An action about the way that councils
are constantly selling off land to private developers in the
name of re-generation. East London especially has been undergoing
an "urban renaissance" since the building of the
docklands and broadgate centre, however all this seems to
be doing is moving out the poor and replacing the charm of
the east end with bland monotonous monoculture, safe for property
developers and the rich to move in.
Space
Hijackers - 1
Police & CPS - 0
All charges have been dropped against the Hijacker
11
In the months leading up
to London's G20 Summit in April 2009, the British press hyped
up police warnings of an impending Summer
Of Rage when public anger would erupt over the government's
bank bailout. The streets would burn and anarchists would
turn the newly unemployed into foot
soldiers of the revolution. Thankfully the police calmed
the situation by saying whatever happened they were 'up
for it'.
Following on from
previous projects where we parodied
the police, the Space Hijackers decided to take our DSEi-busting
tank out for another spin and ridicule the expectations
of violence
from the Police. We would tart her up as a Mad Max-styled
mobile oppression vehicle and don fancy dress on April
Fools Day (the date when the G20 summit and accompanying
demonstrations were taking place). With Ride
of the Valkyries blasting from the sound system, we drove
into the city with our bicycle outriders to thrust the sword
of satire at the State.
What's all this then? It
seems the Police failed to see the humour in a 6-wheeled behemoth
manned by the
laughing cavaliers of anti-capitalism, arrested 11 Hijackers
wearing blue boiler suits and started one
of the most bizarre prosecutions mounted in a British court
in recent years. In an utter waste of taxpayers' money,
we were charged and scheduled for a four day trial facing
charges of impersonating police officers, with the intent
of decieving the public into thinking we were the real fuzz.
We always refuted these
ridiculous claims on the part of the Police and the Crown
Prosecution Service and invited people to look over the past
10 years of our work, which the police were well aware of,
to see that we have a long history of parody, dressing up
and winding up the powers that be.
Thankfully, after finally
seeing sense, the CPS have now decided to drop all charges
against the Space Hijackers and return our vehicle and belongings.
We would like to thank
the Police for this amazing team building exercise they have
put us through. At the cost of tens of thousands of pounds
to the tax payer, the Space Hijackers as a group are now much
more numerous, organised, brave, focussed and optimistic in
what we can get away with. We look forward to their continued,
if slightly fanatically eager interest in our work; getting
our tank back, our compensation and using our new found team
skills, to take our forms of protest up to the next more outrageous
and cunning level.
We can only assume that
the CPS bottled what was heading to be a very very expensive,
complete circus of a trial ending in their inevitable humiliation
at the hands of the Hijackers, Hodge
Jones & Allen Solicitors and our QC.
Michael
Wolkind QC, who was briefed on behalf of all the defendants,
commented " it was a great surprise when Keir Starmer,
the DPP, took time off from the investigation of the death
of Ian Tomlinson, personally to confirm the absurd decision
to pursue this prosecution. His judgement has been exposed
by the late decision to discontinue the case".
In other news, the Space
Hijackers now have a whole free week which we’ve all
booked off work and therefore intend to spend it causing as
much chaos as possible.
Buy
Nothing Day 09 Mystery Non Shoppers
Our Buy Nothing Day action this year, took a much more subtle
form than previously.
Teams of undercover Hijackers were set
loose in Oxford Street department stores to try and minimise
profits. Acting as personal shoppers / concerned customers
/ chatty public we endeavoured to persuade as many people
as possible out of purchasing things in their hands:
"oh, I wouldn't bother buying one of those mate, I had
one a week ago and it just fell apart. There all pretty low
quality throw away fashion"
"Hey, I've just seen one of those in the charity shop
around the corner for £10, you want too go have a look
in there save yourself a fortune"
"Oh my god, red is SO not your colour"
"Hi, I'm a personal stylist, would
you like a hand?"
Full report and pictures coming soon....
Signs
Of Revolt
Creative Resistance & Social Movements since Seattle
From 14th - 22nd November the Space Hijackers took part in
the Signs Of Revolt
exhibition in London's trendy East End. We exhibited the last
10 years of our work and how it fits into the wider picture
of anti-capitalist, anti-corporate and anti-war protest. Along
with The Labofii, Movement
of the Imagination, The
Rebel Clown Army, War
Boutique and many others we put on a show journeying from
Seattle to Copenhagen.
Fighting against the DSEi
Arms Fair in East London
Every two years,
the worlds largest arms fair happens in the Docklands in East
London. Supported by the UK government, Clarion Events invite
delegates from across the world to peruse the latest advances
in the technology of death.
This year the Hilton Hotel
on Park Lane held a cushy little dinner for a selection of
the most reprehensible nasty little men in the world. For
some reason they wanted to keep the whole affair quiet? We
thought we'd help them out with some advertising for it.
The City. A concrete monolith to avarice,
greed, and sloth. Nature is dulled and forced to obey an urban
rigidity. Rivers are suppressed, plants are pruned and bound
to grow in ways that please planners. The suppression parallels
the City’s workers, stunned and cultivated human bots
conditioned to believe they are individual despite the uniformity.
Operation Ivy League is an attempt to sow
the seeds of dissent within the strict architecture and culture
of the City of London.
Once again the Hijackers
took on the dirty capitalists in a match for the city! Once
again we won, and once again there were more bare breasts,
broken bodies and drunken fools than you can shake a stick
at.
The Space Hijackers
training camp is an annual weekend away for Hijacker
agents. Escaping London we travel off to the countryside
to learn essential skills, team build and run workshops.
Alas being a top secret camp for top secret agents
we can't go into too much over what happened. However
suffice it to say that the weekend consisted of various
tests of both mental and physical strength.
The Space Hijackers teamed up with a various
other troublemakers in order to lead a funeral procession
through the East End marking the spread of Starbucks and other
unwelcome multinationals.
Culminating in the closing down of the
Starbucks In Whitechapel, this was a day for protecting our
local community from the beasts of global unfair-trade.
Mayday
09 - GUILTY A
CELEBRATION OF THE POLICE STATE
THERE IS NO PLACE FOR FREEDOM IN AN AGE
OF TERROR! GIVE UP THE FIGHT AND CELEBRATE OUR STATUS AS HAPPY
PRISONERS. HOW MANY MORE MUST DIE BEFORE WE LEARN TO DO AS
WE'RE TOLD?
In response to the massive over-zealous
police operation around the G20 which saw peaceful protestors
beaten, an innocent man killed and thousands put under illegal
detention in a kettle, the hijackers decided to return to
the scene of the crime and highlight our police state. Around
400 people turned up to revel and critique our state with
the street party going on until night.
In
the light of the police's conduct at the G20 demonstrations,
where arbitrary detention, assault and eventually murder seemed
to be not simply the actions of a few 'bad apples', but rather
institutional policy. We were glad to see that someone had
decided to make their recruitment adverts rather more honest.
The Miss University
London competition has been coming under flak ever since the
two men who came up with the idea launched it. Billed as "empowering"
and "educational" the competition asks female university
students to parade around infront of a panel before being
judged on who has the best genes. Gender and Social stereotypes
are re-affirmed, one lucky girl gets to live the dream for
the night the rest go home in tears. This is then called entertainment.
Agent Koshka decided she
had had enough and suggested the Hijackers get busy coming
up with a plan to compliment the feminist protest and variety
of other actions going on. In true Hijacker style we came
up with a tongue in cheek exaggeration of the contest, sending
a group of mainly male agents to go down and offend everyone.
The
Great Whitechapel Starbucks Who Dunnit Mystery?
Starbucks
in Whitechapel had been a centre of protest and anger since
it first announced it was going to open it nippleless mermaid
clad doors in the East End. The Hijackers ourselves had held
many actions at the store. However on January 13th all of
our anger at the store had been outdone when mystery assailants
smashed through the front doors and threw a firebomb in.
We
took it on ourselves to try and solve the mystery, oh and
perhaps accidentally remind everyone that Starbucks has such
a list of enemies, that the mystery bombers could have come
from all walks of life.
Since Clarion events bought the Dsei arms
fair, that delightful cornucopia of torture equipment and
corporate cash flow, The
Space Hijackers have been keen to help their marketing team
inform the existing customer base of the new shopping opportunites
this expansion will yield.
This time we decided to take our travelling
arms fair marketing team along to their (not at all hypocritical)
Spirit Of Christmas Fair.
Ever get the feeling that
all of life seems to now be controlled in a web of corporations,
social networking, government control and money? Why should
peoples social interactions be forced into the non-choice
between online networking sites, corporate sponsored events,
government regulated drinking establishments or pop culture
driven night clubs? We're fed up to the eyeballs with it.
If I want to play in my city, I don't want to be spoon fed
database targeted advertising campaigns, be monitored as a
focus group or be judged in comparison to this months glossy
style bibles.
The Greenwich foot tunnel
Pirate Party had been an idea brewing in our collective conscience
for some time. The government have now banned drinking on
the tube trains, and have been actively clamping down on any
non licensed events for years. In an age where Facebook is
seen as a social life something has to be done!
The powers
that be decided to make a big song and dance about the official
olympic torch being handed over from Beijing to London. Even
organising a 1948 themed street party in Hoxton to mark the
occassion. The Hijackers decided to roll up in our tank to
join in the celebrations, oh and to mark the official handover
from the Free Tibet campaign to the Free Hackney Campaign.
We managed
to make quite an entrance, crashing straight into a security
vehicle as we arrived, then pulling out our FREE HACKNEY banners.
CSG
(Citizens Supporting Government) are continually looking
at new strategies to enforce the SOCPA zone, to make
sure that London’s citizens understand the implications
of the Serious Organised Crime Prevention Act, and don’t
accidentally break these laws by expressing their political
opinions without prior permission from the police. Hundreds
of people everyday pack onto the underground, quite
possibly oblivious to the realities of the law, quite
possibly flagrantly contravening it, with what they
are reading, wearing, listening to, or thinking. CSG
were there to make sure the tube passengers don’t
break any rules.
Ten
tonnes of waste per week is generated by the free newspapers
in Westminster alone, which is not a problem that can be solved
just by recycling. The only solution to the problem is to
remove it - stop printing the papers.
In
an attempt to get this message out, a group of intrepid paper
boys and girls decided to use the tactics of The London Paper
and London Lite, putting their own pro-recycling anti-waste
propaganda into copies of the papers then aggressively and
relentlessly forcing them on the public.
When it was announced
that 15,000 Police men and women would be marching through
central London to protest for better
wages, we realised that it was an opportunity not to be missed.
Our years of experience of causing trouble have graced us
with a wealth of knowledge which we decided to pass on to
these fledgling protesters.
Buy Nothing Day is an annual protest against
the consumer culture which grips many of our lives, a chance
to take a step back and look at what's important in life,
and whether shopping and advertising help or hinder societies
wellbeing.
We feel that there are more important
things to life than chasing empty promises of a better life
through the collection of capital consumer goods. So each
year on BND we enter into the chaos of the pre-christmas shopping
blitz to play within the cathedrals of consumption and spread
a healthy piece of chaos amongst the ringing of the cash tills.
Every two years the worlds largest arms
fair (DSEi) takes place in East London. Each time we go down
to try and disrupt proceedings, wind up the arms dealers and
raise awareness of the fact our government supports this corrupt
business.
Most of the time we are escorted out by
burly policemen and banned from the area
This year however we took things up a
notch or two, after months of fundraising, the Hijackers bought
a tank, a great big, heavy, noisy beast of a tank. We attempted
to drive it into the arms fair, through the mounting police
operation which was aiming to stop us.
I won't spoil the twists of the story
now, but suffice it to say:
