ACAB (Gary Lawson)
Pitsmoor as a place for community activism ACAB © Carl Rose ACAB has lived in Burngreave for over eight years, having come originally from Leeds. He was interviewed for the Burngreave Voices oral history archive on his involvement in community activism in the area. "There's quite a good political scene in Pitsmoor and Sheffield in general. I think most people in that sort of environment seem to all live in certain areas. It's like Pitsmoor seems to be where all the anarchists and politicos live - I've found in Pitsmoor you do get a lot of people that are normally into that kind of thing that all live in the same area. What have I been involved in here? Well, we did something about Naseh* when he went on hunger strike. That was a bit to do with asylum seekers. There's a lot of people now in Pitsmoor that were involved in campaigns when I moved in here and they're still doing it. But yes, it makes you feel like there's a community going on, it makes you feel that it's worthwhile what you're doing, and that you're doing a good thing when you turn up and there's loads of other people there as well." * 'Naseh' refers to Naseh Ghafour, an Iraqi Kurdish asylum seeker and Burngreave resident who began a five week hunger strike in July 2004 to protest at the UK government's intention to deport Iraqi Kurds to northern Iraq. Extract from an interview with ACAB (Gary Lawson) by Stuart Crosthwaite for the Burngreave Voices oral history archive, February 2006. |