For three days running, no Immigration Service snatch squads have been able to leave the Scottish Enforcement Unit at Brand Street to carry out dawn raids. The gates have been chained and blockaded from 5am til after dawn.These blockades are part of an escalating campaign of protest and direct action to resist migration controls and defend our communities.
The Home Office building at "Festival Court" on Brand Street in Ibrox is the place where asylum seekers are forced to sign on weekly with their family to receive a pitiful living allowance. Each time they enter the building and meet with officials (no legal or other support to ensure fair treatment is allowed to be present) they don't know whether they will be coming out the front door or the back door. If it's the front they have to make the same journey next week and the week after that and every week until they are allowed to stay in the country or until they exit by the back door.
If they go out the back door it's into an unmarked blue van on a journey to Dungavel or Yarl's Wood in Bedfordshire, then back on to the tender mercies of the state they fled from. Or anywhere they stopped in before reaching Britain. It doesn't matter to the Home Office.
Outrage over cases like that of the Vucaj family and countless others who haven't made the news has spread across Scottish society, reflected in an extraordinary alliance of protesters. Around 30 Anarchists, Christians, Communists, Clowns, liberals, Muslims, pagans, refugee support workers, socialists and people of no particular allegiance have been descending on Brand St at 5am with the aim of preventing a dawn raid for one day at least.
On Wednesday 14th, they found a number of police stood in the road preventing access to the gates and an informal candlelit vigil was held outside. Placards proclaiming "Jesus Christ was an Asylum Seeker" and "Scar on Scotland's Conscience" contrasted with the Orwellian "Building a Safe, Just and Tolerant Society" of the Home Office.
After an hour of quiet vigil-ing some especially keen child-snatchers began arriving for work. Moved from the road, protesters wondered aloud at the spectacle of police ("building safer communities") facilitating the abduction and terrorising of children. After a while, a distraction of clowns arrived and the mood lightened a little. They declared themselves to be from Elsewhere and attempted to turn themselves in for deportation to any country more sane than this one. Around 8.30 the protesters left, satisfied that no raids would or could take place that day but determined to continue and grow resistance to this inhuman practice.
The following morning, Thursday 15th, they were back. This time No Borders blockaders snuck behind sleepy cops and locked the gates with a massive chain, making the blockade more effective. Again, the blockade was joined by a candlelit vigil until a reasonable hour.
And then, just for good measure, it seems that some activists decided to go for the hat-trick, and the gates were chained once more in the wee small hours of Friday 16th. A message to the Home Office: This is serious. We are not going away.
Judging by the unprecedented alliances this campaign is generating, it's very unlikely that those responsible (or pretending no responsibility) will be having a Merry Xmas or a Happy New Year. And quite right too.
If you want to get involved in defending our communities and supporting refugees and migrants, there are many ways you can help. Not all of them involve confrontation or chains and padlocks. Some, though not all, involve early starts. To find out more, send an email to No Borders Glasgow at:
noborders-glasgow@riseup.net
The next mass protest at Brand Street takes place this Saturday (17th December) at 10am, complementing the weekly vigil there. The venue is easily reached by the Underground or any bus via Paisley Road West.
