Picket Report - London
1 Dec 2001
John Ritson <john@jritson.demon.co.uk>

The day began with heavy rain, but by the time eight or nine suppressives, accompanied by the cute little dog 'Duke' assembled near the Tottenham Court Road 'org', things had improved and we were able to picket for just over two hours with only one brief shower (not even enough to stop leafleting). The 'org' seemed fairly downstat. No students going in or out - only staff members.

They were handing out copies of "The Volunteer Minister's Newspaper - Issue 1". This contains L. Ron Hubbard's 1976 "Role of the Volunteer Minister" in which he says that "a society to survive well, needs at least as many Volunteer Ministers as it has policemen". Later in this "newspaper" it is calculated that means at least 2,100,000. So after 25 years, Scientology still has not got one quarter of its claimed 8 million members to answer to this "urgent" call and join IHELP the "International Hubbard Ecclesiastical League of Pastors". It only costs $25.00 US and you get a yellow jacket. So is Scientology lying about its membership, or are at least three quarters of them lazy cheapskates rather than "the most ethical people on the planet".

Pretty soon the dustbins were full of this "yellow journalism". Passers-by were very supportive, even though they risked the terrifying "death stare" from poor little Paolo. One young lady came over, took a leaflet and thanked me for what we were doing. Paolo stared fanatically at her back as she walked away. When not on microphone duty I was able to demonstrate how SPs are 'at cause' over Scientologists by moving Paolo back and forth along the pavement as I handed out leaflets, before I told him how I was demonstrating how obedient Scientologists can be, whereupon he stopped playing.

They tried to drown out our boom-box by playing music through one and then two loudspeakers, but SP-tech beats Hubbard-tech every time.

One passer-by started asking the Scientologists questions, then went into the 'org', asked more questions, then asked one of their "newspaper" distributors questions. The poor chap was getting lost when faced with L. Ron Hubbard's handwritten OTIII material from the Xenu leaflet, when a more senior staff member came out to tell him to come inside to answer a telephone call. I was able to tell the passer-by to watch out and see if there was any telephone being answered, and we started laughing when he re-emerged without ever leaving our sight or touching a telephone. Perhaps he was using those incredible OT powers?

After a couple of hours we called it a (very successful) day.

--
John Ritson *** " This practice of As-is-ness, by the way, is the reason why people do not consider it polite for other people to stare. People have a hangover in that they know, instinctively, that if they are completely looked at they would disappear." L. Ron Hubbard - 'Creation of Human Ability' ***