Category: Gatherings

This year, the Earth First! sum­mer gath­er­ing will be at a squat­ted site. This isn’t any­thing new, as EF! has a long and proud his­to­ry of reclaim­ing space, most recent­ly dur­ing the 2023 sum­mer gath­er­ing at a pro­posed coal mine loca­tion in White­haven, Cum­bria.

How­ev­er, we know the last two gath­er­ings have been on per­mis­sive sites, and we want to make sure that those who have become EF!ers in the last few years are aware of the dif­fer­ences.

What is squatting?

Squat­ting is when you occu­py land or a build­ing with­out the landown­er’s per­mis­sion. This is tres­pass­ing, which is against the law, how­ev­er cru­cial­ly it is only a civ­il offence. This means that tech­ni­cal­ly the landown­er can take you to civ­il court to regain pos­ses­sion of the land, but it’s not a crim­i­nal offence, mean­ing that the police should­n’t get involved, and the crown pros­e­cu­tion ser­vice can’t charge you for it.

Although civ­il tres­pass itself isn’t a crim­i­nal offence, it’s still pos­si­ble to com­mit oth­er crim­i­nal offences while squat­ting. For exam­ple, if you are both tres­pass­ing and inten­tion­al­ly obstruct­ing, dis­rupt­ing, or intim­i­dat­ing oth­ers from car­ry­ing out ‘law­ful activ­i­ties’ on that land, this becomes aggra­vat­ed tres­pass. If you cause any dam­age to prop­er­ty, this is crim­i­nal dam­age. We will not be com­mit­ting any crim­i­nal offences, so this should­n’t be a prob­lem.

But I don’t know how to squat somewhere!

There will be a ded­i­cat­ed group of peo­ple respon­si­ble for set­ting up the site ini­tial­ly. If you are a gen­er­al attendee, just wait for the loca­tion announce­ment on the web­site (prob­a­bly by 10am on Wednes­day 12th August). If you see it, this means the site has been secured and it should be fine to arrive. So don’t wor­ry — you won’t be expect­ed to rock up and be part of the group secur­ing the site with­out your pri­or knowl­edge! Once set up, the site should be fair­ly sim­i­lar in vibes to what you find at per­mis­sive gath­er­ings. There’ll be camp­ing, work­shops, games, food, singing and friends, just like always. We’ll want as many peo­ple as ear­ly as pos­si­ble to make it safer for every­one, so please plan to arrive on the morn­ing of Wednes­day.

How risky is it?

Gen­er­al­ly, squat­ting is not par­tic­u­lar­ly risky. The main avenue open to the landown­er is to take squat­ters to court, to get either a pos­ses­sion order or an inter­im pos­ses­sion order. They both require a min­i­mum of 2 work­ing days notice before the hear­ing, and with our gath­er­ing being just 6 days, leav­ing on the Mon­day after a week­end, it is impos­si­ble that either of these poten­tial orders would arrive in time to mat­ter.

Anoth­er com­mon strat­e­gy is to try to use pri­vate mus­cle to intim­i­date and remove peo­ple from the land. This is legal to a point, as pri­vate secu­ri­ty has the right to use so-called ‘rea­son­able force’ to remove tres­passers. How­ev­er, this is also quite unlike­ly, as we will be a gath­er­ing with at least sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple. This is far too many for them to con­sid­er vio­lent­ly remov­ing. It will also look very bad for them — we’re just peo­ple who care about the world hav­ing a short, peace­ful gath­er­ing in a way that respects the land we’re on (more than the landown­ers do!)

It is also pos­si­ble that they will call the police, even though we won’t be com­mit­ting any crim­i­nal offences. The most like­ly result will be that a cou­ple of rur­al crime bob­bies will come and have a look, and through a com­bi­na­tion of “this is a civ­il mat­ter, they’re not doing crime” and “oooh look there are rather quite a lot more of them than us, we don’t have enough resources to try to remove them all, and then we’d have to car­ry their tents away too”, will leave and do noth­ing.

We can only talk about prob­a­bil­i­ties — it’d be lying to sug­gest we can guar­an­tee any­thing. How­ev­er, even if the already unlike­ly bad sce­nario hap­pens where lots of goons and/or cops show up, it is even MORE unlike­ly that they won’t allow peo­ple who want to leave to leave. They will be look­ing to remove us at that point — and if that pass­es your per­son­al risk thresh­old and you need to go, that is absolute­ly fine, and they should let you go, as it’ll be what they want too. How­ev­er, we do think that a large response is very unlike­ly — informed con­sent just involves talk­ing about all sce­nar­ios.

What do you think will happen?

The landown­er will prob­a­bly be a bit dis­grun­tled at first, but we’ll explain that we’ll be gone in a few days and we’re not going to dam­age any­thing or dis­rupt any law­ful activ­i­ty, and so the path of least resis­tance will be for them to grum­ble and just wait for us to leave.

Of course, it is pos­si­ble we may fail to secure our pri­ma­ry site. If this hap­pens, we’ll announce a delay on our web­site, and then move on to our back­up site, which will then be announced. This will prob­a­bly be on the after­noon of the 12th (or evening if it is an espe­cial­ly tricky day…)

Greet­ings — there’s just over a week to go until the 2026 EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing in the Peak Dis­trict.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we all know the cli­mate cri­sis is respon­si­ble for the scar­i­ly hot and dry weath­er. We have had a sum­mer of heat­waves, and August is unlike­ly to be dif­fer­ent. There are wild­fires all over the world, and cur­rent­ly sev­er­al burn­ing in the Peak Dis­trict.

The gath­er­ing intends to be incred­i­bly care­ful around the risk of start­ing any fires at the site. Some of this is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the site crew — for exam­ple, we will be hav­ing the heat­ing ele­ment of our kitchen in an off-site, fire safe loca­tion. How­ev­er, fire safe­ty is also about ask­ing every­one par­tic­i­pat­ing to stick to some col­lec­tive agree­ments.

The EF! gath­er­ings col­lec­tive is ask­ing atten­dees:

• Don’t bring per­son­al camp­ing stoves (if you require your own food for access rea­sons, please email earthfirst.uk@proton.me to dis­cuss)
• Not to bring any glass bot­tles (they can start fires)
• To only smoke and vape in our des­ig­nat­ed smok­ing areas, where there will be sand buck­ets for cig­a­rette butts, and water buck­ets & fire extin­guish­ers
• Don’t have any bar­be­cues or camp­fires

Site location

This year, EF! will be squat­ting a site in the Peak Dis­trict. As it will be non-per­mis­sive, the exact loca­tion can’t be shared ahead of time. It will be shared on this web­site on the morn­ing of Wednes­day 12th August.

How­ev­er, the rough loca­tion can still be shared, as it’s often impor­tant to make book­ings in advance.

Traveling from the East (Sheffield)

It’s rec­om­mend­ed that peo­ple com­ing from the East side of the coun­try make their way to Sheffield. The site loca­tion is acces­si­ble by a direct bus ride from the city cen­tre, last­ing no more than 45 min­utes and cost­ing £3. The bus runs from the morn­ing until the ear­ly evening — any gaps in the ser­vice should be filled by a shut­tle.

It will then be a 5 minute walk on slight­ly bumpy, nar­row, and then steep ter­rain. (We appre­ci­ate this sounds con­cern­ing to peo­ple with mobil­i­ty needs — please email us earthfirst.uk@proton.me if you’d like to talk about options)

Sheffield is acces­si­ble by train and coach from vir­tu­al­ly all major cities.

Traveling from the West (Manchester then Bamford)

If you are trav­el­ing from the West of the coun­try, you are still wel­come to make your way to Sheffield, how­ev­er you may also find it eas­i­er to go to Man­ches­ter and then take the Hope Val­ley line to Bam­ford, from which the site will be a half-hour direct bus ride, cost­ing £3.

Man­ches­ter is acces­si­ble by train and coach from vir­tu­al­ly all major cities. The train to Bam­ford nor­mal­ly runs hourly from about 6am to 10pm and lasts about an hour.

The any­time fare is £15.10 (£10.05 with a rail­card) for a sin­gle, or £19.60 (£13.05 with a rail­card) for a return. Often cheap­er advance tick­ets are avail­able.

When to arrive and leave

Site set­up will start from the ear­ly morn­ing on Wednes­day 12th August, how­ev­er it may take a few hours to secure it enough to be able to pub­licly announce it. It should be announced by 10am, from which point every­one is wel­come and encour­aged to come help set up the site! If you’re plan­ning on arriv­ing ear­ly, bring some water and a packed lunch, as the first sched­uled meal won’t be until the evening.

The gath­er­ing will last until Mon­day 17th, which is the pack down day. There will be break­fast, but no lunch and din­ner. Every­one should expect to leave by mid after­noon — please stay and help us to pack down if you can, but as it’s a squat you may not want to linger too long after most oth­ers have left. There will be plen­ty of oth­er pret­ty places near­by if you want­ed to stay in the Peaks!

How much mon­ey?

This gath­er­ing is as DIY as it gets, and doing it our­selves also means fund­ing it our­selves. No one prof­its off of these gath­er­ings. No one gets paid.

Gath­er­ings always run on a dona­tion basis, and no one is turned away for lack of funds. At the wel­come desk you will be able to donate what­ev­er feels right, based on ‘sol­i­dar­i­ty pric­ing’:

Sol­i­dar­i­ty pric­ing: Have more, pay more. Have less, pay less.

Here’s a lit­tle guide to help you judge how much you can afford com­pared to oth­ers, it’s not just about income, oth­er fac­tors are impor­tant. Class, wealth and expe­ri­ences of sys­temic oppres­sion all play a part. Remem­ber, it’s just a guide, an imper­fect way to cre­ate a more eco­nom­i­cal­ly lib­er­at­ing mod­el while we work to smash cap­i­tal­ism and cre­ate dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic sys­tems.

• Some fac­tors that can allow you to afford more:

- Hav­ing above aver­age income

- Own­ing land or prop­er­ty

- Being like­ly to inher­it prop­er­ty or wealth

- Hav­ing sig­nif­i­cant wealth, sav­ings or invest­ments

- Being eas­i­ly able to meet basic needs and can afford lux­u­ries (hol­i­days, take­away)

- Hav­ing recog­nised edu­ca­tion­al back­ground and qual­i­fi­ca­tions (good schools, degrees, post­grad etc.) 

- Being eas­i­ly able to get well paid work

- Hav­ing a safe­ty net or strong social sup­port net­works (eg a par­ents house to retreat to, friends with mon­ey etc.)

• Some fac­tors that can reduce how much you can afford:

- Earn­ing less than aver­age income

- Sup­port­ing depen­dents or hav­ing care respon­si­bil­i­ties (chil­dren, rel­a­tives, part­ners etc.)

- Hav­ing dis­abil­i­ties or long term ill-health

- Reg­u­lar­ly being in con­tact with state/institutional vio­lence

- Pre­car­i­ous migra­tion sta­tus (eg being a Refugee, asy­lum seek­er or per­son with­out papers)

- Being unable to legal­ly work

- Expe­ri­enc­ing finan­cial dis­tress (eg. unex­pect­ed court fees, los­ing a job, sud­den rent increas­es)

- Expe­ri­enc­ing sys­temic oppres­sion due to things such as race, class, gen­der, neu­ro­di­ver­si­ty, sex­u­al­i­ty

No one is turned away for lack of funds, please don’t let cost put you off attend­ing!

We all have dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ships to mon­ey and we encour­age every­one to be hon­est with them­selves. The emo­tions that come up when we talk about what we can afford can often cloud our judge­ment. Cap­i­tal­ism breeds a cul­ture of scarci­ty — for some this feels like emo­tion­al insta­bil­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty, and for oth­ers this looks like mate­r­i­al pover­ty and a lack of resources. It is impos­si­ble to talk about things like class, mon­ey, wealth or income with­out think­ing about sys­temic oppres­sions like racism or ableism.

 There are lots of hid­den costs involved with gath­er­ings like this. Some stuff can’t be found in bins or bor­rowed, and while we try to keep costs down, there is equip­ment we would like to pur­chase to make sum­mer camps like this more acces­si­ble in the future, (eg track mat­ting, a minibus, light­ing, solar pan­els, hear­ing induc­tion loop,.) By donat­ing more gen­er­ous­ly you are help­ing achieve this!

No one is turned away from EF! for a lack of funds, but if you are plan­ning on spend­ing any mon­ey at the gath­er­ing, cash is pre­ferred as there’s not a cash machine near the site!

EF! is as DIY as it gets, which means some­times the card read­er does­n’t have sig­nal, and do you real­ly want to give some­one your whole entire gov­ern­ment name so you do a bank trans­fer to buy their zine?

EF! does­n’t receive fund­ing from bil­lion­aires and dona­tions help cov­er costs like food, kit main­te­nance, hir­ing vans and buy­ing equip­ment to increase acces­si­bil­i­ty of the gath­er­ings. If you are unsure what you should con­tribute, please have a read of this sol­i­dar­i­ty pric­ing guide

This is your (non-exhaus­tive) kit list for the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing!

tent, sleep­ing bag, roll mat or ham­mock, mos­qui­to net, tarp
head torch, ear plugs, face mask
good shoes for lots of walk­ing, sun cream, bat­tery pack + cable
long trousers and socks (tick proof­ing!)
bug repel­lent (mos­qui­to proof­ing! no nasty chem­i­cals plz)
tooth­brush, any meds you need for the week
bowl, mug, cut­lery
crafts & pro­pa­gan­da
cash!! (for zines, books, snacks, dona­tions to cov­er gath­er­ing costs)

Ampli­fied music can be very dis­rup­tive to wildlife, espe­cial­ly dur­ing peri­ods of extreme weath­er when crea­tures are already stressed. We love a wild wood­land rave as much as the next EF!er, how­ev­er to make sure that our pres­ence in the ecosys­tem is as low-impact as pos­si­ble, evening enter­tain­ment will be an acoustic affair at this year’s sum­mer gath­er­ing. We are look­ing for activ­i­ties that every­one can get involved with in the evenings and will have some very spe­cial per­for­mances🐴🐷🐲. If you can host a evening activ­i­ty, quiz, wide game, an open mic or a ceilidh please get in touch!

Earthfirst.uk@proton.me

The work­shop sched­ule for the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing is fill­ing up!!

EF!ers asked for more hands-on and prac­ti­cal work­shops and oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn with our whole bod­ies, so to meet this need there will be work­shops on 12V electrics, climb­ing, herbal­ism, tech secu­ri­ty and more! Please get in touch if you have your own prac­ti­cal skills to share!

To fol­low on from con­vos at the last year sum­mer gath­er­ing there will be work­shops on top­ics such as can­cel cul­ture, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence & data cen­tres, and move­ment strat­e­gy. We’re espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed to include work­shops on themes such as prison abo­li­tion or eco­cide & the mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex. If you have one on those top­ics please get in touch!

And because we are always wel­com­ing new peo­ple into the move­ment, we will have our reg­u­lar work­shops dis­cussing key prin­ci­ples of green eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ments, includ­ing work­shops on green anar­chy & bio­cen­trism, and an intro to EF!

To get in touch, email earthfirst.uk@proton.me

Can you help run kids activ­i­ties at the sum­mer gath­er­ing? Or a wide game or craft activ­i­ty that every­one can get involved with?

Can you help in the kitchen? We need folks who are cre­ative and con­fi­dent in cater­ing for the mass­es, who can help make sure every­one gets fed!

Can you run a work­shop or offer some evening enter­tain­ment? Skill shares, wide games, a ceilidh even?!

If you can help fill one of these essen­tial roles dur­ing the gath­er­ing then drop us an email at earthfirst.uk@proton.me