From Save Vestas blog:
Workers staging a sit-in at the soon-to-close Vestas wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight are being starved out by police.
The police, many inside the factory and dressed in riot gear, have denied food to the workers who took over the factory offices last night, to protest the closure of their factory. The police, operating with highly questionable legal authority, have surrounded the offices, preventing supporters from joining the sit-in, and preventing food from being brought to the protestors.
Around 20 workers at the Vestas Plant in Newport, on the Isle of Wight, occupied the top floor of offices in their factory to protest against its closure which will result in over 500 job losses.
Acting without an injunction, on private property, the police have repeatedly tried to break into the office where the protesting workers have barricaded themselves, and have threatened the workers with arrest for aggravated trespass, despite the fact that no damage has been done to the property where the protest is taking place. Police have also forcibly removed people from private property, another action that is of very questionable legality in the absence of a formal injunction.
The office involved in the latter action was number 3606. The officer who appears to be in charge is 3115.
This heavy handed response is the latest in a long line of over-reactions to protest by various UK police forces.
And yet if they had hostages they’d get all the food and drink they asked for while they were talked with by trained negotiators.
A sort of sit-in kettling then.
“A sort of sit-in kettling then.”
I think so Paul, I mean the cops like to devise new ways of tormenting people.
It’s the management starving out the protesters, they have instructed the police not to allow anyone into the grounds, when people have tried they have been arrested then released without charge, protesters on the outside broke through the police line earlier and got food to the protesters on the inside, since then a large fence has been errected around the factory and the police have been replaced with security guards, good on the protesters we have been treated appallingly
It is truly shocking about the treatment of Vestas workers. Management starving out protesters really horrible.