Happendon Wood Occupied! New Direct Action Camp Against Scottish Coal

Ear­ly evening on Sun­day 12th Sep­tem­ber a group of autonomous indi­vid­u­als suc­cess­ful­ly occu­pied a new site in Hap­pen­don Wood, South Lanark­shire!

Coal Action Scot­land are invit­ing peo­ple to join The Hap­pen­don Wood Action Camp (THWAC) to help defend the wood from destruc­tion by Scot­tish Coal, and to take action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties in the area resist­ing the expan­sion of the coal indus­try in the Dou­glas Val­ley.

You can find out more about the camp at http://happendon.coalactionscotland.org.uk — and more infor­ma­tion about why we’re at Hap­pen­don and what we’re doing there will be com­ing very soon.

In the mean­time, check our press advi­so­ry, for imme­di­ate release, below:

Con­tact:
Sam Mac­don­ald (Off-site Con­tact: Infor­ma­tion and Pho­tos) 07984706188
Jo Reed (On-site Con­tact: Vis­its and Inter­views) 07806926040
media@coalactionscotland.org.uk

Scot­tish Coal’s
Hap­pen­don Wood Occu­pied

Last night (12/9/10) a group of peo­ple occu­pied areas with­in Hap­pen­don Wood, South Lanark­shire (1) to defend it from destruc­tion by Scot­tish Coal, part of the Scot­tish Resources Group. They have begun to build shel­ters and defences on the site, with large ban­ners hung from trees at the front of the site that say: “Defend­ing the Dou­glas Val­ley” and “No Open­cast Here”. The Hap­pen­don Wood Action Camp has come out of a long-term strug­gle by the local com­mu­ni­ty and Coal Action Scot­land (2) to halt coal expan­sion in the Dou­glas Val­ley which is already one of the most heav­i­ly mined areas in Europe.

The Scot­tish Resources Group have applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion for a mixed use devel­op­ment (3) on this land (which is in an area of Great Land­scape Val­ue) in the Dou­glas Val­ley, but they intend to open­cast the area first. The South Lanark­shire min­er­als plan high­lights areas with­in the new devel­op­ment as hav­ing recov­er­able coal deposits that can be exca­vat­ed dur­ing the cur­rent local plan. Scot­tish Coal actu­al­ly wouldn’t be allowed to build on the land with­out open cast­ing it first, oth­er­wise this would be “ster­il­is­ing the nations asset” and there­fore ille­gal. (4)

Scot­tish Coal have not yet pub­licly declared their inter­ests in open­cast­ing Hap­pen­don Wood but many mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty have expressed deep con­cerns that they will be blight­ed with yet anoth­er open­cast coal mine. In a recent meet­ing about the devel­op­ment, MSP for Clydes­dale Karen Gillon told local res­i­dents that she did not doubt that they would remove the coal, in spite of the fact that the area that SRG wish to devel­op takes in the open­cast work­ings at Poniel, which are cur­rent­ly due to be restored. Local res­i­dent and Dou­glas and Gle­spin Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil Chair­per­son Lind­say Addi­son is enraged by the behav­iour of Scot­tish Coal in South Lanark­shire:

“We have seri­ous con­cerns that this is an excuse for anoth­er open­cast. We do not want this devel­op­ment, let alone anoth­er mine. We will fight it all the way and sup­port the efforts of the wider com­mu­ni­ty in its oppo­si­tion to new coal in the Dou­glas Val­ley.”

SRG’s appli­ca­tion for plan­ning per­mis­sion for this devel­op­ment is ongo­ing; the deci­sion by the coun­cil will like­ly be made in the com­ing months. Ques­tions have been raised about the close rela­tion­ship between Scot­tish Coal and South Lanark­shire Coun­cil (SLC) result­ing in SLC issu­ing each mem­ber of the Dou­glas and Gle­spin Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil legal notices stat­ing that pro­ceed­ings against them are to begin at Lanark Sher­iff Court over alleged libel claims. This move is seen by the com­mu­ni­ty as an attack on their free­dom of speech. (5)

Notes to Edi­tors:

1. Loca­tion: In South Lanark­shire, about 30 miles south of Glas­gow, Hap­pen­don Wood is an area just off the B7078, sur­round­ing the Dew­ers ware­house site and Poniel Open­cast work­ings. To reach the site, dri­ving south along the B7078 from Les­ma­hagow (run­ning along­side the M74), take the first left after Hap­pen­don Ser­vices onto the C‑road; the site front is on your left after about half a mile. A map is avail­able at http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/?page_id=1974#Where

2. Work­ing with and sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ties across Scot­land, the Coal Action Scot­land col­lec­tive exists to chal­lenge the advance­ment of coal as an ener­gy source by inform­ing peo­ple about the dan­gers posed by new coal, pro­mot­ing alter­na­tives, work­ing with those involved, and direct­ly chal­leng­ing new coal exploita­tion from source to point of use. Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was set up just along the road from Hap­pen­don Woods last year where peo­ple stayed for over sev­en months, end­ing in a five day evic­tion and a total of 45 arrests. See: http://coalactionscotland.noflag.org.uk/

3. This appli­ca­tion is Poniel / Hap­pen­don Mixed Use Devel­op­ment appli­ca­tion from the Scot­tish Resources Group (Scot­tish Coal). It is for “Mixed use devel­op­ment com­pris­ing indus­tri­al and stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion ware­hous­ing, busi­ness units/office accom­mo­da­tion, hotel with con­fer­ence and com­mer­cial leisure facil­i­ties, retail/restaurant floor­space, land­scap­ing, open space and asso­ci­at­ed infra­struc­ture (plan­ning per­mis­sion in prin­ci­ple)”, but it is expect­ed that once they get per­mis­sion for this they will actu­al­ly be bound to open­cast the area for coal. The plan­ning ref­er­ence for the appli­ca­tion is: CL/10/0180.

4. The Coal Author­i­ty issue licences to coal com­pa­nies. The fol­low­ing was dis­cov­ered in cor­re­spon­dence between them and Scot­tish Coal:
‘Where devel­op­ment is pro­posed over areas of coal and past coal work­ings at shal­low depth, The Coal Author­i­ty is of the opin­ion that appli­cants should con­sid­er wher­ev­er pos­si­ble remov­ing the rem­nant shal­low coal. This will enable the land to be sta­bilised and treat­ed by a more sus­tain­able method; rather than by attempt­ing to grout fill any voids and con­se­quent­ly unnec­es­sar­i­ly ster­il­is­ing the nation’s asset.’

5. For arti­cles and quo­ta­tions on the legal threats to the Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil see:
http://www.lanarkgazette.co.uk/news/South-Lanarkshire-Council-copyright-threat.6526004.jp
http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/?p=1966
http://www.jonathanmitchell.info/2010/09/02/whats-wrong-with-south-lanarkshire/