B secretary of the Train me ate ill Morris, outgoing General
General Workers Union, will be among those speaking at a rally to mark detention centre near Oxford. The rally starts at noon on Saturday 29th November.
Ten years ago, on that date, the first detainees were transported from Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow airport to Campsfield. They were greeted by a dozen noisy local supporters who were at the gates by the time the van arrived.
Protests started immediately
Almost at once the detainees began to oppose their imprisonment in Campsfield. December 24th 1993 saw the detention of almost a planeload of Jamaicans who had come to visit relatives over Christmas. By February individual and group hunger strikes had begun.
A IO-day hunger strike by II detainees, Unite the funihes
charges. The trial in 1998 collapsed when
the prosecution withdrew because its witnesses (Group 4 and Home Office officials) were 'unreliable'. They lied
‹ The Campaign to Close Campsfield has
since worked with other local campaigns
at Harmondsworth, Oakington, Dover;
Haslar and Yart's Wood, helped build the
Barbed Wire Britain Network to End
Refugee and Migrant Detention, and
worked with groups in other countries in
Europe.
Last year the Home Office announced
Campsfield would close in 2004. After the fire at the Yarl's Wood detention centre, it postponed the closure of what had been the UK's most notorious detention centre.
This November's demonstration (Nov 29) is intended to build on the past ten years of struggle and look to what needs to be done now. It won't be all talk.
We'll give a lot of attention to the fence (ribbons and balloons and ...well that's up to you, music and messages and greetings to the detainees, then on to a demonstration in Oxford town centre legal protection and trade union rights as other workers. The Health Service has been completely dependent on immigrant labour from the 1950s and it is not coping because it is under funded. The lack of affordable housing for the young is an easy issue to deal with. This government isn't building council houses and socialists say it SHOES!
The BP's growth is a sign of Labour's weakness and a refusal by millions to engage with its politics. Socialists need to be modest about our achievements. We still have to persuade the millions who supported the anti-war movement that we are a credible political alternative to both New Labour and the BNP.
Only the Socialist Alliance is positioned to do this. To stop the BNP we have to make the Alliance into an organisation that people who despise New Labour and want to change the world will support. Every group of Alliance supporters now needs to be building a local organisation with real roots and a high local profile.