Skip to content

"In the Dark Nights there is always the warmth of the fire!"

  • Contact
  • Distro
  • Direct Action
  • PGP Key
  • Financial Solidarity

Tag: UK

UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign

Posted on 2022/05/21 - 2022/05/21 by darknights

This statement from Toby Shone on prison abolition was recorded and transcribed from HM Prison Parc in Bridgend, Wales, UK. It was his contribution to a prison abolition event due to be hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign on 8 May 2022 but which was postponed until a later date yet to be decided.

Hello Everyone

This is Toby Shone. I’m an imprisoned anarchist held in G4S Parc. It’s a slave labour camp holding 1,800 men in South Wales run by the security multinational on a government contract providing dirt cheap labour for private companies.

I was captured by the anti-terrorist unit during Operation Adream in November 2020. First I want to thank you for listening and also the opportunity provided by Bristol Anti-Repression Coalition. Moments like this break the isolation we feel as prisoners and they also give us a chance to participate and to speak out. There are many reasons to oppose prisons and the current judicial system and as an anarchist I can’t separate the anti-prison struggle from the struggle against the State and civilisation and I’m going to return to this later. But now I’ll briefly give an account of some of the joint struggles inside prison.

I’ve never sought to hide my perspectives while I’ve been here and I’ve been subject to a lot of State intimidation and scrutiny because of that and I’ve never backed down. The prisons in the UK are mostly filthy and overcrowded, lacking basic resources, degrading and decaying.

In London I was held in the prison within the prison alongside Jihadis, Russian-Italian-Ukrainian mafia, postcode war gang members, high level money launderers and so on. Overall we all got on well with each other, even with high levels of violence and on average one death or suicide each month. There we had a laundry room where we could meet, play cards, and talk. We’d exchange books and ideas as well as our hopes and fears. And because of this social area, the administration moved to shut down our laundry and move it off wing. So we had a small struggle to keep it open, spreading a unity between all the groups, collecting 200 signatures for our petition and also it was almost every man that signed it there on H block. It might seem a minor struggle but in prison everything small becomes of a huge significance because you have almost nothing but your dignity and only you can give that away. And it’s important for our decency to have clean clothes and bedsheets, pillowcases and so on. And if the laundry was moved off wing this couldn’t be guaranteed and nobody wanted to have their clothes stolen or damaged and it’s almost impossible to get any more. And it would also mean that we would have to suffer the inability to wash our clothes more than once a week and that’s even if the scheme ran correctly. In practice, in prison, nothing works as it should and it’s intended to be that way, to make life as difficult as possible. Suffice to say, our petition was completely ignored by the authorities and the imprisoned fellow in charge of running the laundry lost his job and was moved prison as a kind of punishment because he was blamed for stirring up trouble. In prisons, the administrations are very scared of anything even slightly challenging to their power. We have to consider these intermediate struggles very well, but we must never give up our stances. Continue reading “UK: Contribution from anarchist comrade Toby Shone for a postponed prison abolition event hosted by Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign” →

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Anarchist Prisoners, Anti-Prison, Brigend, Bristol, Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign, HMP Parc, Operation Adream, Prison, Prison Abolition, SCPO (Serious Crime Prevention Orders), Text, Toby Shone, UK, Wales

UK: Statement by anarchist comrade Toby Shone after strip and cell search by G4S Parc

Posted on 2022/05/19 by darknights

The cell search described by Toby Shone is believed to be an attempt at intimidation by G4S Parc following a month of concerted efforts by those on the outside to call to account Gareth Kite, Post Room Manager, for withholding mail and books from Toby. Although Kite has responded by dribbling Toby small amounts of mail, some of it from months ago – whilst continuing to claim that Toby has no mail – we know that there is a lot of mail outstanding, both from HMP Bristol and HM Prison Parc, and particularly letters and cards of solidarity from political groups and letter-writing nights. Gareth Kite can be contacted at secretariat.parc@uk.g4s.com

18 MAY 2022
HM Prison Parc

This morning at around 9.40, a team from the Security Department, entered my cell, subjected me to a strip search and proceeded to turn my pad upside down, going through all my possessions – legal papers, letters, photos and books – in the name of “intelligence” that they had received. They refused to say what this “intelligence” consisted of and told me to contact my lawyer. Before I could do so, they removed me and put me in a sterile cell until they had finished the invasion. Suffice to say, these lackeys of G4S didn’t find anything, but decided in their impotence to take away a set of shelves, rip a solidarity card I received from London off the wall, take my duvet, my radio antenna and a bottle of medicine for a skin condition issued by the doctor. Incidents like this are part of daily life for us in prison, but as a revolutionary prisoner, I will never let such provocations pass unanswered. One of the team saw fit to ask me, “Where is your Koran?” for which many things could be said, but I’ll leave it there for now as rhetoric is cheap and facts are self-evident.

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” Oscar Wilde

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Anarchist Prisoners, Cell Search, FUCK G4S!, G4S, Gareth Kite, HMP Parc, Operation Adream, Repression, Strip Search, Toby Shone, UK, Wales

UK: Statement from anarchist prisoner Toby Shone 10th May 2022

Posted on 2022/05/11 by darknights

Statement from Toby Shone
10th May 2022

Thanks to all those who came to express their solidarity and rage at Bristol Crown Court on Friday. After 15 months of solitary confinement, it was the most amount of comrades I had seen in a long time. Your strength and warmth stays in my heart.

This was a major defeat and humiliation for the anti-terrorist prosecutors and police, but we should not rest easy. A state methodology has been put together which they will use to attack others in the anarchist space when they can.

Operation Adream is also still not closed and so we should remain ready. There are many lessons to be learnt here and a more complete analysis will come out in time.

I am due for release in late December and will be on license until November 2024. The prison Offender Management Unit (OMU) confirmed to me that the anti-terrorist units still intend to keep me under surveillance after my release. I am sure they will try to take revenge, but with the love and complicity of all the comrades, we’ll turn up the heat. Liberty and discord are one and the same. Always unrepentant, always anarchist.

Nothing is over, everything continues.

Source: Act for freedom now!

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Because nothing is over and everything continues..., Bristol, Bristol Crown Court, HMP Parc, Offender Management Unit (OMU), Operation Adream, Repression, Toby Shone, UK, Wales

International Zine of Social War – ‘War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society’, Dark Nights #51

Posted on 2022/05/02 - 2022/05/02 by darknights

PDF: Dark Nights #51 ‘War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society’

International zine of social war against militarism, against nationalist and imperialist wars, for the insurrection, revolution and internationalism.

Another expanded 16 page edition with articles on the continuing hunger for war by nations, capitalism and civilization. Articles from Italian comrades, of a much needed anti-militarism and calling for the international in response to the war we fight all our lives under the existent. Direct actions and communiques of an anti-militarist nature and examples of past attacks, including Direct Action Cells, attacks from Germany and UK attacks against military targets.

Print it out, distribute it, leave it in a random place!

‘We sabotage the war, Triggering the International!’

  1. ‘War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society’
  2. ‘We sabotage the war, Triggering the International’ – Beztomivny
  3. ‘We do not enlist’ – Anarchists from Spoleto
  4. ‘Anti – Militarism & Social Insurrection’ – Wolfi Landstreicher
  5. ‘Another war is possible’ – Responsibility Claim for arson & incendiary attacks by Cells of Anti-Militarist Action
  6. ‘Heretics’ – Gabriel Pomba da Silva

ANTI-COPYRIGHT NETWORK

Download, copy and distribute! DIY!

Posted in LibraryTagged 'We sabotage the war - Triggering the International', 325, Anti-Militarist, Bezmotivny, Dark Nights, Gabriel Pombo da Silva, Germany, Greece, Insurrection, International Co-ordination, Internationalism, Italy, PDF, Publication, Revolution, Social War, UK, Wolfi Landstreicher, Zine

Against Anarcho-Liberalism and the curse of identity politics

Posted on 2022/04/26 - 2022/04/26 by darknights

DN: We re-post this text from 2018 that we feel is still relevant and even more on an international level in the present, against the supposed ‘unquestionably oppressed’, against those identity politicians and academics who just do not comprehend their involvement in the recuperation of anarchy into a passive joke! All part of the civil anarchism & activist psychosis that is due a much updated critique that will be forthcoming in future publications.

–

Anarchism in the UK is a joke. Once symbolising hard-fought struggles for freedom, the word has been stripped bare to make way for narrow-minded, separatist and hateful identity politics by middle class activists keen to protect their own privileges. We write this leaflet to reclaim anarchism from these identity politicians.

We write as self-identified anarchists who see our roots in the political struggles of the past. We are anti-fascists, anti-racists, feminists. We want to see an end to all oppressions and we take an active part in those fights. Our starting point though is not the dense language of lefty liberal academics, but anarchism and its principles: freedom, cooperation, mutual aid, solidarity and equality for all regardless. Hierarchies of power, however they manifest, are our enemies.

Identity politics is part of the society we want to destroy.

Identity politics is not liberatory, but reformist. It is nothing but a breeding ground for aspiring middle class identity politicians. Their long-term vision is the full incorporation of traditionally oppressed groups into the hierarchical, competitive social system that is capitalism, rather than the destruction of that system. The end result is Rainbow Capitalism – a more efficient & sophisticated form of social control where everyone gets a chance to play a part! Confined to the ‘safe space’ of people like them, identity politicians become increasingly detached from the real world.

A good example is ‘queer theory’ and how it has sold out to corporate masters. The concept of queer was not long ago something subversive, suggesting indefinable sexuality, a desire to escape society’s attempts to define and study and diagnose everything, from our mental health to our sexuality. However, with little in the way of class critique, the concept was readily appropriated by identity politicians and academics to create yet another exclusive label for a cool clique that is, ironically, anything but liberatory. Increasingly, queer is a nice badge adopted by some to pretend they too are oppressed, and avoid being called out on their shit, bourgeois politics.

We don’t want hear about the next DIY event, queer night or squatter fest that excludes all but those who have the right language, dress code, or social circles.. Come back when you have something genuinely meaningful, subversive and dangerous to the status quo. Continue reading “Against Anarcho-Liberalism and the curse of identity politics” →

Posted in LibraryTagged 'Woke Anarchists', Academia, Analysis, Anarcho-Left, Anarcho-Liberalism, Civil Anarchism, Identity Politics, PDF, Rainbow Capitalism, Reformism, UK, Zine

UK: Update about Anarchist prisoner Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/04/04 - 2022/04/04 by darknights

Justice for Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone!

Anarchist prisoner Toby Shone is being held in the Category B facility HM Prison Parc, a privately run prison in South Wales, despite being in reality a Category C or D prisoner who was eligible for Release on Temporary License (ROTL) on 21 January 2022, according to paperwork he received on 26th March 2022. ROTL is home leave from prison in preparation for release. Category B prisoners are not eligible for home leave.

Despite being found Not Guilty of political offences in court and with no evidence linking him to the website and publication 325.nostate.net, Toby is being held without legal process and without possibility of
redress as a Category B, High Risk prisoner where he is not eligible for ROTL (home leave). A probation official told Toby previously that his categorisation is a consequence of his anarchist beliefs, and the fact that he is considered by the authorities to act on those beliefs. This decision has been taken at a level above the Offender Management Unit (OMU) which is the unit Toby personally deals with.

His beliefs are also the reason that police are pursuing a Serious Crime Prevention Order against Toby which will allow the police to monitor and control all aspects of Toby’s life and monitor his associates for five
years. The Order means he can be imprisoned again for an additional five years should he breach the Order which is so intrusive, it would be
impossible not to. The hearing for the SCPO is on the morning of 6 May 2022 at Bristol Crown Court. Continue reading “UK: Update about Anarchist prisoner Toby Shone” →

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged 325, Anarchist Prisoners, Bristol, Category B, HMP Parc, Jimmy Mubenga, Offender Management Unit (OMU), Release on Temporary License (ROTL), Repression, SCPO (Serious Crime Prevention Orders), Toby Shone, UK, Wales, YOI Parc

Bristol: Bristol Against The Hate, Saturday April 9th

Posted on 2022/03/26 by darknights

Posted in Anti-Fascism, Direct ActionTagged 'For Britain Party', Anti-Fascism, Antifascist Rally, BASH THE FASH!, Bristol, Bristol Against The Hate, Edward Colston, Far-Right, GLAD COLSTON'S GONE!, Slave Trade, Tommy Robinson, UK

UK: Anarchist prisoner Toby Shone update

Posted on 2022/03/26 by darknights

Toby has been moved to HM Prison Parc in South Wales run by G4S. His new address is:

Toby Shone A7645EP
HMP Prison Parc
Heol Hopcyn John,
Coity,
Bridgend CF35 6AP
UK

Prisoners are limited to sending 3 letters a week at HMP Parc,
so please write without expecting a reply.

Posted in Prison StruggleTagged Anarchist Prisoners, G4S, HMP Parc, Prison Transfer, Toby Shone, UK, Wales

Replicate – Static – Insurrection

Posted on 2022/03/11 - 2022/03/26 by darknights

Returning from self-imposed hiatus, to rethink what the 325 and Dark Nights project means, to work on several upcoming publications, but also it is healthy to take a step back back from the spectacle that counter-info can become, all too aware that without the insurrectional praxis it can become a void.

Without further ado, our collective will be bringing out a new Dark Nights publication next month concentrating on the militaristic hellscape that is occuring in Eastern Europe, which we see as a continuation of conflicts being waged in Syria, Yemen, previously in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also a continuation of the military industrial techno complex’s pursuit of total control. We find recent texts released by anarchists in the UK & Italy are a direction that all anarchists must pursue because an anti-militarist praxis is one of many anarchist priciples that has been forgotten or outright ignored by those of a more liberal, leftist and even communist deviations in anarchist circles. We are not miltaristic, we do not enlist in nationalistic or imerpialistic wars and we definitly do not join any army, be it democratic or fascist or communist! Too easily anarchists forget the disgusting ‘Manifesto of the Sixteen (1916)’, that even Kropotkin was a signatore of, that condoned joining the massacre in the trenches that was World War I.

We plan in the future to critique the miltaristic tendancy that has been occuring within anarchist circles internationally, beginning in Rojava and now manifesting itself in horrendous fashion in the Ukraine.

Further to the new Dark Nights publication, we are in the early stages of planning a new #13 edition of 325. We encourage any comrades, individuals and projects to contact us with proposals for articles to include in the new edition or any ideas for the direction it will take. We are wanting to make a shift away from an exclusive concentration on technology and science, to start to open up a critique and analysis on a international context. There have been recent proposals for what is known as an ‘International’ in the past few years, we want to further this critique and analysis that such comrades as Alfredo Cospito (‘What International?’), Gustavo Rodriguez and Gabriel Pombo da Silva, have already started. We are particulary interested in hearing from comrades internationally from their own struggles wherever they maybe, in how they relate to international co-ordination. Critiques and analysis of past manifestations of international networks will also be appreciated.

Other future publications we plan to release are about the Direct Action Cells of Greece and a further collection of texts by Gustavo Rodriguez.

Until then… More of this… As comrades are already doing on this techno prison island.

Against the drift towards militarisation, attack and sabotage the machines of control and massacre all around us.

Lets destroy their peace, continue our own war against the existent and against civilization’s grip upon our whole lives!

Absolute complicity and solidarity to anarchist comrades Gianluca Iacovacci & Evelin Sterni recently arrested by the Italian state.

Dark Nights & 325 Collectives

 

Posted in GeneralTagged 'Manifesto of the Sixteen (1916)', 'What International?', 325, 325 Magazine, Alfredo Cospito, Anti-Civilization, Anti-Militarist, Black International of Anarchists of Praxis, Dark Nights, Direct Action Cells, Evelin Sterni, Gabriel Pombo da Silva, Gianluca Iacovacci, Greece, Gustavo Rodriguez, International Co-ordination, Internationalism, Italy, Russia, Russia Ukraine War, UK, Ukraine

UK: Against the Military Machine, Against the Ongoing Death March

Posted on 2022/03/07 - 2022/03/07 by darknights

PDF: militarymachine

Posted in LibraryTagged 325, Anti-Militarist, Dark Nights, Military Machine, Ongoing Death March, PDF, Poster, Russia Ukraine War, Stickers, Techno Industrial Military Complex, UK

Posts navigation

Older posts

Categories

  • Anti-Fascism
  • Autonomy
  • Cognitive Liberty
  • Direct Action
  • Eco Struggle
  • General
  • Interviews
  • Library
  • Prison Struggle
  • Social Control
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: micro, developed by DevriX.