reports of the Great Climate Swoop at Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station

Cli­mate change activists have hailed this weekend’s direct action as a “mas­sive suc­cess” after repeat­ed­ly breach­ing the fence and spend­ing 24 hours out­side Rat­cliffe coal-fired pow­er sta­tion.

Ratcliffe fence downCli­mate change activists have hailed this weekend’s direct action as a “mas­sive suc­cess” after repeat­ed­ly breach­ing the fence and spend­ing 24 hours out­side Rat­cliffe coal-fired pow­er sta­tion.

Three activists are said to have recov­ered from injuries suf­fered at the hands of the police, while one more activist is believed to still be in hos­pi­tal after col­laps­ing yes­ter­day after­noon. Footage was released last night of a pro­test­er-medic aid­ing a police­man tak­en ill at the protest (1).
Ratcliffe in the woods
Activists gath­ered in var­i­ous points on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, swoop­ing on the pow­er plant in sep­a­rate groups to arrive at 1pm. With­in five min­utes they had already bro­ken down one of the perime­ter fences and sev­er­al had entered the plant.

On Sat­ur­day night around 300 activists pitched tents in two camps out­side the gates, despite attempt by police to intim­i­date campers by stand­ing next to the camp­site in full riot gear. The police have con­firmed 58 arrests, but there are believed to be more arrestees yet to be booked in. Fur­ther action is expect­ed to take place today.

Natasha Blair from the Camp for Cli­mate Action said: ‘We’ve achieved what we came here to do: to show that coal has no future and there is a grow­ing move­ment which is pre­pared to take action on cli­mate change.”

This week­end, activists from around the world met in Copen­hagen to final­ist plans for sim­i­lar actions dur­ing the UN cli­mate talks tak­ing place in Decem­ber. The Camp for Cli­mate Action has announced that they will be join­ing oth­er activists in the ‘Push for Cli­mate Jus­tice’, which aims to take over the talks for a day.

Natasha Blair con­tin­ued: “In the run up to the UN cli­mate talks in Copen­hagen this Decem­ber, acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence to con­front big busi­ness and gov­ern­ments that are caus­ing cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change are gain­ing sup­port.”

Notes

1. Find the full video at: http://blip.tv/play/njSBqIoGAg

Action time­line

Live time­line and live map

Police videos of fence cut­ting and police being charged by fence.
Ratcliffe fence montage 1Ratcliffe fence montage 2
Our videos — fences com­ing down | 11 year old atop fence | to the fences | and oth­ers here

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Main­stream news cov­er­age

Ratcliffe police lineNot­ting­hamshire Police’s Chief Inspec­tor has admit­ted that the fig­ure of 80 peo­ple arrest­ed dur­ing the first day of the cli­mate swoop at Rat­cliffe-on-Soar pow­er sta­tion was not cor­rect. In fact only 52 peo­ple were arrest­ed.

Cli­mate Activist Arrest­ed in Run-Up to Coal Action on way back from meet­ing

http://climate-swoop.appspot.com/
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/actions/climate-swoop-2009