Category: Scotland (Central & Southern)

2.4.2010
The Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp packed up the night before last and left the site of UK Coal’s new mine at Blair Farm, in Fife. The camp occu­pied the site for a week and a half to show UK Coal and oth­er mine oper­a­tors that no new mine or coal infra­struc­ture is safe and out of reach of pro­test­ers.

The inten­tion of the camp from the begin­ning was to hold a short-term occu­pa­tion to bring atten­tion to the issue, make links with local com­mu­ni­ties and cost UK Coal mon­ey. The occu­pa­tion was a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty with local res­i­dents who opposed the mine, and with the cur­rent­ly occu­pied Hunt­ing­ton Lane open cast site in Shrop­shire.

One of the pri­ma­ry aims of the camp was to cost UK Coal mon­ey and make it more dif­fi­cult for the com­pa­ny to cause such destruc­tion in oth­er places. Dun­fermline Sher­iff Court would inevitably have grant­ed the sum­ma­ry evic­tion of the occu­piers today and, cou­pled with the fact that bailiffs from the Nation­al Evic­tion Team recent­ly vis­it­ed site, the camp had undoubt­ed­ly already hit UK Coal prof­its.

The camp was set up on Sun­day 21st March in protest against the dev­as­tat­ing effects of open cast coal min­ing. Impacts on near­by com­mu­ni­ties will include noise and dust pol­lu­tion, increased traf­fic on the roads through HGV move­ments, the loss of land­scape, local ecol­o­gy and bio­di­ver­si­ty, and loss of access to recre­ation areas, not to men­tion the increased rates of res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases and can­cer from expo­sure to coal dust. The min­ing of this coal will also release over 2 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 into the atmos­phere from com­bus­tion alone at near-by Lon­gan­net pow­er sta­tion, direct­ly con­tra­dict­ing the Scot­tish government’s tar­gets to reduce emis­sions.

As envi­ron­men­tal­ists, the camp occu­pants made sure to leave the site as they found it, undam­aged by their activ­i­ties. This was unlike UK Coal – with felling oper­a­tions com­plete, huge areas of birch and oak for­est – des­ig­nat­ed ancient wood­land – have been lost as well as the wildlife with­in it, which includ­ed nest­ing birds, bats and red squir­rels. On top of this, the camp is con­duct­ing an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into alle­ga­tions, sup­port­ed by local wit­ness­es, that fire dam­age to Great Crest­ed Newt areas was car­ried out on behalf of UK Coal to facil­i­tate the newts forced migra­tion as a con­di­tion of plan­ning con­sent.

Fiona Coop­er from the camp said “We will be oppos­ing more open cast coal sites in Scot­land, as well as sup­port­ing oth­er com­mu­ni­ties fight­ing the unsus­tain­able and dam­ag­ing growth of the coal indus­try in the UK, such as the Hunt­ing­ton Lane protest site in Shrop­shire.”

The camp would like to thank the peo­ple of Oak­ley and sur­round­ing areas for their sup­port through­out the occu­pa­tion, and remind UK Coal of its oblig­a­tions to restore the site when it is fin­ished with it.

Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp
coalactionscotland@riseup.net
http://blackwood.noflag.org.uk/

29.3.2010
Hours after the Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp suc­cess­ful­ly pushed back its evic­tion hear­ing at Dun­fermline Sher­iff Court this after­noon, mem­bers of the Nation­al Evic­tion Team includ­ing Mar­tin Leyshon, Head of Resources, vis­it­ed the site to doc­u­ment its defences and pre­sum­ably to begin the process of evict­ing the camp.

The Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is just over a week old so the appear­ance of the Nation­al Evic­tion Team at such short notice and before the evic­tion order for the site has even been grant­ed shows that UK Coal want rid of the camp as soon as pos­si­ble. Fur­ther still, the court papers are full of ref­er­ences to the recent­ly evict­ed Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, with police advis­ing UK Coal that the longer the camp exists, the hard­er and more cost­ly it will be to remove it.

And of course, they’re right, but num­bers mat­ter too. Please come and join the camp for as long as you can – even if just for a day, it will be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed. The vibe on the camp is good, with defence-build­ing and bar­ri­cad­ing hap­pen­ing all over the place with plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple to get involved and lend a hand. See here for details of how to get the the camp.

The hear­ing for the evic­tion order of the Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp will take place on Thurs­day 1st April at Dun­fermline Sher­iff Court at 14:00. Come down and show your sup­port for the occu­pa­tion if you can.

Final­ly, UK Coal have claimed that the occu­piers of Black Wood have caused fire dam­age to the site, dis­rupt­ed a Great Crest­ed Newt habi­tat and closed access to a foot­path. The Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp finds it iron­ic that a com­pa­ny about to pro­vide fuel to a coal-fired pow­er sta­tion, fan­ning the flames of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change, caus­ing the forced migra­tion of a pro­tect­ed Newt species and trash­ing their habi­tat on site, and per­ma­nent­ly remov­ing a right of way for the dura­tion of the mine should accuse the camp of these things. The camp sug­gests that hypocrisy and deceit will get UK Coal nowhere.

Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp
coalactionscotland@riseup.net
http://blackwood.noflag.org.uk/

25.03.2010
This morn­ing a sher­iff offi­cer from Dun­fermline Sher­iff Court hand­ed the new­ly-estab­lished Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp its evic­tion sum­mons, with notice to appear in court on Mon­day morn­ing. Despite not mak­ing an appear­ance yet at the site, it is believed that UK Coal rep­re­sen­ta­tives met with Fife police on Mon­day to dis­cuss how to deal with the occu­pa­tion.

UK Coal has been very quick to begin court pro­ceed­ings against the camp and once again, as was the case with the Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, the occu­piers have been giv­en very lit­tle time to respond.

As well as rush­ing court pro­ceed­ings, it is also thought that UK Coal rushed in its con­trac­tors deal­ing with the re-loca­tion of Great Crest­ed Newts, a Euro­pean Pro­tect­ed Specie, the day after the site was occu­pied. As part of the con­di­tions for plan­ning con­sent the newt pop­u­la­tion on site was sup­posed to have been moved before work began. How­ev­er, on Mon­day after­noon a con­voy of con­trac­tors arrived and appeared to start this work.

In addi­tion, an ecol­o­gist has been sur­vey­ing the site this week and told the camp that the work to move the newts was behind sched­ule. Once again, as was the case in Main­shill, eco­log­i­cal sur­veys and work relat­ing to sur­vey­ing the pres­ence of nest­ing birds, bats and oth­er species, is being car­ried out after felling and the destruc­tion of the sites ecosys­tems has begun. All of this high­lights the fact that coun­cils and min­ing com­pa­nies are mere­ly pay­ing lip-ser­vice to ful­fill­ing the legal require­ments in deal­ing with pro­tect­ed species and frag­ile ecol­o­gy, and how employ­ees of envi­ron­men­tal con­sul­tants such as RPS are noth­ing more than eco­log­i­cal box-tick­ers for the min­ing com­pa­nies.

Sup­port­ers and local res­i­dents have con­tin­ued to vis­it the camp and defences are being strength­ened in antic­i­pa­tion of the inevitable grant­i­ng of the evic­tion order on Mon­day. Come to the Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and stop UK Coal trash­ing this site, the cli­mate and com­mu­ni­ty health!

Black Wood Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp
coalactionscotland@riseup.net
http://blackwood.noflag.org.uk/