UK – Page 6

UK: Text from Anarchist prisoner Toby Shone June 11th

Posted on 2022/06/13 by darknights

Text from Toby Shone June 11th

War in the Heavens

J 11. Open Letter in solidarity with Juan Sorroche
Hi, Juan. I’m writing this letter to express my solidarity and send you a big flaming hug of anarchy for the date of June 11th. This date, which is the date of the sentencing demands from the prosecutor, and also is the date for the International Mobilization for Anarchist Prisoners, is one more day in our intransigent lives.

Most likely, you may not remember me, but we met approximately 15 years ago, in Carcelona (i.e. Barcelona, a play on words which mixes the word “Barcelona” with “carcel” or prison in Spanish – translator’s note). I recall your broad smile, your laugh, and your warm and strong heart.

I saw your letter in Respiro number two with a collage of sunflower
seeds and a zen squirrel! Comrades from the Anti-repression fund of the Western Alps sent it to me while I was in the prison of Bristol, which I’m now banned from. When I see the artwork letters of my comrades, it gives me strength. I want to share this vitality with you and all the other comrades through this letter.

Anarchist direct action has precise objectives – it advances towards
those responsible for tyranny and the structures they administer. Our struggle is irrevocable, empirical and international. It is the state which carries out the massacres. It is the state which terrorizes. All the piles of corpses at the borders of Fortress Europe and drowned in the Mediterranean are mass murders. The results of the failed military interventions in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, just to mention a few, are mass murders in the service of Western interests. Multimillion dead from poverty, malnutrition, and economic adventurism, are mass murders. The killings by police on the streets or in custody, the deaths in prison and at the hands of nationalist fascist gangs are mass murderers. And those responsible where are they? With power. We may be imprisoned but our hearts are free. As anarchists we have nothing to explain to the enemy nor apologize for. It is the state which must justify itself and it is the state which is on trial.

It is said that “mountains and rivers differ in each region. But the
wind and the moon are the same throughout the skies we look upon.”

This is the love of the comrades and the compassion which navigates.
Five continents of fire. Five arrows. Five Fingers form a fist.
A fist of solidarity.

We’ll escape beyond the sun.
And nothing can stop us.
04/06/2022
G4S Park, UK
Toby Shone

Source: Act for freedom now!

UK: “Like Mercury” Open Letter for Dan Baker, aka Alishare – from Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/06/01 by darknights

Open Letter for Dan Baker, aka Alishare – from Toby Shone

Alishare, I heard your message of solidarity, thank you, it gave me strength. I would turn the energy with this open letter, and I hope to kick a brick from the walls. One more time. In a flurry of black feathers and lunar wisdom, a murder of crows delivered your statement and those wily crows told me about your situation in FCI Memphis.

I want to add on to this dialogue and talk about three anarchist comrades imprisoned in Italy. The first is Anna Beniamino who is serving a 17 year sentence for the Scripta Manent case in a high security regime in Rebibbia prison (Rome). The Scripta Manent case involved the arrest of 7 anarchists accused of subversive association with terrorist intent and a series of direct actions claimed by the Informal Anarchist Organization. An absurd farce with obscene conclusions. The second comrade I want to mention is Alfredo Cospito who has been locked up since 2012 for the Adinolfi case for which he was sentenced for nearly 11 years and is now waiting for the confirmation of another sentence of 20 years for the Scripta Manent case. Alfredo was recently struck with the legislature 41 bis, special security regime. Each month, he can only receive either one phone call (10 minutes) or one visit strictly with family members with glass and recorded; he can only walk in the yard with maximum 3 other prisoners previously approved by prison security; he cannot receive books, censorship is applied to his correspondence (number of letters per month is extremely limited), and he has a very limited amount of items which he can keep in his cell. Several international agencies have continuously condemned the 41bis prison regime as torture. The third comrade I want to mention is Juan Sorroche. On the date of the international day of with long-term anarchist prisoners, June the 11th , Juan will face a court hearing in Treviso. Juan is on trial accused of an attack against an office of the Lega Nord political party claimed by the “Cell Haris Hatzimihelakis/Black International (1881/2018)” that happened in August 2018. Juan who was already serving time for other judgements, is now facing a long sentence in this other political trial. Like all the imprisoned anarchists around the world, these three comrades deserve the support and solidarity that the international anarchist movement can give them. Continue reading “UK: “Like Mercury” Open Letter for Dan Baker, aka Alishare – from Toby Shone” →

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” →

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

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!

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

Posted on 2022/05/02 - 2022/06/01 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!’

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

ANTI-COPYRIGHT NETWORK

Download, copy and distribute! DIY!

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” →

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” →

Bristol: Bristol Against The Hate, Saturday April 9th

Posted on 2022/03/26 by darknights

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.