Hundreds Halt Fracking Operations in Susex

In the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing, anti-frack­ing activists and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in Bal­combe, Sus­sex, UK, suc­cess­ful­ly halt­ed the first day of explo­rations for a new shale gas devel­op­ment by famed (infa­mous, rather) frack­ing com­pa­ny Cuadrilla. Over 250 peo­ple unit­ed in a pow­er­ful, peace­ful, joy­ful block­ade—that even­tu­al­ly con­vinced the trucks con­tain­ing the ini­tial frack­ing equip­ment to aban­don the site.

This is com­mu­ni­ty pow­er at its best. Cam­paign­ers in Bal­combe, just like those in front­line com­mu­ni­ties around the world (in the U.S., Indone­sia, Argenti­na and else­where) had been call­ing atten­tion to the dan­gers of frack­ing for over a year. This week, when Cuadrilla’s license for explo­ration and devel­op­ment was approved, activists quick­ly mobi­lized to orga­nize a Great Gas Gala, invit­ing peo­ple in Sus­sex and neigh­bor­ing areas to con­verge on Bal­combe and oppose Cuadrilla’s efforts.

Yesterday’s protests are set in the con­text of a recent announce­ment by the UK gov­ern­ment propos­ing a 50 per­cent tax cut for com­pa­nies involved in shale gas extrac­tion, the most gen­er­ous tax regime for frack­ing in the whole world. The pro­pos­al is very much in line with the dread­ed “dash for gas” that Chan­cel­lor George Osborne announced at last year’s unveil­ing of the bud­get.

It is in oppo­si­tion to these efforts that groups like Frack Off, No Dash for Gas and many of our part­ners and allies around the coun­try, are mobi­liz­ing pub­lic aware­ness and oppo­si­tion, in a gen­uine effort to shift the pow­er in our ener­gy sys­tems and put our com­mu­ni­ties and their peo­ple back in charge. The Glob­al Pow­er Shift UK team will be work­ing in the upcom­ing months on help­ing build that large, inclu­sive movement—one that rep­re­sents com­mu­ni­ty inter­ests, lever­ages our diver­si­ty and builds on our shared vision of a peo­ple-pow­ered future that solves the cli­mate cri­sis once and for all.

The fight in Bal­combe is not over yet. Yesterday’s explorato­ry frack­ing attempt was the clos­est to Lon­don to date, where a lot of the finance for these oper­a­tions comes from and where the tan­gled webs of pow­er and influ­ence are care­ful­ly thread­ed between con­sent­ing politi­cians and short-term prof­it ori­ent­ed fos­sil fuel cor­po­rate exec­u­tives. Impuni­ty for them and their cli­mate-wreck­ing efforts? No longer. Real resis­tance is brew­ing in their back­yard.