
The rioting started when police tried to evict a squat opposite a Tesco supermarket. The Tesco branch had been the focus of a long term campaign (http://notesco.wordpress.com/) to stop gentrification and keep corporations out of the Stokes Croft area of Bristol. People responded to the eviction and soon several hundred gathered in the street.
The Tesco store had it's windows smashed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLwsno9uReU
and street fighting with the police went on into the night http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSCyp...ature=youtu.be
Total number of arrests is estimated at 9.
The Tesco building its self had been squatted. In March 2010 four people where arrested when the building was evicted so that Tesco could begin work on their new branch.
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php...10422085404631
As an Anarchist, I strangely find myself getting along better with Maoists than Platformists!
The comments in the youtube section are fucking priceless.
But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on
Looks like it's going to be an interesting time with the Bristol Anarchist Bookfair, 7th May- i think, and events, including an anarchist ball- all in the Stokes Croft area- and one of the more political squats in Stokes Croft being up for eviction from the 5th of May.
I am pleased that people especially the young are starting to wake up and fight back.
"Destroy what destroys you!"
“To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.”
The Battle of #StokesCroft
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/14482
WOW. I’ll update this in the morning, I have just returned from a week abroad to pure and utter carnage on my doorstep. Please excuse all the errors in this – it’s been about 20 hours since I slept. (I have deadlines next week, this has been literally the most ridiculous unplanned night of my life.)
Since I got back to Bristol this evening I’ve been stuck between various police roadblocks and witnessed running battles between police and mostly random people woken in the middle of the night by the sound of police sirens and choppers. When I arrived the police would only tell me that I could not enter stokes croft (where I live) for my “health and safety” and that it was to do with Tesco. Asking around there were various different explanations. Most people said that the police were raiding protesters houses throughout stokes croft.
We could see across the police line approximately 10 riot vans and a riot squad entering the famous “Telepathic heights”. A house, like a lot in the area painted from head to toe in murals. One mural on the side of the block reads “No Tesco in Stokes Croft” in huge letters. Stokes croft is known in Bristol as the cultural quarters and spans only a few thousand square feet of concentrated cultural activity not dissimilar to Camden in central London.
At something like 10PM a huge crowd landed on the front of stokes croft drawn by the low flying helicopter with spotlight and the army of police emerging from 12+ riot vans dressed for combat. Pretty soon tension peaked as no explanation would be given for the roadblocks and there was intimidation on both sides.
I was on the junction of stokes croft high street when the police charged what was only at that point a croud (of about 100 but which quickly grew) down Ashley road pretty much all the way to the end of it over the course of a couple of hours. Due to the absolute confusion a number of people had emerged from their houses only to shortly find they were the wrong side of a road block and got roped in to what became a three hour running battle through pretty much all of the back streets coming off Ashley road croft and in to St Pauls, numerous burning barracades were errected and a huge amount of people were battered and bloodied by police for attempting to approach police lines to get home and find friends. By this point there was devastation everywhere. All junctions were blocked by overturned glass bottle dumpsters and makeshift neighbourhood roadblocks.
Eventually what seemed like the entire residence of stokes croft (and St. Pauls) emerged and pushed the police back on to stokes croft high street. For a long time there was a deadlock, people stood around and shared rumours about the reason behind the army of police that had arrived unnanounced and were terrorising the neighbourhood.
There was total confusion and stokes croft (street) was mostly cordoned off, the police started making arrests and then all hell broke loose. Missiles began coming down from Telepathic heights, the starting point of the problem and police brought out dogs to clear people from the street, quite a few got bitten. Meanwhile a lot of police vans had their tyres let out. At that point the dogs retreated and the convoy of about 10 vans that were surrounded drove at speed through the crowd clipping a large number of people on their way out. Both Tesco and telepathic heights were abandoned by the police.
At this point I decided to go home since now the police had retreated all hell was being unleashed on Tescos and hundreds of pieces of police riot gear were being handed out from the abandoned vehicles, since then the police returned and there’s been more running battles and people flooding down my street.
As an Anarchist, I strangely find myself getting along better with Maoists than Platformists!
