Category: London

Lon­don

Mass Action: The Big-Six Energy Monopoly

Thurs­day 3rd May 2012
Meet in cen­tral Lon­don, details to be announced

The Big Six ener­gy com­pa­nies: British Gas, EDF, E.ON, RWE pow­er, Scot­tish & South­ern and Scot­tish Pow­er con­trol 99% of our ener­gy sup­ply — mak­ing obscene prof­its from burn­ing fos­sil fuels, trash­ing the plan­et and push­ing peo­ple into fuel pover­ty.

Let’s take back the pow­er.

Thurs­day 3rd May 2012
Meet in cen­tral Lon­don, details to be announced

The Big Six ener­gy com­pa­nies: British Gas, EDF, E.ON, RWE pow­er, Scot­tish & South­ern and Scot­tish Pow­er con­trol 99% of our ener­gy sup­ply — mak­ing obscene prof­its from burn­ing fos­sil fuels, trash­ing the plan­et and push­ing peo­ple into fuel pover­ty.

Let’s take back the pow­er.

On Thurs­day 3rd May, as the Exec­u­tives of the Big Six meet at the UK Ener­gy Sum­mit in cen­tral Lon­don, join Cli­mate Jus­tice Col­lec­tive in a mass action for ener­gy democ­ra­cy and against cor­po­rate con­trol and cen­tralised pow­er sys­tems.

The more heads involved in organ­is­ing this, the bet­ter it will be — so come along to our next organ­is­ing meet­ing:
When: Sat­ur­day; 3rd March: 11am – 5pm
Where: Green­peace, Canon­bury Vil­las, Lon­don, N1 2PN. Clos­est tube: Angel
or High­bury & Isling­ton.

*Crash Space & Kids* Please email climatejusticecollective@gmail.com if you’ll be need­ing crash space for Fri­day and/or Sat­ur­day night. Also let us know if you’ll be bring­ing along any of the next gen­er­a­tion of move­ment builders 🙂 Their ages would be help­ful to know as well.

http://climatejusticecollective.wordpress.com/

FRACK MOB 2

*Demo: 14th March*

Organised by *Frack Off <http://www.frack-off.org.uk/>*


On the 14-15th of March, The Marriott Hotel Regents Park is playing host

to another orgy of misinformation and industry propaganda, all in the name

of shafting the planet for profit. Let’s not disappoint! Fracking



*Demo: 14th March*


Organised by *Frack Off <http://www.frack-off.org.uk/>*



On the 14-15th of March, The Marriott Hotel Regents Park is playing host
to another orgy of misinformation and industry propaganda, all in the name
of shafting the planet for profit. Let’s not disappoint! Fracking
investors and the fracking companies themselves will be there. This is a
fantastic opportunity to expose the greenwash and show investors and
backers how dangerous and unpopular it is.



Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 3-8pm, 128 King Henrys Road, NW3 3ST London.



More details TBC - join the 'Frack Off' facebook event



https://www.facebook.com/events/165452203557945



to keep updated!

Reclaim the Fields Spring Gathering 2012 — details & updates

@ The Wilder­ness Cen­tre, Mitcheldean, For­est of Dean, Glouces­ter­shire, GL17 0HA

The first Reclaim the Fields Gath­er­ing of the year will be tak­ing place this March at the Wilder­ness Cen­tre in the For­est of Dean.

Pre-Gath­er­ing Help need­ed:

@ The Wilder­ness Cen­tre, Mitcheldean, For­est of Dean, Glouces­ter­shire, GL17 0HA

The first Reclaim the Fields Gath­er­ing of the year will be tak­ing place this March at the Wilder­ness Cen­tre in the For­est of Dean.

Pre-Gath­er­ing Help need­ed:

Any­one inter­est­ed in help­ing out with the running/ set­ting up of the event, should come to the Wilder­ness asap. If you’re inter­est­ed in giv­ing a talk, or demon­strat­ing a skill — get in con­tact, or just show up and arrange to use one of the “spaces” avail­able with one of the Pro­tect The Wilder­ness Crew.

The pro­vi­sion­al timetable includes:

Thurs­day 8th:

*Intro­duc­tion to Reclaim the Fields — where we’ve come from and recent action, includ­ing feed­back from the Euro­pean Gath­er­ing.
* Wilder­ness Cen­tre intro­duc­tion & house­keep­ing
*Open Intro­duc­tions; intro­duce your self & your projects & con­tin­ue net­work­ing with our notice­board

The remain­der of the day is designed around open spaces, giv­ing peo­ple a chance to work & com­mu­ni­cate around these sug­ges­tions so far:

*WWOLF (woof­ing with teeth) and Reclaim the Field Trips
*Seed Sov­er­eign­ty & grow­er-to-grow­er seed dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works
*Car­rots ses­sion e.g. RTF inter­nal structure/sharing work­loads
*Using the food sov­er­eign­ty prin­ci­ples as a strate­gic frame­work — (in a UK con­text)
*How to organ­ise & main­tain effec­tive land occu­pa­tions
*Com­post­ing gen­der
*Plan­ning for Inter­na­tion­al Peas­ants Day of Strug­gle on April 17th
*Legal options for access­ing land
*Pro­tect­ing bee pop­u­la­tions

Fri­day 9th:

*Ses­sion on gen­er­al Reclaim the Fields strat­e­gy and focus­es for 2012
Work­shops and talks:
*An intro­duc­tion to land rights
*His­to­ry of Land rights strug­gles in the For­est of Dean

Fol­lowed by a con­sen­sus based gueril­la gar­den­ing action… remains open to sug­ges­tions!
(ideas so far…)
*Food for­est, in an aban­doned quar­ry
*Care home for the elder­ly
* Clear-felled Forestry land
* Vic­to­ri­an walled gar­den

Sat­ur­day 10th:

Pro­tect The Wilder­ness open skill-share day!
Seed swap, Com­mu­ni­ty bring and share.
Gar­den­ing the organ­ic com­mu­ni­ty gar­den, and walled gar­den.
Music and feast­ing!

Not for­get­ting gar­den­ing, char­coal burn­ing, bak­ing in the cob oven, seed­bomb mak­ing, cob­bing the round-house, and chop­ping wood through-out!

£5 sug­gest­ed dona­tion per day, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Items to bring:
Warm clothes, two sets (if you mind being mud­dy)
bed­ding, camp­ing mats
tools for g‑gardening [spades, forks, mat­tocks, bill­hooks]
Instru­ments, danc­ing shoes,
seeds for seed­bombs,
home-grown veg, pick­les, jams, whole foods

More info about the Wilder­ness Cen­tre: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Protect-the-Wilderness-Centre-Forest-of-Dean/321890141176064
Who to con­tact for more infor­ma­tion: use the RTF UK email list or email frankynecklace@yahoo.co.uk

Gourds work be done,

Pro­tect The Wilder­ness,
Reclaim the Fields!

#occupyoil pimlico shell garage morning closure

Feb­ru­ary 8 2012

activists closed down the very busy bel­gravia shell petrol sta­tion in pim­li­co this morn­ing as the first sor­tie in a day of actions under the umbrel­la of #occu­py­oil, and main­ly tar­get­ting the oil giant ‘shell’.

Feb­ru­ary 8 2012

activists closed down the very busy bel­gravia shell petrol sta­tion in pim­li­co this morn­ing as the first sor­tie in a day of actions under the umbrel­la of #occu­py­oil, and main­ly tar­get­ting the oil giant ‘shell’.

there will be a pub­licly announced noise demo for an hour at noon today out­side the niger­ian house on northum­ber­land avenue (off trafal­gar square), with oth­er shell actions planned through­out the day.

the pim­li­co garage was tar­get­ted after being iden­ti­fied as a par­tic­u­lar­ly busy one dur­ing morn­ing rush-hour, in a very salu­bri­ous area, and so, just ten min­utes after the garage opened for busi­ness, at around 7am, activists took to the roof of the garage and hung a large anti-shell ban­ner over the edge while legal observers kept an eye on events.

the garage work­ers had to imme­di­ate­ly close down the garage because of health and safe­ty pro­to­col, and they called the police, the first of whom arrived with­in twen­ty min­utes.

over the next hour, more ban­ners and activists arrived, until about a dozen peo­ple were involved. police have so far not act­ed, wait­ing for a spe­cial­ist team to clear the roof safe­ly.

the garage, on the cor­ner of ebury street and ebury square, has been closed for near­ly three hours now, and a sub­stan­tial num­ber of porsches, lan­drovers, and oth­er sloaney vehi­cles leaflet­ted and turned away, so the action has been a great suc­cess for shell activists, and an excel­lent start to the #occu­py­oil day of events.

there are sol­i­dar­i­ty actions tak­ing place in liv­er­pool and peters­bor­ough, and more lon­don actions planned today.

after three hours, the garage remains closed, with a police heli­copter and two van­loads of TSG among the police vis­i­tors.

there will be a peace­ful but loud noise demo for an hour at mid­day out­side nige­ria house in northum­ber­land avenue, off trafal­gar square, and twit­ter will pro­vide info on the #occu­py­oil hash­tag.

AFTERNOON UPDATE

dur­ing nego­ti­a­tions, police plead­ed with the activists above to come down so as to avoid hav­ing to call in a spe­cial­ist team. police how­ev­er would­n’t make any promise not to arrest in return (and such promis­es have any­way been bro­ken in the past, most notably in the case of the fort­num and mason ukun­cut occu­pa­tion last year), and so the activists declined, lock­ing on for addi­tion­al secu­ri­ty.

the spe­cial­ist police climb­ing team even­tu­al­ly arrived at around mid­day, and they spent near­ly an hour cut­ting through the d‑locks that activists had utilised.

in all, the garage was closed for more than six hours, and there were three arrests for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass. the arrest­ed were tak­en to bel­gravia police sta­tion near­by.

Reclaim the Fields Spring Gathering 2012

The first Reclaim the Fields Gath­er­ing of the year will be tak­ing place this March at the Wilder­ness Cen­tre in the For­est of Dean.

The pro­vi­sion­al timetable includes work­shops on:

The first Reclaim the Fields Gath­er­ing of the year will be tak­ing place this March at the Wilder­ness Cen­tre in the For­est of Dean.

The pro­vi­sion­al timetable includes work­shops on:

*How to organ­ise & main­tain effec­tive land occu­pa­tions
*An intro­duc­tion to land rights
*Com­post­ing gen­der
*Legal options for access­ing land
*Learn­ing from Peas­ant Strug­gles in the Glob­al South
*Using the food sov­er­eign­ty prin­ci­ples as a strate­gic frame­work

There will also be feed­back from the Euro­pean Reclaim the Field Gath­er­ings & con­stel­la­tion as well as space for work­ing group ses­sions around:

*Seed Sov­er­eign­ty
*WWOLF (woof­ing with teeth) and Reclaim the Field Trips
*Plan­ning for Inter­na­tion­al Peas­ants Day of Strug­gle on April 17th

Some guer­ril­la-gar­den­ing type actions are also planned through­out. Sat­ur­day 10th is the Wilder­ness Cen­tre’s pub­lic open day so there will also be prac­ti­cal skills-shar­ing work­shops.

When: Accom­mo­da­tion is avail­able from the evening of Wednes­day 7th. Oth­er­wise the gath­er­ing is two full days Thurs­day & Fri­day 8–9th March. The For­est always wel­comes vis­i­tors so arrange with them if you want to stay & help out before hand.
Where: Wilder­ness Cen­tre, For­est of Dean. Direc­tions are here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Protect-the-Wilderness-Centre-Forest-of-Dean/321890141176064
Who to con­tact for more infor­ma­tion: use the RTF UK email list or email frankynecklace@yahoo.co.uk

What to bring: Sleep­ing bags, blan­kets, mats, own set of cut­lery & bowl if pos­si­ble. There is indoor sleep­ing space and room for tents out­side. Any home grown food to share & also seeds to swap.

Food will be a min­i­mum of £5 dona­tion per day. Any oth­er dona­tions are wel­come

More sug­ges­tions for work­shops, ses­sions & oth­er activ­i­ties are always wel­come, this is our con­stel­la­tion & gath­er­ing to make things hap­pen.

About:

Reclaim the Fields is a con­stel­la­tion of peo­ple and col­lec­tive projects will­ing to go back to the land and reas­sume the con­trol over food pro­duc­tion. We are deter­mined to cre­ate alter­na­tives to cap­i­tal­ism through coop­er­a­tive, col­lec­tive, autonomous, real needs ori­ent­ed small scale pro­duc­tion and ini­tia­tives, putting the­o­ry into prac­tice and link­ing local prac­ti­cal action with glob­al polit­i­cal strug­gles.
You can find more about us, our strug­gles & more resources such as down­load­able zines here: www.reclaimthefields.org.uk

Winter Warm-up round-up — Fuel Poverty Action protests

Fri­day update: an excit­ing start to the Fuel Pover­ty Action Week­end of Win­ter Warm-ups…Hundreds of peo­ple across the coun­try came out of their cold homes to get warm at the build­ings of insti­tu­tions that have a hand in cre­at­ing fuel pover­ty, to chal­lenge the Big Six’s monop­oly and the government’s com­plic­i­ty.  Lon­don — Leeds — Swin­don — Man­ches­ter:

Fri­day update: an excit­ing start to the Fuel Pover­ty Action Week­end of Win­ter Warm-ups…Hundreds of peo­ple across the coun­try came out of their cold homes to get warm at the build­ings of insti­tu­tions that have a hand in cre­at­ing fuel pover­ty, to chal­lenge the Big Six’s monop­oly and the government’s com­plic­i­ty.  Lon­don — Leeds — Swin­don — Man­ches­ter: read more

Sat­ur­day update: Cam­bridge

Mon­day update: six activists have bar­ri­cad­ed them­selves into meet­ing rooms on two floors of British Gas offices in Staines, Mid­dle­sex, as part of the ‘Win­ter Warm-Up’ week­end called by the cam­paign group Fuel Pover­ty Action. British Gas is being tar­get­ed as one of the Big Six ener­gy com­pa­nies mak­ing prof­its out of ris­ing ener­gy bills.  Read more. 

Update — faced with a threat­en­ing police pres­ence, the occu­piers of the British Gas offices have now decid­ed to leave on their own terms.

police solidarity blockade of shell petrol station

27.1.12

27.1.12

in many years of inde­pen­dent report­ing, i’ve often seen sit­u­a­tions where police have caused larg­er dis­rup­tion than a hand­full of pro­tes­tors, clos­ing roads, some­times clos­ing down busi­ness­es, and some­times mas­sive­ly ampli­fy­ing the pow­er of the pro­tes­tors alone (not that that’s their inten­tion). how­ev­er, this evening was, i think, the first time that they so com­plete­ly did the job of the activists for them, that the cam­paign­ers could sit in a nice warm pub and toast the met, instead of stand­ing around in the cold them­selves.

the protest this evening was called by the cli­mate-con­scious shell-bash­ing ‘lon­don ris­ing tide’ group, in co-ordi­na­tion with the leg­endary activist sam­ba band ‘rhythms of resis­tance’.

each jan­u­ary, the band com­mem­o­rate the life of activist, val jones, a woman who helped put the ross­port coun­ty mayo strug­gles on the polit­i­cal map, and who, as a design­er, pro­duced many bril­liant huge ban­ners for the move­ment. she was sad­ly struck down with motor neu­rone dis­ease and passed away two years ago. in mem­o­ry of val, the com­mem­o­ra­tion takes the form of a shell garage block­ade each year.

so, tonight, the call-out was for a block­ade at the shell sta­tion in old street, the scene of pre­vi­ous block­ades. around twen­ty peo­ple turned up to the meet­ing point, armed with drums, ban­ners, and leaflets. well, actu­al­ly some­one for­got the leaflets, but as it turned out they weren’t need­ed.

the usu­al time-line for these events is that the activists turn up at the garage, the band plays on the fore­court, the large ban­ners are used to close the entrance to the site, and leaflets are hand­ed out to staff, to motorists, and to passers-by. the staff then close the shop and call the police, who turn up after about half an hour. the police warn peo­ple that they might be com­mit­ting aggra­vat­ed tres­pass, and then they force­ful­ly facil­i­tate the con­tin­u­a­tion of the action on the pave­ment, so that the garage opens for busi­ness once more.

how­ev­er, tonight, some­thing was very dif­fer­ent. even before the demo began, the garage went dark, bol­lards block­ing its entrance, and small groups of police lurked on street cor­ners near­by.

so the activists were con­fused. what to do? was there any point attempt­ing a block­ade of a garage that was already closed for busi­ness? pre­vi­ous esti­mates from block­ades show that garages lose sev­er­al thou­sands of pounds of busi­ness when they close, and this is of course part of the point of the protests. also, some­one had for­got­ten the leaflets, so although there was a sug­ges­tion of mov­ing to a dif­fer­ent tar­get, there was the con­cern the protest would­n’t be so effec­tive with­out this ele­ment.

every now and then, some­one went out to check the site, and the garage remained total­ly closed for busi­ness, all lights off, staff locked in their shop, and non­cha­lant street-cor­ner polic­ing. so, anoth­er drink, a bit of food, plans afoot for future actions, and as the cold wind built up, and the wet driz­zle came down, the occa­sion­al check that the police were con­tin­u­ing to car­ry out the activists’ mis­sion.

an hour passed, anoth­er one, a third. wow, this was bet­ter than any pre­vi­ous small-scale block­ade. there was fond rem­i­nisc­ing of the upper street block­ade a few years ago, val and the band present, on a sat­ur­day. this had closed the upper street shell garage for five or six hours, and end­ed with loads of TSG arriv­ing , a cou­ple of arrests, and a lot of details tak­en. but it was a much larg­er scale event with lots of pri­or plan­ning. tonight was always meant to be a small, token, and com­mem­o­ra­tive action.

after three hours, the police scaled down and appeared to leave, but the garage stayed closed for a futher two hours, until final­ly near 11pm it opened for busi­ness once more.

this has to have been the most suc­cess­ful block­ade with­out a sin­gle activist present. maybe they should con­tact the gui­ness book of records. we have the pho­tos, the eye-wit­ness reports.

var­i­ous the­o­ries emerged as to why this hap­pened tonight, but none of us real­ly know, so in the mean­time, the met should be heart­ened that a glass or two was raised to them for their ster­ling work this evening in cost­ing shell five hours-worth of busi­ness at a nor­mal­ly very busy lon­don garage, and thanks to them that a cou­ple of dozen activists stayed warm, safe and con­spir­a­to­r­i­al. 

all involved hope that the met join in with even more sol­i­dar­i­ty for the big block­ade on the 8th feb­ru­ary (occu­py­oil).

report from tonight’s ‘bikes alive’ protest

9.1.12: ‘bikes alive’ is a new direct action cam­paign­ing group to counter the lethar­gy of trans­port for lon­don, and its pri­ori­tis­ing of lon­don traf­fic flow over the safe­ty of pedes­tri­ans and cyclists.

9.1.12: ‘bikes alive’ is a new direct action cam­paign­ing group to counter the lethar­gy of trans­port for lon­don, and its pri­ori­tis­ing of lon­don traf­fic flow over the safe­ty of pedes­tri­ans and cyclists. tonight saw the first of a series of direct action traf­fic calm­ing gath­er­ings at king’s cross designed to pres­sure TfL into more urgent action over the dead­ly junc­tion.

at the 6pm start num­bers looked a lit­tle thin, with no more than a few dozen cyclists gath­ered on the cor­ner of euston road and york way in front of king’s cross sta­tion. they were observed by sev­er­al police cyclists and a few oth­ers on foot.

num­bers did grad­u­al­ly build up, and by about twen­ty past, the action began with prob­a­bly a lit­tle over a hun­dred cyclists mak­ing their way up york way at a snail’s pace, form­ing an effec­tive block­ade against the rush hour traf­fic.

they looped round and back via the scala before com­plete­ly block­ing the busy junc­tion between euston and pen­tonville roads with york way.

here — next to the white ghost bicy­cle left as a memo­r­i­al to ‘deep’ lee, the young cyclist who was the 16th cycle fatal­i­ty of 2011 — they chant­ed slo­gans against boris, and reclaimed the streets. police began re-direct­ing traf­fic up york way and round, and traf­fic tailed back along euston road a long way.

for the next half an hour, the cycle block­ade, accom­pa­nied by quite a few peo­ple on foot, made slow progress back and forth along both sides of euston road out­side the sta­tion. near the front of the pro­ces­sion were des kay, the bicy­cle activist who won land­mark court bat­tles against police attempts to restrict the month­ly crit­i­cal mass rides, and jen­ny jones, the green cam­paign­er on the lon­don assem­bly and the met­ro­pol­i­tan police author­i­ty.

police response remained (i sus­pect part­ly because of jen­ny jones’ pres­ence) rea­son­ably low key, although inspec­tor mcdon­ald kept ask­ing peo­ple to ‘keep mov­ing’ and he was accom­pa­nied by an over-eager com­mu­ni­ty sup­port offi­cer who liked shout­ing at and grab­bing peo­ple in an offen­sive man­ner.

final­ly at just after 7pm, after hold­ing the start of pen­tonville road for sev­er­al min­utes while traf­fic was once again direct­ed up york way, cyclists agreed to leave en masse rather than dwin­dle in num­bers, des kay recit­ed one of his infa­mous cycle activist poems, and the cyclists went off into the night.

the plan is to hold reg­u­lar, pos­si­bly week­ly, block­ades until TfL promise to act. check the www.bikesalive.wordpress.com site for details of next week’s ride at king’s cross.

‘bikes alive’ action at kings x tomorrow

8th Jan­u­ary 2012

8th Jan­u­ary 2012

In the absence of any timetable or gen­uine will­ing­ness from either the may­or or trans­port for lon­don (tfl), bicy­cle activists will stage the first of sev­er­al direct actions tomor­row evening at king’s cross road junc­tions.

cyclists and sup­port­ers are expect­ed to arrive in large num­bers for tomor­row evening’s ‘crit­i­cal mass’ style block­ade at king’s cross in protest at the large num­bers of cyclist fatal­i­ties at the junc­tion and at tfl and the may­or’s ret­i­cence to do any­thing about it.

tomor­row’s action, which will last an hour from 6pm, fol­lows on from a recent vig­il, pic­tured above, which attract­ed around 100 cyclists and fea­tured speak­ers from the lon­don cycling cam­paign, road peace, lon­don liv­ing streets, and the green par­ty, as well as friends and rel­a­tives of some of those killed.

six­teen cyclists were killed on lon­don roads last year, up from 10 in 2010.

cam­paign­ers are call­ing on tfl to intro­duce dutch-style cycling sys­tems. in dutch cities, cyclists face sta­tis­ti­cal­ly less than half the dan­gers of their lon­don coun­ter­parts, and yet tfl have reject­ed pro­pos­als put for­ward as long ago as 2008, and instead is reduc­ing the num­ber of pedes­tri­an cross­ings to ‘improve traf­fic flow’.

tfl’s grounds for reject­ing junc­tion changes at king’s cross is that they may cause ‘traf­fic delay’.

last year, 24 yr old fash­ion stu­dent ‘deep’ lee was killed by a lor­ry at king’s cross. in decem­ber, after reject­ing safe­ty pro­pos­als at a meet­ing at cam­den town hall, tfl offi­cials asked her boyfriend if they could now remove the flower-cov­ered memo­r­i­al ghost bike. he respond­ed that they should ‘sort out the junc­tion first’.

in response to tfl’s lethar­gy and fail­ures, and in a direct chal­lenge to their con­cerns about ‘traf­fic delays’, bicy­cle activists have called for cyclists and their sup­port­ers to join them at king’s cross at 6pm tomor­row evening and to cycle around the junc­tion en masse at a safe slow speed, per­haps stop­ping every now and then as sheer mass of cycle traf­fic some­times caus­es delays.

this will be the first of sev­er­al reg­u­lar such actions to show tfl that cyclists are fed up of being treat­ed as dis­pos­able cit­i­zens and are enti­tled to pro­tec­tion, safe­ty, and con­sid­er­a­tion in road plan­ning.

for more info and con­tacts for tomor­row’s and future actions, see www.bikesalive.wordpress.com

and for some excel­lent opin­ion pieces and well-researched links, see www.cyclelondoncity.blogspot.com

Stop New Nuclear newsletter no 10, 3 December 2011

Dear all,

Dear all,

this is our first newslet­ter since the Stop New Nuclear gath­er­ing in Bris­tol on 5/6 Novem­ber, where we decid­ed on our next major action. We are all excit­ed about our new plan, and with this newslet­ter we send you some infor­ma­tion about the planned action to sur­round Hink­ley Point on 10 March 2011, fol­lowed by a 24 hour block­ade until 11 March 2011. All this to mark one year since the begin­ning of the cat­a­stro­phe of Fukushi­ma, which is far from over.

No more Fukushimas

Fukushi­ma is the biggest indus­tri­al dis­as­ter in his­to­ry, and has brought Japan to its knees. The reac­tors that went into melt­down in March have now melt­ed through the foun­da­tions and 40 years of accu­mu­lat­ed nuclear waste is emit­ting vast amounts of radi­a­tion, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the land, sea and air. In des­per­a­tion, the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment is trans­port­ing and burn­ing radioac­tive rub­ble all over Japan and export­ing high­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed food as “aid” to devel­op­ing coun­tries. Men, women and chil­dren are liv­ing in high­ly radioac­tive areas but they are not being evac­u­at­ed as they should be. This intense radi­a­tion expo­sure has very seri­ous health con­se­quences for these peo­ple.

How has Japan end­ed up in this dread­ful sit­u­a­tion? Their gov­ern­ment always said “It can’t hap­pen here.” Sound famil­iar? Pow­er­ful polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic inter­est groups are gag­ging the world’s media on this unfold­ing tragedy. Ordi­nary peo­ple the world over will pay the price.
Since the first civil­ian reac­tor start­ed gen­er­at­ing in 1954, there has been, on aver­age, a major acci­dent every 14–18 years: Wind­scale 1957, Three Mile Island1979, Cher­nobyl 1986, Fukushi­ma 2011.

Stop New Nuclear’s answer to the cri­sis of Fukushi­ma is clear: now new nuclear in Britain and any­where else! There­fore, our action on “Fukushi­ma day” will be to

Surround and blockade Hinkley Point, Somerset

Hink­ley Point is the first of eight pro­posed sites for nuclear new build to go ahead. We stopped them here before in 1987, and we can do it again in 2012. If they fail at Hink­ley, it is unlike­ly the “nuclear renais­sance” will have the momen­tum to con­tin­ue.
On the 10th ‑11th March 2012, one year since the Fukushi­ma nuclear dis­as­ter began, we will return to Hink­ley to form a human chain around the sta­tion to show our deter­mined oppo­si­tion to new nuclear.
In 2010, dozens of us block­ad­ed the gates at Hink­ley. In 2011 hun­dreds of us block­ad­ed the entrance again. In 2012, thou­sands of us will sur­round the pow­er sta­tion to say No to new nuclear! Not here, not any­where!
In Octo­ber 2011, peo­ple pledged to block­ade. This time, pledge to bring 5 friends and tell them to do the same. Thou­sands are need­ed to sur­round the sta­tion!
Pledge to sur­round Hink­ley Point, to bring five friends, or to block­ade Hink­ley Point

Help us mobilise

To ‘Sur­round Hink­ley’ is to demand to have a voice in deci­sions about our ener­gy future. Help to make this a fes­ti­val of cre­ative resis­tance with music, art, the­atre, ban­ners, and what­ev­er takes your fan­cy! To mark the end of the ‘Sur­round’, there will be a gath­er­ing at the main gate of Hink­ley for a ral­ly and music. You may want to return on the coach­es after the action or stay to block­ade the gates for 24 hours. With tents and tubes we will remain at the gates to show our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Japan.

The time to act is now! Join your local anti nuclear cam­paign, form affin­i­ty groups. The Stop New Nuclear Alliance can help by giv­ing train­ing in non-vio­lent direct action, con­sen­sus deci­sion- mak­ing, spokes coun­cils and advice on trans­port etc….

In our hun­dreds, in our thou­sands we will come togeth­er to stop nuclear pow­er at Hink­ley Point and dis­man­tle the whole new nuclear agen­da! This is the chance to be part of sme­thing mas­sive. JOIN US!

Please help to spread the mes­sage by either down­load­ing the fli­er, or ask us to send you a pack. We wel­come some dona­tion to cov­er postage, but even if you can’t — we need to get the mes­sage out!

Get in touch with us if you want to organ­ise a minibus or put on a coach.

News from nuclear new build

Hinkley Point

There was some news at the end of Octo­ber that EDF is delay­ing its final invest­ment deci­sion about Hink­ley C (and its oth­er planned new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK: Sizewell, Heysham, etc) until the end of 2012. How­ev­er, EDF still insists that it will sub­mit its appli­ca­tion to the Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion soon, and also declared that it wants to start prepar­ing the site for Hink­ley C from spring 2012 on. For us, this means two things:

  • The next year will be cru­cial to push EDF to aban­don its plans for Hink­ley C. We need to step our cam­paign­ing to show EDF that it is not a good idea to invest in Hink­ley C, and that they should invest in renew­able ener­gy instead.
  • EDF still wants to pre­pare the site, which means it wants to destroy the land from spring 2012 on, even though there is not even a final deci­sion whether they will real­ly go ahead with Hink­ley C. This shows that a legal chal­lenge to the pre­lim­i­nary works per­mis­sion is even more impor­tant. Stop Hink­ley is rais­ing funds for a legal chal­lenge to West Som­er­set Coun­cil’s deci­sion to grant EDF per­mis­sion to car­ry out prepara­to­ry work on the site, even though EDF is still far from a per­mis­sion to con­struct the pow­er sta­tion itself (and has­n’t even made a final deci­sion). Stop Hink­ley needs to raise about £15,000 for this legal chal­lenge, to please sup­port Stop Hink­ley. More infor­ma­tion at http://stophinkley.org/LegChallAppeal.htm.

Nev­er­the­less, EDF went ahead with its appli­ca­tion to the Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion (IPC). The IPC has accept­ed the appli­ca­tion, and from Fri­day, 2 Decem­ber, there are 28 days for every­one to reg­is­ter that they want to com­ment on the appli­ca­tion. This is only a first reg­is­tra­tion, and does not need to be accom­pa­nied by the detailed objec­tions, but with­out this reg­is­tra­tion, you will not be able to object lat­er.

The Infra­struc­ture Plan­ning Com­mis­sion is also organ­is­ing events local­ly near Hink­ley Point to explain the process, when to reg­is­ter and how to make a rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the IPC. They will be held between 10am – 9pm at the fol­low­ing loca­tions:
- Stogursey — Mon­day 5 Decem­ber, The Vic­to­ry Hall, Tow­er Hill, Stogursey, TA5 1PR
- Can­ning­ton — Thurs­day 8 Decem­ber, Can­ning­ton Vil­lage Hall, 2 Brook Street, Can­ning­ton, TA5 2HP
- Willi­ton — Fri­day 9 Decem­ber, West Som­er­set House, Kil­lick Way, Willi­ton, TA4 4QA
- North Pether­ton — Mon­day 12 Decem­ber, The Wal­nut Tree Hotel, North Pether­ton, TA6 6QA
- Comb­wich — Tues­day 13 Decem­ber, Otter­hamp­ton Vil­lage Hall, River­side, Comb­wich, TA5 2QZ
- Bridg­wa­ter — Wednes­day 14 Decem­ber, Town Hall, High Street, Bridg­wa­ter, TA6 3BL.
More infor­ma­tion on the plan­ning process is avail­able on the web­site of the IPC at http://infrastructure.independent.gov.uk/projects/south-west/hinkley-point-c-new-nuclear-power-station/.

Stop Hink­ley will be pre­sent­ing more than 12,000 peti­tions against Hink­ley Point C at Down­ing Street on Tues­day, 6 Decem­ber, at at 1.30pm and at the Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Cli­mate Change in Lon­don on 6th Decem­ber at 2.00 pm. Mem­bers of Stop Hink­ley will be accom­pa­nied by Wells MP Tes­sa Munt and Green Par­ty leader and MP Car­o­line Lucas. The Depart­ment of Ener­gy is at 3 White­hall Place, Lon­don SW1A 2AW. More infor­ma­tion in the Stop Hink­ley press release at http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net/content/stop-hinkley-campaign-presents-petition-government-against-edf%E2%80%99s-nuclear-plans.

Wylfa

Things are also hot­ting up at Wyl­fa, where Hori­zon, a joint ven­ture of Ger­man util­i­ty com­pa­nies RWE and E.on, is plan­ning to build two to three new nuclear reac­tors. Hori­zon con­tin­ue to bul­ly the Jones fam­i­ly of Caerde­gog and have applied for com­pul­so­ry pow­ers to ascer­tain the suit­abil­i­ty of their land for con­struc­tion. Hori­zon Nuclear Pow­er (HNP) recent­ly applied to Ofgem for Sec­tion D of their Elec­tric­i­ty Gen­er­a­tion Licence to be “switched on”. Imme­di­ate­ly upon approval, HNP applied to Ofgem for con­sent to exer­cise their new explorato­ry rights under the Elec­tric­i­ty Act 1989. This would allow a gen­er­a­tion licence hold­er to enter and sur­vey any land to estab­lish whether it would be suit­able for the con­struc­tion of an elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion sta­tion. It would also give them the pow­er to exe­cute their author­i­ty to make com­pul­so­ry land pur­chase. On Thurs­day after­noon 17th Novem­ber, Richard Jones and his fam­i­ly received a let­ter in Eng­lish only from Ofgem inform­ing them of the rights recent­ly grant­ed to HNP to gain access to their land at Caerde­gog. Ofgem have failed in their duty under the Welsh Lan­guage Act to pro­vide the Jones fam­i­ly with the doc­u­ments in their own lan­guage. Fur­ther­more it is con­sid­ered unrea­son­able for any objec­tions to be lodged with­in a time lim­it of five work­ing days espe­cial­ly in view of the legal con­tent of the cor­re­spon­dence (see the offi­cial con­sul­ta­tion at http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Pages/MoreInformation.aspx?file=Consultation%20on%20Horizon%20Application%20for%20Consent%20to%20use%20Exploratory%20Rights.pdf&refer=Licensing/Work).
Hori­zon have con­tin­ued to say that they would only use com­pul­so­ry pow­ers as a last resort yet they exe­cut­ed their new­ly acquired author­i­ty with­in days of it being grant­ed.
On behalf of the fam­i­ly, Richard Jones said: “We as a fam­i­ly will resist Horizon’s bul­ly­ing tac­tics in the attempt­ed destruc­tion of our her­itage, our liveli­hood and our future.”
See the press release of Peo­ple Against Wyl­fa B at http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net/content/nuclear-monster-continues-torment-local-family.

Donate

The new action to sur­round Hink­ley, and the 24 hour block­ade, will need a lot of mon­ey to make them hap­pen. While we don’t start with noth­ing, we are nowhere near what we will need. We are present­ly work­ing on a bud­get, but one thing is clear: Please give gen­er­ous­ly. You can donate online at http://stopnewnuclear.org.uk/donate, or you can send a cheque made payable to Stop New Nuclear to:
Stop New Nuclear
c/o 5 Cale­don­ian Road
Lon­don N1 9DX
Thank you!

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