EDINBURGH'S OTHER TATTOO

by Ellis D. Hayes

COUNCILLORS were unable to nod off at the year's first meeting of 
Lothian Region on February 1.  The walls of their plush chamber, 
like the square outside, reverberated to the rhythms of massed 
drums, beating out rebellion, paradiddling protest, rapping out a 
tattoo of rage at the violent eviction of the Council-owned 
Edinburgh Unemployed Workers Centre last December, during which 
23 unemployed activists were arrested and charged.

As the drumming reached a crescendo the councillors could hardly 
hear themselves lie.

The blood-stirring primal rhythms were laid on by the Sativa 
Drummers and the Women's Drumming Collective, a must at any good 
demo.  Both outfits were involved in the occupation of the 
Centre.

Scores of angry protesters accompanied the beat with whistles and 
yells of "Give us back our Centre !"

For 6 months the Broughton Street Centre had been occupied, as 
both a protest against the corrupt actions of Lothian Region and 
their lackeys and as a display of determination to keep the 
self-managed and unfunded community space open.  A stone's throw 
from the centre of Edinburgh, which is now Europe's fourth 
business capital, unemployed and homeless activists barricaded 
themselves in and continued to run a cheap cafe, offer benefits 
advice, operate a crche, and maintain a wide variety of groups 
and workshops, while the Labour Council seethed with anger.  
Their eviction notice had been torn to confetti.

(For the full story of the fight for the Centre and its history 
see the last issue of Scottish Anarchist)

GET BACK TO THE GUTTERS, YOU SCUM

At dawn on December 1st the sleeping occupation nightshift was 
yanked from its slumbers by the sounds of the Centre's back doors 
being smashed in.  The Emergency Phone Tree was activated before 
the nightshift was flung out by the invading bailiffs and pigs.  
Within half an hour Centre activists and supporters were tackling 
the police.  A sympathetic Herald journalist takes up the story :

"Police and sheriff officers acting on the instructions of 
Labour-controlled Lothian Regional Council smashed their way 
into an unemployed workers' centre which was being used as a 
soup kitchen and shelter for the homeless.

The dawn action involved the ejection of four of the 
activists, who have been occupying the former school building 
in Broughton Street, Edinburgh, since last June when the 
council terminated their lease.

They have used the building 24 hours a day since then, as a 
cheap, vegetarian cafe during the day, a meeting place for 
community and political groups, and by night many of those who 
kept the occupation going were homeless people who would 
otherwise have been on the streets.

One of those present when sheriff officers and police arrived 
yesterday was a homeless man, who gave his name as Graham.  
"They came in about 7.30," he said.  "They couldn't get in 
through the front door but at the same time they were breaking 
in at the back.  They caught us on the hop.

"There were only four of us here.  One guy spoke and there 
were two others in plain clothes plus several police."

Campaigns against the poll tax, Criminal Justice Bill, and VAT 
on fuel were operated from the building, causing resentment 
among regional councillors....

Ironically, one of the users of the building was the Beltane 
Fire Society, which will be involved in the council-sponsored 
Hogmanay celebrations.  Other users included a women's 
drumming workshop, members of which gathered around the 
building yesterday to beat out their protest.

"The Centre has so much support that the only way they could 
evict us was to bring in the police," said one of the 
organising committee, Mr Michael Stevenson....

A police spokesman said they always back sheriff officers if 
they were advised that a disturbance is likely.

Councillor Keith Geddes, the leader of the ruling Labour group 
on Lothian Regional Council, dismissed criticism that a Labour 
authority should not be acting in this way.

He said: "We took a decision some time ago to terminate the 
lease.  Since then, they have continued to occupy the premises 
and we felt it was time to restore the premises to council 
use."

He rebuffed the suggestion that it was wrong for a Labour 
authority to shut down a building which provided cheap food 
for the poor and shelter for the homeless.

Calling the occupiers "unrepresentative", he said: 
"Superficially, it might well appear ironic but, in the long 
term, we believe we will use the building far more 
effectively.""

23 protesters were arrested and charged for taking part in the 
6-hour struggle against 70 police officers, and hauled off to St. 
Leonard's police cells.  The Labour Council had hoped for a swift 
and easy dawn eviction.  They must have been disappointed.

NOR IRON BARS A CAGE

In the stuffy soundproofed single cells of St. Leonard's the 
struggle continued.  The stainless-steel cludgies proved to be 
excellent drums and the rhythm of resistance rang around the 
copshop, made more effective by a 'scream-in' in the women's 
wing, while the big-gutted turnkeys fretted and yelled threats of 
dire retribution.

By 1am all the arrested demonstrators had been released.  
Coincidentally, the blacksmith's van which had turned up to lock 
the Centre Collective out was discovered near the police station 
with its windows done in.

The Crown Office dropped the charges against all but three of 
those arrested.  Ten days after the eviction hundreds rallied 
outside the locked-up Centre to protest its closure while the 
drums rapped out their tattoo.  And on February 1st they were 
back outside the Council chambers, deafening the toadying 
wretches within.

As the demo broke up and drifted away some folk were heard to ask 
"Who was the wee guy with the old-fashioned drum?"  Others 
said that they'd seen no such person, that it must've been a 
ghost.

Indeed it was.  Your reporter, who knows something of such arcane 
matters, can now inform that it was no less than the rebellious 
spirit of Bowed Joseph Smith, back from the grave with his drum, 
to haunt the Council.

BOWED JOSEPH'S DRUM

Around the year 1760 the Edinburgh Town Council and its 
well-heeled allies found themselves faced with a formidable 
opponent in the shape of Joseph Smith who was a frequent, if 
unwelcome, visitor to the Council Chamber.  This was described by 
a contemporary as 'a low-roofed room, very dark and very dirty, 
with some small dens off it for clerks.  Within this Pandemonium 
sat the Council, omnipotent, corrupt, impenetrable.  Nothing was 
beyond its grasp, no variety of opinion disturbed its unanimity.'  
Some things never change.

Joseph Smith was a cobbler who lived in the Cowgate, an area of 
squalid tenemented poverty in the shadow of the Castle Rock.  
Deformed from birth - hence the 'bowed' - Joseph was possessed of 
'great muscular strength in the arms' and an equal strength of 
character in the face of oppression which led to his becoming 
Auld Reekie's foremost and best-respected grassroots organiser.  
Chambers, in his Traditions of Edinburgh, says that after Joseph 
'had figured for a few years as an active partisan of the people, 
his name waxed of such account with them that it is said that he 
could, in the course of an hour, collect a crowd of not fewer 
than 10,000 persons.....'  To rally a spontaneous demo Joseph 
Smith 'employed a drum...and, never, surely, had the fiery cross 
of the Highland chief such an effect upon the warlike devotion of 
his clan as Bowed Joseph's drum had upon the spirit of the 
Edinburgh rabble.'

Rabble?  At the time the city's entire population was less than 
80,000 and considering that the beat of Bowed Joseph's drum could 
muster 10,000 in an hour, that's quite a rabble.  Robert Chambers 
was a respectable businessman whose brother later became Lord 
Provost so his bias is understandable.  But even he admits that 
Joseph Smith 'was never known to act in a bad cause, or in any 
way to go against the principles of natural justice... it was 
apparent that almost everything he did was for the sake of what 
he designated fair-play.  Fair play indeed was his constant 
object, whether in insulting the constituted authorities, sacking 
the granary of a monopolist, or besieging the Town Council in 
their Chamber.'

OMNIPOTENT, CORRUPT, IMPENETRABLE....

When word of council corruption or decisions adversely affecting 
the poor folk of Edinburgh leaked out it wasn't long before Bowed 
Joseph's drum could be heard beating out its tattoo of resistance 
beneath the town's towering 'lands' and up and down its fetid 
closes, while the townsfolk rallied to its call and besieged the 
Council chamber.

Bowed Joseph and a delegation would be invited in to the chamber 
for consultations.  'With one hand stuck carelessly into his 
side, and another slapped resolutely down upon the table - with a 
majestic toss of the head... he would stand before the anxious 
and feeble council pleading the just cause of his compeers, and 
suggesting the best means of assuaging their just fury.  He was 
generally dispatched with a promise of amendment and a hogshead 
of good ale...'  The ale was shared around.  Direct action gets 
the goods.

But Joseph was no ego-tripping, careerist politician riding on 
the backs of the people.  When the demo was over, and the cause 
won, Joseph would return to his Cowgate cobbling.  He never 
sought any office or financial gain.  He was a focus, a 
rallying-point of popular protest, nothing more.  Nor did he need 
a crowd with him to make a point.  When the High Court made a 
notoriously unjust decision, Bowed Joseph stopped the Lord Chief 
Justice's sedan-chair in the street and demanded of him, 
Scotland's highest judge, that he explain the justice of his 
decision.  Later, when the House of Lords reversed the court's 
decision, Joseph dressed 15 scarecrows in rags and wigs, 
'representing the judicial attire', one dummy for each of the 
Scottish Law Lords, and paraded them around the High Street on 
the backs of asses.  There's an idea!

Nor was it only Establishment figures who earned Bowed Joseph's 
scorn.  When the Guild of Shoemakers (which Joseph, as a 
shoe-repairer wasn't able to join) held their annual parade, 
Joseph met them at the city gates.  Wearing a tin crown and 
carrying a wooden ruler like a mace, he stooped before the 
elitist guildsmen and apologised profusely for being only a mere 
cobbler.  The onlookers loved it.  The proto-trades unionists 
were deflated.

But there were more serious issues to contend with.

CLASS WAR IN THE CLOSES

The news filtered down to Joseph's dank den in the Cowgate.  'A 
poor man in the Pleasance, having been a little deficient in his 
rent, and in the country on business,' writes Chambers, returned 
to find that 'his landlord had seized and rouped (poinded) his 
household furniture, turning out the family to the street.  On 
the poor man's return, finding the house desolate, and his family 
in misery, he went to a neighbouring stable and hanged himself.  
Bowed Joseph did not long remain ignorant of the case; and as 
soon as it was generally known in the city, he shouldered on his 
drum, and after beating it through the streets for half an hour, 
found himself followed by several thousand persons, inflamed with 
resentment at the landlord's cruelty.'  The city guard, popularly 
known as the Town Rats, never interfered.  They 'peeped forth 
like cautious snails on hearing his drum' then 'drew in their 
horns... and shut their door as he approached.'

The irate crowd rallied in a local park and decided on revenge.  
They marched to the landlord's house.  He had already fled so 
they removed every article from the premises, heaped it up in a 
pile, and set fire to it 'while the crowd rent the air with their 
acclamations.  Some money and banknotes perished in the blaze - 
besides an eight-day clock which, sensible to the last, calmly 
struck ten as it was consigned to the flames.'  It is noteworthy 
that none of these poverty-stricken townsfolk thought of keeping 
the money, the clock or anything else for themselves. 

On another occasion, during a food-scarcity, the Edinburgh slum 
dwellers, with Joseph and his drum to the fore, had forced all 
the meal-dealers to sell their stocks at a low price, or have 
their shops closed down.  'One of them, whose place of business 
was in the Grassmarket, agreed to sell his meal at the fixed 
price, for the good of the poor, as he said, and he did so under 
the superintendence of Joseph, who stationed a party at the 
shop-door to preserve the peace and good order, till the whole 
stock was disposed of...'  The crowd gave three cheers then 
dispersed with their much-needed foodstuffs.

Next day the merchant boasted to his friends that he had used 
dodgy weights and short-measured the folk of a quarter of what 
they had paid for.  His boastful words leaked back to the hungry 
townsfolk.  Bowed Joseph set about 'collecting a party of his 
troops, beset the meal dealer before he was awake and compelled 
him to pay back a fourth of the price of every peck of meal sold; 
then giving their victim a hearty drubbing, they sacked his shop, 
and quietly dispersed as before.'  Justice was done.

THE END OF BOWED JOSEPH

For twenty years the poor of Edinburgh used Joseph's drum as a 
rallying call to fight back against oppression and corruption in 
the Council Chambers.  Landlords, monopolists and councillors 
shuddered at his name.  The police could do nothing in the face 
of such massive popular resistance.  Neither could the 
magistrates who 'patronised him rather from fear than respect.'  
It is a shining example of people power.

In 1780, while returning from the Leith Races, an annual gala 
beside the sea and a holiday for the Edinburgh folk, Bowed 
Joseph, drunk as a Lord, fell from the top of a coach and died.  
The powers-that-be exacted a subtle revenge.  Joseph's twisted 
skeleton was displayed in the city's medical museum.

Bowed Joseph never exploited his popularity, never ran for office 
or took money.  He never sold out.  If the Auld Reekie 
establishment thought that Joseph's death would mean an end to 
popular resistance, then they were in for a shock.  Four years 
after his death there were massive food riots in the city.  
Joseph had been only a rallier, but an exceptionally good one.  
There have been many like him, men and women, who have 
disappeared into the mists of time, as Joseph would have had not 
Robert Chambers written of him.  'History' is the lie of rulers, 
kings and emperors and their lackeys. The full chronicle of 
popular resistance in Edinburgh remains to be told, from the tale 
of the Blue Blanket right up to modern-day accounts of the 70's 
council-rent strikes, the 80's occupations of council chambers 
during the DHSS strike which successfully forced the Council to 
issue food vouchers, to the demos and occupations against the 
Labour Council's passive acceptance of the Poll Tax - right up to 
the 6 month occupation of the Unemployed Workers Centre and its 
smashing by Labour-run Lothian Regional Council.

That fight isn't over yet.

THE BEGGAR'S BIBLE

As February's drumbeats boomed around that den of thieves called 
the Council Chamber, councillor Brian 'Killer' Cavanagh announced 
that the council had donated z2,000 towards the cost of a booklet 
called A Guide to Surviving on the Streets of Edinburgh. 
Cavanagh, the Labour chair of the social work committee and one 
of those most responsible for the smashing of the Centre, had 
reached the pinnacle of cynical hypocrisy.  z2,000 towards 
telling people how to live on the streets?  Bastard.  The police 
recently admitted that the eviction of the Centre, which was 
unfunded and self-supporting, cost Lothian taxpayers z5,300.  A 
recent request to the Region from the New Town, Broughton and 
Pilrig Community Council, who had supported the Centre, asking 
how much it had cost to guard the evicted centre day and night 
with a private security firm, was answered with 'this will be the 
subject of a future report'.  Bastards.  These politicians are 
the real beggars, morally, ethically and socially.

Four months after the violent eviction, the once-thriving Centre 
building remains locked and bolted, degenerating into graffittied 
dilapidation, a symbol of politicians' determination to deny 
ordinary people a space to autonomously organise outside Party 
and Trade Union control.

The Council may have taken back the building - for now - but they 
have been forced to spend a small fortune to stop it being 
re-occupied, and have been unable to make good their promises 
that it will be used for council-approved community uses.  The 
Centre collective's appeals for solidarity from other voluntary 
organisations have been widely reported in the press.  The Herald 
and Post wrote: 

'The Centre spokesman said....
"Basically the Regional council is either going to have to 
keep the Broughton Street building locked and guarded...or 
rent it back to the community."...
"We are appealing to all charities and voluntary organisations 
that might be approached to use the building to refuse.  If 
they accepted they would be co-operating with the Region in 
closing down the centre."  
And he warned that if any group did try and use the building, 
campaigners would take "peaceful direct action" to stop them.'

The eviction hasn't stopped the everyday resistance practised by 
the Centre activists.  Subversion continues from an unlikely 
temporary home in the basement of a church hall.  Advice and 
solidarity on benefits hassles and poll/council tax arrears, 
leafleting dole offices, benefit gigs including an extravaganza 
for International Women's Day, regular minibus excursions to the 
direct action against the M77 in Glasgow, alternative literature 
distribution - all are contributing to a continuing culture of 
resistance.  So enraged are the authorities that the iron fist 
hasn't crushed the Centre that the police have waged a campaign 
of intimidation against the church where the Centre is based, 
threatening dire consequences if the Centre is not removed from 
the church premises.

Now the Centre collective plans a new initiative.  The hunt is on 
for a cheap shopfront which can be rented and provide space for 
an info-shop, small cafe, meetings, and a general gathering point 
for the dispossessed.

THE BEAT OF THE DRUM

We look forward to the coming day when the beat of the drum will 
summon in half an hour 10,000 of those who are currently 
telly-hypnotised and mortgage-ridden onto the streets to fight 
for a better life, free from politicians and all of capitalism's 
stagemanagers.  Better, of course, if it were 100,000.  Better 
still, a million, or more.  Bowed Joseph lives.

***********************

The Centre hopes to move to new premises this May or June.  In 
the meantime make contact through the permanent postal address : 
The Centre, c/o Peace and Justice Centre, St. Johns, Princes St., 
Edinburgh (mail only), or ring 0131 557 0427.
 

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