Category: Scotland (Central & Southern)

The past week­end saw num­bers swell at the Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, with peo­ple trav­el­ling from far and wide to sup­port the ongo­ing strug­gle to stop Scot­tish Coal open­cast­ing Main­shill Wood. The num­ber of peo­ple occu­py­ing the site reached num­bers seen at Main­shill when the Camp for Cli­mate Action set up on the site in August, show­ing how this issue is not going away.

Com­mu­ni­ty Walk

On Sat­ur­day after­noon as the sun shone down on the Dou­glas Val­ley, res­i­dents of the camp, sup­port­ers and activists from local com­mu­ni­ties came togeth­er to wit­ness the changes that Main­shill Wood has seen over the past few months. The tour took in the parts of the site that have been occu­pied, defend­ed and heav­i­ly for­ti­fied for near­ly 5 months, lead­ing up to areas that have been most recent­ly felled and cleared.

The walk then went down to the far cor­ner of the site where Scot­tish Coal and var­i­ous con­trac­tors have set up a com­pound, sur­round­ing machin­ery in fenc­ing, flood­light­ing and secu­ri­ty guards. The walk then passed through the huge area of clear­fell, and down through the field on which the Camp for Cli­mate Action took place, past more defences, tree­hous­es and tun­nels. The tour end­ed with tea and bis­cuits in the com­mu­nal, and dis­cus­sions on where the cam­paign is going, and how the camp and com­mu­ni­ties can con­tin­ue to sup­port each oth­er in their strug­gle to stop Scot­tish Coal.
Work­shops

After the walk, a group from the camp walked into the clear­fell to plant native trees, in a sym­bol­ic effort to refor­est the area, with indige­nous tree species. Although Scot­tish Coal flout their plans to restore the site using native species after coal­ing, his­to­ry and com­mon sense tells us that the site will not be restored. Take a walk across the val­ley to Dalquandy, which was Europe’s largest mine at 20 mil­lion tonnes and stopped pro­duc­ing years ago. It has been left as it was, a dan­ger­ous moon­scape, leak­ing tox­i­cs into ground­wa­ter and pol­lut­ing sur­round­ing envi­ron­ments.

Oth­er work­shops skill-shared on tree-climb­ing, tree-house build­ing, lock-on build­ing and gen­er­al­ly resist­ing Scot­tish Coal’s plans for the area.

Sab­o­tage

A report post­ed on Indy­media Scot­land reads:

Activists sab­o­taged a spe­cial­ist drilling rig and oth­er machin­ery in Main­shill Wood on Sat­ur­day night.

Cables were cut, con­trols dam­aged, levers bust­ed, locks glued, win­dows bro­ken, lights smashed. There were no injuries or arrests.

The spe­cial­ist drilling rig, owned by Apex Drilling Ser­vices, is per­form­ing an essen­tial role for Scot­tish Coal. This action may stop their work for a con­sid­er­able time while repairs are made.

The drilling rig takes core sam­ples of the rocks under the woods, to deter­mine rock types and amounts of min­er­als present. This is work that needs to be com­plet­ed before coal can be exca­vat­ed from Main­shill.

Scot­tish Coal have agreed to pay for any dam­age to the con­trac­tors expen­sive machin­ery while work­ing at the Main­shill site.

This action to stop the work car­ried out by Scot­tish Coal or its con­trac­tors is one of many acts of sab­o­tage at Main­shill over recent weeks.

Lock-ons

No work took place on the site through­out the week­end, and the har­vest­ing machine had been tak­en off-site on the back of a flatbed lor­ry on Fri­day, prob­a­bly so that it couldn’t get dam­aged over the week­end as has hap­pened in the past. So a large group decid­ed to stop the har­vester from being brought on-site on Mon­day morn­ing.

Using New Mains Home Farm as its access to the site and com­pound, the flatbed drove in with the har­vester at around 7am, quick­ly fol­lowed by peo­ple from the camp. The har­vester was just off the flatbed when it was chased and sur­round­ed, with peo­ple climb­ing on it.

The dri­ver put up quite a fight in an effort to get his machine on site, putting lives at risk by reck­less­ly dri­ving the machine and then vio­lent­ly try­ing to remove peo­ple from it. How­ev­er, a camper man­aged to scale the crane-like arm of the har­vester, and locked-on to it with a bicy­cle D‑lock.

Vio­lent respons­es from the work­ers is becom­ing an all too com­mon reac­tion to actions at Main­shill where peo­ple try to peace­ful­ly used their bod­ies to stop machin­ery – peo­ple have been pushed, kicked in the head, grabbed, near­ly run over, and had their campers tak­en off them and thrown into the mud.

Although a lot of this has been doc­u­ment­ed and def­i­nite­ly con­sti­tutes assault, even attempt­ed mur­der in some instances, the fight of the Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is with the boss­es, land­lords and deci­sion-mak­ers. The Scot­tish Coal and Scot­tish Wood­lands exec­u­tives sit in their offices, dri­ve their fan­cy com­pa­ny cars to their fan­cy homes, and tell the con­trac­tors or sub­con­trac­tors they employ that they wont get any trou­ble from the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. They tell them that they won’t be giv­en any more work until they have fin­ished at Main­shill Wood. They put work­ing peo­ple, with fam­i­lies to feed and no choice but to car­ry out the con­tracts they’ve been giv­en, in between them­selves and the com­mu­ni­ty and Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp activists.

We say that these boss­es act cow­ard­ly, pay­ing oth­ers with blood mon­ey to car­ry out their dirty work. We appeal to con­trac­tors to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the camp and com­mu­ni­ty and not accept con­tracts for work at Main­shill. We appeal to the Scot­tish Coal tech­ni­cal direc­tors, the Estates Man­ag­er, the Scot­tish Wood­lands direc­tors, the coun­cil­lors respon­si­ble for pass­ing this project and Lord Home to come do the work them­selves, get their over­alls dirty for a change and see how long they last.

The action last­ed for five hours, with the camper locked-on at the neck through­out that time. Even­tu­al­ly a V‑division sup­port unit from Glas­gow with the Moun­tain Res­cue team arrived, and in true V‑division style rigged up a pal­let on a farm trac­tor as a “makeshift cher­ry-pick­er”. Ear­li­er in the day the Inspec­tor present had said that Health and Safe­ty rules for how close machin­ery can oper­ate to peo­ple on site were “guide­lines” – it must be the same for remov­ing peo­ple from lock-ons!

The camper was removed from the har­vester arm, arrest­ed for a Breach of the Peace, held over night at Bell­shill police sta­tion and then tak­en to court in Lanark the next morn­ing, where she plead guilty and will be sen­tenced in six months, pend­ing good behav­iour.

This action was a vic­to­ry for the camp and took the resis­tance into New Mains Home Farm, where the Dou­glas and Angus Estates Office is, and where a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple will live only some two hun­dred metres from the exca­va­tion works. The action also saw a down-scaled police response. Where at pre­vi­ous actions some 25 offi­cers had been in atten­dance, this time there were only 4 for the most part, and sup­port was only moved away right at the end. Is Strath­clyde Police get­ting sick of being used as Scot­tish Coal’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty force?

In Con­clu­sion…

As well as some superb evening enter­tain­ment, the weekend’s events and the peo­ple that came through and saw the camp has strength­ened the resis­tance to the ongo­ing work at Main­shill, and giv­en peo­ple new ener­gy to fight these cor­rupt coun­cil­lors, fat-cat land-own­ers and greedy cor­po­rate types with every­thing we’ve got.

mainshill@riseup.net
http://mainshill.noflag.org.uk/