Protestors picket Shell in Southend

by Norman Traub | Socialist Resistance no48 | page 23

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

On September 5, twenty activists Irom soutnena stop the War Coalition staged a demonstration and picket at a local Shell Oil garage during the earl morning rush hour

Banners proclaiming "Hands Off Iraqi Oil" were hung from pedestrian bridge above the busiest road leading out of the town. Below, protesters picketed the Shell Oil garage and handed out leaflets to motorists and pedestrians.

The leaflet warned that a new oil law presented to the Iraqi parliament for ratification in May 2007 proposes to fundamentally restructure Iraq's oil industry, to give the primary role in oil development to multinational companies, under contracts of up to 30 years. Yet most Iraqis firmly believe that oil production should remain in the public sector.

The law is opposed by all of Iraq's trade unions, by over 60 senior Iraqi oil experts and by other civil society, political and religious groups.

Shell has worked closely with the British and US governments as military occupanon powers, lo crcale lne framework for multinational companies to take control of Iraqi oil

In 2007 the US government took the lead in pushing for the passage of the law. became the most important of