UPDATED: Bright Green editor arrested
Posted on May 15, 2011 by Gary Dunion | 40 Comments
Alasdair Thompson, of this parish, has been arrested by Lothian & Borders Police for displaying an anti-cuts banner during a peaceful Uncut occupation of a BHS store in Edinburgh’s Rose Street.
UK Uncut logo[i-UK Uncut logo]Ali was the only demonstrator arrested. Police confirmed to Uncut activists that even before the action had begun, they had been ordered to make an arrest to “set an example”. A woman was physically restrained, but not arrested, for photographing the police.
Edinburgh Uncut were staging an instore comedy gig in protest at the activities of BHS’s owner, Philip Green’s tax-dodging empire Arcadia.
Green has registered Arcadia under the legal ownership of his wife, Tina who as a Monaco resident pays no UK income tax. Through this scam, the couple were able in 2005 to pocket the biggest paycheck in British history, £1.2 billion, without paying a penny in tax. This one payout cost UK public services around £285 million.
Update, 15:48 – Ali has been released after protests outside St Leonard’s police station, where he was being held. We will bring you his account as soon as possible.
Comments
40 Responses to “UPDATED: Bright Green editor arrested”
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DennyNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 3:04 pmI had an unfortunate conflation of Green(s) (name) with Green(s) (party) when reading this… not sure if it could be edited to be clearer. [i-:)]
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DennyNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 3:04 pmOh, and of course; I hope Alasdair is okay and doesn’t get too serious an example made of him!
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Peter McCollNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 3:08 pmHi,
Updated to try to make that clearer. Thanks,
Peter -
Jonathan[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 3:25 pmThis is shitty. What grounds were given for the arrest and was he charged with anything?
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t fletcher[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 3:25 pmwe can’t have people walking around with banners protesting it’s just not british.
but it’s okay if you’re a muslim in luton protesting against british troops who served in afghanistan -
Rupert Read[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 4:18 pmOur government praises demonstrators in the Middle East – and arrests them here.
(However, that fact is of course no excuse for prejudice – on the contrary! Thus t fletcher’s comment is not welcome. Islamophobia is not welcome here.) -
Mike Shaw[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 4:59 pmYou should have some footage later today…
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Adam RamsayNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 5:03 pmEr, @tfletcher, we try not to moderate comments here, but I think you miss the point. Everyone, whether we agree with them or not, should have the right to protest.
Much solidarity to Ali, who is now out.
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Chris Beach[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 5:47 pmFor goodness get a real job and stop trying it on with the police with your illegal trespassing on private property.
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Adam RamsayNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 5:54 pmErm, Chris, Ali is a physicist. Is that not a real job? Or do you just have a comical set of predjudices baed on your bizzare misunderstanding of a world you can’t get your head round? Coz if it’s the latter, I guess I can empathise.
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Jane D[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 6:00 pmSurely the police can’t just decide in advance to make an arrest whether or not a crime is committed? I’ve always been wary of people who talk about a ‘police state’ but in the last few weeks I’ve seen a lot of worrying evidence that that might be just what we’re heading for. It’s very scary.
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Adam RamsayNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 6:05 pmJane, I think you are right both that this is scary, and to be wary. Terms like ‘police state’ are very binary – either we live in one, or we don’t. Clearly we don’t live in Burma, or equivilent.
However, it is also important to remember that the freedoms that we enjoy do not exist by chance. They were fought for and won. And unless we keep protecting them, they will be lost. And so we should be concerned when people are arrested for carrying a placard – even if, unlike the Turkish activists I met yesterday, when my friends are arrested, they don’t have their finger and toe nails ripped out.
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Pete B[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 8:25 pmI was arrested, convicted and fined over £300 for holding a banner at Heathrow airport, even though I put it down when asked by a senior Police officer. Apparently it’s against some dodgy Heathrow bylaw.
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jan bainbridge[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 8:28 pmrupert, t fletchers comment was not Islamaphobic they stated a fact, perhaps that is something you should consider before name calling. Yes Adam we do/did have the right to protest in this country, but that is peaceful protest as ukuncut have been carrying out, which is to their credit. No group has the right to violent protest or to incite hatred which some minor Muslim groups do, yet we don’t see them being kettled and arrested en masse. You are not doing the average Muslim in this country any favour by not recognising and questoning this.
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ronchesta[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 8:42 pmplease tell me if theres such a law as ‘setting an example’ and when it was discussed, debated..and had second motion and ammended by the house of lords..and passed and put into statute..because i dont ever remember it happening…if this is the case then this is illegal….and for those who think that protesting is just causing trouble, then woe betide you when you lose your job, or have a motorway development put through your area and risk having having you house knocked down and forced to relocate or having you local hospital closed…(of course having private health insurance might protect you .until the company goes broke or you lose your job due to free market competition) .
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Tim[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 8:44 pmJan,
there was only one mass arrest, This was admittedly, politically motivated. Muslims protesting against the israeli slaughter in gaza in dec 2008-jan2009 at the israeli embassy received harsh custodial sentences for minor damage.
But for the record they do get kettled. i can assure you theres no non-kettling just because their muslim. but covert islamophobia aside, lets not get silly now. -
jan bainbridge[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 9:10 pmTim, yes this was at the Israeli embassy,protesting there is a definate no no. but we won’t go into that because that leads to ‘anti-semite’ at best or ‘nazi’ if we are feeling really childish.
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man in the street[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 10:13 pmOkay,
one problem the Greens have is reaching out to people. Taking the piss out of / ignoring / or rounding on anyone who isn’t making ‘appropriate’ comments, won’t get you very far, just as doing the same to a school pupil won’t exactly change his/her mind or enamour them of your point of view.
secondly, I sympathise totally with UK Uncut aims of making these toe-rags pay their fair share of tax, but ‘comedy gigs’ in BHS by the middle classes almost makes me wilfully go against you. I’m sure it feels very cutting edge and exciting to do it but it’s something to consider…
Rupert, one man’s claim about islamists not being arrested isn’t a million miles away from some Green rants about ‘Israelis’ when you stop and look at it coldly, but then we judge ourselves by our motives and others by their actions.
Denny, is that your hair or a hat? It’s cool whatever.
Otherwise, carry on chaps and chapesses…
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LizNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 10:45 pmDear Man in the street
This is the annoying bit where I take issue with the label of ‘middle class’ as a person from a mining town, recently made redundant from my youth work job, on the dole, in debt blah blah blah (and was supposed to be performing, not that I got time as the police came etc)
I can understand why people are suspicious of middle class activists, and it is important about ways people get alienated from debate because of class.I also agree with you about gigs not being the only way to do things, and it’s more of a fun way of getting attention than a long term strategy (for me) However, there are ways to critique ideas without deciding for yourself what particular group people fit into.I’m not sure what your problem with the gig is, apart from the class nature of the participants?
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katie[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 11:36 pmIs there a legal case of some kind that can be publicised from this? I’ve been reading so many incredibly worrying reports of the Police arrested protesters for what seems like absolutely NO reason at all. Surely Ali’s arrest is some kind of infringement of civil liberties?!?!
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Gary DunionNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 15th, 2011 @ 11:46 pmKatie @ 20,
While I suspect a legal action would be prohibitively costly and likely to fail, I do think that Ali was the victim of a wrongful arrest here.
Police told him he was being arrested under Section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010. This covers “threatening or abusive behaviour” which “would cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm.”
Ali was holding, in silence, a banner reading “We will not pay for their bailout.”
This could cause annoyance to BHS or its staff; it may even cause a minor loss of custom. It is not reasonable to propose that it would cause fear or alarm, even less so to allege that it constitutes threatening or abusive behaviour.
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Mark[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 3:25 am“but it’s okay if you’re a muslim in luton protesting against british troops who served in afghanistan”
Er… you mean the ones who were convicted? ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/11/luton-guilty-soldiers-baby-killers )
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Robin Gitte[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 3:38 amI went on some Uncut demos in Liverpool last year, also supported the December student protest in London, and the March 26th rally. At sixty years of age, it was a new experience for me.
Police intimidation definitely works. I’ve stopped protesting.
The police are indiscriminate, provocative and disproportionate. You only need to be a protestor to be arrested at random, or even beaten up. If I hadn’t witnessed it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it.
If I grow a spine, I will join in again.
Respect!
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Green GordonNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 9:46 am“please tell me if theres such a law as ‘setting an example’ and when it was discussed, debated..and had second motion and ammended by the house of lords..and passed and put into statute..because i dont ever remember it happening…if this is the case then this is illegal….”
That isn’t the way the law works. There’s plenty of things we (and institutions) do on a daily basis that aren’t explicitly permitted by law.
The reality is that there are plenty of minor laws that only get enforced if the police want to set an example, or if you give them lip.
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Green GordonNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 9:49 amp.s. it goes without saying I’m on Ali’s side here. I just don’t think arguments are helped by hysteria.
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katie[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 10:35 am@ Gary Dunion
Thank you for explaining that. It really does seem like anyone can be arrested these days and our rights to protest and to have free speech are continually being stepped on.
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jan bainbridge[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 10:51 amman in the street, haven’t all revolutions started with the middle class? I think the comedy aspects of the protests is ingenious, when/if test cases go to court the defence should have a field day.
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man in the street[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 1:08 pmHi Jan
I suspect ‘most’ people wouldn’t find the comedy gig ‘funny’. What the activists find amusing isn’t exactly going to translate well to those people they want to influence. It would probably have the opposite effect.
Liz,
I agree with you to a point. Again, ‘most’ people see a lot of these protests as the well of middle classes protesting. Which it largely is of course. That’s a problem for those of us who want to spread the message wider. We need to reach people not alienate them. -
Ric Lander[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 3:10 pmWhat a fuss about nothing! You’d think the police would have better things to do…
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K[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 5:26 pmHere’s a video of yesterday’s protest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75nlARLo0dE
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Chris Jones[i-No Gravatar]
May 16th, 2011 @ 11:24 pmMarx was a stage. God is a stage. There may even be a Marx ‘spot’ in the brain. Every sane human wants to preserve life and sustain equality. When the bananas are few the monkeys share, when they are plentiful the monkeys kill each other.
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Gordon Tracey[i-No Gravatar]
May 17th, 2011 @ 1:30 amRupert Reads comment on T. Fletchers Afghan banner demonstrators.
Rupert – you are too hard. Perhaps T. Fletcher could only bring to mind that particular incidence, which shows what you are trying to prove. The selection of that protest does not make T. Fletcher a racist – or do you work for the British secret Services? -
David HenryNo Gravatar[i-No Gravatar]
May 17th, 2011 @ 1:58 amHey people – sorry to hear this. You might want to contact Mani from UKUncut in Manchester who was also arrested and physically attacked on Saturday (along with two other activists) whilst protesting. He was charged with ‘assault’ and would appropriate solidarity from other UKUncut groups. Info on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ukuncutmanc
PRESS RELEASE -
We are appealing for witnesses to come forward to give evidence on Tuesday 24th May 9:45AM,:
Manchester City Magistrates Court
Crown Square
Manchester
England
M60 1PRPlease email us: ukuncutmanchester@aussiemail.com.au for further contact information.
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ronchesta[i-No Gravatar]
May 31st, 2011 @ 2:35 pmi wasnt being hysterical, i was just asking is there was a ‘setting an example’ law..if you are arrested do you not have a right to ask what law you have broken? including non repealed by laws going back to year dot?
Trackbacks
- UKuncut protester arrested merely for holding a banner | Liberal Conspiracy
- UPDATED: Bright Green editor arrested | Bright Green « WorldWright's …
- More arrests at @UKUncut actions | Bright Green
- More arrests at @UKUncut actions | GreenFeed (beta2)
- The Rise of Political Policing « keeptheredflagflyinghigh
- Police release Edinburgh Uncut activists uncharged | Liberal Conspiracy
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