The Miners' Strike 20th Aniversary... SchNEWS article

“The Miners of Silverwood, having been told they were confined to six pickets only, built themselves a seventh comrade in the shape of a large snowman, wearing a plastic policeman’s helmet. Next morning, Chief Inspector Nesbitt appears on the scene and seeing the jeering miners and their snowy companion, ordered the constables to knock the snowman down. This order brought rebellion to the police ranks as PCs declined to, “look so fucking stupid knocking down a snowman”.

“Very well,” shouts the irate Nesbitt, jumping in his Range Rover and charging off to demolish the snowman… As the vehicle made contact, it came to a dead stop, smashing front grill, bumper and headlamps and hurling the shocked Nesbitt into the steering wheel. PCs found excuses to walk away or suppress body-shaking laughter while pickets fell about on the ground with side-splitting mirth. The snowman had been constructed around a three foot high two foot thick concrete post!”

From ex-miner Dave Douglass’s book, ‘All Power to the Imagination’ published by The Class War Federation

VATAN... Anti terror laws in action from SchNEWS 392 (which has a great cartoon by the way)

In December, five Turks and a Briton were charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 for supporting the Turkish Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C. They were nicked because DHKP-C has been banned by the UK government and the six arrestees were supposedly “facilitating the retention or control of terrorist property.” Guns? Bombs? Er, no, the people arrested were simply in possession of magazines, videos and posters that supported the DHKP-C. At a pretrial hearing, the judge ordered all the defendants to surrender their passports and banned them from selling or distributing copies of “Vatan,” a radical Turkish-based magazine that has the bare faced cheek to criticise that bastion of human rights, Turkey.
One of those nicked was Rory O’Driscoll, who had recently joined other people in a visit to Turkish hunger strikers protesting about prison conditions. His house was then raided and he was held for two weeks at Paddington Green police station where every hour someone would open up the hatch to his cell and ask if he was ‘alright’ (a friendly way to deny a prisoner of sleep, don’t you reckon?). If found guilty of the ‘crime’ of possessing magazines and supporting Turkish hunger strikers, Rory could face up to 10 years in prison.

£1m terrorism case is thrown out by judge ... Vatan update.

The case against six people charged under Anti-Terrorism laws has been thrown out of court due to a "tragi-comic" prosecution by the Home Office. The six were charged under the Terrorism Act for supposedly supporting the banned Turkish Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C. They were arrested for selling copies of “Vatan,” a radical Turkish-based magazine that criticises Turkey’s human rights record, and possessing posters and other media supporting the banned group. The prosecution said that Vatan is “terrorist property”, even though it is sold legally throughout Turkey and Europe.

A week before the trial, defence lawyers produced a letter from the Home Office confirming that the six were actually working for the similarly named DHKC which has never been banned. The prosecution went ahead with the case anyway, claiming that the six also worked for the DHKC's militant wing, the DHKP-C.

Lawyers for the six were then told four days before the trial that the consent of the attorney general - a requirement for prosecutions under the Terrorism Act which involve another country - had never been given. At the last minute, the attorney general gave a rushed consent for prosecution on conspiracy charges in case the other charges were thrown out by the judge. The case was thrown out by the judge who said: “Were this prosecution to continue, it would bring the administration of justice into disrepute amongst right-thinking people and offend this court’s sense of propriety and justice”. Piss up and brewery justice...

I spoke to their Lawyer yesterday, and he said all charges had been dropped and the six were all free and well.

Guardian coverage