Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

138 Open Borders
out there who care about them. Group 4 has made intermittent and strenous
efforts to block communication between demonstrators and detainees. In the
early days the prisoners could see the demonstrations from windows at the
front of the building. When one-way glass was installed and then detainees
were barred from these windows, the demonstrators went round to the back
of the site. When they discovered they could see over the fence and shout to
detainees in a courtyard by climbing trees, Group 4 cut down the trees. They
have since extended metal sheeting to the full height of the fence, saying
detainees ‘needed protection from the wind’. Recently they have taken to
preventing detainees from going out into the yard during demonstrations.
Partly because of the razor wire on the top of the fence, the protesters have
not yet devised a method of seeing over it. Demonstrators have come with
drums and musical instruments. They have had support from green activists.
During the year or so after Campsfield opened, and before the razor wire,
some of the latter climbed fences and draped banners on them; demonstrators
climbed into the centre; a woman climbed inside and got onto a roof
before she was violently dragged down by Group 4 guards, who had to call
an ambulance. In the summer of 1995 there was a protest camp in a
Ministry of Defence-owned piece of land adjacent to the prison which lasted
for several weeks before the campers were evicted; campers have returned
for brief periods over the years. Six supporters walked to London and
delivered a 5,000-signature petition, in a box bound with barbed wire and
red roses, to Downing Street. In 1997, after the Nine had been arrested and
charged with riot, protesters paid what was meant to be a surprise visit to
Jack Straw one weekend when he was staying at his period cottage in the
Cotswold village of Minster Lovell. The plan was to put up a tall fence in front
of his house. When the protesters arrived at the top of the rise above the
village they saw police with a dozen vans and on horses, who allowed them
to reach the main street some yards from Straw’s house before pushing them
back. Later two protesters camped outside Campsfield and announced to the
media that they were digging a tunnel under the fence.
Supporters of the Campaign to Close Campsfield have also put resolutions
to Labour Party branches and constituencies, to Labour’s 1995 annual
conference and to local councils and trade unions, with some successes. In
1994 Oxfordshire County Council passed a resolution critical of the practice
of detention at Campsfield. Closure of Campsfield and all detention centres is
the policy of both Labour constituency parties in Oxford. Oxford City Council
failed to pass a resolution put forward by the Labour group calling for
Campsfield to be closed only when a minority of right-wing Labour
councillors allied with opposition councillors to vote against it. Closure of
Campsfield and all detention centres is the national policy of the Manufacturing
Science Finance Union (MSF), the National Union of Journalists (NUJ),
the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education
(NATFHE) and the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), and of
the trades council movement of England and Wales. A letter circulated in