Why we shut down the UK’s largest coal mine – a call to action

On 8th May 2017, we were sentenced to pay £10,000 compensation charges to Miller Argent Ltd, after pleading guilty to aggravated trespass by shutting down Ffos-y-fran coal mine for one day.

by Andrea Brock, Chris Field, Rick Fel­gate, Kim Turn­er and The Canary

In the ear­ly hours of 21st April 2017, under the ban­ner of Earth First! and Reclaim the Pow­er, our group of five block­ad­ed the UK’s largest open­cast coal mine to dis­rupt the eco­log­i­cal­ly and social­ly dis­as­trous min­ing oper­a­tions of Miller Argent (South Wales) Ltd.

At 5am, two of us blocked all vehi­cle access to the mine by using D‑locks and an arm­tube to lock onto the cat­tle grids at the entrance gate. Before long, on-site secu­ri­ty became aware of our pres­ence and called the police. Mean­while, three of us hiked over the sur­round­ing com­mon land and the edge of the mine – sneak­ing past cows and secu­ri­ty per­son­nel. We climbed down towards the bot­tom of the vast hole that Miller Argent’s oper­a­tions have ripped into the earth to find their 300 tonne hydraulic exca­va­tors. These are used to extract coal from the mine – five mil­lion tonnes of coal have already been extract­ed from Ffos-y-fran, with anoth­er six mil­lion to go – fif­teen to six­teen hours a day. Fol­low­ing a lit­tle explo­ration of the exca­va­tor, we used D‑locks to attach our­selves to the machine, got books, ear­phones, sleep­ing bags and sand­wich­es out and pre­pared for a long day in the pit. We were locked on for a total of 10 and a half hours, shut­ting down all coal min­ing and trans­port of coal off the site. After hav­ing been cut out, we were arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass, dis­rup­tion of law­ful activ­i­ty and intim­i­da­tion of min­ing per­son­nel.

Per­haps the most intim­i­dat­ing of us all was one who was dressed as a bright yel­low canary. His­tor­i­cal­ly, canaries were brought down into under­ground mines to act as warn­ing sig­nals: the death of the lit­tle bird indi­cat­ed tox­ic lev­els of gas and told min­ers to get out of the pit. Sim­i­lar­ly, we want­ed to high­light the threat that min­ing pos­es to neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties and the glob­al cli­mate – coal min­ing is caus­ing irre­versible dam­age, par­tic­u­lar­ly to those least respon­si­ble, espe­cial­ly in the glob­al South. That’s why the cli­mate cri­sis is a racist cri­sis.

How­ev­er, coal min­ing is not only a glob­al issue. It’s also an issue of local air pol­lu­tion, lack of democ­ra­cy, account­abil­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. For over a decade, cam­paign­ers from Res­i­dents Against Ffos-y-fran and the Unit­ed Val­leys Action Group have been fight­ing the mine. With the mine only 37 metres from the clos­est homes in Merthyr Tyd­fil, they are suf­fer­ing from pol­lu­tion, dust, noise and vibra­tion every day. In March this year, the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur On Human Rights & Tox­i­cs called for a health inquiry into can­cer and asth­ma rates in the com­mu­ni­ties neigh­bour­ing Ffos-y-fran, crit­i­cis­ing the lack of gov­ern­ment response to local com­plaints. Five hun­dred local res­i­dents have attempt­ed to take court action against the mine, but their appli­ca­tion was refused by the High Court as they were deemed unable to afford it.

Ffos-y-fran illus­trates the fail­ures of envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tion in the UK, the dom­i­nance of cor­po­rate over human inter­ests, and the injus­tices asso­ci­at­ed with the sys­tem. As local com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to suf­fer, and as we approach run­away cli­mate change, Miller Argent con­tin­ue their min­ing at Ffos-y-fran, caus­ing eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and health impacts under the name of “land recla­ma­tion”. In fact, the com­pa­ny is try­ing to expand its oper­a­tions and has applied for a per­mit to open a sec­ond mine near­by, which would lead to the destruc­tion of high­ly bio­di­verse and unique habi­tat – sup­posed to be “off­set” else­where (as if the destruc­tion of nature could eas­i­ly be com­pen­sat­ed for with the pro­tec­tion of nature else­where). Cur­rent­ly, the com­pa­ny is appeal­ing against the coun­cil rejec­tion of their pro­pos­al. The ongo­ing eco­log­i­cal and social destruc­tion at Ffos-y-fran mine shows the fail­ure of the cur­rent polit­i­cal eco­nom­ic sys­tem to deal with the mul­ti­ple social and eco­log­i­cal crises, and illus­trates its struc­tur­al depen­dence on fos­sil fuel extrac­tion.

Cor­po­rate fos­sil fuel inter­ests have become insti­tu­tion­alised as state inter­ests, to be defend­ed at all costs through col­lab­o­ra­tion between pri­vate secu­ri­ty per­son­nel, cor­po­ra­tions, state forces and police who sup­press, co-opt and intim­i­date resis­tance. The court’s will­ing­ness to deter pro­test­ers on behalf of Miller Argent by impos­ing these ridicu­lous­ly high com­pen­sa­tion pay­ments has exem­pli­fied this today.  The sys­tem is based on and has entrenched our addic­tion to fos­sil fuels to the extent that we can­not envi­sion a dif­fer­ent sys­tem. In fact, some have argued, it is eas­i­er to imag­ine the end of the world than the end of fos­sil cap­i­tal­ism.

Coal kills!

Until recent­ly, Ffos-y-fran mine sup­plied coal to one of Europe’s dirt­i­est and most tox­ic pow­er sta­tions, Aberthaw, the third largest emit­ter of nitro­gen oxides in the EU and respon­si­ble for 17% of Wales’ green­house gas emis­sions. In 2014, the Euro­pean Court of Jus­tice con­firmed that the pow­er sta­tion has been in breach of EU air pol­lu­tion reg­u­la­tion since 2008. Yet, rather than shut­ting the plant down once and for all, the gov­ern­ment is actu­al­ly pay­ing the oper­a­tor, RWE nPow­er, some £27 mil­lion pounds to keep it oper­a­tional. Recent­ly, the pow­er sta­tion stopped burn­ing Welsh coal, instead rely­ing on import­ed coal (most like­ly from Rus­sia and Colom­bia where social and envi­ron­men­tal min­ing impacts are even worse). Ffos-y-fran con­tin­ues to oper­ate, how­ev­er, sup­ply­ing oth­er indus­tries – RWE nPow­er could resort back to its coal any day, and we have no rea­son to believe that they won’t.

Whilst David Cameron’s gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted to phas­ing out coal by 2025, this is not soon enough for the com­mu­ni­ties around Ffos-y-fran, nor is it soon enough for the many peo­ple who are already suf­fer­ing from cli­mate change, and the many more who will in the future. And with Brex­it, the real­i­ty of this com­mit­ment is cast into doubt, espe­cial­ly giv­en There­sa May’s lega­cy of con­duct­ing u‑turns in many impor­tant pol­i­cy areas and the com­mit­ment to leav­ing the juris­dic­tion of the Euro­pean Court of Jus­tice.

Over and over again, gov­ern­ments have shown that they can­not be trust­ed to deal with the mul­ti­ple social and eco­log­i­cal crises we are fac­ing; they are part of the prob­lem, not the solu­tion. Their respons­es have been dri­ven by cor­po­rate inter­ests, fur­ther entrench­ing and insti­tu­tion­al­is­ing inequal­i­ties and injus­tices through racist bor­der poli­cies, false solu­tions and green cap­i­tal­ist fan­tasies of nev­er end­ing eco­nom­ic growth, mar­ket solu­tions and pri­vate prop­er­ty. The ongo­ing mon­e­tary val­u­a­tion and com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion of nature is jus­ti­fied by the need to ‘make nature pay for its own pro­tec­tion,’ or ‘sell­ing nature to save it’ and based on the con­struc­tion of nature as ‘ecosys­tem ser­vices’ or ‘nat­ur­al cap­i­tal,’ effec­tive­ly turn­ing it into a glob­al cur­ren­cy to be trad­ed on mar­kets. This approach only thin­ly veils the ongo­ing and inten­si­fy­ing destruc­tion of our plan­et and the deep­en­ing of glob­al and local inequal­i­ties along axes of race, gen­der and many oth­ers. Twen­ty-five years of cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions have laid bare the cor­po­rate cap­ture of the inter­na­tion­al pol­i­cy process­es and exposed the need to take mat­ters into our own hands – to go to where cli­mate change is caused, to reclaim pow­er and to “shut shit down”. The glob­al coal indus­try is at the fore­front of cli­mate change, of bio­di­ver­si­ty loss, exploita­tion and degra­da­tion of social and eco­log­i­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

Film of the action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYOMyvRBY_s

We need a diver­si­ty of tac­tics and strate­gies to end coal. In resis­tance to Ffos-y-fran, local peo­ple have fought numer­ous court bat­tles and a pub­lic inquiry, and organ­ised peti­tions and protests over the last decade, suc­ceed­ing in hav­ing a sec­ond mine reject­ed. By dis­rupt­ing oper­a­tions and shut­ting down the mine, we hit the mine oper­a­tor where it hurts most – in the first two hours of the block­ade alone, we have been told, the com­pa­ny alleged­ly lost £33,000. Only through con­tin­ued direct action, and by oppos­ing all types of destruc­tion, author­i­ty and oppres­sion can we start to build the world we want to see. Cen­tral­is­ing pow­er struc­tures and author­i­ty are inher­ent­ly envi­ron­men­tal­ly exploita­tive and social­ly oppres­sive. We want a socio-eco­nom­ic sys­tem run for the needs of peo­ple, not for prof­it; and accord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of sol­i­dar­i­ty, co-oper­a­tion and mutu­al aid, not com­pet­i­tive­ness. This sys­tem is based on shar­ing, vol­un­tary col­lab­o­ra­tion, and com­mu­nal organ­is­ing and runs on local, decen­tralised, com­mu­nal­ly con­trolled elec­tric­i­ty. That’s the world we are fight­ing for.

If you sup­port our action and can help us pay for these ludi­crous charges in any way, please donate here.

For those who came before, and those who will come after!

A short­er ver­sion of this blog­post has been pub­lished in the Huff­in­g­ton Post.