Coal Protest Hits the Cardiff Hilton

Merthyr Tyd­fil res­i­dents and cli­mate change cam­paign­ers staged dis­rup­tive protests at the Cardiff Hilton today dur­ing the AGM of the UK Coal Author­i­ty.

10th Sep­tem­ber 2008 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – NO EMBARGO

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Email con­tact: media@thecoalhole.org

Coal Protest Hits the Cardiff Hilton

Merthyr Tyd­fil res­i­dents and cli­mate change cam­paign­ers staged dis­rup­tive protests at the Cardiff Hilton today dur­ing the AGM of the UK Coal Author­i­ty.

Three cam­paign­ers scaled the main entrance of the lux­u­ry hotel and hung a ban­ner read­ing “Coal: Leave it in the Ground”, while oth­ers inside the con­fer­ence chal­lenged coal indus­try del­e­gates on their industry’s record of envi­ron­men­tal dam­age.
Dur­ing the indus­try body’s “envi­ron­men­tal awards” pre­sen­ta­tion, local res­i­dents affect­ed by the Ffos-y-Fran open­cast min­ing scheme inter­rupt­ed pro­ceed­ings to present devel­op­ers Miller Argent with their own award — the “Com­mu­ni­ty Award for Glob­al Cli­mate Crimes”.

“I want­ed to make clear to James Poyn­er of Miller Argent the mis­ery he is bring­ing to our com­mu­ni­ty,” said Merthyr Tyd­fil res­i­dent Alyson Austin. “The Ffos-y-Fran mine is a two hun­dred metre deep hole, only thir­ty-five metres from our hous­es, and the coal they are dig­ging out is caus­ing dan­ger­ous cli­mate change. We are dis­gust­ed that local democ­ra­cy has been ignored, and Miller Argent has not been chal­lenged by the Welsh Assem­bly, despite their promis­es to us to take envi­ron­men­tal issues seri­ous­ly.”

The UK Coal Author­i­ty is a gov­ern­ment-fund­ed body tasked with pro­mot­ing and sup­port­ing the UK coal indus­try. Their AGM fea­tures ses­sions on expand­ing open­cast min­ing, length­en­ing the lifes­pan of aging pow­er sta­tions, and a range of oth­er con­tro­ver­sial activ­i­ties car­ried out by the indus­try, which has faced wide­spread oppo­si­tion over the past year to its plans for a new gen­er­a­tion of coal-fired pow­er sta­tions, and ongo­ing expan­sion of open­cast min­ing across the coun­try.

“Tax­pay­er-fund­ed bod­ies like the Government’s Coal Author­i­ty should not be allowed to col­lude with big com­pa­nies to cause dis­as­ter for local com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try, and dis­as­ter for the plan­et,” said Swansea res­i­dent and envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­er James Bryant, speak­ing out­side the Hilton. “At a time when cli­mate change and ris­ing fos­sil fuel prices are top of the polit­i­cal agen­da, it seems amaz­ing that the coal indus­try can still have cosy meet­ings about how great busi­ness is with no men­tion of the big­ger pic­ture.”

INTERVIEWS: Inter­views are avail­able with the pro­test­ers, in both Welsh and Eng­lish

PHOTOS: Pro­fes­sion­al, high-res­o­lu­tion images and high-qual­i­ty video are avail­able of the protest

Under­cur­rents filmed the direct action..watch our report here