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At last nights food serving (between 6.30 & 8pm on outside Botanic Rail Station), all seemed quiet. There wasn’t a huge rush on our tasty spiced parsnip soup the summer evenings being generally quieter in south Belfast. Mostly we had curious passers by & a few people who were actually pretty hungry. There was a nice atmosphere & quite a few people stopped to chat for an hour or so.

We were just getting ready to pack up when two friendly bobbies approached & asked who was responsible for the stall. We stated that there was four of us present taking responsibility & he could speak with all of us. 

At this point I began to record the conversation on video. The police asked me to stop recording, & said they would seize the camera if I took any footage of them & pointed out that I could be a terrorist. I continued to film but assured the officer I’d not film him & opened the flip screen so his colleague could see I wasn’t recording any footage of them.

He stated that there was no record of a permit for serving hot food from this location & that he would have to caution someone for this activity. There was then a little confusion as the officer stated he could just remove our stall from the street as no one was claiming responsibility for it. We again pointed out that four of us were responsible, & he mentioned something about giving a caution to all four of us. 

In the end no there was no formal caution as we stated we’d look into a permit from City Council as we didn’t realise we needed one to hand out food for free. He said this was the fourth time he’d seen us at this location & he’d give us a week to look into getting a permit. We’ll keep you posted on further developments.

In cities throughout the world Food Not Bombs & other similar groups have been hassled & repressed by authorities for handing out free meals on the street & publicly critiquing how governments continually to priorities military expenditure to the detriment of people who are going hungry in every part of the world. 

Belfast FNB’s operates as a collective without leaders. We serve hot vegetarian meals every second Thursday; we collect food on the Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning before & cook on Wednesday evenings. If you’d like to get involved send us an e-mail, or just turn up at our next serving: 6.30pm 5^th August outside Botanic Rail Station.  

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