Homes Not Spikes – a victory that will send a message (Left Unity)

2014-06-13 · first published in Left Unity · 199 words

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From the Left Unity site The spikes are gone. Tesco buckled under the outcry after it was found to have put in ‘anti-homeless spikes’ outside a central London store, and the company was forced to remove them. Activists used a range of tactics, from the tweeters to the 100,000 who signed an online petition to the people who covered some of the spikes in concrete in the dead of night. Left Unity played a key part in piling on the pressure. Our action outside the Tesco yesterday was covered by the Independent, the Guardian, ITV News online,BBC Radio London [starts at 02:20:50 in], BBC Radio WM [from 1:39:55] and many more. At one point Tesco was even coming onto our Facebook page to try to persuade us not to protest! Then, just as we were arriving, we found they were hurriedly pulling out the spikes – here’s what it looked like: This is a victory that will send a message to any other company that is thinking of using these spikes. It’s also helped us spread the word about the real issue: that there are 700,000 homes lying empty in Britain, enough to house all homeless people right now.