‘A special day’: how a Glasgow community halted immigration raid

Activists and local people tell how they forced the release of two men detained in an enforcement van

It was just after 9am on Thursday and he was finishing breakfast when the callout came. Kenmure Street's Van Man" - the activist who spent nearly eight hours squeezed underneath an immigration enforcement van to prevent the detention of two men on Glasgow's southside - was on his bike in minutes.

It's not often you can catch raids in the act like this, but the southside has a lot of folks pulling together," he said. The only way that day could have ended was with our neighbours' release; there were simply too many local people standing in the street for the police to have taken the van away. The strategy does work - and we want the world to understand that it was the people on the streets who won that victory, not the politicians."