THE BOTTLED WASP.

        The Bottled Wasp Pocket Diary is a new not-for-profit prisoner support fundraising project launched by Brighton Anarchist Black Cross and associates at the 2012 London Anarchist Bookfair. Our plan is to create a long-term stable income for prisoner support activities, delivering a publishing template that can be used by a hopefully independent self-sustaining collective that will go on to produce the diary in future years.

        Each new edition of the Bottled Wasp is based around an individual theme, which for the 2013 edition of The Wasp is prisoner support and resistance. It features articles on Writing to Prisoners, Why You Should Sue the Police, No Comment plus all the usual diary features: monthly and yearly organisers, a menstrual calendar and extensive prisoner support links pages. With contributions from the Anarchist Black Cross, Legal Defence & Monitoring Group, Bent Bars Project, Green & Black Cross, Haven Books to Prisoners, Kate Sharpley Library and many more. The planned theme for the 2014 edition is 'Anarchism and the Arts', with 2015 slated for an anti-fascist themed one.

         The cover of the Bottled Wasp has been designed by Clifford Harper and the diary itself includes extensive listings of dates and illustrations of historical prison resistance and other non-prison related anarchist and class struggle events, large-scale demos and significant resistance activities, long-term prisoners' birthdays (as part of the role of this issue of the diary is to increase the numbers of people actively supporting prisoners in addition to passively supporting them via purchase of the diary itself) along with monthly feature articles on subjects ranging from Attica 1971 and Strangeways 1990 the Bombing of MOVE to Giuseppi Pinelli and Deaths in Custody.

         The Wasp was launched at the London Anarchist Bookfair on October 27th at Queen Mary, University of London, E1 4NS and is currently available for the staggeringly reasonable price of £5 from a good bookshop near you.

       Please help spread the news and you can also publicise the Bottled Wasp by linking to our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/bottledwasp

      If you wish to make a donation to the Bottled Wasp project and to the work that the Anarchist Black Cross network and other prisoner support groups do, then here are our bank account details:

The Bottled Wasp
Co-operative Bank
Sort code: 08-92-99
Acc. No.: 65601648
You can also contact us at: thebottledwasp@riseup.net

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DEATH AT THE HANDS OF THE POLICE.

      In a recent post, UK armed police,  I mentioned the death of Mark Duggan, by armed police, and the three deaths at the hands of the police since that event. I referred to this as a recent spate, as it should be noted that death at the hands of the police goes away back in our history.
       We can start with Blair Peach, killed at an anti-racist protest in April 1979. In spite of the fact that 14 witnesses stated that they had seen Blair Peach being hit by members of the Metropolitan Police Special Patrol Group, (SPG), nobody was ever charged with his murder. Prior to the Mark Duggan killing the previous high profile death at the hands of the police was Ian Tomlison. Ian was hit from behind and pushed to the ground by a police officer, he died shortly afterwards. This was April 2009 at the London G20 protest, Ian, however, was not at the protest, he was merely trying to find his way home through the protest, after work. He was walking with his hands in his pockets and his back to the police when he was brutally assaulted by the officer.
      There never seems to be much coverage in the media of the number of deaths at the hands of the police, but the numbers are considerable. From 1997 until 2007, in England and Wales, 530 people have died in police custody. Not one single officer has been convicted in connection with these deaths. During the period, 1990 until 2011, armed police have killed 53 people, 21 of these were by the London Metropolitan Police. A lot of deaths, no convictions, it doesn't seem to add up.

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