Leeds ABC - Annual Report

Leeds ABC are a small, but active group. We are not an 'open' group, but can rely to some extent on the support of others outside the group who cannot commit to membership on a ‘full-time’ basis.

We have held a number of fund-raising activities over the past year, and as funds have allowed we have sent money to prisoners and/or the campaigns in support of them, for example we recently sent over 350 Euros to support an imprisoned Anarchist in Krasnador, Russia. We have also sent numerous International Reply Coupons and stamps to prisoners, as well as books and pamphlets.

Beyond financial solidarity, we have been involved in helping to support prison struggles in many parts of the world, and were particularly involved in the campaign to free Ruben and Ignasi, 2 Anarchists imprisoned in Barcelona, as well as in the campaign to support the Aachen 4 in Germany. We also do our best to support recently released prisoners as best we can.

We have held various talks and info nights to raise awareness of prison struggle, for example we organised 2 talks by Basque ex-prisoner Laudelino Iglesias Martinez (the second being a launch event for the pamphlet we had produced 'Down With The Prison Walls!' - A transcript of Laude's talk at Bradford '1 in 12' club.)

We have over the past couple of years managed to get together an impressive bookstall, stocking a wide selection of books and pamphlets on prison-related issues (as well as some other Anarchist and antifascist material.) We also stock DVDs, spoken word CDs, some music (prisoner benefits), T-shirts, badges, and our 'antifascist donor cards'! We have done stalls all over central and northern England at appropriate events such as prisoner info nights and benefits, the first national British Antifa conference, the Projectile Anarchist film festival, etc.

We have produced a range of publications in the past year, as well as working on a number of ongoing projects. In addition to Laudelino's pamphlet (mentioned above), we have printed an English version of a Salakheta pamphlet 'Women in Prison', 2 pressings of an interview given by Mark Barnsley in Germany a few years ago (published under the title 'With A Smile And A Twinkle In My Eye'), and we commissioned and published John Bowden's pamphlet 'Tear Down The Walls!' We have also published a new 4 page guide to writing to prisoners (available to download as a PDF) and a general ABC leaflet. Additionally, we've produced a series of badges and a new generic ABC T-shirt. Various other things have been produced, such as a DVD and spoken word CD.

We are working on a number of other publishing projects: an English translation of the talk given by the mothers of Xose Tarrio and Gabriel Pombo Da Silva has been a lengthy undertaking, but we are very pleased with the final result. We hope to release it soon as a DVD, but also as a pamphlet, which will include additional material on the Aachen arrests and translated extracts from Xose's book. Members of the group have also translated Gabriel's book into English, and are in the process of translating Xose's. We also hope to help translate John Bowden's book into other European languages.

Over the past months though, our main focus has been in supporting John Bowden and defending the ABC against smears of 'terrorism'. We have published a huge amount of material on the internet (in English and other languages) and sent it out by e-mail. We have organised 2 solidarity days, taking a good number of people to Edinburgh to picket the Scottish Parliament on the first, and helping organise events in Scotland, London, and Leeds for the second. We produced thousands of leaflets, did several banner drops, and picketed the Scottish Prison Service HQ. In Leeds we held a support event where people could use the phone to complain to the SPS, etc, send e-mails, and write letters, as well as sign our extra large postcard. Banners in Leeds are still in place and we will be hanging more. We have now produced thousands of 'Free John Bowden' stickers, which we will be distributing, and we are printing a series of postcards to further spread the word about the campaign. We initiated a 'Hands Off John Bowden!' postcard campaign to the SPS, which has resulted in them receiving thousands of cards. We have also been pursuing a number of complaints. While John Bowden remains in closed conditions, we know that the campaign has had a very positive effect in terms of his day to day treatment.

We have helped to establish a Scottish ABC group, and members of the group will be going to Scotland again shortly to give talks in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and try to organise other actions in support of John Bowden. We have also given advice and assistance to people in Belfast, where an ABC group has been recently re-established.

While none of the group possess the skills to set up a proper website, we have a Leeds ABC site on MySpace, which functions well enough, as well as having set up a 'Friends of John Bowden' page. In addition to sending out regular MySpace bulletins we have a large e-mail list to which we regularly send information and prisoner support bulletins.

Leeds ABC maintains good contact with other ABC groups throughout the world, and with prisoner support organisations outside of the ABC. Recently members of the group travelled to Europe to visit comrades and galvanise support for John Bowden, visiting groups and individuals in London, Lille (France), Gent and Antwerp (Belgium), Amsterdam, and Norwich, as well as a number of former Anarchist prisoners. They attended a prisoner support afternoon in Amsterdam at which dozens of letters and cards were written, and a card for John Bowden was signed by supporters in all the towns and cities visited. John Bowden’s pamphlet ‘Tear Down The Walls!’ has also now been translated into Dutch by Gent ABC, and we hope that a French version will soon follow.

All money raised by Leeds ABC is used for the direct support of Anarchist and class struggle prisoners. We pay ourselves no wages under any guise, have no bureaucratic costs or hidden ‘expense accounts’, and we fund our personal prisoner support activities out of our own pockets. We are however only ordinary working-class people, like the prisoners we support, and of limited means, therefore financial donations are always needed (the campaign in support of John Bowden for example has been a very costly one) as well as stamps to send to prisoners. Thank you to those who have made donations or organised benefit events in the past year.

Leeds ABC