Another Successful Action-Packed Gathering at Mainshill Solidarity Camp

From Sat­ur­day 28th Nov – Tues 1st Dec there was anoth­er suc­cess­ful action-packed gath­er­ing at Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. With activists trav­el­ing from all over the UK, around 55 peo­ple con­verged on the camp and spent the week­end solid­i­fy­ing old defences, work­ing on new ones and stop­ping the log­ging work on site.

From Sat­ur­day 28th Nov – Tues 1st Dec there was anoth­er suc­cess­ful action-packed gath­er­ing at Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. With activists trav­el­ing from all over the UK, around 55 peo­ple con­verged on the camp and spent the week­end solid­i­fy­ing old defences, work­ing on new ones and stop­ping the log­ging work on site.

Har­vesters were stopped from chop­ping down trees and prepar­ing the ground for min­ing machin­ery on both Mon­day after­noon and Tues­day morn­ing. The har­vester dri­vers seemed hap­py to get a break and were friend­ly and chat­ty with the pro­tes­tors. There are now 3 har­vester machines work­ing on site rather than just the one which has been work­ing up until now, per­haps indi­cat­ing that the almost dai­ly actions to stop work have seri­ous­ly delayed the work of remov­ing trees at Main­shill in prepa­ra­tion for the mine.

Sat­ur­day night saw anoth­er leg­endary par­ty and gave every­one a chance to cel­e­brate some of the hard work done to solid­i­fy the defences in antic­i­pa­tion of an evic­tion. As well as all the work on defences, the com­mu­nal spaces were also improved with the instal­la­tion of a beau­ti­ful new burn­er in the com­mu­nal made espe­cial­ly for the camp and a lot of progress on the new kitchen exten­sion.

By Sun­day morn­ing there was news that an autonomous group of activists act­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those who oppose the open cast­ing of Main­shill Wood had paid Lord Home a vis­it. Appar­ent­ly Home was at home down the road from the camp, win­ing and din­ing a group of chums, prob­a­bly in antic­i­pa­tion of a Sun­day of grouse shoot­ing. Reports on Indy­media state that “activists deflat­ed tyres on all of the posh ccars out­side the house, put super­glue on the wind­screens and left a sign on Home’s lawn say­ing ‘No Open Cast’.”

Climb­ing and bunker build­ing work­shops kept every­one busy on Sun­day as well as col­lect­ing wood to keep the camp going dur­ing these cold­er weeks. There was snow on Mon­day but every­one was in high spir­its after a real­ly good week­end of work.