Benefit gig on 30th August

On Sunday 30th August we’ll be having a fundraising event in TJs, Newport. For a modest entry fee of £5, you can feast on a delight of rabble rousing rebel music.

Over on tour from Belgium are dub/ska-punk band The Usual Suspects who bring militant politics to music in a manner that can only be matched by Spanner who are coming over from Bristol. They are joined by Cardiff revolutionaries KilnAboy and Dirty Revolution who bring folk-punk and reggae-punk respectively.

There are event pages on both facebook and myspace, please help us promote this event by inviting your friends! On the night you’ll be able to find us activists taking turns behind  our usual stall, it would be good to meet anyone who is interested in finding out more or getting involved.

It’s a bank holiday the next day, so  check out these videos and if you like what you hear, why not come on down:

Sincere radical political music is a rare and splendid thing, we

Welcome in Calais?

You may notice on the top of our left column we have a new feature, our twitter feed!  To go along with our Facebook and Myspace accounts, we’ve signed up to the latest social networking craze and will be sending out ‘tweets’ for the duration of the No Border Camp, and hopefully beyond! This will mean we’re able to keep people unable to attend the camp up to the minute about what’s happening, follow us today!

Some people have been asking what kind of welcome the No Border Camp will have in Calais. Naturally the authorities are being typically bullish and threatening, (and in Dunkirk have taken it one stage further) however local people have

University occupation ends in victory

The occupation of Cardiff University ended on Thursday having secured a major victory. A key demand of the occupation, which was organised by Cardiff Students Against War, was that the University divest

Video of ‘Two sides – One story’ in Cardiff

As promised in our report, here is the film of the last night of tour of “Two Sides – One Story: Guantanemo from both sides of the wire“:

Demo at Amey Plc HQ

On Monday,  No Borders activists from South Wales, Bristol, and Oxford joined with members of the Campaign Against Immigration Controls to make a horrible noise with drums, olive oil tins, a symbol and two megaphones in a noise demo outside the HQ of Amey PLC in Oxford. Whilst No Borders North East held a solidarity picket outside the company’s Newcastle HQ.

The protest went on for three hours, the noise visibly disrupting Amey’s working day. Though security guards initially asked for protesters to leave, no police were called, it appears the company simply do not want the attention that would bring. Employees were  leafleted as they left the office and there was a banner drop from the nearby car park.

These protests are part of a campaign against Amey Plc. In September 2008 five Colombian cleaners working for Amey at the National Physical Laboratory were suspended for criticising the company, they have since been sacked. Amey Plc have worked hand in glove with the immigration authorities, asking ‘disruptive’ workers to attend fake training sessions, which turn out to be ‘snatch sessions’ for UKBA agents and police, leading to deportation and detention.

This case is a typical example of how companies make an increased profit by exploiting the precarious situation migrant workers currently face. The full background story explains the importance of this dispute.

“this small story is a perfect lesson in how migration controls work, and what role they play in the economy. It’s clear that, in order to take the contract at NPL, Amey had to make a bid stating that it could do the same work as the previous company for less money. This “race to the bottom” is the way the market works.

But how can a company do the same work for less? By keeping wages down, enforcing a bigger workload on less workers, using agency workers (mostly hired as “self-employed” “one-person companies”) that have no rights and aren’t given the appropriate training. How can they get away with this?

By counting on a workforce that is not aware of its labour rights, who has less options in the work market, or is too precarious or afraid to challenge their conditions. In other words, the migrant worker who has little or no support network in this country, and whose visa status can often be irregular, is the ideal worker for companies like Amey: the guarantee that they can keep on racing to the bottom.”

Cardiff Protest Against ID Cards

Over 60 people attended our protest against the introduction of Biometric ID Cards for non-EU students and spouses on Tuesday. The demonstration was held for a couple of hours at midday outside the Cardiff office of the UK Border Agency at 31-33 Newport Road. People the government is forcing to carry ID cards will have to attend this centre for interrogation, photographing and