Category: Action Reports

On 5th August three members from GenetiX Snowball openly and accountably trashed an AgrEvo test site, breaking an injunction served against them. They took the bagged up crops to AgrEvil’s HQ in Norfolk where the staff were totally phased, despite the fact that they had been sent a letter saying they were going to break their injunctions. At an impromptu press conference AgrEvo claimed that Snowball had the wrong site, until a journalist pointed out the injunction signs surrounding it. Finally they were allowed to hand in the bag of GM oilseed rape and their statements and injunctions. Over two months later they are still awaiting their committal papers!!

Greenpeace Norfolk GM action

The following weekend, Greenpeace activists, including its executive director Lord Melchett, decontaminated a GM maize farm-scale trial in Lyng, Norfolk.

This action, in which 28 people were arrested, could have turned into a tragedy when the farmer who owned the land, William Brigham, became violent, driving a tractor into the mower which was driven onto the field to destroy the maize, as well as chasing the activists around the field. Of those arrested, only Lord Melchett was remanded, and his treatment ignited a long-awaited debate in the press regarding direct action and whether it is the action of a small unrepresentative minority who want to derail the democratic process. The government would say that, wouldn’t it! Unfortunately, much of the press debate focused on ‘establishment maverick’ Melchett, rather than the validity of farm-scale trials or why ordinary people take action. Because the police arrived before the site was completely destroyed, the trial remains valid.

No-one fancied going back to finish off the job and possibly meeting rabid farmer Brigham again! Those arrested await a court date for a crown court trial.

Scottish GE simultaneous decontaminations

Some other local actions and events Scotland – Scottish Genetix Action report that on Saturday 24th July 1999, in a simultaneous action, GM oilseed rape test sites in Edinburgh and Aberdeen were destroyed. Scottish Genetix Action will continue to campaign for a GMO-free Scotland.

In Watlington, Oxfordshire, the campaign against the farm-scale trial had been running from the moment the test plots were announced. Stalls were held in the town and an organic picnic was organised along with a walk to the site. By lucky coincidence, literally metres away from the Model Farm GM test site, lay an abandoned farm house with an overgrown garden full of wild flowers. This swiftly became the Alternative Model Farm for two weeks, with beautiful displays of permaculture and organic farming methods. Open days were held for the general public to decide which ‘model’ of the future they wanted.

On Sunday 18th July, a beautiful summer’s day, locals mingled with campaigners and concerned individuals from all over the country at a rally addressed by Nottingham South MP, Alan Simpson; Swindon campaigner, Jean Saunders; a local food writer, Linda Brown; Jim Thomas from Greenpeace, and George Monbiot, journalist, campaigner and all-round defender of truth and justice! At the end of the rally over 600 people, dressed in white paper decontamination suits and waving biohazard flags, large bumble-bees and banners went to symbolically surround the site. But then, like a scene out of Braveheart, they just walked through the conventional control oilseed rape onto the GM oilseed rape itself.

An hour and a half later the site was almost totally destroyed. Although the crop had already pollinated, the test site was rendered scientifically useless. As the last protestors were returning to the rally site police reinforcements, including horses fresh from a demo at Hillgrove Cat-Breeding Farm, attempted to snatch people randomly out of the crowd and scatter it with horses. A mounted policemen lifted one woman up by her hair. The ensuing chaos provided the media with pictures of ‘violence’, allowing them to portraying the jubilant and good-humoured crowd as an angry mob.

This provocation can only be seen as a deliberate attempt to belittle what was an extremely empowering, significant and, above all, peaceful action – one of the biggest in the recent history of the environmental movement. For many people attending, this was the first time they had taken direct action against the genetic pollution escaping into the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside. A lasting image will be that of an eighty-year old woman, without a suit, quietly pulling up the oilseed rape.

“One of the many things that has unified the huge opposition to GE in this country has been the peaceful nature of all Genetic Events. Please do everything you can to ensure that it continues in the same peaceful vein and enjoy it” From a leaflet distributed at the rally.