Climate activists escape jail sentences for power station shut down

no-dashPost­ed Thu 6th Jun 2013  ‘No Dash for Gas’ cam­paign­ers giv­en con­di­tion­al dis­charges and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice orders for pow­er sta­tion occu­pa­tion

no-dashPost­ed Thu 6th Jun 2013  ‘No Dash for Gas’ cam­paign­ers giv­en con­di­tion­al dis­charges and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice orders for pow­er sta­tion occu­pa­tion

Twen­ty-one cli­mate cam­paign­ers were sen­tenced today at Not­ting­ham Mag­is­trates court for tak­ing part in a week-long occu­pa­tion of EDF’s West Bur­ton Gas Fired Pow­er Sta­tion last Autumn [1].

Despite fears that some of the pro­test­ers might be fac­ing jail terms, they were giv­en less­er – but still puni­tive — sen­tences rang­ing from 18 months con­di­tion­al dis­charges for five of the pro­test­ers, to vary­ing num­bers of hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. On sen­tenc­ing, the judge remarked, “All of you are high­ly edu­cat­ed men and women, indus­tri­ous com­mit­ted indi­vid­u­als who wok and vol­un­teer in your com­mu­ni­ties. Your motives were gen­uine… what you planned you exe­cut­ed to per­fec­tion.”

Speak­ing after the sen­tenc­ing, Rachel Thomp­son said: “Although – thank good­ness — none of us are going to jail, we are still fac­ing penal­ties for sim­ply stand­ing up for clean, safe and afford­able ener­gy. Mean­while, every­one in the coun­try will be fac­ing a dis­as­trous­ly desta­bilised cli­mate and rock­et­ing fuel bills if we don’t stop the Gov­ern­men­t’s reck­less dash for gas. The Gov­ern­ment is putting the prof­its of the Big Six ener­gy com­pa­nies before the fun­da­men­tal need for a safe and live­able cli­mate for gen­er­a­tions to come.”

More than 64,000 peo­ple signed a peti­tion [2] in sup­port of the No Dash For Gas pro­test­ers after EDF launched a £5 mil­lion dam­ages claim against them. The law­suit was quick­ly dropped in the face of this pub­lic out­cry, and sup­port for the cam­paign­ers seems to have remained strong. Over a thou­sand peo­ple have pledged to con­gre­gate out­side EDF’s Lon­don offices this evening in a sol­i­dar­i­ty vig­il in sup­port of the defen­dants [3].

Sup­port­ers of No Dash For Gas have also vowed to return to EDF’s West Bur­ton pow­er sta­tion for a four day “Reclaim The Pow­er” action camp in August [4]. The “Cli­mate Camp-style” gath­er­ing is expect­ed to attract a mix­ture of cli­mate cam­paign­ers, pen­sion­ers fac­ing fuel pover­ty and anti-aus­ter­i­ty activists, and promis­es a “sur­pris­ing and inspir­ing mass action”.

Ewa Jasiewicz, one of the 21 defen­dants said after the sen­tenc­ing: “Reclaim the Pow­er is about just that – reclaim­ing the pow­er to decide where our ener­gy comes from, what we use it for and how we organ­ise our soci­ety in the pub­lic inter­est, accord­ing to peo­ple’s needs and not for cor­po­rate greed. A decen­tralised, renew­able, pub­licly-owned ener­gy sys­tem is both pos­si­ble and nec­es­sary if we are to avoid cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change and ever-wors­en­ing fuel pover­ty”.

Eight minute doc­u­men­tary of the action and pro­test­ers is avail­able at: http://youtu.be/HovQqw9jEJY

*** ENDS ***

[1] See http://www.nodashforgas.org.uk/
[2] www.change.org/edf21
[3] See https://www.facebook.com/events/549817328384415/ EDF Offices: Car­di­nal Place, 80 Vic­to­ria street, Lon­don. Mem­bers of Fuel Pover­ty Action, UKUn­cut, Dis­abled Peo­ples Against the Cuts and the Greater Lon­don Pen­sion­ers Asso­ci­a­tion will be attend­ing and avail­able for inter­view
[4] See http://www.nodashforgas.org.uk/