[noborders-brum] Response to no borders/arc spat

[Mike D]

> Dear Hub13,
>
> I am a member of Birmingham No Borders and I agree with the
> sentiments expressed within the Birmingham No Borders statement. The
> statement was drafted by a member (Shiar) and agreed consensually
> with other active members. This would qualify it as a statement made
> by Birmingham No Borders.
>
> It was my understanding that ARC have campaigned on the basis of
> Asylum Amnesty prior to last years event. members of Birmingham No
> Borders had indeed attended an ARC meeting where they had challenged
> this agenda to no avail. ARC had made no public change to their
> stance at this point. As previously stated, No Borders has always
> stood for Asylum for all, not a selected few. The change to ARC's
> stance on Amnesty is a development which is applauded and welcomed.
> Furthermore, the Birmingham No Borders statement states:-
>
> "We have a lot of respect for ARC and what they do, and we have
> personal friendships with some of them....this of course, does not
> mean the two groups cannot work together. Indeed, they have in the
> past". I would have imagined that this would have been interpreted
> as an olive branch rather than "inflating division" as you state.
>
> Birmingham No Borders feel they cannot work with you (as do a
> significant number of activists in Birmingham who I have personally
> spoken to) for a plethora of reasons. Yourself and your partner were
> involved in a social centre project in Birmingham a few years back.
> You were disruptive, intimidating, and abusive to other
> collective members. You repeatedly broke consensus, which
> resultingly compromised the project, whilst your partner took
every > measure possible to cover up your behaviour in an attempt
to prevent you from being held to account for your actions.
>
> As a few members of the collective later learned, yourself, your
> partner and another individual conspired to use the property as a
> place for yourselves to live and run as a 'social centre'. This was
> contrary to the aim of reinstating the building to be used as a
> *locally* run community centre, which was consensually agreed by the
> collective, and more importantly by a large number of people in the
> local community. Clearly such selfishness and self-interest has no
> place in activism. Many people felt alienated by your behaviour and
> subsequently left the campaign. To what degree this was intentional
> we can only speculate. Furthermore, yourself and your partner had
> previously compromised another social centre project in Birmingham
> with far more serious consequences which I will not discuss here.
> Since the demise of this social centre, your partner has played a
> significant role in attempting to rehabilitate your reputation,
> emotionally blackmailing a variety of people into withdrawing their
> critisms of you. Thankfully your partner's attempts to do this have
> failed as people realised they were being manipulated. Without an
> honest admission from yourself regarding your behaviour, it was
> deemed that history was likely to repeat itself if you were included
> in Birmingham No Borders. Excluding you and your partner was to
> maintain the integrity of Birmingham No Borders rather than a 'hate
> campaign'.
>
> I notice that you have not included your true identity in this
> email. In the past you have used a number of different email
> addresses and handles to pretend to be different people whilst
> involved in activist projects. When confronted you have argued
> argued that this is a 'security measure', however you have also used
> it to manipulate discussion on email lists. This is an abuse of
> anonymity, I am sure members of a "truth based" No Borders would
> appreciate a little more transparency.
>
> Regarding the No Border banners, these were made specifically for
> the No Borders demo in Harmondsworth in 2006 by members of No
> Borders. The banners can be seen here at the Harmondsworth demo in
> photos 4 and 5:-
>
> https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2006/04/337973.html
>
> I believe the "Trojan Horse" reference was made to refer to the
> attempts by yourself and your partner to gain possession of these
> banners under the guise that you would use them at the ARC demo.
> From personal experience you could not be trusted to return these
> banners for use as a "collective resource".
>
> Finally, I interpreted the invitation to discuss the issue of
> working with other groups rather than the disruption
> and meddling of two individuals. This of course would be a
> constructive use of time for national No Borders groups.
>
>
>
> Mike