Derbyshire Coal Mine Occupation — Eviction Ended

The police have launched a full evic­tion attempt at the Bodge House squat in Ship­ley, Der­byshire. The house is locat­ed on the site of a pro­posed open cast coal mine.

Update Thurs­day 14th August: The last 2 pro­tes­tors were evict­ed from the tun­nel at about 2:30am, and have been hand­ed over to the cops. UK Coal has already pulled Prospect Farm down, leav­ing us with no option but protest day trips to the site!

Update Sun­day 10th August: Evic­tion is still ongo­ing at Bodge House, in Der­byshire. This is the 4th day of the oper­a­tion and 4 peo­ple were arrest­ed ear­li­er today. The house is very heav­i­ly bar­ri­cad­ed and 2–3 peo­ple are still report­ed to be inside. 4 vans of police and bailiffs still in atten­dence.

Update Fri­day 8th August: — We were there today to give sup­port to those still in the house. We arrived about 11.00am. There were loads of police as would be expect­ed and 3 peo­ple were tak­en out of the house while we were there and tak­en to Rip­ley police sta­tion. We were not allowed near so could not see who it was. Around 3.00 in the after­noon a chap in a suit and 2 women in inap­pro­pri­ate shoes turned up. We think they were from the bailiff teams. They spoke to the chief inspec­tor in charge and went to the house. All the time the bailiffs on site had been cut­ting down the trees sur­round­ing the house and try­ing to get in the front door of the house. They suc­ceed­ed just before the ‘suits’ arrived. We left around 4pm to run some film to ITN but I heard lat­er that the bailiffs had start­ed up a gen­er­a­tor to get air to the peo­ple in the tun­nel under the house but left the site around 5.30. they are due back tomor­row (Sat­ur­day) to get the 2 peo­ple in the tun­nel out. Any­one who can get there, please get there to give sup­port.

Update Thurs­day 7th August: Around 7.45am about 60 police and 50 bail­liffs arrived at the house. Through­out the day the police have been try­ing to get through the bar­ri­cades and defences. Local peo­ple and media have been at the scene. So far 3 peo­ple have been removed from lock­ons and a car­go net out­side the house and have been arrest­ed. 7 peo­ple are still inside and are heav­i­ly bar­ri­cad­ed in, includ­ed being hid­den in tun­nels under the house. The bailiffs have put up secu­ri­ty fences and although they have man­aged to enter part of the build­ing, the evic­tion attempt has been stopped for today. It is esti­mat­ed the evic­tion will take at least anoth­er cou­ple of days.

Back­ground -
On Fri­day July 18, UK Coal, who own the site, were grant­ed a pos­ses­sion order for the Squat­ted farm­house on the planned Lodge House open cast coal mine site. For some time it has been antic­i­pat­ed that an evic­tion is immi­nent, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the climb­ing team used against road pro­test­ers has been seen around the site. It is evi­dent that with the Cli­mate Camp hap­pen­ing at Kingsnorth Pow­er Sta­tion, the police saw their opper­tu­ni­ty to move in.

Bits from main­stream sources (above from IMC) —

The pro­test­ers have been occu­py­ing the build­ing at Prospect Farm, in Bell Lane, Smal­l­ey, for almost two months in the hope of mak­ing it impos­si­ble for UK Coal to begin open­cast min­ing at the 334-acre site this autumn.

Bailiffs from the Nation­al Evic­tion Team arrived yes­ter­day, lead­ing to the arrest of three pro­test­ers. Three more left vol­un­tar­i­ly.

A spokesman for UK Coal said: “We believe up to eight peo­ple remain in the house, four of whom could be in a labyrinth of tun­nels under­neath the house, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion we have.

We’ve got just over 20 experts from the Nation­al Evic­tion Team, who worked on the site until 6pm last night.

Andy Green, a spokesman for Leave It In The Ground, said: “We’ve built an exten­sive tun­nel net­work and have tree-struc­tures and sus­pend­ed car­go nets.

“As bailiffs and police arrived on site, peo­ple were chained to bar­ri­cades defend­ing strate­gic parts of the prop­er­ty.”

UK Coal has Gov­ern­ment clear­ance to mine for four-and-a-half years from this autumn, despite Der­byshire Coun­ty Coun­cil hav­ing refused to grant plan­ning per­mis­sion.

One of the pro­test­ers, who left vol­un­tar­i­ly and iden­ti­fied him­self only as Ben, said: “We need to find an alter­na­tive to coal and time for action is long over­due because cli­mate change has already start­ed hap­pen­ing.”

Evic­tion starts sto­ry and direc­tions

Short audio report from first day — audio/x‑wav 716K

A lit­tle back­ground: The site was occu­pied on Tues­day June 18 by cli­mate cam­paign­ers from ‘Leave it in the Ground’. They bar­ri­cad­ed them­selves in a dis­used farm build­ing and took to the trees on the site of the open cast mine. Under the cov­er of dark­ness activists secured them­selves in the Prospect Farm build­ing, on the site which is about to be dev­as­tat­ed by huge machines. and claimed squatter’s rights.