Crop Squat!

At 5am Saturday 23rd of May, Britain's first "crop squat" began, as 30 odd (very odd!) anti-GE activists moved onto a release site for experimental sugar beet at Kirby Bedon, near Norwich. Activists met in London the night before for the usual briefing on law, the action, the site, and what to do on arrival - like putting up Section 6 notices, a yurt, and a marquee. Police arrived within 40 minutes, and apoligized for their initial hastiness, 'sorry, we heard there were 30 people in a field with sticks, but got here and saw you were building wig-wams!

Within a few hours, gardens were established, transforming this epitome of industrial corporate agriculture into organic growing, along with the essentials of camp life (toilets, kitchen and campfire), and a well-resourced info centre. The press arrived and carried on doing so for the next two weeks. At times the "radical gardeners" (as a local PC called us) regretted just being a media circus, but our success was bigger than that. Most support came from local people, some camping at night and going to work in the morning, and a successful rally brought in people naturally shy of protest sites.

With an eviction order passed after two weeks occupation (what do you expect if you squat the land of the Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk?) we packed up and left. Resist the eviction? Maybe next time; we felt we'd done well to bring so much attention to the issues and the alternatives, to worry Novartis (the crops testers), and to get in the face of the genetix industry. We knew we were trying too hard when the local gamekeeper complimented our behaviour and the Chief Inspector said we were the nicest protesters we'd ever met - perhaps we can justify this as outreach to the mainstream...!

If you want to do a crop squat in your area, drop Norfolk EF! a SAE to find out how we did it.