Picket Report 2001/aug/18 LONDON (UK), "What is Scientology"
Picket Report 2001/aug/18 LONDON (UK), "What is Scientology"
I had problems with travel and arrived a bit late, damned if I
could find the (first time) rendezvous. From Westminster underground,
rather than east to Parliament and across Westminster bridge,
you go west and across parliament square, a traffic island with
grass and some statues -- you can see the giant millennium ferris
wheel "the London Eye" across the river -- to the southwest corner
leading into Broad Sanctuary. All the east side is Westminster abbey.
On the west side are three large halls, and the conference centre
owns all the cobbled forecourt and pavement right to the road:
your choice for picketing is before, after, or across the road.
I was all dressed up in my nice clean pale blue jeans and red
check shirt, looking moderately tidy for a change.
I had wandered past central hall, and damned if I could see where
we were supposed to meet. However the demo started on time and I
followed the sound of the boombox across the forecourt
to the northeast corner(#) where our lot had pitched up;
the Jive Aces were inside the forecourt and up 2 metres of
steps(+), about 10 or 15 metres south of us. Basically we were
lined up north to south from martin P as main leafleter, me(Dave)
as 2nd leafleter, Jens with the gas cylinder and balloons, John R
on boombox... or rotating different people onto the boombox. Two
more, Damian and Hartley, were across the road leafleting.
FIVE MINUTES AT THE ABBEY
Huge crowds of tourists, many in guided tour groups and speaking
mainland European languages or Japanese, were doing five minutes
at the abbey then five minutes at parliament then... They had zero
interest in a "what is scientology" exhibition. Our people who went
inside say it was practically empty. This area is near Whitehall
and various ministries. The conference centre is a place where
ministries do major presentations to industrialists or vice versa,
and is priced accordingly. It was utterly useless to the clams.
They were putting out a major amount of leaflets in the street --
mostly to tourists who would leave the country in a week and file it
among their holiday souvenirs -- but the sales response rate on
leafleting is low if other fields of selling are anything to go by.
The small number of people who were NOT tourists looking at the
abbey passed on our side of the road. The Jive Aces played their
hearts out, and the clams sent furious amounts of people to come
out and handle us or counter leaflet -- maybe eight at any time,
with some rotation? -- we had their entire attention. All their
outside people were on us. They did not seem very happy. The
Spanish twit from London Org seemed to think I wanted a gift of
washing powder and would be photographed with it. A fat girl
with a Scots accent asked for a couple of balloons then burst
them: wow, that really put us in our place. I was feeling tired,
but if they wanted to be nasty to us that increased my resolve
to stick out the full 2 1/2 hours and not leave till they had.
FELLING SNAPPY.
The best bit was at the end. A tall skinhead type with cropped
blond hair came over and started abusing alternately me, or Jens,
or John, whoever came his way, shouting abuse inches from their
faces. Eventually he wound up admitting his paedophile tendencies
by accusing everyone else of it. The Spanish twit held a leaflet
in front of our videocam, until I reached out for the leaflet
and she withdrew it. Another shorter skinhead type with identical
cropped blond hair turned up and started to drag him off. These,
I gather, are JIVE ACES MUSICIANS. There was no way this was faked,
the guy just lost all self control and TRs, and came over shouting
abuse at people; gawd knows why, since we hadn't been specially
tough on the band in particular. They must really by in a bad
way if 3133t d00dz of the Sea Org like the Jive Aces loose control
and embarrass the CofS in public. It makes me wonder whether there
will be an exhibition, or even much of a cult, by next year. The
cracks are definitely showing. The whole event so far has been a
complete disaster for them, and we have not even been particularly
tough or effective: they are falling apart as we stand by and watch.
So, three of us stood on the corner and watched until the band's
white van drove away. Then we wandered off along Victoria Street
and found a pub nearer Victoria to celebrate on the way back.
All in all, we had a grand day out.
18 Aug 2001
Dave Bird <dave@xemu.demon.co.uk>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ /\\
.:;;;;;;' ( ))
Westminster .;;;;;;;;' \//
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