The New Wave of the Free Spirit

A new wave of protest movement is emerging in Europe that does much to harken back to the "revolutionary millenarians and mystical anarchists of the middle ages" (Norman Cohn).
The Hamburg and Dresden for Free collectives engage in bold, often humorous actions underpinned by a belief that goods should be held in common. They raid expensive supermarkets dressed as superheroes stealing goods which are then redistributed among the low-paid workers and unemployed. In another stunt they marched into an exclusive Hamburg restaurant dressed in carnival masks plucking food from the plates of the millionaire diners and hoisted a banner aloft proclaiming "The Fat Years Are Over". Their slogan of , "Everything for everybody. And everything for free" recalls the English Ranters of the 17th Century who declared "All Is Ours" as they preached against contemporary morality and private property.

The call of the ‘For Free’ movements for "the reappropriation of privatised previously public spaces" is an echo of Winstanley’s Diggers setting up camp on St George’s Hill in the belief that the land was a common treasury.

The Spanish anti-consumer activists YoMango! say that their politics is "the politics of happiness, of putting the body first. Be happy, insultingly happy. YOMANGO: feel pretty!" and extol people to liberate goods from shops, creatively shoplift in the name of the higher ideals of their cause. They are also summoning up the same form of antinomianism that adepts of the Free Spirit used to justify their displays of public nudity, fornication and blasphemy in the medieval streets and squares.

So why are we falling back on ideas and forms of protest 500 years old? Probably because the problem remains the same, that capitalism still commodifies the spirit, the wealthy still insist on stealing our space and seek to further encroach upon the few freedoms we have left with pervasive surveillance and biometric ID cards. Public land is sold off and turned into shopping malls and luxury apartments. Even the building blocks of life, the DNA of living organisms is being patented by multinational corporations. In light of actions such as these, donning fancy dress costumes and entertaining corpulent diners for free seems to be quite a mild response.

Marsh Lane Land Grab - appeal for help

I received this by email from the New Lammas Land Defence Committee.
"As we expect you already know, on 12th June the LB Waltham Forest’s Planning Committee granted approval for part of our former Lammas Lands at Marsh Lane Fields on Leyton Marshes to be fenced off from public use in order to relocate some of the Manor Gardening Society allotment-holders from Eastway Allotments in LB Newham.

About a third of the plot-holders at Eastway have, sadly, given up; others are still trying to get permission to remain where they are, which we also believe they should be allowed to.This was the third major land-grab of open spaceoutside the currently designated Olympics site.

What happens next at Marsh Lane Fields will influence what happens in the future elsewhere in green open spaces surrounding the actual site - especially in the part of Leyton that falls in the Borough of Newham (where Major Road Open Space has been fenced off for relocating a Gypsy Traveller community) and Hackney Wick (where yet another part of Hackney Marshes on Homerton Road has been taken for families from another displaced Traveller community) as well as in other parts of Waltham Forest.

Any help would be very welcome indeed - if we were to give up without a squeak it wouldn’t be much inspiration to others in the future - however, this is not a likely prospect and we are preparing to fight this all the way !

We would welcome any offer of help, even if just over the coming week or so when we are all so very busy and the deadlines are so urgent?

The situation is serious and we really do need to work at it NOW if we are to save our Lammas Lands on Leyton Marshes!

For a view from the allotment-holders’perspective (bearing in mind that not all hold exactly the same opinion about what course to take) please see their www.lifeisland. com website, or visit the Games Monitor website which has in-depth analysis from a number of perspectives.

There is also a nascent NLLDC website under construction at www.lammaslands.com but there’s very little on it at present and it has not yet been officially launched.For more information please contact marshlane@umbilical .demon.co. ukMany thanks for any help you can give us!!
New Lammas Lands Defence Committee.

Also have a look at this short video I made about the Lammas Lands back in December when the threat first emerged.

Taking Liberties

You must go and see the film 'Taking Liberties', essential viewing. It's far from flawless, in fact technically it's all a bit sloppy. But the film is driven by a strong and compelling polemic that the Blair government are slowly eroding our basic civil liberties. Whether you believe that we are already living in a police state or not the argument put forward in this film will leave you very unsettled.
It covers such shocking incidents as the Fairford Peace protestors who were locked on their coaches and forcibly taken back to London. An act that contravenes the government's own Human Rights Act. And the arrests of the two students arrested for reading out the names of dead Iraqis at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.
The situation is even grimmer than the film suggests with the introduction of new stop and search powers for the police and PM-elect Gordon Brown voicing support for a 90 day dentention period without charge - things that would have been abhorant (and illegal) even in the Middle Ages.
But don't just go and see the film, join the fightback. I shall be going down to Parliament Square on June 20th to join Mark Thomas' Mass Lone Demonstrations ('Return Tothill to the Druids!' will be my protest). Or sign up against ID cards with the NO2ID campaign (ironic that they want a lot of details from you to join the campaign though). Or just write a lot of annoying letters to your MP.