Latest round in the date war, this letter below went to a selection of ministers, law officers and local police. With each letter went a single stolen date, removed by me from the Swansea Tesco store.
Dear Peter Mandelson
FREE SAMPLE: CONFISCATED TESCO ‘WEST BANK’ DATE
You are now in receipt of stolen goods and whoever is in charge of import regulations may need to decide who’s responsible and what should be done.
I have recently removed this date among others, in packets labelled ‘Origin: West Bank,’ from the shelves of Tesco’s Swansea Marina store. Since last January I have confiscated a number of similar packets and written to Tesco CEO Terry Leahy explaining why. I offered to refund the price in full if he could show the dates were not the product of illegal Israeli settlements. In the ensuing correspondence, Tesco neither addressed the settlement issue nor took up my refund offer. I was banned from their stores but not prosecuted.
A more public ‘citizen’s seizure’ was then organised at the same Tesco store. Filmed and reported in the press, aYoutube clip of the event drew 50,000 hits. Although a woman accompanying me was charged, for some reason I was not. When the woman’s case came to Swansea Crown Court in June, the judge dismissed it.
Through my MP, Alan Williams I have written to government ministers urging them to bring UK law into line with the Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council resolutions to which we are signatories. Bill Rammell (then at the FCO) put the contradiction baldly in his reply: ‘…the building of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal under international law. However the import and sale of products from Israeli settlements…is not prohibited by law in the UK, and we consider this is consistent with the UK’s international law obligations.’
This week I learned that that the government is citing a Security Council resolution to justify an otherwise illegal freeze on suspects’assets. This prompts me to adopt a similar line in a further citizen’s seizure. Where a process is inadmissible, not to mention cruel, so is its product – whether settlement dates, ‘blood diamonds’, evidence obtained by torture, or lampshades made of human skin. Where government lawmakers and enforcers fail to uphold our commitments in international law, citizens have a right and duty to step in.
Import and sale of settlement produce amounts to handling stolen goods, it undermines international law and helps prolong a conflict for which Britain bears heavy responsibility. I have auctioned previous consignments of confiscated West Bank dates in aid of Gaza relief (at £1 per date). Unless you need this sample as evidence, you may care to do the same. Or eat it and serve justice in some other way.
Yours sincerely
Greg Wilkinson (dgregwilkinson@yahoo.co.uk, phone 01792 455335)
Monday, 26 October 2009
I want my DNA back
This letter was prompted by Weekly Guardian articles on Justice and Civil liberties. A bit of unfinished business:
Ian Arundale
Chief Constable, Dyfed Powys Police
PO Box 99, LlangunnorCarmarthen SA31 2PF
Sir
Data Protection: please return or destroy DNA evidence taken from me in Llanelli, Spring 2003
One morning soon after the allied invasion of Iraq I was arrested, with one or two others, in the road outside Colleg Sirgar in Llanelli. I had joined students in a sit-down protest and remained seated when asked by police officers to clear the way.
I was lifted and manhandled. Although I did not resist, my arms were forced up behind my back, thumbs were pressed into the soft space under my ears, and my head banged down on the bonnet of a police car.
After a few hours in the cells, I was charged, then cautioned and released. I cant remember the exact charge, but I was asked if I agreed to a caution on the base of it. To get back to my family, I did, but only on condition that a reference to abusive language and behaviour was deleted.
In the presence of the desk officer, I asked the arresting officer to describe the abusive language and behaviour he accused me of. (This was the man who kept shouting ‘pressure points’ and sticking his thumbs under my ear; he also called me ‘a stupid old man’ and tightened the plastic cuffs until they hurt.) When he was unable to recall any abusive words or gestures I might have used, the desk officer agreed to delete the reference.
At the time, I did not object to the DNA swab and made no formal complaint about the manner of the arrest (as a young man I’d got used to some casual violence, both on the rugby field, and in protests over the Vietnam war). It was only later, when I discovered that the ‘abusive’ passage had not been deleted from the charge, that I felt a real injustice had been done: if I’d known the lies were staying in I would have refused the caution and fought the charge in court.
As it is, I was not convicted and did not accept the charge as given. Innocent of any crime, I ask you to destroy or return any DNA evidence retained by your force and ensure that related computer records are deleted.
I await your response - yours sincerely
David ‘Greg’ Wilkinson (formerly of Graig Fach, Llangennech, Llanelli SA14 8PX)
Ian Arundale
Chief Constable, Dyfed Powys Police
PO Box 99, LlangunnorCarmarthen SA31 2PF
Sir
Data Protection: please return or destroy DNA evidence taken from me in Llanelli, Spring 2003
One morning soon after the allied invasion of Iraq I was arrested, with one or two others, in the road outside Colleg Sirgar in Llanelli. I had joined students in a sit-down protest and remained seated when asked by police officers to clear the way.
I was lifted and manhandled. Although I did not resist, my arms were forced up behind my back, thumbs were pressed into the soft space under my ears, and my head banged down on the bonnet of a police car.
After a few hours in the cells, I was charged, then cautioned and released. I cant remember the exact charge, but I was asked if I agreed to a caution on the base of it. To get back to my family, I did, but only on condition that a reference to abusive language and behaviour was deleted.
In the presence of the desk officer, I asked the arresting officer to describe the abusive language and behaviour he accused me of. (This was the man who kept shouting ‘pressure points’ and sticking his thumbs under my ear; he also called me ‘a stupid old man’ and tightened the plastic cuffs until they hurt.) When he was unable to recall any abusive words or gestures I might have used, the desk officer agreed to delete the reference.
At the time, I did not object to the DNA swab and made no formal complaint about the manner of the arrest (as a young man I’d got used to some casual violence, both on the rugby field, and in protests over the Vietnam war). It was only later, when I discovered that the ‘abusive’ passage had not been deleted from the charge, that I felt a real injustice had been done: if I’d known the lies were staying in I would have refused the caution and fought the charge in court.
As it is, I was not convicted and did not accept the charge as given. Innocent of any crime, I ask you to destroy or return any DNA evidence retained by your force and ensure that related computer records are deleted.
I await your response - yours sincerely
David ‘Greg’ Wilkinson (formerly of Graig Fach, Llangennech, Llanelli SA14 8PX)
Remembrance Day: killing as we mourn?
A letter/feature for the local paper, trying to pull together race and war, focussing on next month's Remembrance Day ceremonies. I wrote the piece partly to atone for not going to London for a big Stop the War demonstration on the same day.
Saturday Oct 24th
To the Editor
South Wales Evening Post
I missed the BNP debut on Question Time. That was partly because here in Wales the programme was pushed into a late-night slot, partly because I felt people had already put up a good anti-racist showing job in Swansea last week. My wife helped make a big banner saying ‘Equality, Welcome, Respect’ and I joined the crowd behind it for a while, across the road from the Swansea Mosque.
That silent protest was called by Quakers, a sideshow to the larger demo in Castle Square. What I’m wondering about now is whether there should be another silent presence alongside the usual Rememberance Day event at the Swansea Cenotaph.
Like Nick Griffin, I have a father who served, in the Second World War, and like Jack Straw’s father, I myself refused to join the army. Instead I did a three-year stint in voluntary work-camps. Earlier, when we lived in wartime London, we had our windows blown out, twice. I hardly remember that, but what does stand out is my mother getting the news of her younger brother’s death. An army engineer, he was blown up, not long after the allied landings, by what would now be called an IED. At that time, we were sharing our house with a family of Jewish refugees: during the V1s and V2s we children camped happily under tables in the basement.
In my father’s or uncle’s place, faced with Hitler’s attack, I don’t know what I would have done. But that wasn’t the sort of war facing me when my turn came. Self-defence is one thing, but that didn’t seem to be the issue in Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, Aden or Suez. Then, as now in Afghanistan, it wasn’t clear who or what were we fighting for.
The BNP links war and race, but in the wrong way. Like Harry Patch, I believe there’s no such thing as a good war and I want to remember the dead on both sides, all sides. Since the Hitler war, most of our foreign engagements have set ‘us’ - mainly white – against ‘them’ in various shades of brown and black, with maybe 10 of ‘them’ killed to every one of ‘us’. Add religion, as in Iraq, Afghanistan and the ‘war on terrorism,’ it’s worse, and the wounds take longer to heal.
One of my first work-camps was in an Algiers shanty-town, at the start of the Algerian independence war. One workmate, an Algerian student, was later killed. Another, a young French officer, joined us when he could because he wasn’t happy in his army role. After that war, I knew another Algerian, ‘freedom fighter’ or ’terrorist’ who never quite recovered from the killing he’d done. In Egypt, soon after Suez, I shared a flat with a black, gay, former US serviceman. Later became press-spokesman for the militant Black Panthers, but in Cairo his presence was a talisman to me: a lot of Egyptians were still bitter about our Suez attack, and I was easy to pick out.
Earlier this year, an old Algerian journalist colleague came to stay with us in Swansea. He was more religious than I remembered him. We took him to the Swansea Mosque – to pray for us, he said – and we enjoyed the halal chicken and lamb we bought in St Helen’s Road.
So… The equation of Islam = extremist = terrorist makes no sense to me, and I cant make sense of a world divided on religious or racial lines. I may not have fought in wars, but I have got close enough to know and respect people who did. I want to show my respect and remember the dead. But can I stand in mourning for the dead while turning my back on the ongoing waste of lives in Afghanistan? ‘Organised murder,’ to quote Harry Patch again, or bloody chaos, oil on the flames, a gift to the enemy.
It’s a couple of weeks from Remembrance Sunday and I would like to know what other people think, in Swansea or further afield. Especially those who have fought and suffered themselves, lost family or friends, welcomed home the disfigured or deranged.
Yours sincerely
Greg Wilkinson
dgregwilkinson@yahoo.co.uk
Saturday Oct 24th
To the Editor
South Wales Evening Post
I missed the BNP debut on Question Time. That was partly because here in Wales the programme was pushed into a late-night slot, partly because I felt people had already put up a good anti-racist showing job in Swansea last week. My wife helped make a big banner saying ‘Equality, Welcome, Respect’ and I joined the crowd behind it for a while, across the road from the Swansea Mosque.
That silent protest was called by Quakers, a sideshow to the larger demo in Castle Square. What I’m wondering about now is whether there should be another silent presence alongside the usual Rememberance Day event at the Swansea Cenotaph.
Like Nick Griffin, I have a father who served, in the Second World War, and like Jack Straw’s father, I myself refused to join the army. Instead I did a three-year stint in voluntary work-camps. Earlier, when we lived in wartime London, we had our windows blown out, twice. I hardly remember that, but what does stand out is my mother getting the news of her younger brother’s death. An army engineer, he was blown up, not long after the allied landings, by what would now be called an IED. At that time, we were sharing our house with a family of Jewish refugees: during the V1s and V2s we children camped happily under tables in the basement.
In my father’s or uncle’s place, faced with Hitler’s attack, I don’t know what I would have done. But that wasn’t the sort of war facing me when my turn came. Self-defence is one thing, but that didn’t seem to be the issue in Malaya, Cyprus, Kenya, Aden or Suez. Then, as now in Afghanistan, it wasn’t clear who or what were we fighting for.
The BNP links war and race, but in the wrong way. Like Harry Patch, I believe there’s no such thing as a good war and I want to remember the dead on both sides, all sides. Since the Hitler war, most of our foreign engagements have set ‘us’ - mainly white – against ‘them’ in various shades of brown and black, with maybe 10 of ‘them’ killed to every one of ‘us’. Add religion, as in Iraq, Afghanistan and the ‘war on terrorism,’ it’s worse, and the wounds take longer to heal.
One of my first work-camps was in an Algiers shanty-town, at the start of the Algerian independence war. One workmate, an Algerian student, was later killed. Another, a young French officer, joined us when he could because he wasn’t happy in his army role. After that war, I knew another Algerian, ‘freedom fighter’ or ’terrorist’ who never quite recovered from the killing he’d done. In Egypt, soon after Suez, I shared a flat with a black, gay, former US serviceman. Later became press-spokesman for the militant Black Panthers, but in Cairo his presence was a talisman to me: a lot of Egyptians were still bitter about our Suez attack, and I was easy to pick out.
Earlier this year, an old Algerian journalist colleague came to stay with us in Swansea. He was more religious than I remembered him. We took him to the Swansea Mosque – to pray for us, he said – and we enjoyed the halal chicken and lamb we bought in St Helen’s Road.
So… The equation of Islam = extremist = terrorist makes no sense to me, and I cant make sense of a world divided on religious or racial lines. I may not have fought in wars, but I have got close enough to know and respect people who did. I want to show my respect and remember the dead. But can I stand in mourning for the dead while turning my back on the ongoing waste of lives in Afghanistan? ‘Organised murder,’ to quote Harry Patch again, or bloody chaos, oil on the flames, a gift to the enemy.
It’s a couple of weeks from Remembrance Sunday and I would like to know what other people think, in Swansea or further afield. Especially those who have fought and suffered themselves, lost family or friends, welcomed home the disfigured or deranged.
Yours sincerely
Greg Wilkinson
dgregwilkinson@yahoo.co.uk
Afghanistan: Swansea rally address
This piece was written as an address to a Swansea 'troops out' rally. We made a banner and did all we could to promote it, but the Swansea Evening Post forgot to publish the piece advertising the event. Only about 100 people turned up, and we felt a bit lost in the crowd... So I didnt say all I'd intended, and I dont know how many people got the drift...
Friends, brothers and sisters – I can call you that because we’re all much like beneath our skins. Whatever the religion, race or language, we all laugh and cry, we all get wet when it rains. We all feel it when our people are attacked or someone dear to us is killed.
The first thing for us here now is to mourn the dead. Not just the 204 British servicemen and women, but all the people killed in Afghanistan. As Harry Patch reminded us, me must remember those on the other side of the line. For every coffin and flag carried off a plane in Wilthshire, there are ten white bundles in Afghanistan, bodies quickly buried in the ground they lived on..
As a child in the second world war, I was with my mother when she got the news of her brother’s death in Belgium. He was blown up by an IED, or boobytrap as they called them. And his widow came to live with us..
Some things ought to change, but don’t. Now again, we get public ceremonial, ritual mourning, then wives and families are left to their tears. Somewhere in Wales or Helmand a woman a woman will wake up at night, and believe for a moment it was all a bad dream, reach out in bed and find the empty space….
Let’s now take two minutes to remember ALL the dead and their families.
Our next task is even more important: to do what anything we can to stop this waste. Sacrifice is to fine a word. If we really respect our soldiers, we should bring them home, alive and in one piece. We’ve sent them on a fool’s errand: you cant impose democracy or free other people’s women by force. This war is unwinnable, it’s unaffordable and it does more to prompt terrorist attacks than stop them.
Our troops are doing the job we pay them to do. Bravely and as best they can. Not long ago, I heard a British para say the same about the Taliban: ‘They’re good,’ he saisd, and Jeremy Paxman blinked., ‘They know what they’re doing and they believe in what they’re fighting for.’ And a lot of the Afghan fighters, like are own, are doing what they do because there weren’t many other jobs around.
More than 40 years ago, as a journalist I helped cover dead-end wars in Algeria and Vietnam. Then too Western governments and generals kept saying ‘We’re winning: just one more push, more troops, a bit more time. Luckily we had a Labour prime minister then who refused to follow the US to Vietnam. Later we watched the route of Russian forces in Afghanistan and only recently, we heard a commander in Basra say that British troops in Iraq were part of the problem not the solution.
If you’re in a hole, stop digging, but our sad clown prime minister drops us deeper in it. There’s talk about talks with the Taliban, and we send more troops. To kill and die in our name as we foot the bill. Every other day, another one or two. And, you wouldn’t know it from the media, but people round the country are coming out to call a halt. When Gordon Brown comes back from his holiday, there will be a packet of 1000 signatures from Swansea waiting for him, demanding withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.
TROOPS OUT! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!
In two months time, on Saturday October 24th, the Stop the War coalition is planning a national troops out march in London. Maybe we could get some buses organised for that.
Friends, brothers and sisters – I can call you that because we’re all much like beneath our skins. Whatever the religion, race or language, we all laugh and cry, we all get wet when it rains. We all feel it when our people are attacked or someone dear to us is killed.
The first thing for us here now is to mourn the dead. Not just the 204 British servicemen and women, but all the people killed in Afghanistan. As Harry Patch reminded us, me must remember those on the other side of the line. For every coffin and flag carried off a plane in Wilthshire, there are ten white bundles in Afghanistan, bodies quickly buried in the ground they lived on..
As a child in the second world war, I was with my mother when she got the news of her brother’s death in Belgium. He was blown up by an IED, or boobytrap as they called them. And his widow came to live with us..
Some things ought to change, but don’t. Now again, we get public ceremonial, ritual mourning, then wives and families are left to their tears. Somewhere in Wales or Helmand a woman a woman will wake up at night, and believe for a moment it was all a bad dream, reach out in bed and find the empty space….
Let’s now take two minutes to remember ALL the dead and their families.
Our next task is even more important: to do what anything we can to stop this waste. Sacrifice is to fine a word. If we really respect our soldiers, we should bring them home, alive and in one piece. We’ve sent them on a fool’s errand: you cant impose democracy or free other people’s women by force. This war is unwinnable, it’s unaffordable and it does more to prompt terrorist attacks than stop them.
Our troops are doing the job we pay them to do. Bravely and as best they can. Not long ago, I heard a British para say the same about the Taliban: ‘They’re good,’ he saisd, and Jeremy Paxman blinked., ‘They know what they’re doing and they believe in what they’re fighting for.’ And a lot of the Afghan fighters, like are own, are doing what they do because there weren’t many other jobs around.
More than 40 years ago, as a journalist I helped cover dead-end wars in Algeria and Vietnam. Then too Western governments and generals kept saying ‘We’re winning: just one more push, more troops, a bit more time. Luckily we had a Labour prime minister then who refused to follow the US to Vietnam. Later we watched the route of Russian forces in Afghanistan and only recently, we heard a commander in Basra say that British troops in Iraq were part of the problem not the solution.
If you’re in a hole, stop digging, but our sad clown prime minister drops us deeper in it. There’s talk about talks with the Taliban, and we send more troops. To kill and die in our name as we foot the bill. Every other day, another one or two. And, you wouldn’t know it from the media, but people round the country are coming out to call a halt. When Gordon Brown comes back from his holiday, there will be a packet of 1000 signatures from Swansea waiting for him, demanding withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan.
TROOPS OUT! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? NOW!
In two months time, on Saturday October 24th, the Stop the War coalition is planning a national troops out march in London. Maybe we could get some buses organised for that.
Afghanistan: troops out
Here's a leaflet handed out in Swansea last month, when we took a table into town with a petition calling for troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan. A thousand people signed.
AFGHANISTAN: ANOTHER DEAD-END WAR!
The British death toll approaches 200, with about thirty-times as many Afghans killed by allied forces. For every death, several are disfigured or maimed…
The government says war will help stop terror attacks in this country. The truth is the opposite. Explosives and poisons can be made anywhere. The London bombers planned their action in revenge for British actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The more Afghans killed by US and UK troops, the more friends and relations join the Taliban.
You cant impose democracy or free other people’s women by force. The more you use, the more they cling to old ways (European Churches grew stronger under Stalin).
The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, a cause of terror not the cure. Iraq and Afghanistan are dead-end wars. The real threats to our way of life are not from jihad but inequality, climate change and all-consuming, well-armed greed (aka Capital!).
TROOPS OUT: BRING THEM SAFELY HOME!
Swansea Stop-the-War 07792720667 / 07895063020
AFGHANISTAN: ANOTHER DEAD-END WAR!
The British death toll approaches 200, with about thirty-times as many Afghans killed by allied forces. For every death, several are disfigured or maimed…
The government says war will help stop terror attacks in this country. The truth is the opposite. Explosives and poisons can be made anywhere. The London bombers planned their action in revenge for British actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The more Afghans killed by US and UK troops, the more friends and relations join the Taliban.
You cant impose democracy or free other people’s women by force. The more you use, the more they cling to old ways (European Churches grew stronger under Stalin).
The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, a cause of terror not the cure. Iraq and Afghanistan are dead-end wars. The real threats to our way of life are not from jihad but inequality, climate change and all-consuming, well-armed greed (aka Capital!).
TROOPS OUT: BRING THEM SAFELY HOME!
Swansea Stop-the-War 07792720667 / 07895063020
Sunday, 19 July 2009
letter to observer
Sir
Alan Milburn observes that the UK is ‘an unequal society in which class background too often determines life chances,’ with professions becoming ‘more socially exclusive, not less.’ And yet, in the dying days of New Labour, with no obvious contender on the left, he looks forward to a ‘great wave of social mobility’ in the near future.
Milburn rightly notes that greater equality would benefit many middle-income people as well as the poor and eschews ‘clumsy class-war politics’. But, while Barry Sheerman sees Harrovians who ‘walk around as if they own the world,’ a Fabian warns against ‘silliness about top-hatted toffs.’ The answer, he suggests, is not class-war, but a war against class.
From my own old public-school, Oxbridge and commonsense angle, it seems to me you cant have one without the other. We DO still live in an unequal class society, and most of us have an interest in freeing ourselves from BOTH the fine web of class divisions in and among ourselves AND the flexible domination of a self-selecting ruling class.
Wealth, class and income as we know them go together in a capitalist economy bound for nowhwere. Clumsy or silly as it may sound, I long for a credible alternative, a movement or party committed to joined-up human freedom, peaceful process and a sustainable world.
yours
Alan Milburn observes that the UK is ‘an unequal society in which class background too often determines life chances,’ with professions becoming ‘more socially exclusive, not less.’ And yet, in the dying days of New Labour, with no obvious contender on the left, he looks forward to a ‘great wave of social mobility’ in the near future.
Milburn rightly notes that greater equality would benefit many middle-income people as well as the poor and eschews ‘clumsy class-war politics’. But, while Barry Sheerman sees Harrovians who ‘walk around as if they own the world,’ a Fabian warns against ‘silliness about top-hatted toffs.’ The answer, he suggests, is not class-war, but a war against class.
From my own old public-school, Oxbridge and commonsense angle, it seems to me you cant have one without the other. We DO still live in an unequal class society, and most of us have an interest in freeing ourselves from BOTH the fine web of class divisions in and among ourselves AND the flexible domination of a self-selecting ruling class.
Wealth, class and income as we know them go together in a capitalist economy bound for nowhwere. Clumsy or silly as it may sound, I long for a credible alternative, a movement or party committed to joined-up human freedom, peaceful process and a sustainable world.
yours
Friday, 26 June 2009
PRESS RELEASE 24.06.09: TESCO CASE DISMISSED
On Wednesday June 17th Judge John Diehl dismissed a charge of theft against Swansea campaigner d Murphy arising from removal of Israeli ‘West Bank’ goods from Tesco’s Marina store.
(I wasnt there but d said the judge layed into the CPS like Basil Fawlty with his hapless waiter. It was the judge who asked the defence to ask him for a dismissal... All very odd, a mixture of relief and disappointment, though there could still be a civil action for costs by Tesco, or the CPS might conceivably come up with a new charge of, say, criminal damage)
The protest action took place last January, in response to the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Ms Murphy was charged with theft after she and another protester, Greg Wilkinson, removed two trolley-loads of ‘West Bank’ goods from the shelves and wheeled them to the main entrance, marked them in red and dumped them as unfit for sale.
Outside the store, Free-Palestine protesters handed out leaflets explaining that goods labelled as ‘West Bank’, came from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory under military occupation. They argued that the British government recognises the illegality of both occupation and settlements, and that the import and sale of settlement goods is therefor unlawful: removal of the goods was comparable to a citizen’s arrest – serving to uphold the law, not break it.
In a letter to Swansea MP Alan Williams (May 14), the Foreign Office Minister, Bert Rammell, said ‘Mr Wilkinson…rightly notes that the UK considers the building of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal under international law. However the import and sale of products from Israeli settlements is not prohibited by the law in the UK and we consider that this is consistent…’
Consistent? One purpose of the Tesco action was to challenge this curious consistency in court, to argue that the sale of fruit and vegetables from illegal settlements amounted to the sale of stolen goods – grown on stolen land for the profit of the thieves who stole it. The protesters welcome the judge’s dismissal of the case last week as a technical victory, but it also forecloses a more important argument about the import and sale of settlement goods.
In preparing for the trial-that-never-was, the defence team, led by a young Palestinian barrister, also received information from Israeli sources that settlement goods were routinely mixed in by wholesalers with Israeli goods, to be exported and sold under Israeli labels (strengthening the case for a more general boycott!).
Tesco is now pursuing Ms Murphy for repayment of what the store claims was the cost of the action. Like Mr Wilkinson in an earlier written exchange with Tesco bosses, Ms Murphy might consider repayment if Tesco could show that the goods she took were NOT the produce of illegal settlements.
(A Youtube video of the Tesco arrests has attracted nearly 43,000 hits and more than 1000 more or less rational comments - some anti-Jewish, some anti-Arab, some anti-Women, and we’re sorry about that sort of silliness!)
On Wednesday June 17th Judge John Diehl dismissed a charge of theft against Swansea campaigner d Murphy arising from removal of Israeli ‘West Bank’ goods from Tesco’s Marina store.
(I wasnt there but d said the judge layed into the CPS like Basil Fawlty with his hapless waiter. It was the judge who asked the defence to ask him for a dismissal... All very odd, a mixture of relief and disappointment, though there could still be a civil action for costs by Tesco, or the CPS might conceivably come up with a new charge of, say, criminal damage)
The protest action took place last January, in response to the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Ms Murphy was charged with theft after she and another protester, Greg Wilkinson, removed two trolley-loads of ‘West Bank’ goods from the shelves and wheeled them to the main entrance, marked them in red and dumped them as unfit for sale.
Outside the store, Free-Palestine protesters handed out leaflets explaining that goods labelled as ‘West Bank’, came from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory under military occupation. They argued that the British government recognises the illegality of both occupation and settlements, and that the import and sale of settlement goods is therefor unlawful: removal of the goods was comparable to a citizen’s arrest – serving to uphold the law, not break it.
In a letter to Swansea MP Alan Williams (May 14), the Foreign Office Minister, Bert Rammell, said ‘Mr Wilkinson…rightly notes that the UK considers the building of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal under international law. However the import and sale of products from Israeli settlements is not prohibited by the law in the UK and we consider that this is consistent…’
Consistent? One purpose of the Tesco action was to challenge this curious consistency in court, to argue that the sale of fruit and vegetables from illegal settlements amounted to the sale of stolen goods – grown on stolen land for the profit of the thieves who stole it. The protesters welcome the judge’s dismissal of the case last week as a technical victory, but it also forecloses a more important argument about the import and sale of settlement goods.
In preparing for the trial-that-never-was, the defence team, led by a young Palestinian barrister, also received information from Israeli sources that settlement goods were routinely mixed in by wholesalers with Israeli goods, to be exported and sold under Israeli labels (strengthening the case for a more general boycott!).
Tesco is now pursuing Ms Murphy for repayment of what the store claims was the cost of the action. Like Mr Wilkinson in an earlier written exchange with Tesco bosses, Ms Murphy might consider repayment if Tesco could show that the goods she took were NOT the produce of illegal settlements.
(A Youtube video of the Tesco arrests has attracted nearly 43,000 hits and more than 1000 more or less rational comments - some anti-Jewish, some anti-Arab, some anti-Women, and we’re sorry about that sort of silliness!)
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