Birmingham (England)
7 Apr 2001
Dave Bird <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk>

Ten of us picketed today in Birmingham (England): Dave, Jens, Damian, Martin, Hartley, Ian, Andy and Pam, Steve C-T, plus Santosh. John didn't come presumably because of the state of his local trains into London, and Roland because it was Grand National day. It rained. Well, it only rained hard part of the time, and it even stopped raining altogether once or twice. It was windy, and very cold; my hands needed a good warming afterwards. Things got off to an odd start when Ian took a wrong turn with the Boombox and we thought we'd lost him. But we got it going and I had a go, LRon Hubbard had a go (posthumously, on tape), and Martin had a go; we could have done with JohnR really.

One small OSA clam scuttled round the edges. He used a mobile to phone the police, who seemed to be telling him to go away and stop wasting their time. Between one and two clams carried on against out picket. He said he had a "surprise for us at the end", which seemed to be that the total of body routers went up to four the moment we departed. he followed us, taking pictures, to a pub just next to the station. Leaflets went reasonably well, we must have put out about 500; the street was busy despite the intermittent light rain. Some SPs seemed to prefer demonstrating under the concrete awning of Pizza Hut rather than out on the street, though.

All in all, a pretty good picket. Back next month.........

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