The following text was kindly contributed to Freedom by Lisa Selby @bluebaglife (follow them on Instagram and Twitter), UK Prison Wives and the UK Prison Support Group. It describes the experiences of people in prisons and their loved in the time of COVID-19 and beyond. My partner, Elliot, has been out of prison for almost
Note from the editor: this text contains a discussion on issues which may be triggering and difficult to read. However, we decided to publish it as it concerns hard questions prison abolitionists need to face. (zb) The View Magazine started at the request of the governor at HMP Downview, a new governor, who was woefully
The Greek Prison Solidarity Fund have commenced an online fundraiser, asking for emergency support during the time of COVID-19. COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown across the globe continue to have a massive impact on our lives: many are struggling to make ends meet and worrying about the future; some are struggling with the lockdown itself,
The following letter from ‘D’ – passed to us by Carl Cattermole and Lisa & Elliot of @bluebaglife – lays bare the horrific conditions being endured by prisoners during the Covid-19 pandemic. As Carl wrote yesterday, British prisons are a Petri dish for this virus and unless people are released en masse, hundreds of prisoners
Carl Cattermole This past Tory decade has left public services looking like a bicycle locked up too long in East London: valuable parts stolen, everything else rusted. And if the service still has two wheels then I guarantee it doesn’t have the suspension to cope with bumps… and… COVID-19 isn’t a bump, it’s an assault
On Monday 9th March, the Incarcerated Workers Organising Committee (IWOC) have called a protest outside the Royal College of Psychiatrists to mark the 10 years that IWOC member Kevan Thakrar has spent in Close Supervision Centres within the British prison system. Close Supervisions Centres (CSCs) are the most extreme form of imprisonment in the UK,
This week has seen a raft of draconian law & order policies floated by the government and police representatives. Carl Spender examines these grim omens of the future. And so it begins: returned to government with a thumping majority, Johnson’s Tories have begun a crackdown on those pesky legal rights that risk getting in the
Last week, Sarah Jane Baker celebrated her 100th day as a free woman, having served 30 years in men’s prisons. At the time of her release, she was the world’s longest serving trans prisoner. Here she offers us a message of hope and solidarity for the new year. During the 30 years in which I
I witnessed the attack at London Bridge last Friday. Like the victims of the attack I’m a prison campaigner (Jack Merritt, one of the deceased, followed my work on social media). Like the assailant, I’m an ex-prisoner and I was failed by prison, as most of us are. There’s so much more than meets the
Greek anarchist prisoner Nikos Romanos was released from prison last week after serving 6 years out of his 18-year sentence. He was freed following a legal battle: despite his good behavior behind bars, the court originally had not admitted any mitigating circumstances necessary for early release. However, this decision was eventually reversed by the Greek
Taking a deep dive into Mary Trump’s recent work on the political psychopathology of her US President uncle.
Yesterday saw the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March held in Brixton, London.
Boris Johnson’s agenda of forcing workers to return to unsafe workplaces, urged in speeches characterised by his usual clowning incoherency, has been more thoughtfully if sinisterly promoted by a document published on Wednesday by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR).
This week anarchists based in England and Wales launched a new website, Autonomy News.
As a form of self-organisation and resistance, and driven by the principles of mutual support and solidarity, workers in Rio de Janeiro have launched the Despatronados delivery co-op. The initiative has come out of the Movement of Anti-Fascist Deliverers, an organisation which was formed in the wake of tough conditions around delivery services during the
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