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THE BARRICADES OF BROUGHTON
'We're going to lock them out, we're going to stay here 24 hours a day.
If the police and the sheriff officers come, we will not let them in."
Angela, Centre volunteer, STV Reporting Scotland.
THE ONCE-FAMILIAR wooden doors are Derried now 'neath steel, sheets of
steel shaped and bolted on by blacksmiths who refused all and any payment.
"Our donation to the Centre", said they. Solidarity lives.
But the doors are open twixt noon and four every day bar Sunday, and the
Centre is inhabited around the clock, seven days a week. Within opening
hours a busy vegan cafe, famously cheap and substantial, is the hub of
Centre activity and behind the chatting diners poster-festooned walls
advertise gigs, meetings and actions, while the skirting tables sag
beneath the mass of flyers and brochures explaining anti-VAT on Fuel,
Criminally Injustice Bill, Stop the Fascists, community arts,
homelessness, hunt sabs, gay rights, claimants rights, women's
issues, Poll Tax arrears, AIDS, Parks for the People......
Above the cafe the pine-beamed mezzanine floor is being transformed
into a snug reference library and reading room, while next door the
Centre office advises callers, who phone or drop in, on benefit rights.
There's a well-equipped children's playroom and a basement darkroom.
Upstairs, one end of the large hall is carpeted with defenders'
sleeping bags while the other end is a mass of art and craft
odds-and-ends with which the Creative Resource Network makes the
puppets and props for its street theatre. The door of the small
room opposite bears a hand-drawn sign - 'Cheap Claes Shoap'.
The atmosphere is busy, cheery and sociable. No-one gets paid.
Anyone can get involved. But when the doors are locked and blocked
and the Centre quietens down, ears are cocked and nerves steeled
for the baying of the bailiffs and the grunting of the pigs.
New Readers Start Here
"The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and
from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to say which
was which."
George Orwell, Animal Farm.
Conceived in 1981 as a left-Labour response to mass-unemployment,
and funded by the Regional Council, the Edinburgh Unemployed Workers
Centre (EUWC) was founded as a charitable trust and started life in the
basement of the Edinburgh Trades council building.
In the mid-80's it moved to larger temporary premises off the
city's High St.. There it became something more than a printing
press, computers and a meeting room, evolving, despite the reticence
of the Party-hack dominant clique, into a focus for independent
unwaged activists. The Right to Work campaign was submerged under
Claimants Union direct actions, then along came the anti-Workfare
Campaign.
By the time the Centre moved into its new permanent premises
in Broughton Street in 1989 the Poll Tax fight was well under way.
By 1990 the Labour Council was setting the bailiffs on the refuseniks.
All the poindings were stopped, many by pickets based at the EUWC.
By that time 4 of the Centre's 7-strong Board of Trustees were unwaged,
unaffiliated activists democratically elected from the Centre's Users
Group. The other 3 were Labour councillors Tony Kinder and Des Loughney,
and Jim Milne, boss of Labour-controlled Dalkeith Unemployed Workers
Centre. [ Loughney, for his sins, was and is also secretary of Edinburgh
Trades Council., Powerful enemies indeed.]
These Labour and trade union bureaucrats had lost control. Their response
was swift. During the night of 1/2 Feb. 1992 the 3 Labour Party trustees
simply, and unilaterally, changed the Centre's locks one night and locked 4
trustees, the users group and the public, out . The now-deserted building
resonated solely to the rhythm of the basement printing press, operated by
the paid worker George Wilson, churning out reams of Labour Party literature,
exploiting charitable tax status.
The locked-out organised in a donated room across the road in the Gay
Centre and in March '92, in a splendid piece of direct action, smashed
open the Centre's door and re-occupied the building, opening it again
to the unwaged and homeless.
Councillor Kinder's lucrative printing contract was left hanging.
But even Labour politicians are not averse to a bit of direct action,
it seems, especially when their wallets are threatened. Shortly after
the Centre's liberation, one cold, dark March Sunday morning, Labour
trustee Jim Milne and ex-Centre worker George Wilson, backed verbally
by Councillors Kinder and Loughney, broke back in and removed the printing
press, 6 Applemac computers, a process camera, enlargers........in short
they took away 25,000 pounds of the Trust's equipment, including a washing
machine for the homeless. They removed the accounts and minutes books.
They even pinched the donations tin and the teabags, and smashed the emergency
lighting system, just for the hell of it. The councillor-trustees then used
their clout to freeze the Centre's 10,000 pound bank account and stop its mail.
Repeated attempts by the independent trustees to have the assets judicially
returned have been consistently denied legal aid. The Establishment closes
ranks.
The Centre Fights On
"It's getting up the nose of the Council, the fact that we're unfunded,
but still here and still running."
Maggie, Centre volunteer, STV Reporting Scotland.
Custodians now of a stripped building, with no equipment, no funding
and no bank account, the Centre users decided to fight on. Money was
raised by using the upstairs hall as an increasingly popular gig venue
with live bands appearing from all over Britain. Room space was rented
out to community and other groups. The bills could be paid, but hostile
eyes were watching. The Council's attempt to strangle the life out of
the self-managed centre had failed. A new tactic was tried.
In February 1993 the Region's Social Work Committee - the Centre's
landlords - suddenly remembered that they had 'inadvertently left out'
an all-important clause in the lease, a clause which disallowed
fund-raising activities in the Centre without their permission.
The bills piled up.
Both renegade trustees Loughney and Kinder were members of the
Social Work Committee. The centre's lease had only just over a
year to go. They sat back and waited.
In February 1994 a social work inspectorate visited the building,
ostensibly to 'see if any repairs needed done'. Party Hacks then
produced a hostile report, signed by the social work director,
recommending the Centre's closure. Amid a welter of media publicity
the users' group smashed the phoney report to pieces, proving it to
be totally false and deliberately contrived. Nonetheless, the report
was adopted by the Council who immediately started eviction proceedings.
For obvious reasons, the 4 independent trustees chose to obey the
injunctions and quit the premises, but not before putting all Trust
property into the sympathetic stewardship of the local community
council who are requesting that a new lease be granted to them,
so that the Centre volunteers can be kept in situ, carrying on
their sterling community work. The Edinburgh Unemployed Workers
Centre is no more. Now it's simply 'the Centre'. The Labour
Council is entrenched in its bitter hostility. 'Get out'
they yell. 'Get stuffed' reply the volunteer defenders.
Power and Control
The whole issue is, of course, about power and control. The attempted
destruction of Edinburgh's autonomous, volunteer-run centre is part of
an iworld-wide attack on such self-managed social centres by the state,
national or local. The Centre recently received a letter of support
from Spain, telling of such attacks against autonomous centres in Bilbao
and Zaragoza. Similar letters have arrived from London, while a
recent visitor to the Centre described the resistance to evictions
mounted by squatted centres in his native Netherlands. Meanwhile
in Italy dozens of self-managed social centres, such as the renowned
Leoncavallo in Milan, continue their activity despite state harassment.
Grey Orwellian drabness and conformity is the order of the day.
International support has been more than on paper. So far, two months
into the sit-in, folk from Holland, Canada, USA, Australia, and
Germany have turned up and got involved, widening the definition
of 'community centre'. More help is needed though. Operating a
24 hour 7 day shift system is demanding and we need more people
to get involved, in any way.
The Centre must remain open, and self-managed.
Riddley Walker
The Centre, 103 Broughton Street, Edinburgh EH1. Tel. 031 557 0718.