Category: South East England

Activists out­side the Ves­tas fac­to­ry on the St Cross Busi­ness Park, Dod­nor Lane, New­port, Isle of Wight have been tipped off that Tues­day 22nd Sep­tem­ber at 12 noon a ‘Blade Run­ner’ barge is com­ing down the riv­er Med­i­na to the Ves­tas fac­to­ry from Southamp­ton to pick up some of the remain­ing blades still inside the fac­to­ry. Those present expect a big police pres­ence along with big sup­port from oth­er sup­port­ers and activists. They claim they are pre­pared to do any­thing and every­thing to stop Ves­tas from ship­ping these blades or from get­ting any­thing into the fac­to­ry if that’s their plan.

The new Marine Gate (/‘Magic Swings’) camp is a very beau­ti­ful place to wake up / not go to bed! River­side views, from a Pent­house Tri­pod for those with strong arms and no sense of ver­ti­go. In the shad­ow of a mighty Oak, and sit­u­at­ed along the New­port-Cowes cyclepath — a fine stretch of Sus­trans, wood­ed, snaking along the riv­er, a mer­maid stat­ue and solar pow­ered lights to guide you…

Fire­side chats into the night are full of inspi­ra­tion. Near­by skips mag­i­cal­ly pro­duce goods wished for, while pix­ies frol­ic in the moon­less nights. There are field kitchens at both camps, but the Mag­ic Round­about hous­es the ‘Round­about 8 Restau­rant’ — so called because vol­un­tary veg­an dona­tion din­ner is served, around about eight pm (turn up at six to be assured a place at the table, bring your favourite ingre­di­ents if you want can’t cook won’t cook fun).

Get your­selves down and get involved. We can win this cam­paign and have a work­er con­trolled renew­ables fac­to­ry for 600 work­ers if we pull our fin­gers out!

(and it’s sort of on the way / the way back from Calais. ~£30 with rail­card for trip from lon­don to ryde, hitch­ing to new­port fair­ly easy. new grey­hound coach­es as cheap as £1 to portsmouth and southamp­ton. hov­er­craft portsmouth to ryde can be only £4, fast­cat is £7 with a rail­card).

there are space tents, and even the odd spare sleep­ing bag.

——

22nd Sep­tem­ber 2009
Ear­ly this morn­ing, a large num­ber of Police were in atten­dance at the river­side gate of the Ves­tas Blade plant in New­port.

The block­ade of pro­test­ers, who have been camp­ing on the tow path over the last few weeks, were dis­persed by the Police and any unclaimed belong­ings bagged up and removed.

When we arrived at the site at about 8:30am, fenc­ing was being erect­ed by secu­ri­ty staff along the path.

The oper­a­tion start­ed at about 6:30am when offi­cers issued warn­ings, under sec­tion 69 of the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994, to around 13 peo­ple “sus­pect­ed of hav­ing com­mit­ted, com­mit­ting, or about to com­mit, crim­i­nal offences of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.”

One pro­test­er showed us a map she’d be hand­ed show­ing an area at the back of the Ves­tas build­ing. She told VB that she had been instruct­ed not return to the marked area for three months.

Tents, sleep­ing bags and oth­er items which were not claimed by those present were bagged up and tak­en to New­port Police Sta­tion as lost prop­er­ty.

The media restrict­ed
The foot­path is a busy route for cyclists as they trav­el to New­port.

This morn­ing, cyclists were told to dis­mount and were then escort­ed between the new­ly-erect­ed fences. They were then able to get back on the bikes and con­tin­ue their jour­ney.

When we approached the line of the police they offered to escort us across the area and back – but only once.

We were told by the PC and then by the Sergeant that if we want­ed to cross the path again, we would risk being charged for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

We point­ed out that this restric­tion on report­ing seemed unrea­son­able, but to no avail.

The Sergeant sug­gest­ed tak­ing it up with the Police media offi­cer, which we have done.

UPDATE 2 (12:10): Sound like this has been sort­ed out now. We’ve just heard from the Police media offi­cer that an area has been set­up for the media, up on a raised area that we can shot from.

Blades ship­ping today?
It’s under­stood that the Bladerun­ner barge is due to arrive at the river­side at noon and with high tide at 2pm and that Ves­tas will attempt to ship the final blades and equip­ment from the fac­to­ry this after­noon.

Reports about camp evic­tion and some but not all blades hav­ing been moved, at http://savevestas.wordpress.com/

——

There has been a camp out­side the Ves­tas fac­to­ry on the St. Cross Busi­ness Park, Dod­nor Lane, New­port, Isle of Wight, since at least the begin­ning of the Occu­pa­tion of the fac­to­ry on 20th July this year. The camp has a well estab­lished kitchen run by vol­un­teers who serve qual­i­ty veg­an evening meals ‘Round­about 8’, with lunch and break­fast also pro­vid­ed and some­times cooked too. Those who occu­pied the fac­to­ry are often present, togeth­er with cli­mate campers and those from assort­ed lefty groups and unions. Get down there and join ’em! …and take some cake with ya!

Also at the camp is a car­a­van serv­ing as a site/campaign office, a stand­pipe for fresh­wa­ter, a chem­i­cal toi­let, a bike-pow­ered smooth­ie mak­er (in bits), a fair amount of solar capac­i­ty and sal­vaged sealed lead acid bat­ter­ies pro­vid­ing the bare min­i­mum of pow­er to charge radios, phones and a lap­top. There’s a recent­ly erect­ed mar­quee, and a ‘liv­ing room’ of sorts, with com­fy chairs and an ever-burnin’ oil-drum bra­zier. There are even spare tents and sleep­ing bags res­cued from being sent to land­fill post-Besti­val. The weath­er is gen­er­al­ly bet­ter than the main­land, the fer­ry trip is expen­sive but beau­ti­ful and excit­ing. The locals and wel­com­ing and sup­port­ive of the cam­paign, and the island is full of beau­ti­ful coun­try­side includ­ing plen­ty of Mighty Oak trees.

The three main aims of the cam­paign and camp are to achieve:

1. Full rein­state­ment of the 11 work­ers sacked for occu­py­ing their fac­to­ry in an attempt to save the jobs of 600 employed there — these work­ers have still not been paid any redun­dan­cy though to pay them equiv­a­lent redun­dan­cy to the oth­er work­ers would cost Ves­tas a tiny £45,000. The work­ers are also cam­paign­ing for a bet­ter redun­dan­cy pack­age for all work­ers.

2. Wind tur­bine pro­duc­tion on the Isle of Wight. If Ves­tas want to shut the fac­to­ry, they must sell it. If no buy­ers come for­ward, the facil­i­ty should be nation­alised and placed under work­er’s con­trol. Car­o­line Lucas has put for­ward a pro­pos­al for the fac­to­ry to be run as a Work­ers’ Coop to the local coun­cil under the Sus­tain­able Com­mu­ni­ties Act. A female ex-work­er has also put togeth­er a busi­ness plan based on such an idea.

3. Seri­ous Gov­ern­ment poli­cies and plans regard­ing the pro­mo­tion of indus­try pro­duc­ing renew­able ener­gy equip­ment, and for renew­ables to pro­vide the required share of nation­al elec­tric­i­ty in the UK. The St. Cross site was the UK’s largest renew­able’s facil­i­ty and for the Gov­ern­ment to allow it to close as they speak lofti­ly of Copen­hagen and 1 mil­lion new green jobs is hypocrisy of the high­est order.

This is a great cam­paign, not only because of the clear jus­tice of the aims, but because it is a pos­i­tive cam­paign (rare in the Cli­mate and Labour move­ments), because it is a winnable cam­paign, because it is a rad­i­cal cam­paign, a cam­paign that has used Direct Action from the start, because it is a cam­paign with huge local, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sup­port, and with huge sig­nif­i­cance, and huge capac­i­ty to inspire fur­ther actions.

Those of you who know about the Occu­pied Fac­to­ry Move­ment in Argenti­na fol­low­ing the Decem­ber 2001 eco­nom­ic col­lapse there should know that Ves­tas is our Zanon, our Bruk­man — we need to devote ener­gy to this cam­paign.

Those of you who don’t know about the Argen­tine Move­ment should seek out Nao­mi Klein and Avi Lewis’ film ‘The Take’ or look up the slo­gans ‘Occu­py, Resist, Pro­duce’ and ‘Que Se Vayan Todos’ on the net…

There have been arrests recent­ly and an evic­tion of a 2nd block­ade camp by 120 main­land police at 6.30 am one day last week.

Sup­port in the form of dona­tions, vis­its (how­ev­er short) and sol­i­dar­i­ty actions is warm­ly received!

see: savevestas.wordpress.com for more info, and irreg­u­lar updates!

17th Sep­tem­ber 2009
This morn­ing sev­en activists from Cli­mate Rush on the Run decid­ed to pay Jere­my Clark­son a vis­it.

“Sev­en of our activists dumped dung on Jere­my Clark­son’s front lawn this morn­ing – he can deal with our emis­sions since he won’t deal with his!” — Cli­mate Rush on the Run

“I’m the biggest lib­er­tar­i­an of them all — I’m dump­ing dung at Clark­son’s gates so he might under­stand that his atti­tude will land us all in the shit.” — Tam­sin Omond”
“Jere­my is keen to land us in the shit! So he can have ours … ’ — Cli­mate Rush on the Run

At a cost to the envi­ron­ment of an esti­mat­ed 1.7 tonnes of CO2 emis­sions, petrol head Jere­my Clark­son drove to the Arc­tic to delib­er­ate­ly antag­o­nise envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

The Arc­tic is a frag­ile envi­ron­ment. CO2 emis­sions in the Arc­tic has a dis­pro­por­tion­ate bad impact. The Arc­tic is warm­ing much faster than pre­dict­ed, the ice is melt­ing much faster than pre­dict­ed.

Tem­per­a­tures are ris­ing fastest at the poles. The Arc­tic Ice Sheet is van­ish­ing. Were the Green­land Ice Sheet to melt, sea lev­els would rise by 17 metres. Many coastal cities, includ­ing Lon­don, Bangladesh, South Pacif­ic Islands, would not sur­vive these sea lev­els.

The Arc­tic is expect­ed to be ice free in the sum­mer­time some­time between 2011 and 2015, that is 80 years ahead of what was pre­dict­ed only a few years ago!

Cli­mate Camp on the Run are wend­ing their way through Eng­land from Sip­son near Heathrow to Totnes in Devon. They are high­light­ing and rais­ing aware­ness of cli­mate change with the occa­sion­al direct action against cli­mate crim­i­nals.

17 Sep­tem­ber 2009
Through­out the coun­try today actions are tak­ing place in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the work­ers of the Ves­ta Blades fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight. This morn­ing the offices of the South East Eng­land Devel­op­ment Agency (SEEDA) was tar­get­ted by pro­test­ers who dropped ban­ners and built a mini wind­farm in the lob­by. SEEDA is being pres­sured to with­draw £3m of pub­lic mon­ey they’ve said they’ll give Ves­tas for a R&D facil­i­ty despite the Dan­ish com­pa­ny pulling its man­u­fac­tur­ing from the UK. Tonight there will be a protest at the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment and Cli­mate Change, in White­hall Place, cen­tral Lon­don.

PRESS RELEASE — CHATHAM OFFICES IN WIND POWER PROTESTS

SEEDA (South East Eng­land Devel­op­ment Agency) offices in Chatham, Kent where today vis­it­ed by pro­test­ers, as part of a nation­al day of action for Ves­tas wind tur­bine work­ers.

Occu­py­ing the lob­by of the build­ing after hang­ing ban­ners from the bal­cony of the top floor, the pro­test­ers built a mini wind farm on the devel­op­ment agency’s mod­el of the Med­way estu­ary.

Paper wind­mills were hand­ed to work­ers along with a satir­i­cal guide on build­ing wind­mills, which instruct­ed SEEDA to cut up the con­tracts promis­ing to give Ves­tas mon­ey for noth­ing.

Pres­sure is mount­ing on SEEDA to with­draw the offer of £3 mil­lion (part of £10 mil­lion of pub­lic mon­ey being giv­en toVes­tas by the gov­ern­ment) unless the Dan­ish multi­na­tion­al stand aside and allow their closed fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight to con­tin­ue to be used for tur­bine blade man­u­fac­ture.

Ves­tas closed the fac­to­ry to move pro­duc­tion to the U.S. and slash­ing 600 green UK jobs. The work­ers then occu­pied the fac­to­ry and are demand­ing that the gov­ern­ment nation­alise the facil­i­ties, the only sig­nif­i­cant blade man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in this coun­try.

“By fail­ing to act on the clo­sure of the Ves­tas Blades fac­to­ry, and sup­port­ing a return to out­dat­ed coal pow­er (like Eon’s Kingsnorth pro­pos­al), the Gov­ern­ment is show­ing it cur­rent­ly has no seri­ous com­mit­ment to build­ing a low car­bon econ­o­my or pre­vent­ing cat­a­stroph­ic run­away cli­mate change.” Anas­taz­ja Jarek, Kingsnorth Cli­mate Action Med­way
“Ves­tas work­ers have fought mag­nif­i­cent­ly to save jobs and essen­tial wind tur­bine man­u­fac­tur­ing in Britain. The gov­ern­ment say that Ves­tas have refused to sell them the fac­to­ry, yet it is still reward­ing Ves­tas with pub­lic mon­ey through SEEDA. The gov­ern­ment needs to stop pussy­foot­ing around big cor­po­ra­tions and take seri­ous action to pro­vide jobs and pre­vent cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change.” – Steve Wilkins, Med­way Trades Coun­cil

tippingpointmedway@gmail.com

15.09.2009
Blade Run­ner Protest launched from Pow­er Boat [post-arrest update at bot­tom]

Using Southamp­ton’s Boat Show as cov­er, pro­test­ers have arrived by pow­er-boat this morn­ing to occu­py cranes and ves­sels at the city’s docks.

Com­ing from the Ves­tas fac­to­ry block­ade on the Isle Of Wight, the group aim to pre­vent the load­ing of wind-tur­bine blades from the New­port plant, which was closed in July with the loss of 600 jobs.

“We made these blades, and now Ves­tas want to take their prof­its and leave us high and dry,” said ex-Ves­tas work­er Jamie Rig­by, who is sta­tioned at the dock entrance, Jamie was one of 11 work­ers sacked for occu­py­ing their fac­to­ry after Ves­tas announced the mass lay-off in July. The occu­pa­tion end­ed in August after 18 days, and on that occa­sion Jamie leapt unin­jured from a bal­cony rather than be escort­ed out by bailiffs.

Jamie is joined today by sup­port­ers from the island com­mu­ni­ty, cli­mate activists and work­ers from the main­land, who have hung ban­ners say­ing “Wind pow­er to the peo­ple” and locked them­selves to a crane load­ing blades onto the BBC Ohio in Empress Dock. Oth­ers have occu­pied the so-called ‘Blade Run­ner’ Barge which is need­ed to fetch the remain­ing blades from the St Cross fac­to­ry in New­port. They have a ban­ner which reads, “Our blades, Our pow­er”. The barge is vis­i­ble to the east from the Town Quay, which is also a Red Star Ter­mi­nal for IOW pas­sen­gers.

On the crane at Empress Dock, Jack­ie Sheedy said, “ After the fac­to­ry occu­pa­tion end­ed, Ves­tas and the gov­ern­ment hoped we’d all just qui­eten down. But we’re unit­ed in this block­ade. The island work­ers need those jobs, and we all need them if we want even a chance of com­bat­ing cli­mate change for our chil­dren.”

Speak­ing by phone from the occu­pied Blade Run­ner barge, Robin Siva­palan, a Uni­son mem­ber from the group Work­ers Cli­mate Action, said “Work­ers like Jamie were vic­timised and robbed of their redun­dan­cy pay for tak­ing a stand on behalf of all of us,. If Ves­tas want the block­ade lift­ed, they had bet­ter start talk­ing about re-instate­ment and terms. And if the gov­ern­ment want the protests to end they had bet­ter drop the green­wash and start tak­ing some real action for a renew­able pow­er indus­try in this coun­try”.

Mean­while, oth­er sacked Ves­tas work­ers are at the TUC con­fer­ence in Liv­er­pool, lob­by­ing the labour move­ment for sol­i­dar­i­ty action and sup­port on Thurs­days “Nation­al Day of Action”, while

work­ers from the Lush Cos­met­ics fac­to­ry in Poole, Dorset, are tak­ing part in direct action train­ing at the Ves­tas Marine Gate block­ade on the New­port-Cowes cycle path, New­port IOW.

ENDS

Loca­tion: BBC Ohio and cranes — Empress Dock, East­ern Docks, Southamp­ton

Blade Run­ner barge – Oppo­site Town Quay, (Red Fun­nel Ter­mi­nal)

Best view: Blade Run­ner east from Town Quay;

BBC Ohio and cranes – restrict­ed access through Oceano­graph­ic Cen­tre, or by sea/air.

Con­tacts:

On the Docks protest: Jack­ie Sheedy, 07944 744922;
Jamie Rig­by (sacked Ves­tas work­er), 07875 441668 and Mar­tin Shaw 07950539254 at END OF TOWN QUAY, Southamp­ton.
Robin Siva­palan, 07974 331053

For inter­view off site: Ian Ter­ry at TUC con­fer­ence, 07970 739921
Mark Smith at TUC con­fer­ence, 07980703115
Lush Cam­paigns Man­ag­er: Andrew But­ler on 07876 596541

Back­ground:

http://savevestas.wordpress.com
http://ventnorblog.com

Cam­paign Video includ­ing Jamie’s jump: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4CrTEFtSGU

Ship­ping and Docks info:

http://www.ais-live.co.uk/AIS%20Live/aissolent.html and http://www.abports.co.uk/files/southampton%202008.pdf

workersclimateaction.info@googlemail.com
http://workersclimateaction.wordpress.com

——-

Update: Ves­tas Crane Activists Charged and Released

16th Sep­tem­ber 2009 — 3pm

The four Ves­tas sup­port­ers arrest­ed yes­ter­day have just been released after 17 hours of deten­tion in Southamp­ton police sta­tion. Orig­i­nal­ly threat­ened with arrest under the Ter­ror­ism Act they have now been charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass after spend­ing sev­en hours locked on to Ves­tas cranes in Southamp­ton Docks.They have been bailed to return to court on the 29th of Sep­tem­ber. Their bail con­di­tions include non-asso­ci­a­tion with one anoth­er and they have been banned from enter­ing all Ves­tas sites in Southamp­ton and on the Isle of Wight. One of the activists suf­fered minor injuries dur­ing the trau­mat­ic police removal.

The four now intend to press charges against Ves­tas ship­ping man­ag­er for order­ing the two crane dri­vers to reck­less­ly endan­ger their lives by turn­ing on both cranes and mov­ing the boom whilst one pro­test­er was attached to the mov­ing parts that were then pulled voilent­ly through her arms and legs whilst police watched on and videod the inci­dent.

One of the four, Jacque­line Sheedy said: ”Through­out the action we were peace­ful­ly occu­py­ing the crane and Ves­tas arro­gance and quest for prof­its drove them to risk our lives in order to remove us in an attempt to car­ry on load­ing the blades as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. The behav­iour of Ves­tas man­age­ment through­out has shown scant regard for the health and safe­ty of their work­force and lit­tle sign of human­i­ty in deal­ing with the clo­sure of the fac­to­ry. Dock work­ers in Southamp­ton were call­ing us dur­ing this inci­dent incred­u­lous that this could hap­pen, as did the RMT legal team. We were inun­dat­ed with mes­sage­sof encour­age­ment from work­ers and activists around the while on the cranes and this is yet more proof that this cam­paign is far from over and that it is only a small part of what will soon prove to be a much more wide­spread strug­gle for work­ers rights and the envi­ron­ment.”

It has been revealed that the actions have delayed trans­port of the wind tur­bine blades to the US by a day, as was intend­ed. How­ev­er there is lit­tle doubt that the blades will even­tu­al­ly be moved due to the lack of demand for wind farms in the UK. We have the com­po­nents for green ener­gy right here, right now so why are we not using them to full effect?

Ves­tas work­ers have been talk­ing about their strug­gle at the TUC con­fer­ence hap­pen­ing this week in Liv­er­pool. There is also a nation­al day of action tak­ing place in sup­port of Ves­tas work­ers tomor­row, Sep­tem­ber 17th. The protest will con­tin­ue untill the demands of the cam­paign have been met.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please call: 07950 539254 or Jamie ex-ves­tas occupier:07875441668

For fur­ther cam­paign infor­ma­tion see web­site: savevestas.wordpress.com

On the morn­ing of Thurs­day 10 Sep­tem­ber a tri­pod has now suc­cess­ful­ly been erect­ed at the marine gate pre­vent­ing blades from leav­ing the fac­to­ry. A work­er from the orig­i­nal occu­pa­tion is cur­rent­ly stand­ing at the top of the tri­pod as the block­ade pre­pares for an increase in activ­i­ty on both sides.

10th Sep­tem­ber 2009, 7am

After more than a week of blockad­ing the Ves­tas fac­to­ry in New­port, Isle Of Wight, a tri­pod has now been erect­ed at the marine gate pre­vent­ing blades from leav­ing the fac­to­ry. A work­er from the orig­i­nal occu­pa­tion is stand­ing on top of the tri­pod enjoy­ing a stun­ning view of sun­rise over the Riv­er Med­i­na.

This inspi­ra­tional addi­tion to the block­ade fol­lowed a day of police intim­i­da­tion that includ­ed one arrest and one per­son being banned from the site after receiv­ing a dis­per­sal order. Block­aders have also had to deal with the con­fis­ca­tion of one tri­pod before it had been erect­ed and the dis­man­tling of one oth­er block­ade. Work­ers and sup­port­ers worked togeth­er through­out the night to build the replace­ment tri­pod and car­ry it to the site as the sun rose. Tri­pod work­shops have been held through­out the week as cli­mate activists share skills with Ves­tas Work­ers. Oth­er skill­shares have includ­ed 12 volt solar instal­la­tions to pow­er the camp’s office in a car­a­van.

This action comes one week before a nation­al day of action to fur­ther high­light the plight of the 600 work­ers made redun­dant by this multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny.

“We the work­ers see it as our duty to stop our blades from leav­ing as part of the cam­paign to nation­al­ize the fac­to­ry. Ves­tas have told us that there is no demand for our prod­ucts but are still unwill­ing to sell the site to oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties. It is clear the gov­ern­ment must act on such an impor­tant issue as renew­able ener­gy pro­duc­tion. They should not let our future be dic­tat­ed sole­ly by prof­it.’’

‘’We are call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to invest in green jobs on the Isle of Wight and for Ves­tas to rein­state the eleven sacked work­ers who occu­pied the fac­to­ry.’’

The work­ers and their sup­port­ers call on oth­ers to come and join them on the block­ades over the com­ing days as a mat­ter of urgency and to show sup­port on the Nation­al Day of Action on 17th Sep­tem­ber.

PLEASE GET IN TOUCH FOR PHOTOS AND INTERVIEWS

Tele­phone num­ber for tri­pod inter­views with Ves­tas work­er: 07875 098960 or 07935 868009

Web­site: Savevestas.wordpress.com

Email: savevestas@gmail.com