The following is a summary of a call to action from the London Gandalf Support Campaign.

On Thursday 13th November 1997 the UK 'Gandalf' trial resulted in 3 journalists each being sentenced to 3 years imprisonment. The State had brought charges against the editors of Green Anarchist (GA) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) Supporters Group Newsletter (hence 'GA aND ALF') for 'conspiracy to incite persons unknown to commit criminal damage' - one ALFSGN editor was found 'not guilty' and 2 other defendants are due to be tried at a later date. The 3 convicted defendants had merely been performing a public service in publishing news of some of the wide range of current direct actions (in the UK and in other countries) by environmentalists and animal rights activists. The court had found such reporting to be 'incitement'. An Appeal is being prepared.

"Public Interest Immunity" Certificates were used to suppress evidence of Secret Service actions in the gathering of evidence. The police have been the prime movers behind this case - "Operation Washington", as the lead-up was known, involved 55 police raids and, at its height, employed sixty officers. So far the State has spent four million pounds. Many publications include coverage of direct action protests. Catch-all incitement and conspiracy charges threaten not only radical publications, but also anyone making statements that could be interpreted as 'inflammatory'. This case opens the way for similar attacks on any publication deemed to support such actions. Yet the hypocrisy and bias of the law is obvious - the establishment's media daily support and call for various forms of institutionalised violence - wars, police controls, environmental damage, factory farming, vivisection etc - but none have been prosecuted for 'incitement'.

The McLibel case for example, and the ever growing distribution of hundreds of thousands of anti-McDonald's leaflets in response, has demonstrated that repressive laws can be exposed and made unworkable by organised, mass defiance backed by public awareness and support. State attacks on independent publications can also be successfully resisted and defeated.

This crude and futile attempt at intimidation will cause outrage and widespread defiance, including ever greater circulation of the kind of information that the State is trying to suppress. It is important that all progressive organisations and journals report examples of direct actions and protests by the public against companies and governmental bodies. Environmental degradation, animal cruelty, economic injustice and poverty, attacks on personal freedoms, wars, the arms trade, nuclear weapons - these, among many others, are the real inciting factors, not the reporting of direct action protests. The best way to fight for our freedoms is to exercise them.