Ian Bone V. Qatari

[alanjjohnstone]

The owner of the Shard has sought a high court injunction to prevent a protest led by a veteran anarchist outside the 72-storey London landmark, where 10 multiple million-pound luxury apartments lie empty. Angered by revelations about the number of empty apartments in “posh ghost towers” , Ian Bone, a veteran campaigner and founder of anarchist newspaper Class War, attempted to organise a “noisy, but peaceful” protest outside the Shard. Families of some of the victims of the Grenfell Tower tragedy were due to join him in the demonstration.

“We are starting weekly actions – Thursdays 6-8pm starting Feb 8th.”

Less than 48 hours after making the Facebook post, Bone was issued with a summons to appear at the high court this Thursday – the day of the planned protest. The Shard’s owners and management company applied to the court for an immediate injunction preventing Bone and “persons unknown” from entering the Shard or land near the building.

Evidence filed by the Shard’s owners at the high court includes a detailed “intelligence report” on Bone compiled by private security firm VSG. The report described Bone as the leader of anarchist movement Class War, and said he “walks with a cane and generally is belligerent and uncooperative when interacting with persons of authority, such as police officers and security officers”. The VSG report described Class War as “a small but passionate group of leftwing, pro-anarchy activists with a long and proven history of campaigning against ‘the elite’ and other entities associated with wealth or perceived social injustice”.

The report advised the Shard’s owners that if Bone’s protest was allowed to take place it could endure for months and “attract widespread media coverage”. It also warned that activists could use “pyrotechnics and large, offensive banners of a derogatory nature”.

André Frank Baker, a former Metropolitan police commander and head of the Shard’s security team, said he was concerned about Bone coming near the tower because he had published a book entitled Bash the Rich: True Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK.

“I instructed lawyers this morning and was advised that an urgent injunction should be pursued,” Baker said in his witness statement. “The threat could materialise at any time … It was thought appropriate to pursue an injunction without notice. Given that the stated objective of this anarchist campaign is to unlawfully occupy vacant apartments at the Shard and cause disruption generally, I and the claimants take this threat extremely seriously.”

Bone said he had no intention of causing a public nuisance and “just wanted to highlight the obscenity of having huge empty luxury towers when so many are homeless and struggling”. “This is the billionaire Qatari royal family against a little old pensioner,” 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/06/shard-owners-seek-to-ban-protest-by-class-war-activist

[Young Master Smeet]

Victory for free speech! The Qatari royals have failed in preventing us from criticising the Shard over their empty multi million quid apartments. They also failed in getting over 500 quid in costs for their injunction over protests at the building.

— Class War (@Classwar2015) February 8, 2018

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