Aristocrat landlord’s garden opencasted!

18.07.2012 Ear­li­er today activists from Take Back the Land! vis­it­ed Lord Home’s man­sion in the Dou­glas Val­ley and open­cast­ed his gar­den, hop­ing to bring the issues clos­er to home for him.

18.07.2012 Ear­li­er today activists from Take Back the Land! vis­it­ed Lord Home’s man­sion in the Dou­glas Val­ley and open­cast­ed his gar­den, hop­ing to bring the issues clos­er to home for him. Lord Home owns Main­shill and all of Glen­tag­gart East which is cur­rent­ly being occu­pied by an action camp. Of course only some of the things that impact com­mu­ni­ties so much would have been felt because of this open­cast, such as see­ing a big mess. He won’t have to put up with the health impacts from dust and diesel fumes, the dan­ger on the roads, the noise, con­tempt from South Lanark­shire Coun­cil – the list goes on.

COAL ACTION SCOTLAND MEDIA RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE USE 18th July

Lord Home’s gar­den open­cast­ed by anti-coal activists

At 10:30 this morn­ing 20 envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice pro­test­ers entered the grounds of Lord Home’s state­ly home at Castle­mains in the Dou­glas Val­ley and began dig­ging up his front gar­den. The protest brought home to Lord Home how much of an eye sore an open cast next to your res­i­dence is. A ban­ner held up in front of his home which read “Com­mu­ni­ty Health not Lord Home’s Wealth!” Police attend­ed the scene but no arrests were made.

Rob Hearne, one of the activists dig­ging up the Lord’s gar­den said: “Lord Home is mak­ing mil­lions off open­cast coal min­ing in the Dou­glas Val­ley. He owns land cur­rent­ly being mined at Main­shill, and owns the entire Glen­tag­gart East site, next on the list to be mined. There is no com­mu­ni­ty con­sent for open­cast in this area, with 70% of peo­ple in Dou­glas oppos­ing Main­shill and over 650 let­ters of objec­tion sent to the coun­cil against it. Yet because of his aris­to­crat­ic and hered­i­tary priv­i­lege, he can do what he wants and walk all over the wish­es of the com­mu­ni­ty. We’re dig­ging up his gar­den to bring the issues clos­er to home.”

Local res­i­dent David Grey said: “The Lord owns every­thing around here and makes loads of mon­ey but gives vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ty. He gets mil­lions but we get can­cers, asth­ma and res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases. He is essen­tial­ly a par­a­site, suck­ing the wealth out of the area and con­sol­i­dat­ing it into his pri­vate estate.”

Clare Reed, anoth­er of the dig­gers at Castle­mains, added: “Lord Home doesn’t even live in the val­ley despite his mas­sive house and huge land own­er­ship. He lives in Lon­don, sits in the House of Lords and is Chair­per­son of Coutts Bank. He is total­ly com­plic­it in the destruc­tion caused by open­cast min­ing in the val­ley and all the health impacts inflict­ed on com­mu­ni­ties, but suf­fers none of the impacts him­self. In fact, he makes a killing – we esti­mate he’ll make up to £7 mil­lion off Glen­tag­gart East alone.”

Today’s protest fol­lows Monday’s block­ade of Bro­ken Cross Open Cast Coal Site and Saturday’s inva­sion of Main­shill Open Cast Coal Site where 45 activists stopped work on the site for the day. These actions are part of a week-long action camp and occu­pa­tion of Scot­tish Coal’s intend­ed new mine in the area, Glen­tag­gart East. The camp called “Take Back the Land!” has attract­ed activists from across Scot­land, the UK and Europe to take direct action against the blight of open­cast coal min­ing.

Coal Action Scot­land
contact@coalactionscotland.org.uk
http://takebacktheland.org.uk/