Climate Camp Land Occupied & directions

11.08.2007

Cli­mate Camp activists met at a half dozen loca­tions around Lon­don this after­noon, mov­ing dur­ing the evening in vans to var­i­ous sites near Heathrow.

Just after eleven the groups con­verged on a large field oppo­site the air­port. With­in minute tripods were erect­ed and occu­pied with a large ban­ner read­ing “Cli­mate Camp, No Air­port Expan­sion” slung between the two.

By 11.30 a hun­dred or so peo­ple were on the Sip­son Lane site
( http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=sipson&ie=UTF‑8&oe=UTF‑8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox‑a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl) , half way between Sip­son and Har­ling­ton vil­lages. Vans were being quick­ly unloaded, tape was mark­ing out the bar­rios and tents were being erect­ed. Despite the pitch dark­ness kitchens were being organ­ised and a vil­lage began to take place.

Mid­night saw the arrival of the first police — does over­time kick in at a high­er rate after the witch­ing hour? Five vans lined up out­side the west gate, a cou­ple more out­side the east gate and sev­er­al saloons denot­ing the pres­ence of senior offi­cers.

A pha­lanx of cops poured on to the site and demand­ed to speak to the lead­ers. A quick call out for peo­ple to the main gate seemed to over­whelm them and they beat a hasty retreat back to the vans, a fair­ly low grade FIT team video­ing and stum­bling over the brack­en as it went.

The mood on the site is one of great ela­tion. After months of plan­ning and antic­i­pa­tion the day has final­ly arrived and the site is tak­en.

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The Cli­mate Camp site has been suc­cess­ful­ly tak­en!

We now need lots of peo­ple to come down and get every­thing set up.

We are on Sip­son Lane, between the vil­lages of Sip­son and Har­ling­ton, North of Heathrow.

By pub­lic trans­port:

Train from Padding­ton to ‘Hayes and Har­ling­ton’ sta­tion.

From there bus 90, 140 or H98 head­ing South. Get off at the cor­ner of Har­ling­ton High Street and walk West along Sip­son Lane about 600 metres.

OR

About a 2 mile walk — south into Har­ling­ton vil­lage then as above.

OR

Go one sta­tion fur­ther on to West Dray­ton and take the 222 bus to the West­ern (Sip­son) end of Sip­son Lane.

Loca­tion Map

Staines is quite far away — if you want to make your own way to the site don’t go to Staines!

But what we do know is that if is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! Staines rail­way sta­tion is very small so the Wel­come Desk and pick­up bus­es will be run­ning from Spelthorne Leisure Cen­tre, 5 min­utes walk from the station.(There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week).

If you get lost try­ing to find the sta­tion or any oth­er enquiries then call 0207 3779088 . There will be some­one man­ning the phone at the Lon­don Action Resource Cen­tre 10am to 6pm from 2nd August who will be able to help you.
There will prob­a­bly be police­man film­ing you at the sta­tion and else­where. Do not be intim­i­dat­ed

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The police are very pissed off that they did­n’t find the site for around 2 hours despite being very near­by. They’re demand­ing to search every­thing enter­ing the site and even copy­ing every piece of avail­able infor­ma­tion from mobile phones, such as ser­i­al num­bers and phone num­bers stored in the address book. No news on the arrestee oth­er than that its a ‘known activist’ who the police decid­ed would make a nice token ges­ture of force. Any­one want­i­ng to get down to work on the site is very much wel­come to get down and get work­ing.

Remem­ber your legal rights & the fun I Spy card (links above & from main arti­cle

2nd Arrest

Some­one has been nicked for walk­ing on the road. Legal observers were present. Search­es becom­ing a lit­tle less thor­ough, though even the back route into the site is being heav­i­ly policed.