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The Independent
10 minutes ago
- The Independent
‘I'm an ex-army officer whose family fled the Nazis. This is why the Palestine Action ban should be overturned'
King Charles Street, in central London, is a road Colonel Chris Romberg knows well. It was his postal address during his final posting in the military, a link to home while he was overseas. Last week, the address became significant in Col Romberg's life once again after he was arrested for the first time in his life and taken to a processing station – set up by the Metropolitan Police – on that same street. Hundreds of protesters, many of whom – like 75-year-old Col Romberg – were retired, had silently held up placards in Parliament Square, Westminster to protest genocide and express support for the group Palestine Action. Due to the home secretary 's proscription of Palestine Action under terror laws, expressing support for them on a t-shirt or on a sign is now a criminal offence. As a result, 522 arrests were made by the Met Police – some 112 of them were over 70-year-olds. A former defence attache at the UK embassies in Jordan and Egypt, Col Romberg waited around five hours before he was arrested, and then a further three to be processed by officers and released on street bail. He had been involved in campaigning for the Palestinian cause for some years, feeling motivated by the oppression he saw during his time in the Middle East. His father, aunts and grandparents, who were Christians of Jewish descent, fled Nazi-controlled Austria in 1938, he explained. This history, he said, has also driven him to oppose what is happening in Gaza, and what he described as Western governments' complicity in the unfolding humanitarian crisis. Speaking about his decision to take part in last weekend's protest, he said: 'I did think about it and I did discuss it with family because it's not an easy decision to make. Although it wasn't certain we would be arrested, there was a high likelihood we would be. 'It was my first time being arrested. But all our freedoms and all the best movements that there have been in democratic and non-democratic history have been achieved by people taking risks, and people taking action. My motivation is to defend of freedom of speech and expression, and also to prevent a genocide - which we have a moral and legal duty to do.' He added: 'For a lot of people there, I believe it was the first time they have been arrested, and the first time they have taken action in that form. The implications are serious because we are being arrested under a very serious piece of legislation - the terrorism act. For many people, especially younger people, that can have serious implications for their lives. For those that are older like me, then those long-term consequences may not be quite the same but nevertheless they are serious.' His family's history has connected him to descendants of Holocaust survivors who are part of the pro-Palestine protest movement. He explained: 'In my case, my father and his parents and sisters survived because they fled. They fled Austria in 1938 after the German takeover. 'Because of our family connections, we are horrified that a genocide should again be taking place. And for many this brings back horrible memories from what they heard from their own parents and grandparents, and therefore we are determined to oppose it'. Labour peer and former shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti has warned that the ban is at risk of becoming an 'I am Spartacus' moment, urging the government to 'think again'. Former Labour minister Peter Hain has described the mass arrests as 'madness', saying Palestine Action was not 'equivalent to real terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or Islamic State'. Co-founder of Palestine Action Huda Ammori has been granted permission by the High Court to challenge the group's ban in the courts – the first case where such a legal battle has been allowed to go ahead. Defend Our Juries, who co-ordinated last Saturday's protest, have pledged that they will demonstrate again in September if 1,000 people agree to take part. With the demonstrators taking to the streets in protest genocide and to stand up for civil liberties, home secretary Yvette Cooper has sought to emphasise the dangers of Palestine Action. In a statement released after the weekend's arrests, she said: 'Palestine Action was proscribed based on strong security advice following serious attacks the group has committed, involving violence, significant injuries and extensive criminal people may not yet know the reality of this organisation, but the assessments are very clear - this is not a non-violent organisation'. Ms Ammori said that the proscription of the group was 'solely based on property damage, and any insinuation that it is based on other things is categorically untrue or unavailable to the rest of us to be able to rebut'.
The Independent
10 minutes ago
- The Independent
Palestine Action ‘more than a regular protest group', says home secretary as 60 more face charges
Home secretary Yvette Cooper has labelled Palestine Action more than 'a regular protest group' as she defended the group's proscription as a terrorist organisation. She said protest and free speech remain 'an important part of our democracy' which will 'always be protected', but argued Palestine Action has carried out 'an escalating campaign'. Writing in The Observer, she said: 'Some may think it is a regular protest group known for occasional stunts. But that is not the extent of its past activities.' Ms Cooper said counterterrorism intelligence showed the organisation passed the tests to be proscribed under the 2000 Terrorism Act with 'disturbing information' about future attacks. 'Protecting public safety and national security are at the very heart of the job I do,' she said. 'Were there to be further serious attacks or injuries, the government would rightly be condemned for not acting sooner to keep people safe.' She said only a tiny minority of people who had protested in support of Palestinian people since the start of the war with Israel had been arrested. 'That is why the proscription of this group is not about protest or the Palestinian cause,' she said. 'In a democracy, lawful protest is a fundamental right but violent criminality is not. The Metropolitan Police said on Friday more than 700 people have been arrested since the group was banned on July 5. The force said a further 60 people will be prosecuted for support of Palestine Action, while Norfolk Police said on Saturday 13 people were arrested at a protest in Norwich. Last week, the Met confirmed the first three charges in England and Wales for offences under the Terrorism Act relating to Palestine Action. The three people charged were arrested at a protest in Parliament Square on July 5. More prosecutions are expected in the coming weeks, and arrangements have been put in place 'that will enable us to investigate and prosecute significant numbers each week if necessary', the Met said.
Auto Car
10 minutes ago
- Auto Car
A Corvette designed in England? Inside GM's new Leamington Spa base
GM's new European design base was set up by director Julian Thomson Close Ashbourne Drive sounds a bit more like a street full of retired bank managers than the location of an imposing, all-new General Motors advanced car design studio. But then Spa Park, through which Ashbourne Drive runs, isn't your usual British industrial estate either, missing out on shabby factories, Portakabins selling burgers and cars badly parked on every footpath. Instead, GM's new European design base, quietly set up around three years ago on the outskirts of busy Leamington Spa by its director, Englishman Julian Thomson, is a tribute to the designer's art in itself. It is one of those impressive industrial buildings of the modern era designed for maximum interior flexibility – in this case, spacious mezzanine floors front and rear for offices and meeting rooms, a covered working area on one side of the ground floor for around 30 people and huge windows on the other to flood the working area with light. The whole thing provides 25,000 square feet of space, dedicated to unbridled creativity, and outside is a high-walled yard for exterior viewings, complete with its own dark Tarmac, because cars look different on real roads. In the centre of the building – occupying the approximate space of two tennis courts – are spaces for half a dozen full-sized car models in development, overhung by automated milling machines that can shape designs, according to digital instructions, even when the human staff are asleep or away for the weekend. All rooms are sparsely but expensively furnished: this place may have started life as an industrial unit, but there's an aura of warmth and homeliness about it that encourages pride and feeds creativity. 'The amount of work we've done in the past couple of years is immense,' says Thomson. 'We've touched every brand, we've made lots of good friends and contacts in GM and we're already very much part of the process.' Still, the question hangs: why does GM need a design operation in Europe? After all, in the medium term, it will sell only electric Cadillacs, Corvette sports cars and some top-end commercial vehicles here, and these will very much be American cars. There used to be an impressive GM design studio at Luton, back in the heyday of Vauxhall, and an even bigger one at Rüsselsheim in Germany when Opel became the senior brand, but those were swept away when the PSA Group bought Opel-Vauxhall eight years ago. Thomson has no doubts about his usefulness. If you run a multi-branded car company such as GM, he contends, more than anything else you need good ideas. And plenty of them. 'It's no longer good enough to design cars for one territory or another,' he says. 'Your designs must be understood everywhere. You need diversity among designers too – different backgrounds and ages. If you had a studio in just one area, you would get a very strong viewpoint reflecting specific trends, aspirations, lifestyles. GM knows this, and it knows it needs to gather influences from Europe. That's why we're here.' Other foreign locations leave no doubt that GM's global intentions are as strong as ever: there are two studios in the US (Detroit and California), plus one in South Korea and another in China. The establishment in Ashbourne Drive seems to have been driven by when Thomson became available and the empathetic relationship he has developed with Michael Simcoe, GM's vice-president of design. Thomson is very experienced: he trained at the Royal College of Art in London, where he was sponsored by Ford, then joined Lotus, where he took the top job after Peter Stevens left, and famously designed the original Elise. After a couple of years at Volkswagen advanced design in Barcelona, he moved to Jaguar Land Rover, where he formed a happy partnership with Ian Callum, taking the top job when Callum departed. Then came GM. 'They said I could put this place anywhere in Europe,' says Thomson, leaning back contentedly in his Warwickshire office, 'so I suppose we could now be in Nice. But I like this area. It's a real hotbed of car design talent; there are half a dozen other big studios in the area. And I wanted to get things up and running quickly, to make a good impression. I had friends in design here who I absolutely knew were the best in the business so I was able to put a team together quickly. We've got 35 people – designers, engineers, digital designers and clay modellers – and we're a great team.' Thomson acknowledges that he's no architect, but he devised the studio layout himself, using prior experience of other studios, advice from experts and by talking to designer friends in the pub. He sent a detailed proposal off to GM and the bosses agreed to build something very much like it – a decent start. 'Of course there were some tough times,' says Thomson. 'I remember being in Thailand once, turning on a Teams [video conferencing] call late at night and being confronted by a grid of about 10 angry builders wanting to talk about drains and electrical supply. But we worked it out. That was just a low point. We're really happy with what we have now. It's working brilliantly.' Easily GM Design Europe's best-known piece of work so far is their concept for a Corvette C10 – one model beyond the C9 that is approaching production as a replacement for today's C8. It is one of three concepts commissioned by Simcoe as a way of influencing the C9. It's an unusual way of doing things, but the UK effort has evidently been well received across the pond. One of the challenges for Europe is dealing with the issue of Americanness, says Thomson: 'When we did the Corvette, some people thought we would just do a European car with a Corvette badge on it. "But that would have completely missed the point. Corvette has a tremendous history; it's the world's most successful sports car. We had to respect that – but hopefully give it some freshness and some features that would make people think.' The key to this new challenge of doing American cars in Europe, believes Thomson, is to recognise the things Europeans value in American design: 'Everyone watches American films and TV and buys American clothes. Ideas of optimism, of confidence, of entertainment are seen a lot of American design. "You see it in engineering projects like Nasa's Apollo programmes. Our job is to present this from a new viewpoint and not to be stuck in a groove.' The fact that Thomson has been involved in advanced design for much of his career – at VW, at Ford and now at GM – makes him more confident than most might be about the British studio's job of presenting designs that probably won't make production but will probably affect those that do 'We need a certain naivety to be valuable,' he explains. 'We don't know what a [Chevrolet] Silverado is like the Americans do. It wasn't bred into us. We have an impression, but that's a different thing. Our value, part of our brief, is to play the role of the customer and look at the product with fresh, questioning eyes.' I suggest that it's hard not to imagine American design teams, who might be working on their third generation of some well-known model, being irritated by a bunch of British upstarts. But Thomson bats the idea away: 'Our aim is to be surprising with no surprises. We don't want just to annoy people but to stretch their thinking a bit and to present new ways of reaching design goals. Sometimes we're there to shock people.'Thomson has in a long career seen unfortunate examples of an absence of this 'stretching'. He recalls an event at VW when no fewer than 18 full-sized concepts for the next Passat were presented, most of whose creators were intent on 'winning' by anticipating what other teams did rather than presenting their best work. At Jaguar, he recalls, a constant comment on advanced design proposals was: 'That's not a Jag.' This experience is the main reason why Thomson always involves his entire team in formative discussions about every new project. He has seen the value of diverse ideas and the dangers of not hearing them. 'A lot of our younger people are better than me,' he says cheerfully. 'I know how to design a car, but I'm not one of them. There are plenty of times when I don't represent the customer as well as they do. Why would I employ a designer who has just done five years' training just to scribble down what I think? Thomson can't say when – or even whether – a car designed at Ashbourne Drive will ever appear in showrooms, and in a way he doesn't care. But if he comes to recognise certain lines on the C10 Corvette (and on other models that can't be named), he will know that he has fulfilled the brief. Join our WhatsApp community and be the first to read about the latest news and reviews wowing the car world. Our community is the best, easiest and most direct place to tap into the minds of Autocar, and if you join you'll also be treated to unique WhatsApp content. You can leave at any time after joining - check our full privacy policy here. Next Prev In partnership with
