Category: Action Reports

Butterfly

Manchester is the home of several peat moors, all under threat from extractors profiting from the destruction of some of the most precious areas in the UK. But together we can stop them, and save our moors!

WILDLIFE UNDER THREAT

Peat moors are home to a vast range of plants, insects, butterflies, and birds. Often they are officially recognised conservation areas and have been proven to help prevent climate change. However, due to extensive ‘mining’ of the peat, mainly for use in home gardening, these precious habitats are dwindling. We must fight to protect these unique havens of wildlife, before corporate lobbying destroys our moors forever.

MANCHESTER’S FORGOTTEN PEAT MOORS

Manchester is not often thought of as an area rich in biodiversity, but within the bounds of Greater Manchester, there are several peat moors, or mosses under threat. From large sites like Irlam Moss, run by Scotts and Peel Holdings, to smaller sites like Saltersley Moss in the nearby Wilmslow. Extraction is already underway, but the damage done is reversible if we act quickly.

MANCHESTER IS FIGHTING BACK

We have decided to do something about this destruction of our natural heritage by forming a local peat campaign. We will focus on a wide, inclusive campaign against peat extraction on Saltersley Moss and more targeted campaigning on other Manchester-area mosses. If you would like to get involved, please contact us.

For more details, contact Manchester Peat Campaign on Manchester Earth First! on 0161-226 6814

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/manchester/peat/

A deal was announced today (27th February 2002) between Scotts and English Nature, to restore major peatbogs as ecological sites.

The deal is undoubtedly very good news, but it is certainly not the end of the story. The main pointsof the deal are given below.

* Thorne Moor, South Yorkshire, and Wedholme Flow, Cumbria to be restored to raised bog habitats. This will be started immediately; no more peat will be extracted from the site.
* Hatfield Moor, South Yorkshire, to be continued to be mined for peat for a further two years, although only on half the site – the other half will also now be restored.
* For this, English Nature will pay Scotts £17 million as compensation. Scotts will take on much of the responsibility for carrying out the restoration.

Clearly this is very welcome, but the fight is far from over. Some of the problems that remain are:

* Carrying on extracting peat for another two years could make a crucial difference to the chances of a raised bog habitat re-evolving on Hatfield Moor. The depth of the peat is getting startlingly low on many parts of the site, and below a certain depth the ecological value of the system that will regenerate will be significantly reduced.
* In many places the bottom of the peat has been breached, and the sand layer has been dug into. This introduces excessive nutrients into the water table, which means the peat may not support many important plants. Continued digging will almost certainly exacerbate this.
* Scotts bear much of the responsibility for carrying out the ecological restoration work. However, given their track record of destroying ecological systems, what are the assurances that they will not put profitability before doing a good job?
* Scotts will continue to operate their other peatland sites in the UK. In particular, Carnwath Moss in Scotland is a designated SSSI, and they have said that they will continue extraction there for the foreseeable future.
* There are many other peat companies who also still mine peat from valuable wildlife sites. In particular Wm. Sinclair Ltd, who make J. Arthur Bowers brand compost, continue to mine at Bolton Fell in Cumbria, and have pledged to legally challenge government plans to designate it a Special Area for Conservation (this status would mean they would have to stop extracting peat). They also mine at Whim bog, an SSSI in Scotland.
* With the closure of UK peat mines, the problem may well just be shifted overseas. Imported peat will form a grater proportion of the market, with new bogs being destroyed in Ireland or the Baltic States.

So let’s be encouraged by the latest news, but not stop until the peat industry is no more!

Corwen peat (national day of) action

Across the UK offices, factories and peat extraction sites belonging to The Scotts Company (the world’s largest horticultural company) were today occupied or disrupted by activists protesting against the continued destruction of rare raised peat bog habitats. Seven facilities belonging to Scotts were targeted by Peat Alert, a recently-formed national campaign network, which aims to stop peat extraction in the UK and Europe. “We want Scotts to know that they cannot continue decimating our wild places without attracting this type of disruptive opposition”, said Danielle Locke, a spokesperson for the network.

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Godalming, Surrey – Head Office At around 2pm 20 people went into the offices for about an hour & a half before police with dogs arrived and people left. Most of the office was closed down and the front doors were locked using bicycle D-locks. There were only about 70 workers, so they made quite an impact. After leaving the demonstration a van load of protesters were pulled over. By around 5pm 15 people were arrested and taken to Guildford police station, charged with burglary. They were released at 3am the following morning, not charged but bailed to reappear on one of two dates in April.

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Corwen, North Wales – PBI Home & Garden fertilizer & pesticides manufacturing plant. “a fun day out had by all! Early this morning (well about 8 am) 13 welsh and english activists descended on Corwen home and garden plant in north wales – owned by Scotts – and proceeded to disrupt work at the factory. The office was occupied as was the factory floor. A banner was hung overlooking the A5 road. The gates were temporarily locked shut. Initially surprised workers were mainly friendly – even pleased to see us!- and had no love for “parent ” company Scotts, who are rumoured to be about to sell off the plant leaving workers in the lurch. Several already knew about Scott’s operations at Hatfield Moor.

After a couple of hours’ hanging around getting in the way, more police showed up (it took an hour 4 the first ones 2 get there despite the cop shop being literally 500 yards down the road!!) and it was leave or get nicked time. We left, leaving one pretty pissed- off manager who claimed to be missing a back- up computer disc. we then went for a scramble around the ruins of Llangollen castle…lovely. “actions- better than work!” ”

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Bramford, nr Ipswich, Suffolk
A group of 15 activists arrived at Scotts Fertilizer plant at 9am. Unfortunately the security were just securing the site after being notified of another action in Corwen Wales two minutes before.

Four people rushed into the offices and two were evicted very quickly. One managed to find his way into an office with a paper ‘Scotts A Peat Strategy’ on it but after barricading the front door, the person whose office it was entered through the back door. One managed to hide in an office and not get noticed, even when the police searched the building, unfortunately the only thing in there was archives.

One group closed and D-locked themselves to the exit gate, and one group headed for the entrance gate, but couldn’t lock it shut, so entered the lorry yard. After one person clung to the underneath of a lorry, most of the rest of the people were bundled out of the yard. The lorry driver and his mate tried to use force to remove the person clinging on and punched an activist who stood in their way.

Outside the Entrance gate a lorry pulled up and was immediately D-locked to underneath, starting the tail back process which had up to twenty lorries in it with many more being turned away. The blockade lasted for 3 hours, it took them about an hour to boltcropp the activist from under the lorry free. The police then arrested five people for aggravated trespass or obstruction of the highway.

Arriving at the site just after us was the director of the international fertilizer division, Eric von Karthoven, who had traveled over from Holland for a meeting. He was thoroughly grilled by campaign members.

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Hatfield Moors, South Yorkshire – Between 11.30 and 12.30, 15 activists arrived at Hatfield Moor, and spent the day carrying out conservation work on the moor, including filling in drainage ditches to prevent the moors drying out. There were no police, so they just got on with it and left the moor around 5.00. They then proceeded round to the front gates and stopped work in the factory for about half an hour, leaving before the police turned up because they were knackered.

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Wedholme Flow, Cumbria. About 10 people spent the day on the site of Scotts peat mine in Cumbria. There wasn’t much work going on to disrupt, so they decided that time was best spent building dams to interfere with Scotts attempt to drain the land ready for harvesting peat in the spring.

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Goole, East Yorkshire – At around 11.30 two women entered the offices of the Scotts fertilizer & pesticide manufacturing facility, staying only to send a fax to Nick Kirkbride, UK Managing Director at the Head Office in Godalming, announcing their presence and opposition to Scotts involvement in peat extraction. At the same time a set of gates were locked shut by other activists.

Text of the fax:

Dear Nick

By now you will know that sites across the country are being targeted for demonstrations. This is because of Scotts’ involvement (or should that be “championing”) of peat extraction from rare raised bog habitats, in the UK and globally.

You will have been aware of the enormous opposition to this practice when you bought up the peat facilities. You have been involved in negotiations around “Special Area of Conservation” status for Thorne, Hatfield and Wedholme Flow & others, and have slowed them down at every stage. You know you will be forced to stop sooner or later, so GO PEAT-FREE NOW, while you can still save a shred of reputation and there remains a chance to save the moors.

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!

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?

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.

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.