Day of action at Kingsnorth Camp for Climate Action

The day of action against Kingsnorth took dif­fer­ent forms: the Orange group nego­ti­at­ed with the police to take a route to the pow­er sta­tion, suit­able for kids and par­ents amongst oth­ers; the Green group went direct for the fences; the Blue group took to the water and the Sil­ver group was airborne(ish).

»>E.ON’s Defences Breached Fol­low­ing Olympic Efforts by Pro­test­ers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Sat­ur­day 09/08/08

Pro­test­ers Evade 26 Police Forces To Enter Pow­er Sta­tion Site

The Cli­mate Camp at Kingsnorth was cel­e­brat­ing today as pro­test­ers suc­ceed­ed in breach­ing the perime­ter fence and inner 10,000 volt elec­tric fence to enter the pow­er sta­tion site despite the best efforts of 26 police forces with over 1,500 police.

The day start­ed ear­ly with a flotil­la of boats – the Blue group — sail­ing towards Kingsnorth in the sun. Over twen­ty crafts made their way up the Med­way to con­verge on the coal load­ing jet­ty. Three peo­ple occu­pied the ledge above the pow­er sta­tion’s water inlet tun­nel while a ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘CO2AL: Starter Gun for Cli­mate Chaos’ was hung from Dar­net Fort on an island in the Med­way direct­ly oppo­site the pow­er sta­tion.

Kent Police have been claim­ing that they had to res­cue rafters from the Med­way, but the par­tic­i­pants have stat­ed that the safe­ty pre­cau­tions they had tak­en were entire­ly suf­fi­cient and at no point were they in any dan­ger. “Its a bit cheeky for the police to say that we had to be res­cued when for starters we weren’t in any dan­ger, and sec­ond­ly, they were the ones who had con­fis­cat­ed our safe­ty boat this morn­ing,” said Rebel Rafter Harold Cry­er. “The Riv­er Police were very pro­fes­sion­al and cour­te­ous, unlike their land­lub­bing equiv­a­lents.”

Mean­while, around 1,000 peo­ple from the Orange group head­ed from the Camp direct­ly to the main gates at Kingsnorth, led by a colour­ful car­ni­val drag­on made by chil­dren dur­ing the camp. At the gates the Cam­p’s Chris­t­ian Cafe crew held a ser­vice giv­ing the pow­er sta­tion its last rites. The group blocked the main entrance even after a police heli­copter cir­cling above had demand­ed the marchers dis­perse.

The few hun­dred strong Green group made it to the perime­ter fence of the pow­er sta­tion. Some used a sec­tion of fenc­ing to make a lad­der to breach both the out­er and the inner elec­tric fence. Oth­ers climbed a near­by pylon to hang a ban­ner read­ing ‘Shut Down Kingsnorth’(2).

Spokes­woman Emi­ly Davies said, “It shows how seri­ous we are about stop­ping cli­mate change that peo­ple from all walks of life were pre­pared, despite bla­tant­ly intim­ida­to­ry polic­ing, to take direct action to dis­rupt E.ON. This Olympic effort cer­tain­ly deserves a gold medal.”

Campers have been sign­ing pledges to return to Kingsnorth if Min­is­ter for Busi­ness John Hut­ton gives E.ON the go-ahead to build the first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in the UK for 30 years. They promise to take action against E.ON and oth­er com­pa­nies until they aban­don all such plans. Else­where in the coun­try peo­ple are cur­rent­ly down in tun­nels resist­ing evic­tion of a protest camp on the site of a pro­posed open-cast coal mine in Der­byshire.

“It’s been a great today, but a real vic­to­ry for us will be when we have con­clu­sive­ly scup­pered E.ON’s coal-fuelled mania. If Hut­ton gives the green light to this pow­er plant, E.ON can expect to be see­ing a lot more of us in the future,” said Ewa Steck­el, who has signed one of the pledges to stop the plant.

Bizarrely, Mal­colm Wicks, Ener­gy Min­is­ter stat­ed yes­ter­day that we need Kingsnorth to counter cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. (1). Campers react­ed furi­ous­ly, “Mal­colm Wicks’ claim that build­ing an unabat­ed coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth is nec­es­sary to save us from cli­mate change shows him to be delu­sion­al and dan­ger­ous­ly sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly illit­er­ate.” said camper Ania Kemp.

ENDS

Con­tacts:
07772 861 099 and 07932 096 677

(1) See inter­view in today’s Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/08/carboncapturestorage.fossilfuels
Q Patrick Win­tour, Guardian: But why does the gov­ern­ment not set a cut off point, such as 2020, by which time coal sta­tions such as Kingsnorth would be shut if the clean coal tech­nol­o­gy was not in use?
A: Mal­colm Wicks: “I think if we did that at the moment, when we do not know 100% that CCS is going to work, the engi­neer­ing has not yet been test­ed and no one is ful­ly aware of what the costs might be, then that would put an end to coal-fired pow­er sta­tions and demon­stra­tion plant and peo­ple would build gas again.”

(2) pho­tos are avail­able from www.indymedia.org.uk

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Orange:

Lit­tle video clip of orange march — video/avi 1.4M

Orange Block march­es to Pow­er Sta­tion. Arrives. Speech­es. Police say go back. They march back to camp. Some peo­ple stay. They are all arrest­ed.

–

The Chil­dren’s Rev­o­lu­tion joined togeth­er with the Orange march to Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion on the day of mass action and com­bined with the chil­dren of local res­i­dents to help form a huge block­ade which attract­ed the atten­tion of all the inter­na­tion­al news media.

The Chil­dren of the Eco War­riors marched along­side the Kingsnorth drag­on cre­at­ed by Raga the well known Quak­er peace activist, and they were led by Kristoff the clown and the Car­bon Town Cry­er band.

The march itself was fair­ly unevent­ful with a num­ber of arrests — there were mount­ed police at the front of the march and a snatch squad grabbed (only just, he near­ly got back into crowd) some­one for rolling up the ‘POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS’ tape that was doing no good as we were in both lanes of the dual car­riagewy, as the Orange group meet­ing agreed to do despite the Police insis­tence that the march, con­tain­ing fam­i­lies and chil­dren, use one lane while lor­ries could zoom past in the fast lane. No way Jose!

At the pow­er sta­tion ban­ners were erect­ed on the gates, and the police kept a watch­ful eye on the speak­ers using the Bicy­col­o­gy sound sys­tem micro­phone.

At one pm a police heli­copter announced that the protest was over and that any­one who stayed in the vicin­i­ty would be arrest­ed under sec­tion 14 of the Pub­lic Order Act.

Most of the cli­mate campers drift­ed off back to the Camp for Cli­mate Action but many stayed out­side the pow­er sta­tion gates and the Rhythms of Resis­tance sam­ba band con­tin­ued their drum­ming at the near­by round­about.

Even­tu­al­ly the police start­ed to push and shove a group of teenagers who had been part of the flotil­la of lit­tle boats, and sev­er­al police hors­es were also used to try to force them to move back to the camp site.

One young girl appeared to be snatched from behind by the police and the rest of the group were shout­ed at and bul­lied for about twen­ty min­utes before the police final­ly gave up and left them alone.

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Green group:

There were sev­er­al breach­es of the perime­ter fence. Activists used extra fenc­ing that had been errect­ed in advance of the protests as make shift lad­ders to scale the inte­ri­or fence. Some also used them on the inner elec­tric fence (the fence being turned off), with a small num­ber of activists enter­ing Kingsnorth itself.

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Sil­ver group:
As part of the Sil­ver Group actions, Pasty the CCS pig became air­borne at around 11.03 for a short flight, but due to adverse weath­er con­di­tions the CCS pig nev­er flew far — boooooo!
Keep an eye out for future appear­ances 🙂
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Blue group:

Eco Hero Kayak Crew splash out on the Med­way

A dar­ing crew of 8 cli­mate campers in inflat­able kayaks kept police boats busy for 3 hours this morn­ing head­ing towards Kingsnorth Pow­er sta­tion on the Med­way.

The fleet of 8 craft and 1 safe­ty boat dropped into the water at around 9am this morn­ing at a secret launch point near Rochester. They pad­dled towards Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion to join the protest against E‑on and the build­ing of the first new coal fired pow­er sta­tion in 34 years. Their mobile craft allowed them to evade police cap­ture for some time. The crew were picked up one by one by marine divi­sion offi­cers final­ly end­ing up in a stand off on the Hoo mud­flats close to the pow­er sta­tion. All 8 kayak­ers were final­ly picked up at around 12.30pm, turned over to the Har­bour Mas­ter and released with­out charge.
“The local papers say we’re crazy,” said one of the crew ” but what’s real­ly crazy is that gov­ern­ment and busi­ness are not seri­ous­ly com­mit­ted to com­bat­ing cli­mate change.”
All activist involved have signed a camp wide pledge to cam­paign to stop the build­ing of the new pow­er sta­tion.

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8.30am and RAF Search and Res­cue is hov­er­ing over­head. Pirates are hid­ing in the bush­es at Upnor beach, tim­bers a’shiv­er­ing. Police believed they’d be con­struct­ing rafts at the camp, but the real­i­ty is they’d been built and buried in the woods two weeks before.

The heli­copter flies off upstream, and crews pour out of the woods. The inflat­a­bles got off eas­i­ly, the IKEAs (build it your­self rafts) had a lit­tle bit more trou­ble and two, sad­ly, were inter­cept­ed by police launch­es almost imme­di­ate­ly.

Oth­ers got away fine though, and sailed hap­pi­ly down the Med­way towards Kingsnorth.

One crew stopped off on the way at an old fort to make a ban­ner drop “Coal — Start­ing Gun for Cli­mate Chaos” before plough­ing on against a falling tide and get­ting stuck in the mud.

After­wards we met up with the Coast­guard. They were very friend­ly and com­pli­ment­ed the crews on their atten­tion to safe­ty. But they were scathing about police activ­i­ty ear­li­er in the week. “When we heard they’d raid­ed the camp and seized life jack­ets our hearts dropped” they said. “It was irre­spon­si­ble and could have put lives at risk”.

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On Sat­ur­day the 9th of august four activists using great skill and dex­ter­i­ty man­aged to gain access to the water inlet area of Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion and sat on a ledge above the water.

While the pro­test­ers sat calm­ly get­ting to know one anoth­er and mak­ing phone calls to the local press the riot police behind the razor wired fence began to cut holes using bolt crop­pers to allow climb­ing spe­cial­ists rigged with all their equip­ment to come from either side sur­round­ing the pro­test­ers. The police removed a large sign from behind and anoth­er hole was cut in order to allow the police to pull the peace­ful pro­test­ers through to the oth­er side of the fence where bark­ing dogs and riot police await­ed. All four pro­test­ers remained calm and decid­ed to link arms with one anoth­er. As the police strug­gled to pull them free they held on tight­ly and man­aged to remain there whilst more police joined in the task of remov­ing the peace­ful sta­t­ic pro­test­ers using all the force and tac­tics they could. Even­tu­al­ly after much effort from the police one by one the pro­test­ers were removed, after being hand­cuffed and searched (again) they were put in to the back of a police van this was the first of many as they went through at least three dif­fer­ent vehi­cle on the way to the sta­tion. Three of the pro­test­ers were released lat­er on that night and the fourth was charged in the ear­ly hours of Sun­day morn­ing where she then found out that unbe­known to her e’on had instruct­ed “the water inlet cool­ing sys­tem to be shut down” thus caus­ing major dis­rup­tion to the entire run­ning of the plant. The fourth activist was remand­ed and after attend­ing court on the mon­day morn­ing she was grant­ed bail.

Well done to every­one that took part weath­er in the action itself (green, blue, sil­ver and orange groups) or in cli­mate camp in gen­er­al (food, work­shops, set­ting up and secur­ing the camp) your input has been great­ly appre­ci­at­ed and this suc­cess would have not been pos­si­ble with­out you, thank you.

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Pylon-action:

This morn­ing, cli­mate camp activists scaled high volt­age trans­mis­sion pylons car­ry­ing elec­tric­i­ty from the pow­er sta­tion. As some activists began to scale the pylons, oth­ers made phone calls to the rel­e­vant bod­ies. They have now ascend­ed past barbed-wire anti-climb devices and have hung a ban­ner read­ing ‘Shut down Kingsnorth’.

Jo, one of the climbers, said: “We weighed up the risks and researched this care­ful­ly before decid­ing on this peace­ful action to shut down Kingsnorth today. The threat posed to our cli­mate change tar­gets by the Government’s pro­posed new gen­er­a­tion of coal-fired pow­er sta­tions is so great that we are pre­pared to do this occu­pa­tion to ensure Kingsnorth is shut for the day. Cli­mate change, dri­ven by car­bon dinosaurs such as Kingsnorth, already kills 160,000 peo­ple a year, accord­ing to the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion. It is utter mad­ness to build new coal-burn­ing plants when we need urgent and deep cuts in our car­bon emis­sions”.

The pro­tes­tors are set to remain for the rest of the day as oth­er protests against Kingsnorth and E.ON coal expan­sion plans gath­er pace.

The pro­tes­tors are from this year’s ‘Camp for cli­mate action’ at Kingsnorth in Kent. The week-long camp has been hold­ing work­shops on cli­mate change and show-cas­ing prac­ti­cal low – or zero – car­bon alter­na­tives. At the same time, it has been build­ing up to today: a day of action to shut down Kingsnorth.

E.ON, the Ger­man-owned ener­gy com­pa­ny, plans to build the first of a new series of coal-burn­ing plants in the UK. The com­pa­ny argues the plant will be ‘car­bon cap­ture ready’, But the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of experts agree the tech­nol­o­gy won’t be tech­ni­cal­ly or eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable for at least a decade, if ever. Should the tech­nol­o­gy not be proven as a viable option, there is cur­rent­ly no oblig­a­tion on the util­i­ty to fit car­bon cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy at all. In oth­er words, there’s a very strong chance we could end up with a stan­dard coal plant belch­ing out mil­lions of tonnes of car­bon diox­ide for half a cen­tu­ry to come.

The pylons are sit­ed on the Hoo penin­su­lar at post code DA12 3HU which can be reached by road and which has park­ing. OS grid ref­er­ence is TQ 694 737

Jo, one of those occu­py­ing the pylons, can be reached on 07879283517
Anoth­er cli­mate camp spokesper­son at the scene: Richard 07956163272
Avail­able for media inter­views: James 07964618657
Pho­tos avail­able at AP and oth­er out­lets

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Update:
3 peo­ple, includ­ing the two climbers, were arrest­ed around lunchtime under a sec­tion of PACE as the police were unable to ver­i­fy their address­es (yeh, right). 4 hours lat­er and the police have yet to con­firm which police sta­tion they have been tak­en to.

This was one of the actions that have led to 1261 news arti­cles gen­er­at­ed by today’s actions, so far. Amaz­ing, huge respect.