South West England – Page 7

Arson against police training building and attack of security services vehicles

The (under construction) Police Firearms Training Centre in Black Rock Quarry, Portishead, situated directly beneath the Avon and Somerset Police regional headquarters was our target on the night of 26th August, and we left it with flames licking high. The facility is intended to serve forces across the South West.

After climbing into the quarry we used accelerant to burn the major electrical cables at five junction points throughout the complex, and doused and lighted a pallet of electrical fittings and wires. More than twelve hours later the fire is still burning. It put smiles on our faces to realise how easy it was to enter their gun club and leave a fuck you signature right in the belly of the beast, with a curious fox as our only witness.

On the same night others of us attacked two vehicles near St George, Bristol with paint stripper and by slashing the tyres – one G4S and one Amey. In the UK and globally G4S provide prison and security services and profit from many aspects of prison society. Amey, in a joint venture with GEO transport prisoners in England and Wales and run courthouses in Bristol and North Somerset.

In the City around us the lock down increases; there is a general atmosphere of rising fear and powerlessness; there is more and more surveillance, and security guards with handcuffs appear on more and more doors. Tensions across the world are simmering as people lose faith in the system. As a response to this insecurity the state is militarising it's police with firearms, remote control drones and 'non-lethal' weapons that regularly kill. At the same time they develop the preventative 'soft cop' buffer of community support officers, liaison teams and so on, that are more fitting with the democratic image. They even get some help from leftists such as John Drury from Aufheben with his contributions on crowd control, who is as terrified of the unmanageable as the ruling classes are. The British state is a world leader in counter-insurgency techniques. Their expertise is the result of generations long brutal colonisation, like in India, Kenya and to this day in Ireland.

Two years after the major UK riots we think an important door was opened for radical and combative refusal of our daily existence on a wide scale. For those of us who took to the streets it was a breath of clean air in the dungeons, a reminder that the encroachment and control is not complete. Even when the apathy and isolation seems to have taken hold again we continue our attacks. The police and security industry specialise in making us feel powerless in our own lives, and making these attacks goes a long way to overcoming this feeling.

This is also our way of marking two years that Bristol anarchist Badger has evaded capture after the riots. Stay free, keep fighting!

Speaking of which, the night of our action coincides with the announced start of the planned cull of wild badgers in the South West of England. Through attempting to facilitate the cull and stop resistance the police shore up the interests of agricultural industry and the land owning classes. We hope this will be one of many rebellions against this slaughter. Because the state and corporate security forces are integral to this world of exploitation and authority.

Our best wishes to the Greek anarchist Kostas Sakkas in recovery from a successful hunger strike for pre-trial release after 30 months on remand.

The struggle will continue until all are wild and free.

-Angry Foxes Cell in collaboration with ACAB

—

From the BBC:

An anarchist group has claimed it started a fire which ripped through a police firearms training centre being built in Somerset.

A passing officer spotted the blaze at the Black Rock centre in Portishead in the early hours of Tuesday.

In a post on the Bristol Indymedia website, the group, called "Angry Foxes Cell", says it "used accelerant to burn the major electrical cables".

Police said it is too early to decide "cause or responsibility".

The centre, which is being built at Black Rock Quarry, is to be used by the Avon and Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire forces.

The facility, which will contain two indoor firing ranges and classrooms, is due to open in January.

It is part of a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deal, worth more than £100m, which will also see police stations and other operational facilities built in Patchway, Keynsham and Bridgwater.

Friends of Badgers Hack into NFU Mutual

11/06/12: received anonymously:

"NFU Mutual is the commercial arm of the National Farmers Union (NFU). They provide a huge part of the income for the NFU and enable it to be a lobbying powerhouse in UK politics. The funding they provide to the NFU is used to ensure that animal welfare regulations on farmers remain lax; that farmers continue to receive huge subsidies; that the horrific live export trade can continue and also ensure that they are able to get the government to allow them to persecute wildlife such as badgers in complete disregard to the law which has them as a protected species. The NFU and NFU Mutual are so closely linked that NFU reps are also sales agents for NFU Mutual. NFU Mutual makes the profit that greases the wheels of political lobbying to allow the slaughter of our innocent wildlife. Last September we decided to come out of our sett and get hacking NFU Mutual, our biggest target.

Since the beginning of May we have exploited vulnerabilities on NFU Mutual systems to allow us to download almost all of their customer files including full financial details, claims and account history. Our access is so complete that we were able to make subtle modifications to the accounts of several people we know are involved in the badger cull.

As more people are identified as being part of the badger cull we will exploit the details we have on them. We will show the same mercy to their finances that they show to the lives of badgers. We already have plans to use the details we have on some of the more high profile supporters of the cull.

This is Bodger and Badger. NFU Mutual bodged their security and so we are now badgering them.

Badgers have friends, and those friends are hackers.

BrockCyberClan – saving wildlife one bit at a time."

The Fuel Nightmare Continues

It’s as if the universe is trying to tell us something, isn’t it?

It’s as if the universe is trying to tell us something, isn’t it?

First, a disastrous month that saw at least 15 separate oil spills worldwide, nearly all of them in North America. That month also saw an oil barge catch fire after a collision, and the publication of a study implicating fracking as a cause of earthquakes.

Now at least 600 gallons have spilled from an Enbridge oil pumping station near Viking, Minnesota.Two fuel barges carrying a natural gas derivative have exploded and are still burning on the Alabama River. And new reports strongly suggest that tar sands from Exxon’s Pegasus Pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas have seeped into Lake Conway and are heading toward the Arkansas River.

Disasters like these bring the real costs of fossil fuels into sharp focus, because we can imagine ourselves affected by them. But the truth is, disasters like these are part of everyday life for the people and other beings living in areas where fossil fuels are extracted—or any other industrial materials, from copper for solar panels to coltan for cell phones.

If you wouldn’t want oil spilling into your back yard, if you wouldn’t want a strip mine ripping open a hole behind your house and poisoning your water, then it’s time to admit that the economic system founded on consuming these materials has got to go. We’ll never have justice or sustainability if we base one group’s “high standard of living” on the dislocation and destruction of others.

The Efficiency of Green Energy

We ought not at least to delay dispersing a set of plausible fallacies about the economy of fuel, and the discovery of substitutes [for coal], which at present obscure the cri

We ought not at least to delay dispersing a set of plausible fallacies about the economy of fuel, and the discovery of substitutes [for coal], which at present obscure the critical nature of the question, and are eagerly passed about among those who like to believe that we have an indefinite period of prosperity before us. –William Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question (1865)

There are, at present, many myths about green energy and its efficiency to address the demands and needs of our burgeoning industrial society, the least of which is that a switch to “renewable” energy will significantly reduce our dependency on, and consumption of, fossil fuels.

The opposite is true. If we study the actual productive processes required for current “renewable” energies (solar, wind, biofuel, etc.) we see that fossil fuels and their infrastructure are not only crucial but are also wholly fundamental to their development. To continue to use the words “renewable” and “clean” to describe such energy processes does a great disservice for generating the type of informed and rational decision-making required at our current junction.

To take one example – the production of turbines and the allocation of land necessary for the development, processing, distribution and storage of “renewable” wind energy. From the mining of rare metals, to the production of the turbines, to the transportation of various parts (weighing thousands of tons) to a central location, all the way up to the continued maintenance of the structure after its completion – wind energy requires industrial infrastructure (i.e. fossil fuels) in every step of the process.

If the conception of wind energy only involves the pristine image of wind turbines spinning, ever so wonderfully, along a beautiful coast or grassland, it’s not too hard to understand why so many of us hold green energy so highly as an alternative to fossil fuels. Noticeably absent in this conception, though, are the images of everything it took to get to that endpoint (which aren’t beautiful images to see at all and is largely the reason why wind energy isn’t marketed that way).

Because of the rapid growth and expansion of industrialiation in the last two centuries, we are long past the days of easy accessible resources. If you take a look at the type of mining operations and drilling operations currently sustaining our way of life you will readily see degradation and devastation on unconscionable scales. This is our reality and these processes will not change no matter what our ends are – these processes are the degree with which “basic” extraction of all of the fundamental metals, minerals, and resources we are familiar with currently take place.

In much the same way that the absurdities of tar sands extraction, mountaintop removal, and hydraulic fracturing are plainly obvious, so too are the continued mining operations and refining processes of copper, silver, aluminum, zinc, etc. (all essential to the development of solar panels and wind turbines).

It is not enough – given our current situation and its dire implications – to just look at the pretty pictures and ignore everything else. All this does, as wonderfully reaffirming and uplifting as it may be, is keep us bound in delusions and false hopes. As Jevons affirms, the questions we have before us are of such overwhelming importance that it does no good to continue to delay dispersing plausible fallacies. If we wish to go anywhere from here, we absolutely need uncompromising (and often brutal) truth.

A common argument among proponents of supposed “green” energy – often prevalent among those who do understand the inherent destructive processes of fuels, mining and industry – is that by simply putting an end to capitalism and its profit motive, we will have the capacity to plan for the efficient and proper management of remaining fossil fuels.

However, the efficient use of a resource does not actually result in its decreased consumption, and we owe evidence of that to William Stanley Jevons’ work The Coal Question. Written in 1865 (during a time of such great progress that criticisms were unfathomable to most), Jevons devoted his study to questioning Britain’s heavy reliance on coal and how the implication of reaching its limits could threaten the empire. Many covered topics in this text have influenced the way in which many of us today discuss the issues of peak oil and sustainability – he wrote on the limits to growth, overshoot, energy return on energy input, taxation of resources and resource alternatives.

In the chapter, “Of the economy of fuel,” Jevons addresses the idea of efficiency directly. Prevalent at the time was the thought that the failing supply of coal would be met with new modes of using it, therefore leading to a stationary or diminished consumption. Making sure to distinguish between private consumption of coal (which accounted for less than one-third of total coal consumption) and the economy of coal in manufactures (the remaining two-thirds), he explained that we can see how new modes of economy lead to an increase of consumption according to parallel instances. He writes:

The economy of labor effected by the introduction of new machinery throws laborers out of employment for the moment. But such is the increased demand for the cheapened products, that eventually the sphere of employment is greatly widened. Often the very laborers whose labor is saved find their more efficient labor more demanded than before.

The same principle applies to the use of coal (and in our case, the use of fossil fuels more generally) – it is the very economy of their use that leads to their extensive consumption. This is known as the Jevons Paradox, and as it can be applied to coal and fossil fuels, it so rightfully can be (and should be) applied in our discussions of “green” and “renewable” energies – noting again that fossil fuels are never completely absent in the productive processes of these energy sources.

We can try to assert, given the general care we all wish to take in moving forward to avert catastrophic climate change, that much diligence will be taken for the efficient use of remaining resources but without the direct questioning of consumption our attempts are meaningless. Historically, in many varying industries and circumstances, efficiency does not solve the problem of consumption – it exasperates it. There is no guarantee that “green” energies will keep consumption levels stationary let alone result in a reduction of consumption (an obvious necessity if we are planning for a sustainable future).

Jevons continues, “Suppose our progress to be checked within half a century, yet by that time our consumption will probably be three or four times what it now is; there is nothing impossible or improbable in this; it is a moderate supposition, considering that our consumption has increased eight-fold in the last sixty years. But how shortened and darkened will the prospects of the country appear, with mines already deep, fuel dear, and yet a high rate of consumption to keep up if we are not to retrograde.”

Writing in 1865, Jevons could not have fathomed the level of growth that we have attained today but that doesn’t mean his early warnings of Britain’s use of coal should be wholly discarded. If anything, the continued rise and dominance of industrialisation over nearly all of the earth’s land and people makes his arguments ever more pertinent to our present situation.

Based on current emissions of carbon alone (not factoring in the reaching of tipping points and various feedback loops) and the best science readily available, our time frame for action to avert catastrophic climate change is anywhere between 15-28 years. However, as has been true with every scientific estimate up to this point, it is impossible to predict that rate at which these various processes will occur and largely our estimates fall extremely short. It is quite probable that we are likely to reach the point of irreversible runaway warming sooner rather than later.

Suppose our progress and industrial capitalism could be checked within the next ten years, yet by that time our consumption could double and the state of the climate could be exponentially more unfavorable than it is now – what would be the capacity for which we could meaningfully engage in any amount of industrial production? Would it even be in the realm of possibility to implement large-scale overhauls towards “green” energy? Without a meaningful and drastic decrease in consumption habits (remembering most of this occurs in industry and not personal lifestyles) and a subsequent decrease in dependency on industrial infrastructure, the prospects of our future are severely shortened and darkened.

Affirmative: Fracking Awareness North Somerset is go, go, GO! 30th April

Fracking Awareness North Somerset (F.A.N.S) is a new organisation seeking to mobilize community based resistance against fracking. We aim to build a network of groups all over North Somerset to collectively struggle against the insidious threat posed by fracking to our local communities and landscape.

F.A.N.S. will encompass and offer support for all anti-fracking/environmental groups in North Somerset, providing them with up to date information, encouragement and solidarity in fighting this cause.

Our Facebook page is now up and running and we are currently in the midst of designing our new North Somerset focused leaflets. We are also creating a new website so that we are easily contactable and can provide information and help for other groups around North Somerset.

Once our leaflet and website are finished, we are planning F.A.N.S Fortnight – two weeks of talks, presentations, meetings, workshops and film showings around the towns and villages of North Somerset. F.A.N.S Fortnight aims to educate the residents of these areas on the often complex issue of fracking. We seek to show them how they may be affected by fracking in the coming years, but also that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

So it’s all go from North Somerset! Please feel free to get in touch if you are interested in supporting us or have a new group that would like to join F.A.N.S. We would also very much like to hear from anyone interested in helping out with festivals or ideas for promotion.

Fracking will bring industrial North Sea gas extraction to our very doorsteps. Together, we can stop it.

Community resistance will be one of the most effective tools deployed against the fracking corporations. Despite what may appear at first glance to be a very bleak situation, hope can be found by standing together in focused solidarity.

Therefore, we will be encouraging and providing support for anyone who would like to start their own local group. Our aim is to help as many people as possible take their first tentative steps in this struggle. United communities are key to ending (with a firm and resolute full stop) fracking's threat to North Somerset.

A lot of promotion is needed to ensure that residents know who we are and when we will be in their area. Therefore, members of F.A.N.S are planning to visit a large number of local South West summer festivals this year to manage stalls, run workshops and hold talks. We will also be promoting F.A.N.S Fortnight and the events/meetings that are going to be held during that time.

Last on our current agenda is 'Love and Rage' – a monthly spoken word poetry and acoustic music night held in Bristol. Love and Rage will be a regular fund-raiser to help contribute towards the monetary demands of our campaign. It will also be a platform from which to inform people of the dangers posed by Fracking and, at the same time, hopefully mobilise them into action.

attack on bristol security firm

No peace for the defenders of commodity-society. Their security = a joke once again. Our latest target was Avon and Somerset Guarding, on Fishponds Rd, we broke half the storefront glass and attacked the CCTV camera, leaving an anarchy symbol tagged on the scene. Enough uniformed bastards in our lives, let's trash the control apparatus.

Reclaim the Fields:Spring into Action Gathering!FoD

:Reclaim the Fields : Spring into Action Gathering! 16th-25th March:

:Reclaim the Fields : Spring into Action Gathering! 16th-25th March:
Yorkley Court is hosting the Reclaim the Fields 'Spring into Action' gathering, on Saturday the 16th of March- 25th! The Gathering aims to be a platform for sharing practical land-based skills, crafts and related knowledge. We intend to 'get on with it' whilst continually seeking to create a popular discourse/ debate on the issues of land access, the right to food autonomy/ sovereignty and the right to build and dwell within a low-impact home on the land.

Yorkley Court Community Farm is a growing grass-roots farm in the Forest of Dean, interested in developing resilient agro-ecological systems, that are both productive and ecologically regenerative.

The Seed Camp will start on the 8th of March, with a two day Permaculture course by Tomas Remiarz. The rest of the week will focus on setting up infrastructure and openly, inclusively organising the Gathering. Anyone interested and able to help get the Gathering off to a great start, should come along for this week, prior to the main Gathering! Lots of skill-sharing and fun will be had!

We are currently looking for people interested in doing talks, running workshops and skill-sharing during the main Gathering… everyone will have the opportunity to share their skills and knowledge at the gathering, but we can publicise the workshops/talks offered before the gathering! So let us know what you'd like to offer or to see, in the way of workshops/skillshares asap!

The weekends of the Gathering will be focused on talks, presentations, workshops and discussions. The week days between will be more focused on practical activities.

Please get hold of us, if you're planning to come to the Seed Camp, or are wanting to do talk, run a workshop, etc…

:Contact Details:

yorkleycourt@gmail.com

yorkleycourt.wordpress.com < our main, local community facing website!

rtfspring2013.wordpress.com < the gatherings own website! programme still under-construction!

reclaimthefields.org.uk < our constellations website

:A bit about the Forest:

The Forest of Dean is a land betwix two rivers, a secret Wilderness in West Gloucestershire, right on the Welsh boarder.

The Forest of Dean has historically been the home of many radical land-rights struggles and was settled by 'the cabiners', people who built their homes "by right" instead of through state dependence. They were treated by the state with the same distain as 'squatters' are today, albeit with more direct violence and less PR spin.

As one Oxford prof. put it, after moving here recently, because…
"The Forest and it's people have a healthy disregard for the rule of law!"

Resistance is Fertile!

Reclaim the Fields!

"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. "

EDF suing climate activists for £5 million – protesters face losing homes Wed 20th

EDF suing climate activists for £5million

Evidence of police/corporate collusion as police serve legal papers on activists on behalf of EDF, and hand over personal data

EDF suing climate activists for £5million

Evidence of police/corporate collusion as police serve legal papers on activists on behalf of EDF, and hand over personal data

Key CCTV footage at police station may have been deleted

Counter-Terrorism Command visited activist at home

Home Secretary Theresa May questioned in Parliament

For more information, photos, film footage and interviews email
press@nodashforgas.org.uk or phone 07447027112. A new short film of two of
the activists speaking about the civil claim can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kTZgMIn4Go

Following the week-long shut-down and occupation of EDF’s West Burton gas-fired power station last October by campaign group 'No Dash for Gas', EDF has launched a civil claim for damages against the group and associated activists for costs the company claims to have incurred – a figure it puts at £5 million [1].

Should the claim succeed, several of the campaigners face losing their homes, and all could face bankruptcy or be forced to pay a percentage of their salaries to EDF for decades to come. The amount of the claim represents just 0.3% of EDF's annual UK profits, which rose by 7.5% this year to £1.7 billion [2].

This is the first time an energy company has attempted such a claim, and campaigners say it represents the opening of a new front against peaceful direct action protesters. If successful, it could have a chilling effect on other groups – such as UK Uncut and Greenpeace – who use civil disobedience to challenge social and environmental problems.

Aneaka Kelly, one of the No Dash for Gas defendants said: 'This un-civil action by EDF is not about money – they know we don't have this kind of cash. EDF just want to make sure that anyone who tries to stand up and challenge their profiteering price hikes, shady government lobbying and climate-trashing power plants is quickly silenced by the threat of legal action.”

Sixteen campaigners occupied two chimneys at West Burton for a week in October 2012, stopping nearly 20,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions [3]. The activists – 21 in total – were convicted of aggravated trespass at
Mansfield Magistrates Court today. Seventeen are due to be sentenced on March 20th, and the remaining four on April 2nd.

There is evidence that Nottinghamshire Police colluded with EDF against 'No Dash for Gas' by formally serving civil papers on the activists after their arrest, and by sharing their personal data with the power company. In one case officers served the papers on the activists’ lawyer, in another they chased an activist down the street outside the station and served the papers on him directly, commenting, “I’m doing this as a
courtesy to EDF” [4]. Last week, the Home Secretary was questioned in Parliament about whether this kind of practice is routine [5].

The campaigners believe that Nottinghamshire Police's support for the civil claim is part of a larger strategy to crack down on environmental protest, as evidenced by the use of extremely onerous bail conditions on
the activists after their arrest. They were not allowed to associate with each other and most were subject to home curfews from 9pm to 7am. Those conditions were only lifted once the company had ordered its own civil legal strategy against the activists. FOI documents obtained by No Dash for Gas show that a Special Advisor in the Department for Energy was liaising with the police about those bail conditions before most of the activists were even arrested. [6]

In another incident, Counter Terrorism Command officers visited an activist at her home to 'remind' her of her bail conditions and caution her against going within 50 metres of E.ON's Grain Island Power Station.

Deeply concerned by police involvement in the unprecedented civil claim, the activists’ lawyer Mike Schwarz of Bindmans wrote to the police asking to view CCTV footage from inside the station, only to be told it had
probably been deleted as footage was only kept for three months – despite the fact that this three-month deadline had not yet passed.

Aneaka Kelly from No Dash For Gas said: “The police are meant to be working in the public interest, not acting as EDF's private police force. If I wanted to sue EDF over their pollution or their price hikes, would
you expect the police to deliver the legal papers to EDF on my behalf, or hand over the names and addresses of their top executives? Somehow, I don't think so.”

The protest itself aimed to challenge the Government's plan to build up to 40 new gas-fired power stations, which would see gas accounting for over 50% of the UK's power generation over the next three decades. The Government's own Committee on Climate Change have said that a new “dash for gas” would make it impossible for the Government to meet its legally-binding carbon reduction targets, and thus would push us ever closer to the brink of unstoppable climate change [7].

The Committee also point out that a greater reliance on gas would increase household bills by up to six times more than a shift to renewable energy [8]. These comments were echoed this week by the Chief Executive of Ofgem Alistair Buchanan, who warned that an increased reliance on gas will lead
to higher prices in the near future [9]. Campaigners blame the lobbying power of big energy companies like EDF for the Government's current pro-gas position [10].

The case is reminiscent of the record-breaking “McLibel” case, when the fast food chain McDonalds sued two activists from North London from 1990-1997. Ewa Jasiewicz, another No Dash for Gas defendant said: 'This is starting to look just like McLibel. It's a David and Goliath battle between protesters with nothing but their bodies to put in the way, and out-of-control Big Energy which has a business plan that will drive up
bills, push millions into fuel poverty and crash our climate targets. We will be resisting EDF's claim every step of the way'.

ENDS

Notes for editors

[1] Copies of the legal papers from EDF are available – please email us on
press@nodashforgas.org.uk or phone 07447027112 to see them. The £5 million
figure was presented in court today, in evidence from Graeme Bellingham,
Project Director at West Burton's, who stated that: 'Delays to the final
completion of the project has caused total losses to EDF in excess of £5
million'. See also
http://www.channel4.com/news/edf-sues-activists-for-5m-an-attack-on-peaceful-protest

[2]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/14/edf-profits-rise-following-price-hike

[3] See
http://www.nodashforgas.org.uk/blog/press-release-campaigners-prevent-carbon-emissions-in-longest-ever-power-station-occupation.
The campaigners calculated that they were stopping 2,371 tonnes per day, and the action lasted for seven days, so that's 2371 x 7 = 19117 tonnes of CO2 saved.

[4] See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/20/activists-police-edf-law-suit

[5] On Friday 8th February, Caroline Lucas (MP for Brighton Pavilion) put forward the following question in Parliament:

“To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what her policy is on (a) the provision of
information by the police to private companies that are planning or taking civil legal action against protesters, where those protesters may be subject to criminal proceedings, (b) the timing of the provision of such information and (c) provision of other practical assistance by the police to companies taking civil proceedings, including service or quasi-service of court papers; whether her Department has established any formal procedures or organisations to (i) facilitate the flow of any such information and (ii) establish compliance with or breach of any such procedures and policies; and if she will make a statement.”

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmordbk2/130212o01.htm#13_

The Home Secretary has not yet responded.

[6] FOI documents available on request – please email us on
press@nodashforgas.org.uk or phone 07447027112 to see them.

[7]
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/tories-dash-for-gas-risks-climate-target-8120153.html

[8]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/dec/13/gas-energy-bills-renewables

[9]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9878281/Ofgem-boss-warns-of-higher-energy-prices-in-supply-roller-coaster.html

[10] See for example
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/dirty_half_dozen.pdf

Statement from No Dash for Gas on today’s court appearance 20th Feb

Today, 21 No Dash for Gas activists appeared in court, to face charges of aggravated trespass following the week-long occupation of EDF's West Burton power station last October/November. All 21 chose to plead guilty, because they felt their time will be better spent campaigning against the government's insane dash for gas, rather than being tied up in a protracted court case.

The activists have issued the following statement:

"We undertook our carefully considered protest action last October out of a sincere belief that companies such as EDF, in collusion with government, are unaccountable, unrepresentative and wrong in pursuing gas as a dominant fuel in our country's energy system.

We have no influence over where and how our energy is sourced, priced and delivered in this country. We believe that these decisions should be made democratically and in the public interest.

Six large multinational corporations have a monopoly over our domestic energy supply and some of their personnel write policy at the Department for Energy and Climate Change. These companies set the energy agenda in this country, to the detriment of the public interest and legally binding carbon reduction targets. We do not have the power, access or capital that these companies have. Civil disobedience is one of the only means we have to intervene in this agenda.

The majority of people in this country want clean, renewable, cheaper energy. We acted out of necessity and, we sincerely believe, in the public interest – to prevent an escalation in the crisis of climate change that threatens the safety and security of millions of people and ecosystems in the UK and around the world."

Anti-road campaigners peacefully resisting camp evictions (16 Jan)

The eviction of the two remaining camps (“Base camp” and “Decoy Pond Wood” – see here and below for maps) has begun, and campaigners are resisting peacefully in treehouses and tun

The eviction of the two remaining camps (“Base camp” and “Decoy Pond Wood” – see here and below for maps) has begun, and campaigners are resisting peacefully in treehouses and tunnels. Please protest, support and publicise!

Bailiffs arrived just before 8am, and the eviction proper began around 8.15am. As at 8.37am there were 30+ bailiffs on site with more security arriving, focussing mainly on the tunnel(s). As at 8.59am it was no longer possible to access the camp via the access road to Adam’s farm (though other cross-country routes may still be available), and Harris fencing was being brought in.

Please note: This is only the end of the beginning for the protests against the Bexhill Hastings Link Road (BHLR)! We urgently need to replenish our finances following the last month of protests, so please consider giving a donation, using the “donate” button on our web-site and Facebook page, if you are able.

Press release Combe Haven Defenders [1]
Wednesday 16 January
Contact 07926 423 033

EVICTION OF ANTI-ROAD CAMP NEAR HASTINGS HAS STARTED
Protestors resisting peacefully in treehouses and tunnels

Wednesday 16 January, 8.16am: Opponents of the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road (BHLR) are defending trees and occupying tunnels at their main protest camp in Crowhurst. Security guards and bailiffs, supported by police, began attempts to evict the camp at 8am today.

The main camp, which has been in place since 21 December, is located on the proposed route of the BHLR close to Adam’s Farm, Crowhurst [2]. Further trees on route are occupied by protestors at nearby “Decoy Camp”.

The peaceful protests against the road– which have now been running for a month, with 12 arrests – have seized national attention over the past week [3].

Tree-felling work for the road started on 14 December 2012 and represents the first significant work on the highly-controversial £100m road, one of over forty “zombie roads” that were declared dead years ago but have now been resuscitated as part of as part of Britain’s largest road-building programme in 25 years [4, 5].

Contact 07926 423 033

NOTES
[1] http://www.combehavendefenders.org.uk
[2] Nearby postcode TN33 9AY. For map see http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/camp-groundrules-directions/
[3] http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/recent-media-coverage/
[4] See ‘Controversial ‘zombie roads’ scheme to be resuscitated’, Guardian, 10 October 2012, http://tinyurl.com/zombieroads
[5] http://bettertransport.org.uk/media/26-Oct-roads-report