On Thursday last week Pollokshields, a residential area on Glasgow’s Southside, made headlines worldwide. On that morning a UK Border Agency van came down the narrow confines of Kenmure Street and officials swooped to detain and deport two young men, Lakhvir Singh and Sumit Sehdev, Sikhs originally from India.
Within minutes a young activist, known only as ‘Van Man’, from Glasgow’s No Evictions Network lay under the van. Another local resident, Declan Blench, who had been working from home, ran onto the street and behind the van, tweeting and alerting others to the incident.
Blench told The Guardian: “I just thought ‘You’re not going to do that in front of me.’ There is due process and this is not it. I’ve never done anything like that before, so I was quite nervous. But every time I turned around there were more and more people.”
