One of the activists who took part in the occupation at the JustEat offices in London this week, to support the strike by couriers in Sheffield and other northern towns, explains their solidarity action.
Please donate to the strike fund here. For more see IWGB Couriers Sheffield's Twitter. For an interview with IWGB Couriers Sheffield chair Parirs Dixon, see here.
The JustEat strike which started in Sheffield three weeks ago is hugely significant – it’s the longest running gig economy strike in UK history and is spreading to other cities. In Sheffield student activists have been very active in solidarity, helping picket and generally providing support. We wanted to take a higher profile national action to support and draw attention to the strike.
We organised through an informal affinity group, involving activists from different organisations across the country – Warwick, Manchester and Sheffield uni rent strikes groups, Sussex uni renters’ union, plus the Red Square Movement and UKSCN London...
We walked into the lobby of the building where JustEat has its offices [in Farringdon, central London] at just before 3pm on the 20th. We’d decided to say we were Warwick business students so we could get in the lift and go up. We originally thought we might stay in the offices overnight. That didn’t work, so we also tried to go up the stairs; but someone was grabbed and pulled back by security, so we decided to stay in the lobby, as we did not want to create a confrontation. We got our banners out in the lobby and said yes, this is a protest.
Very quickly three City of London police turned up. We pointed out this was civil trespass, not aggravated trespass – we weren’t obstructing, disrupting or intimidating anyone. They had to step back and check their books, which was quite entertaining. One of them seemed to accept our argument, but also argued their presence another was necessary to prevent a breach of the peace if the security removed us. Another disagreed and spent ten minutes arguing with us that it was aggravated trespass.
After about half an hour another five or six officers showed up. At that point they could stop arguing legal semantics as they had the force to kick us out, under threat of arrest. Though we’d not been there that long we decided to leave as we didn’t want to get arrested – the focus is on the strike, not on arrested students.
Two of us managed to get away but the rest were detained for about ten minutes. They used Section 50 [of the Police Reform Act 2002], which allows them to demand name and address if they have reason to believe the person has been engaging in anti-social behaviour. Section 50 isn’t supposed to be used against protests, but last month it was used against anti-Amazon protesters, so there is a concerning trend. It seems police are inappropriately using the legislation to collect information on protesters.
The whole thing absolutely reaffirmed how the police are there to protect property, or more specifically to protect businesses against any challenge – in that context they don’t see you as a citizen, you become someone to be policed. They had several vans come for a small, peaceful, not-disruptive protest, when the building already had security part of whose job is to remove civil trespassers – so any police presence was unwarranted. They weren’t really bothered about the legal technicalities so much as finding an excuse to act in the interests of JustEat.
We need more solidarity actions in support of the strikers, in as many places as possible.
Certainly among student activists but among quite a lot of students more generally I’d say there’s an understanding about the need to support workers’ struggles. Students can play an important role. Our student Sheffield Solidarity Group has sent five to ten people to the pickets lines every night, for five or so hours of picketing.
In Sheffield the roots of this strike are in earlier organising to oppose a transfer from Stuart to Scoober, which would have meant fire and rehire with a pay cut and worse working conditions. The the militancy of the couriers prevented. As part of that Sheffield Solidarity Group systematically canvassed halls and students areas with a leaflet and petition, to show support and give the couriers more confidence in their fight. So our solidarity work began in that earlier fight and was well established when this one began.
