Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

Earth First! Winter Moot 2012 — 24–26th February 2012. Updated: location & what to expect

A week­end of dis­cus­sion and net­work­ing for those tak­ing direct action against eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion. 

Please note date & loca­tion change (due to date clash & venue prob­lems):

24–26th Feb­ru­ary 2012, near Glas­gow

Near­est train sta­tion: Lanark.

A week­end of dis­cus­sion and net­work­ing for those tak­ing direct action against eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion. 

Please note date & loca­tion change (due to date clash & venue prob­lems):

24–26th Feb­ru­ary 2012, near Glas­gow

Near­est train sta­tion: Lanark.

See earthfirstgathering.org.uk for fur­ther infor­ma­tion about loca­tion,  pro­gramme and con­tact details

Update:

Where — this years Earth First Win­ter Moot will take place in Gle­spin Vil­lage Hall, South Lanark­shire. Gle­spin is a small vil­lage about 14 miles south of Lanark, and 35 miles south of Glas­gow. South Lanark­shire also has many beau­ti­ful areas with rivers, hills, forests and peat bogs.  Full direc­tions

What to expect — this years Earth First! Win­ter Moot takes place in South Lanark­shire, Scot­land. In a months time envi­ron­men­tal­ists from across the UK and beyond will con­verge to dis­cuss and debate. Below is an update from the organ­is­ing col­lec­tive who are work­ing on the pro­gram.

The Moot 2012 col­lec­tive has felt that at pre­vi­ous EF! Gath­er­ings groups have pri­mar­i­ly attend­ed to recruit for their respec­tive cam­paigns. Yet those who attend EF! Gath­er­ings are pre­dom­i­nant­ly already active, mak­ing them good places for net­work­ing, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for out­right recruit­ment. We recog­nise the effort gath­er­ing organ­is­ers put into plan­ning agen­das but often the more dis­cur­sive aspects of the gath­er­ings focus on larg­er,  abstract ques­tions and debates have often been framed by self-appoint­ed experts. We feel that these dis­cus­sions inef­fec­tive­ly attempt to find answers or reach con­sen­sus where this is inap­pro­pri­ate.

For exam­ple at the first EF! Gath­er­ing 20 years ago the ques­tion was asked: ‘What is EF!?’ 20 years lat­er in 2011 at the last Moot the same ques­tion was still being asked …

The answer is EF! is what we make it, and this year we are going to make it a space in which we can approach our cam­paigns both crit­i­cal­ly and ana­lyt­i­cal­ly by ask­ing more spe­cif­ic and prac­ti­cal ques­tions. Our activism should be con­stant­ly evolv­ing not stuck in a rut ask­ing the same ques­tions again and again.

The agen­da will be designed to ask ques­tions around four key issues: the tac­tics we use; the strate­gies that we employ in our cam­paigns; com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty; and sus­tain­able activism. There will be no attempt to reach con­clu­sions or con­sen­sus espe­cial­ly about what EF! is. Instead we want to have dis­cus­sions that lead to new ideas that could evolve ongo­ing cam­paigns or give cre­ative inspi­ra­tion to ones that are just get­ting start­ed.

A free space will be pro­vid­ed in which cam­paigns will be able to hold meet­ings and have fur­ther dis­cus­sions if they wish, and there will also be some space giv­en for cam­paign updates with an empha­sis on hon­est analy­sis rather than pro­mo­tion.

For updates and more info check the web­site or email us.

efwintermoot@noflag.org.uk

The Dale Farm Eviction and the Whiff of Fascism

19th Octo­ber 2011

 

Despite coura­geous resis­tance by fam­i­lies and a group of activists, Basil­don Coun­cil are con­tin­u­ing their evic­tion of Dale Farm res­i­dents, backed up by the iron fist­ed bru­tal­i­ty of Essex riot cops. Har­row­ing and dev­as­tat­ing though the episode is for the peo­ple being oppressed, it also has dark impli­ca­tions for soci­ety as a whole, in the UK and glob­al­ly.

19th Octo­ber 2011

 

Despite coura­geous resis­tance by fam­i­lies and a group of activists, Basil­don Coun­cil are con­tin­u­ing their evic­tion of Dale Farm res­i­dents, backed up by the iron fist­ed bru­tal­i­ty of Essex riot cops. Har­row­ing and dev­as­tat­ing though the episode is for the peo­ple being oppressed, it also has dark impli­ca­tions for soci­ety as a whole, in the UK and glob­al­ly.

 

While the cor­po­rate media rou­tine­ly spreads the decep­tion that Dale Farm is an “ille­gal site”, it is in fact legal­ly owned by the trav­ellers them­selves. In one part, res­i­dents con­struct­ed build­ings hav­ing won plan­ning per­mis­sion to do so. In the oth­er — where eighty fam­i­lies had been camped before today- no such per­mis­sion has been won. How­ev­er, the lack of legal rights for trav­ellers is part of a broad­er issue, and can­not jus­ti­fi­ably be used to excuse one of the largest mass evic­tions in the coun­try’s recent past. It should be not­ed that 90% of plan­ning per­mis­sion appli­ca­tions by trav­ellers are reject­ed.

The land cur­rent­ly called Dale Farm has been dis­put­ed for decades. Though it is often referred to as “green belt”, it was used as a scrap­yard by the coun­cil as ear­ly as the 1960s. Eng­lish trav­ellers first lived there in the 1970s, but they most­ly left around ten years ago, when Irish trav­ellers moved in.

Legal bat­tles have been rag­ing between Basil­don Coun­cil and the trav­ellers for years, and the lat­ter have exhaust­ed every pos­si­ble avenue in defend­ing their homes. But when the High Court ver­dict was hand­ed down last week, it became clear that the coun­cil’s evic­tion would be going ahead.

Cops and bailiffs began their inva­sion at sev­en this morn­ing, as police in riot gear ille­gal­ly broke down a rear fence, while an appar­tent­ly planned dis­trac­tion took place at the front. Elec­tric­i­ty was cut off, affect­ing essen­tial med­ical equip­ment used by one res­i­dent. Police used Tasers — again poten­tial­ly ille­gal in this sit­u­a­tion — and one batoned woman was hos­pi­talised with back pain, unable to move her legs. Cops were met with bricks and oth­er mis­siles, but their supe­ri­or force is telling.

Local Con­ser­v­a­tive MP John Baron was quick to applaud the state aggres­sion, stat­ing that: “The police have been restrained but at the end of the day, the police have got to defend them­selves to ensure there is no vio­lence”. [empha­sis added]

Clear­ly for Baron, police vio­lence is not vio­lence, and in fact serves to pre­vent vio­lence. The incon­gruity of vio­lent­ly defend­ing your­self from vio­lence before vio­lence takes place does not seem to have occurred to him. In plain Eng­lish, this gang of armed thugs smashed their way into some­one’s prop­er­ty and got their retal­i­a­tion in first, in much the same way as the US and UK rained “shock and awe” on Iraq eight years ago, before con­demn­ing the indige­nous resis­tance.

The finan­cial costs of all this — esti­mat­ed at near­ly £20 mil­lion at a time of pub­lic sec­tor aus­ter­i­ty — show that this is not just some coun­cil’s response to a plan­ning issue. Rather it is a polit­i­cal attack on a mar­gin­alised lay­er of soci­ety, aimed at: 1) reclaim­ing a piece of land for poten­tial­ly more prof­itable use, 2) divert­ing atten­tion from rul­ing class crimes which are impov­er­ish­ing broad mass­es of the pop­u­la­tion, and 3) spear­head­ing the gov­ern­men­t’s Local­ism Bill — which will decrease the already insuf­fi­cient num­ber of sites avail­able to trav­ellers.

In respect to num­ber 2, the right wing gut­ter press has been lead­ing this charge for months, com­bin­ing crude eth­nic stereo­typ­ing of the trav­ellers with out­right lies about the activists who have ded­i­cat­ed so much time to this strug­gle. In a time of sky-high eco­nom­ic ten­sions, the rul­ing class are des­per­ate to find scape­goats and alter­na­tive hate fig­ures, in order to pro­tect them­selves from the seething class anger now endem­ic in soci­ety.

In this respect, the British rul­ing class is no dif­fer­ent to the French, the Ital­ian, Hun­gar­i­an and Czech gov­ern­ments, which have all dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased their per­se­cu­tion of Roma in recent times. This — along­side the anti-Mus­lim big­otry pro­mot­ed by rulers through­out the west­ern world — is an expres­sion of the sort of rul­ing class decay that was last seen dur­ing the last Great Depres­sion, and ulti­mate­ly led to fas­cism in Europe.

The events at Dale Farm must serve as a warn­ing to all work­ing class peo­ple: Today they came for the trav­ellers; tomor­row they are like­ly to come for you.

 

Aldermaston Women Invade Faslane Peace Camp

18/10/2011

18/10/2011
This week­end saw the delec­table women from Alder­mas­ton Women’s Peace Camp descend on Faslane. The theme of the inva­sion was ‘Domes­tic Extrem­ists ‘ at large and they did her Majesty’s Roy­al Navy a ser­vice by clos­ing off the North Gate for a few hours on Sat­ur­day and giv­ing the Min­istry of Defence a much need­ed les­son in domes­tic­i­ty! A few of us from Peace Camp joined our sis­ters and, armed with rub­ber gloves, head scarves and thought pro­vok­ing ban­ners, like good domes­ti­cat­ed women, we gave the gate a right scrub. Of course, we had to stop the influx of NATO army trucks by block­ing the road… that’s why the gate was so dirty in the first place! With the gate (and the MoD police car!) sparkling we decid­ed to cause a bit of mis­chief with some wool but this made the MoD police rather cross… Nev­er­the­less, the whole clean­ing oper­a­tion end­ed ami­ca­bly with no arrests and some of us went on to the South Gate to make our feel­ings on the ille­gal­i­ty and immoral­i­ty of the British Nuclear Weapons Pro­gramme known to the base traf­fic we’d suc­cess­ful­ly divert­ed.

Our vis­it to Coul­port ear­li­er that morn­ing also caused a bit of a kafuf­fle for the gate staff. On behalf of the nation foot­ing the bill for these abhor­rent bombs, we formed a team of Weapons Inspec­tors. We mere­ly want­ed to take a look at the war­heads that are engulf­ing so many of the nation’s tax­es at the expense of our NHS and com­mu­ni­ty projects, but were denied entry. We love our account­able, demo­c­ra­t­ic state.

Con­clu­sion: Those of us at Faslane Peace Camp great­ly appre­ci­at­ed the won­der­ful atmos­phere and engag­ing con­ver­sa­tion that came with our week­end inva­sion. Our for­mi­da­ble sis­ters of Alder­mas­ton Peace Camp are wel­come to come and make domes­tic extrem­ist mis­chief with us any time!

Autumn Action Day at Faslane Peace Camp 22nd October

With the win­ter com­ing Faslane Peace Camp is hav­ing a cre­ative day of work­shops and action against the Tri­dent mis­sile sys­tem based at Faslane.

With the win­ter com­ing Faslane Peace Camp is hav­ing a cre­ative day of work­shops and action against the Tri­dent mis­sile sys­tem based at Faslane.
Come to Faslane Peace Camp, in con­tin­u­ous occu­pa­tion for over 29 years now, for work­shops includ­ing direct action, land occu­pa­tion and out­door liv­ing, cam­paign skill­shar­ing includ­ing pales­tine, and many more. If you have a skill you’d like to share, want to share your expe­ri­ence with cam­paigns or just want more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact us!
So bring your instru­ments and friends along for din­ner and a cup­pa tea (this is an alco­hol free event)
There’ll be live music and veg­an food pro­vid­ed for dona­tion, and vis­i­tors are very wel­come to stay for longer.
There’s plen­ty of sleep­ing spaces avail­able in car­a­vans, although if pos­si­ble bring a tent as there is camp­ing spaces avail­able.
Dogs and chil­dren are wel­come to this event too!
Call us on 01436820901 for more infor­ma­tion.

direc­tions-
The camp is sit­u­at­ed 6 miles North of Helens­burgh. Helens­burgh can be reached from Glas­gow by train, for £5 return, trains leave every half hour from Glas­gow Queens Street (Low lev­el station).Or the 216 from Jamaica St — Helens­burgh.
or direct train from edin­burgh waver­ly to helens­burgh.
You can catch the 316 bus from Helens­burgh Cen­tral train sta­tion (for Coul­port or Gare­loc­head, stops out­side the camp) it only costs £1.75, and you can ask to be dropped off at the peace camp.

-F.P.C. is on the east verge of the A814 road, which leads to HMNB Clyde and beyond. The Camp is there­fore vis­i­ble to all traf­fic com­ing towards the base from the direc­tion of Helens­burgh.

We are about 30 miles west of Glas­gow, by the Gare­loch, a riv­er Clyde estu­ary sea loch. Faslane Naval Base is on the Gare­loch.

The Tri­dent nuclear weapons sys­tem for the UK is based at Faslane Naval Base just down the road from the peace camp. It costs the tax­pay­er over 2bn every year to main­tain 4 nuclear sub­marines with a total of 144 nuclear weapons, each over 10 times more pow­er­ful than the bombs dropped on hiroshi­ma and nagasa­ki. capa­ble of wip­ing out all of human­i­ty at any moment.
They’re pro­posed to be replaced soon so now is the time to take action and stop anoth­er 50 years of nuclear threat, envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion and waste of tax­pay­ers mon­ey on a weapons sys­tem which is capa­ble of destroy­ing human­i­ty at the touch of a but­ton. Faslane peace camp

Update: Work starts to cut down Irton’s beech tree

Break­ing News 11pm, Tues­day 4th:
CONTRACTORS have start­ed work to cut down Irton’s beech tree.
Vic­ki “Beech­nut” Welsh spent four nights in the tree but came down at 10.10am today to applause from vil­lagers, who have now accept­ed defeat in their bat­tle to save the tree.

Break­ing News 11pm, Tues­day 4th:
CONTRACTORS have start­ed work to cut down Irton’s beech tree.
Vic­ki “Beech­nut” Welsh spent four nights in the tree but came down at 10.10am today to applause from vil­lagers, who have now accept­ed defeat in their bat­tle to save the tree.
The tree was fenced-off and felled, to tears — video.

4 Octo­ber 2011
A PROTESTER who is the lat­est to sit in the branch­es of a threat­ened tree in Irton yes­ter­day demand­ed answers to four ques­tions – one of which was aimed square­ly at the Prime Min­is­ter – before she leaves her leafy home.

The 17-year-old Bridling­ton girl, who is known only as Beech Nut, had been there since Fri­day and is the fifth tree­top pro­test­er since the start of the sit-in two weeks ago today.

She said that a spe­cial appeal had also been set up. She said: “I am here to launch the Irton Tree Foun­da­tion and would like to appeal for any help with our cause.”

Beech Nut said she want­ed to dis­pel any mis­con­cep­tions that the protest had cost coun­cil tax­pay­ers £250,000 – because their protest began after the deci­sion to fell the tree had been tak­en.

She added that, while they did not roost in the tree, bats used it as a pri­ma­ry feed­ing site. She said: “I’d like to see the results of a rep­utable bat sur­vey.”

Beech Nut said that the vil­lagers had been treat­ed with dis­re­spect and deserved answers. She asked: “Has the evi­dence been seen by a high court judge?”

And in a ques­tion direct­ed at Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron she asked about the valid­i­ty of tree preser­va­tion orders – the beech tree was the sub­ject of an order but it was over­ruled by a judge. She said: “It’s not just about this tree, in this vil­lage, it’s about all trees in Eng­land.”

A North York­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tive read out a state­ment on Fri­day which said that any­one pre­vent­ing the tree felling, which is like­ly to take place by the end of this week, could face a prison sen­tence.

Tree sup­port­ers have tak­en sep­a­rate legal advice to chal­lenge the court deci­sion and are wait­ing to hear the results.

Irton res­i­dent David Park­er said that they would con­tin­ue the protest until the first “chain­saw touched the trunk”. He added: “We’ve been told that some time this week the tree will def­i­nite­ly be felled but no offi­cial per­son has come here so far.”

He said that they would con­tin­ue to look into every legal avenue that they pos­si­bly could. He said: “We are quite with­in our rights to do so. We have a right to object peace­ful­ly against some­thing we dis­agree with. We will act with­in the law.”

The tree has been the sub­ject of a long-run­ning legal bat­tle between vil­lagers, two local author­i­ties and a near­by home­own­er, who suc­cess­ful­ly applied to a judge to have the beech cut down.

Peo­ple who would like to donate to the Irton Tree Foun­da­tion can do so through any branch of HSBC by using the sort code 40–40-22 and account num­ber 91752707.

3rd October: Manchester occupied!

Yes­ter­day saw the occu­pa­tion of Albert Square in Man­ches­ter out­side the town hall. Through­out the after­noon and evening sev­er­al open mic assem­bly ses­sions were held with peo­ple speak­ing about var­i­ous issues with the com­mon themes being resis­tance to cuts, com­mu­ni­ty organ­is­ing, direct democ­ra­cy, and occu­pa­tions. There was also a sound sys­tem pump­ing out tunes and some danc­ing in the rain.

Yes­ter­day saw the occu­pa­tion of Albert Square in Man­ches­ter out­side the town hall. Through­out the after­noon and evening sev­er­al open mic assem­bly ses­sions were held with peo­ple speak­ing about var­i­ous issues with the com­mon themes being resis­tance to cuts, com­mu­ni­ty organ­is­ing, direct democ­ra­cy, and occu­pa­tions. There was also a sound sys­tem pump­ing out tunes and some danc­ing in the rain.

The per­sis­tent rain proved to be a dis­cour­ag­ing fac­tor and after sev­er­al hours the size of the crowd pret­ty much matched the size of the tarps strung across lam­posts to pro­vide some cov­er (ear­li­er the police had tried to pre­vent peo­ple rig­ging up the shel­ters).

Lat­er in the evening peo­ple heck­led guests attend­ing tory par­ty fringe meet­ings at the town hall and the police went around grab­bing beers off a few peo­ple.

Around 9pm a group of 20–30 peo­ple with a sound sys­tem on their way to the occu­pa­tion from the squat­ted con­ver­gence cen­tre were has­sled by the cops and there were a few arrests.

http://www.occupymanchester.org

Dale Farm: injunction remains for now

LATEST: Mon­day 3 Octo­ber: Basil­don Coun­cil con­cedes that full clear­ance of Dale Farm as orig­i­nal­ly pro­posed would be ille­gal. Coun­cil ordered to pay one third of Dale Far­m’s legal costs. Await­ing out­come of appli­ca­tions for judi­cial reviews, due Tues­day.

LATEST: Mon­day 3 Octo­ber: Basil­don Coun­cil con­cedes that full clear­ance of Dale Farm as orig­i­nal­ly pro­posed would be ille­gal. Coun­cil ordered to pay one third of Dale Far­m’s legal costs. Await­ing out­come of appli­ca­tions for judi­cial reviews, due Tues­day.

The legal­i­ty of the evic­tion notices served by Basil­don Coun­cil on Dale Farm res­i­dents was chal­lenged by the Trav­ellers in the High Court on Fri­day. Once the argu­ments had been heard, includ­ing an appli­ca­tion by Basil­don Coun­cil for the scaf­fold­ing at the entrance to the site to be removed, the Judge Mr Jus­tice Edwards-Stu­art said that there would not be a rul­ing before Mon­day 26 Sep­tem­ber (now extend­ed to Tues­day 4 Octo­ber). Late in the day it was report­ed that the injunc­tion to restrain bailiffs from start­ing any clear­ance or evic­tion of the site would stand in its cur­rent form until at least 4pm Mon­day. A lat­er report indi­cat­ed that the judge may fur­ther extend the injunc­tion into the mid­dle of next week or beyond if nec­es­sary. In the mean­time, appli­ca­tions are being pre­pared for judi­cial review of the evic­tion, which could lead to fur­ther delay of a final deci­sion. Basil­don Coun­cil has already set aside £18 mil­lion to evict the Dale Farm res­i­dents. How­ev­er, with the cur­rent stale­mate report­ed to be cost­ing the coun­cil over £1 mil­lion per day, the total cost is like­ly to have increased by some £8 mil­lion by Mon­day and will con­tin­ue to rise dur­ing any fur­ther delay. With a bit of luck they’ll run out of mon­ey before the evic­tion is allowed to go ahead.

Sup­port­ers are need­ed both at the High Court now and at Dale Farm now and for the dura­tion. Con­tact savedalefarm@gmail.com for more infor­ma­tion or see Save Dale Farm.

Community-Suported Treesitting in Yorkshire: the way forward

27.9.11
An old beech tree has been occu­pied since Tues­day 20th Sep­tem­ber, to stop it’s felling, with a change-over of occu­pi­er last Sat­ur­day, whilst bor­ough and coun­ty coun­cil bat­tle it out in the courts over whether the tree should be felled or pre­served.

Back­ground

27.9.11
An old beech tree has been occu­pied since Tues­day 20th Sep­tem­ber, to stop it’s felling, with a change-over of occu­pi­er last Sat­ur­day, whilst bor­ough and coun­ty coun­cil bat­tle it out in the courts over whether the tree should be felled or pre­served.

Back­ground

The local com­mu­ni­ty has been protest­ing against the destruc­tion of an 80+ year old Beech Tree in Irton, North York­shire for sev­er­al years.

Irton is a vil­lage which has a strong com­mu­ni­ty spir­it. Res­i­dents and out­siders have come togeth­er to show their oppo­si­tion to a North York­shire Coun­cil deci­sion which goes against com­mon sense.

One vis­i­tor to the vil­lage stat­ed “ I went pre­pared to think it was just an ordi­nary tree …. But it is excep­tion­al! It is beau­ti­ful – it adds grace to the vil­lage. Los­ing it would make a huge dif­fer­ence.”

The tree has a ‘tree preser­va­tion order’ on it, which pre­sum­ably means that tree experts feel it should not be destroyed. Despite this as well as local oppo­si­tion from res­i­dents, local coun­cil­lors, the gen­er­al pub­lic and envi­ron­men­tal experts, — North York­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil has decid­ed to fol­low legal pro­ce­dures to destroy the tree. ….

Why is the tree being destroyed?

Occu­piers of a near­by house state that the tree roots are affect­ing, or may affect in the future:

• The bound­ary walls
• The drainage sys­tem
• The cur­rent own­ers access to the prop­er­ty

Why these are not valid rea­sons

The bound­ary walls
• There is no vis­i­ble sign of dam­age to bound­ary walls.

“ It is not in any way affect­ed – it is per­fect­ly upright” says one inde­pen­dent observ­er. House own­ers need to pro­vide evi­dence that dam­age has hap­pened. This con­cern can­not be tak­en seri­ous­ly.

The drainage sys­tem
• 2 expert reviews or ‘tech­ni­cal reports’ have appar­ent­ly been con­duct­ed. Alleged­ly, the first report found that the dam­age to drains pre­ced­ed the tree, and the sec­ond report found that the drains were being dam­aged by the tree.
o Who has com­mis­sioned these reports? No infor­ma­tion has been pro­vid­ed to the pub­lic about who did these reports. Why aren’t these in the pub­lic domain?
o A local tree stu­dent has explained that any dam­age done to walls or drains can nowa­days be dealt with by localised meth­ods – the affect­ed roots can be treat­ed and there is no need to cut down an entire tree.

The cur­rent own­ers access to the prop­er­ty
• The cur­rent occu­piers can move their access point, or con­sid­er using sus­tain­able meth­ods of trans­port.
o Long term res­i­dents of the vil­lage have stat­ed that the prop­er­ty entrance was orig­i­nal­ly well away from the tree, and only in recent years has the gate­way been altered.
o Res­i­dents have indi­cat­ed that the cur­rent own­ers wrere pre­vi­ous­ly inter­est­ed in prop­er­ty devel­op­ment on the site – they sub­mit­ted a plan­ning appli­ca­tion for the devel­op­ment, of sev­er­al dwellings…… but were declined.

North York­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil may have fears about the finan­cial impli­ca­tions of deci­sions they make now, how­ev­er it is unac­cept­able to make the fear of an indi­vid­ual home own­er suing the coun­cil over­ride the rights and needs of nor­mal cit­i­zens.

The pro­test­ers

This protest is entire­ly peace­ful, and there was a feel­ing of con­fu­sion amongst pro­test­ers sur­round­ing the con­cept that what they are doing is a law­break­ing activ­i­ty.

“We felt the tree had been con­demned. We need­ed to stop it hap­pen­ing. It is dis­gust­ing.”

The protest includes a tree-sit in. 2 res­i­dents have been resid­ing in the tree in order to save it.

“We got lad­ders, and stood them up the tree. An hour lat­er, the con­trac­tors turned up. There are 60 and 70 year olds who real­ly do not want this tree cut down. Come and have a look – there is no evi­dence of dam­age.”

Pro­tes­tors in and out of the tree have been sup­port­ed by a strong com­mu­ni­ty, pro­vid­ing moral sup­port, food, drink and warmth, as well as the oblig­a­tory wee jar.

The views

“This is real­ly mov­ing all the bystanders…. Their expres­sions are amaz­ing…. It can’t be wrong to make a peace­ful protest.”.
“There is no defence for killing this tree… I can’t find any defence.”
“ It can’t be right…. Peo­ple in pow­er mak­ing decisions….it just seems very wrong…. It is very wrong. ”

Pro­tes­tors are cur­rent­ly being advised by the Envi­ron­men­tal Legal Foun­da­tion.

More pho­tos

Video

new EF! Action Update

In an end of the sum­mer com­pact EF!AU, find news about kick­ing shell in the teeth in Ross­port again and then some more, sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty at Dale Farm, and anti-GM resis­tance — Spuds you Don’t Like demo in Eng­land, sab­o­tage in Ger­many, France and Scot­land.

In an end of the sum­mer com­pact EF!AU, find news about kick­ing shell in the teeth in Ross­port again and then some more, sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty at Dale Farm, and anti-GM resis­tance — Spuds you Don’t Like demo in Eng­land, sab­o­tage in Ger­many, France and Scot­land.

On top of the usu­al con­tacts and dates, read about sol­i­dar­i­ty with jailed Swiss nan­otech activists, resis­tance against steel plants, mobile phone masts, min­ing and ener­gy projects here & across the world — stay angry and don’t car­ry on as usu­al!

The quar­ter­ly EF!AU, August 2011

Rossport roundup

Gar­daí look on as Shell secu­ri­ty con­tin­ue to use unlaw­ful force on peace­ful pro­tes­tors

Gar­daí look on as Shell secu­ri­ty con­tin­ue to use unlaw­ful force on peace­ful pro­tes­tors

On Thurs­day last, the 15th Sep­tem­ber, Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty force, IRMS con­tin­ued their prac­tice of using force on the pub­lic road as they see fit. Once again the Gar­daí sat close by and wit­nessed this unlaw­ful use of force by IRMS and allowed it to con­tin­ue unim­ped­ed.

At approx­i­mate­ly 2:30pm last Thurs­day, a small num­ber of cam­paign­ers from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp went down to the entrance of the Shell com­pound in Augh­oose to peace­ful­ly protest. Work­ers at the com­pound were attempt­ing to lay tar­mac at the entrace to the com­pound, so the cam­paign­ers attempt­ed to sit down on the edge of the road. How­ev­er the cam­paign­ers were pre­vent­ed from sit­ting down at the edge of the road by IRMS and were pushed, kicked, punched, pulled and car­ried away from sit­ting down at the edge of the road. This con­tin­ued for over 45 min­utes dur­ing which Gar­daí watched the whole sit­u­a­tion from Gar­da vans parked no more than 50 metres away.

Com­ment­ing on the lat­est inci­dent Shell to Sea spokesper­son Ter­ence Con­way stat­ed “Let’s be clear about this: Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty — IRMS — have absolute­ly no right to use any force on cam­paign­ers who are peace­ful­ly protest­ing on a pub­lic road. The fact that Gar­daí would watch IRMS assault cam­paign­ers for near­ly an hour on a pub­lic road is anoth­er clear exam­ple of the total sus­pen­sion of the rule of law in rela­tion to protest­ing against Shell.”

“In Octo­ber in Gene­va, the UN Uni­ver­sal Peri­od­ic Review will review Ire­land’s human rights record, and while the Irish Gov­ern­ment give great lip-ser­vice to human rights abus­es in far-away places, they are let­ting Shell and the Gar­daí here in Mayo do what­ev­er they wish to peace­ful pro­tes­tors”. [1][2]

NOTES

[1] UN urged to exam­ine Irish human rights laps­es – Irish Times — 13th August 2011
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0813/1224302379794.html

[2] Shell to Sea high­lights human rights abus­es to UN
http://www.shelltosea.com/content/shell-sea-highlights-human-rights-abuses-un

—

Fence climb­ing, tres­pass­ing, trac­tor climb­ing and more dis­rup­tion of work in Augh­oose, Co. Mayo

Tues­day 13th Sep­tem­ber six peo­ple from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp went down to Shel­l’s tun­nelling com­pound in Augh­oose, Co. Mayo to dis­rupt work. Work was slowed from three sep­a­rate actions spread over 2 hours as peo­ple inter­fered with fenc­ing work and then two peo­ple got up on a trac­tor mak­ing a deliv­ery to the com­pound.

Over the past cou­ple days Shel­l’s com­pound in Augh­oose has seen some major dam­age to the perime­ter fenc­ing. The heavy duty pal­isade fenc­ing (the green spiky one) is still in place, but a lot of the flim­sy sil­ver har­ris fenc­ing is down, con­crete bol­lards hold­ing oth­er fenc­ing was smashed, and the green fenc­ing pan­els (which is in piles along the road in the pho­tos) came down. As a result of this destruc­tion, Shell has all but stopped mak­ing deliv­er­ies to the com­pound.

On Tues­day after­noon as Shell work­ers were try­ing to repair some of the dam­age done, six peo­ple went down to dis­rupt them. Green fenc­ing pan­els were in piles along the road­side of the com­pound, and peo­ple sat on the piles to pre­vent the work­ers from putting them back up. A dig­ger on the inside of the com­pound was wait­ing to re-erect the pan­els, but the pro­test­ers made this dif­fi­cult and the dig­ger dri­ver gave up.

Shel­l’s secu­ri­ty (IRMS) even­tu­al­ly came over and dragged peo­ple off of the pan­els. This was not on Shel­l’s prop­er­ty but the road verge, so the pri­vate secu­ri­ty had no right to use force on the pub­lic road. Gar­dai were present but did­n’t seem to mind pri­vate secu­ri­ty assault­ing peo­ple on the pub­lic road and at one point even did some labour for Shell, mov­ing fenc­ing pan­els back into place.

After awhile peo­ple went around the side of the com­pound and tres­passed onto Shel­l’s land where work­ers were try­ing to fin­ish the last bit of the heavy duty pal­isade fenc­ing. As soon as peo­ple showed up the work­ers gave up and packed away their tools, the dri­vers got out of the dig­gers and walked away. This last­ed for about an hour until Shell secu­ri­ty dragged and car­ried peo­ple off the land.

One pro­test­er was sex­u­al­ly assault­ed as they were being car­ried by IRMS. Their pants were falling down and they asked secu­ri­ty to put them down so they could pull their clothes back on, but IRMS refused. The secu­ri­ty mem­ber (pic­tured below) who was car­ry­ing the per­son­’s legs shoved both of his hands up into the per­son­’s crotch. He refused to show his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion badge fol­low­ing the assault.

After this a trac­tor car­ry­ing some sort of bog-drainage equip­ment was com­ing down the road towards the com­pound. Peo­ple ran towards it and despite attempts by Gar­dai to keep them off the trac­tor two peo­ple climbed up on top of it. One per­son was dragged down from a con­sid­er­able height, and the oth­er came down after being giv­en a warn­ing under the Pub­lic Order Act. Nei­ther per­son was arrest­ed.

Actions against Shell are pret­ty much con­stant at the moment, with some­times 3 or 4 sep­a­rate actions in a day. Morale is high, and any­time is a good time to vis­it if you’d like to see the area and find out more about what is hap­pen­ing. There is a week­ly protest out­side Shel­l’s Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery, with lots of locals and peo­ple from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. And there’s plen­ty to do aside from protest­ing, includ­ing cook­ing, tend­ing to the three gar­dens, meet­ing locals and loads of building/site main­te­nance!

The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is locat­ed in a field in Augh­oose, between Bal­linaboy and Pul­lath­omas. To con­tact the camp, rossportsolidaritycamp[at]gmail[dot]com or 085 114 1170

More pho­tos — http://www.indymedia.ie/article/100512