Author: earthfirst

Hatfield Moor peat works disrupted

26/11/2001 Work stopped for 3 hours at Hatfield Moor Works

On Monday 26th November a group of around 30 people entered the site of the Scotts Company UK Ltd.

As work on the surrounding peat moorland has stopped for the winter, the action was concentrated on the adjacent works, where peat is processed and bagged for sending off to farmers and garden centres around the countries.

A group of people blocked the bridge leading off the site whilst the rest tried to shut down machinery and occupy the offices. Thanks to health and safety, all machinery was switched off as soon as everyone arrived on site, and the time was spent exploring the site, chatting to workers and blockading the front gate. The group that was blockading the bridge received a lot of hassle off security, management, and drivers trying to leave. There were too few people and after a few nasty confrontations with protesters almost being run over they left the bridge and joined everyone else in occupying the works.

The rest of the day passed smoothly with protestors given a guided tour of the site by workers. A lot of information was gathered and a few pixies partially damaged the back up generator. Lots of keys went missing including the key for the main computer process controller which was left turned off and broken in the lock.

After about 3 hours the most amusingly polite police you could ever hope to meet turned up in sufficient quantities to remove people from site, after issueing each person a notice that they would be arrested for aggravated trespass should they return within 3 months.

Ha! As if that will stop us!

Hatfield Moor peat mining halted

Ten people from Nottingham visited Hatfield Moor as their part of the days of action against peat mining.

Despite a large amount of pre-publicity there was no police presence when we arrived and we entered the moor with no hassle.

Seeing dust in the distance we headed towards where they were working, and they tried to drive off. We tried to head them off and despite their half a mile head start we still managed to trap the machines and prevented them from working for the rest of the day.

After about an hour and a half, two police officers and the site manager turned up to say that so long as we didn’t damage anything they wouldn’t arrest us.

Usefully one of us managed to overhear a conversation between the boss and the police about how disrupting the factory works would cause them massive problems.

So what are you waiting for?

Late August mass peat trespass

On Saturday the 25th August during the Northern Green Gathering a Mass Trespass was planned.

About 70 people left the gathering and met up with a few people from The Ramblers and other local conservation groups. There was a very low police presence, which was generally ignored and the majority of people trespassed onto the moor. A ‘Bog off Scotts’ banner was held up for photos.

Then people spotting dust in the distance decided to go and stop work. The police refused to go any further, citing Health & Safety Regulations. People ran towards where the cutting was taking place at which point the work stopped and the workers desperately tried to move the machinery away before people could stop them. A train trying to speed up to escape from a group chasing it, went too fast and derailed itself, and other machinery was stopped and sat on, preventing it from going elsewhere to work. Another train was found and rocked off its rails. Another group of people meantime had been making themselves busy, destroying the plastic used to keep the cut peat dry whilst it’s stockpiled for winter, they also managed to block two of the largest and most important drainage ditches causing Scotts to give up on that area for the rest of the season. A digger was tinkered with and almost jump started, but unfortunately the police helicopter arrived with most unfortunate timing so it was just trashed instead. It is still there and seems to have been abandoned.

This time the police, who were unprepared and in very small numbers, didn’t even bother with trying to take details and every one left after a few hours and headed back to the gathering.

Pixeing & a game of chicken at t’peat works

On Sunday the 12th August, about 15 people visited the peat works unannounced, finding it almost deserted and wandering around for about 15 minutes before finding any workers.

During this time, all the keys from the key safe and ignition keys for most of the machines disappeared and ended up at the bottom of drains and the engine of one of the two peat-moving trains got sand in the petrol tank.

After coming across workers and realising the police had been called, we decided to head off across the moor in an attempt to get away.

However the police used their helicopter to try and head us off, bringing it about 6 feet off the ground in front of us and engaging in a game of chicken. However we pressed on regardless and the police chickened out first, but not before police on foot had caught up with some of the group and escorted them off site after taking another set of details. They then set off with the helicopter and dogs to find the rest of the group who managed to hide and escape from the moors without being spotted.

Peat works shut down for 3 days

An action was planned to coincide with the EF! Gathering at the start of August.
A group of about 30 people headed off to the peat works after another action against prison labour in solidarity with Mark Barnsley.

The action was announced in the morning meeting at the gathering, and when we arrived police (with horses) had occupied the works. Speaking to workers after the event we were told that the police had claimed that 100 violent anarchists had planned to come and destroy the works.

However this was our most successful action to date, because an advert on a board claiming we would be going back on Monday after the gathering caused the police to shut down the works for 3 days and leave 300 police there for the whole of that period.

Another mass trespass to protect the peat bogs of midgy Yorkshire

We met up the night before for a briefing, giving out information about exactly what is at stake and the most effective things that can be done to disrupt work.

We camped for the night in the nature reserve just round the corner, getting eaten alive by small flying biting things.

This time the police turned up in rather larger numbers and surrounded the works to prevent any disruption.

However, after coming to tell us what we could and couldn’t do over breakfast, they left us and waited at the works entrance, so we drove round to the back of the moor and entered from there.

You can easily see how beautiful the site could be, when you see the surrounding area, which supports a great diversity of wildlife (apparently 5000 species) from darting dragonflys to beautiful cotton grasses. We even noticed a birds nest in the heavily worked drainage channels on the site.

While wandering the site it was easy to see that the peat pixies had been busy tying to save their homelands. Drainage channels appreared to have been filled in while others had dams blocking them. Rumours were abound of fistier pixies getting to the machinery and workings of the site, but I can not comfirm this at all.

We found some work going on, which stopped when we arrived. It didn’t take long for the police helicopter to arrive and follow us around for the day, but they had no other police anywhere near us and the helicopter had to leave at some point to refuel, during which time quite a lot of damage occurred. A couple of machines that were left out were pushed into drainage ditches, every drainage ditch we passed was filled in and handy crowbars were used to pull up the railway track, hopefully causing massive delays as they would have had to check the whole rail network for damage.

When we left the moor we found the police waiting for us and being remarkably friendly. They requested everyone’s name and address, so instead of delaying and letting them find out what damage had occurred a whole load of false names and addresses were given, including Mr C. Cret and Claremont Road.

Please ask your local garden centre to not stock scotts compost as they are destroying a beautiful and ireperable habitat to get it. Whats more leaf mould actually works better than peat in compost for routeing properties (this is why peat is used as it has no nutritional value for plants). Leaf mould is made by piling up atumnal leaf fall and turning it occasionally. In a years time you will have the perfect substance to mix with compost from your veg waste to make a potting mixture.

This senseless maddness and destruction must stop.

For more info, http://www.peatalert.org.uk

Scotts stop peat extraction message delivery and onto the moor

This event was timed to coincide with the start of the peat-cutting season, which can only begin when the peat has dried out enough.

All morning Leeds & Sheffield Friends of the Earth and others collected messages from the people of Thorne and the surrounding area, on cards, placards and balloons. They got a really good response from the local population who are well aware of the damage being done to their moors. At the same time activists from the north were taken on guided tours of the site and learnt as much as they could about the peat-cutting process.

After lunch everyone gathered at a friendly pub and then set off in a procession to the peat works. Some of the (smaller) messages collected during the morning were handed in to a poker-faced security guard and then around 50 people strolled into the processing plant, past him and the four or five bumbling police officers. They had a good look round the vast site and inside lots of buildings, they conga’d through the piles of stacked up compost bags and ceilidhed alongside the railway line.

There were no arrests as we danced out of the site and back to the pub. After a lovely day we decided to have a bigger, better and longer trespass of the site and the moors on Tuesday 25th June, with some camping available the night before – more details available from Leeds EF!

Other actions will of course be going on all the time!

Mass trespass to protect peat

Scotts stop peat extraction message delivery and onto the moor

This event was timed to coincide with the start of the peat-cutting season, which can only begin when the peat has dried out enough.

All morning Leeds & Sheffield Friends of the Earth and others collected messages from the people of Thorne and the surrounding area, on cards, placards and balloons. They got a really good response from the local population who are well aware of the damage being done to their moors. At the same time activists from the north were taken on guided tours of the site and learnt as much as they could about the peat-cutting process.

After lunch everyone gathered at a friendly pub and then set off in a procession to the peat works. Some of the (smaller) messages collected during the morning were handed in to a poker-faced security guard and then around 50 people strolled into the processing plant, past him and the four or five bumbling police officers. They had a good look round the vast site and inside lots of buildings, they conga’d through the piles of stacked up compost bags and ceilidhed alongside the railway line.

There were no arrests as we danced out of the site and back to the pub. After a lovely day we decided to have a bigger, better and longer trespass of the site and the moors on Tuesday 25th June, with some camping available the night before – more details available from Leeds EF!

Other actions will of course be going on all the time!

2,000 Women Protest Against GM Food, Blockade Supermarket in Brazil

Amidst widescale protests against corporate control of the food chain 2,000 Brazilian women blockaded a supermarket 800 miles south of Brasilia in a protest against genetically engineered food

BRASILIA, Brazil: Women farmers throughout Brazil demonstrated Thursday on International Women’s Day to protest worldwide economic policies they say are unfair.

Some 700 women members of Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers Movement occupied a McDonald’s restaurant in Porto Alegre, some 1,600 kms (1,000 miles) south of Brasilia.

They burned flags bearing the fast-food chain’s logo, criticized economic globalization and called the Brazilian government a slave to “world neoliberalism.” Thursday’s protest was inspired by the anti-globalization efforts of French activist Jose Bove a sheep farmer who shot to fame for ransacking a McDonald’s restaurant in France and was arrested in Brazil last January after he joined the workers movement in a massive protest.

Also on Thursday, some 2,000 women blocked access to a supermarket in Florianopolis, 1,300 kms (800 miles) south of Brasilia, claiming it sold genetically engineered food.

And in Belo Horizonte, some 600 kms (380 miles) southeast of Brasilia, a group of women protested in front of the local city council chambers demanding that the government speed up agrarian reform.