Category: Squatting / Free Spaces / Protest Sites

Work­ers at the Ves­tas Wind Tur­bine fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight have JUST NOW occu­pied their fac­to­ry. They are fight­ing for 600 jobs and the future of the plan­et. They need help now.

PLEASE TEXT AND CALL EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

There is a large pick­et of sup­port start­ing out­side the fac­to­ry. This will be cru­cial in giv­ing peo­ple con­fi­dence inside. We want hun­dreds of peo­ple by morn­ing.
If you are not work­ing, come now, by car, bus or train.
If you are on the South Coast and work­ing, come for the night and go to work exhaust­ed and proud.

If you can’t come, call up friends and offer to pay the fare or petrol mon­ey for some­one else to come down. Or part of the fare.
Don’t just call the envi­ron­men­tal and union activists you know. Call your friends and ask them who they know. Call your brother’s friends or your children’s friends. Text every­one. Get your friends call­ing and tex­ting.

WE WANT HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE NOW. SAVE THE JOBS — SAVE THE PLANET.

The work­ers want Gor­don Brown to step in as if it was a trou­bled bank and save the jobs and keep mak­ing wind tur­bine blades. They gave the bankers tril­lions. They say they care about cli­mate change. He has talked about cre­at­ing 40,000 “Green Jobs”, the first step should be pro­tect­ing these 600.

The work­ers will need sol­i­dar­i­ty — dona­tions of mon­ey, food and oth­er assis­tance. In the first instance please send mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty to savevestas@gmail.com

We will sug­gest oth­er forms of sol­i­dar­i­ty soon. Do this now. Reach for your phone.

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How to get there, and more info at:

http://savevestas.wordpress.com/

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A pro­test­er claims the 30 demon­stra­tors at a sit-in at the Ves­tas wind tur­bine fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight have been told they will be sacked.

Dan­ish com­pa­ny Ves­tas Windsys­tems plans to make 625 work­ers redun­dant at the end of July, despite ris­ing prof­its.

One of the pro­test­ers, who occu­pied the New­port site on Mon­day, said man­agers gave them until 2230 BST on Tues­day to end their action or face the sack.

Ves­tas said con­sul­ta­tion on the site was on-going and would not com­ment.

The work­er, who did not want to be named, said: “We have been told we will be sacked.

“We were giv­en the choice to leave by 2230 BST last night and keep our redun­dan­cy pack­age and walk out with no charges.

“Obvi­ous­ly we have stayed in. We did­n’t want it to come to this.

“We want the com­pa­ny to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment tak­ing the site over and improv­ing the redun­dan­cy pack­age.”

The cam­paign­ers have called on Ed Miliband, the ener­gy and cli­mate change sec­re­tary, to trav­el to the island and speak to them.

Luke, one of the pro­test­ers, said: “We’re pre­pared to stay here for as long as it takes.”

About 200 work­ers staged a protest out­side the fac­to­ry on Tues­day after being turned away when they arrived for work.

They were also joined by cli­mate change pro­test­ers who are sup­port­ing them.

Police said Ves­tas has start­ed legal action to gain an injunc­tion which would remove the pro­test­ers.

The com­pa­ny said the fac­to­ry was being closed next week due to reduced demand for wind tur­bines in north­ern Europe

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Update, 22nd July: ARRESTS AT VESTAS + FOOD IN

At 5.10am this morn­ing, a cli­mate activist at the protest out­side the Ves­tas plant attempt­ed to take a bag of food to the occu­py­ing work­ers by means of a rope which the work­ers had low­ered from the bal­cony. The activist was grabbed by 5 police offi­cers and arrest­ed. On his release he obtained the police report of his arrest, which stat­ed that the rea­son for his arrest was that, as his bring­ing food to the occu­piers had the stat­ed inten­tion of pro­long­ing the protest, it was facil­i­tat­ing a breach of the peace – clear­ly ludi­crous as the police have them­selves admit­ted that the protest is not breach­ing the peace.

At 1248, a large num­ber of pro­tes­tors walked through the line of police hold­ing food in their hands which they threw up to the bal­cony. The police pushed some of the pro­tes­tors and attempt­ed to obstruct the line but did not offer sub­stan­tial resis­tance. One pro­tes­tor was harassed by a secu­ri­ty guard, and asked a police offi­cer, whose num­ber was 24266, if he intend­ed to do any­thing about it; the offi­cer said he didn’t. Anoth­er pro­tes­tor saw a police offi­cer grab­bing the arm of an activist as he attempt­ed to throw food to the bal­cony – the activist told the police offi­cer that this con­sti­tut­ed harass­ment, the police offi­cer took no notice.

A sec­ond cli­mate activist was arrest­ed and tak­en through the front doors of the fac­to­ry. Lat­er, a sergeant whose num­ber was 3027 came out and said that no-one had been arrest­ed for car­ry­ing food, but that one activist had been arrest­ed for assault. Oth­er pro­tes­tors present have com­ment­ed that as the activist in ques­tion, who has not giv­en per­mis­sion for his name to be released, is a chris­t­ian paci­fist, this seems unlike­ly.

Secu­ri­ty have start­ed putting up a fence around the site, with pro­tes­tors out­side attempt­ing to get a sec­ond food-car­ry­ing walk-in past the police before its com­ple­tion. There are cur­rent­ly around 50 pro­tes­tors out­side the fac­to­ry, over 30 of them Ves­tas work­ers, and sources say they expect num­bers to increase dras­ti­cal­ly around 6pm when the protest starts.