Leave it in the Ground’s Picnic in the Park trespass report

Around 70 peo­ple had set of to trav­el on a bank hol­i­day Mon­day which is no easy task as pub­lic trans­port has a nat­ur­al ten­den­cy not to run or has a lim­it­ed ser­vice on bank hol­i­days, for a pic­nic in a remote part of Der­byshire. The weath­er reports had all pre­dict­ed thun­dery show­ers for the day, which seems to be nor­mal for a bank hol­i­day out­ing, but this did not seem to deter the peo­ple who had gath­ered at the vis­i­tors cen­tre at Ship­ley Coun­try Park, Heanor, Der­byshire

The event had been organ­ised by a new cam­paign group called Leave it in the Ground and Earth First! to oppose new and exist­ing open cast min­ing in the UK and sol­i­dar­i­ty to inter­na­tion­al groups who are hav­ing their lives and land trashed in places like Phul­bari, Bangladesh by British com­pa­ny GMC Resources PLC http://www.gcmplc.com

After every one had fin­ished social­is­ing at the vis­i­tors cen­tre with cups of tea, they head­ed of through the park to the area of plush green fields and ripped out hedgerows, which is to be the area of the new open cast mine called Lodge house owned by UK Coal as we were fol­lowed by an evi­dence gath­er­er and a few oth­er police offi­cers who were mak­ing notes on how friend­ly and socia­ble we were.

UK coal had erect­ed new fences with­in the bound­aries of the fields declar­ing the 122 hec­tor site of destruc­tion wait­ing to hap­pen and activists out for the day just walked through the gap that will even­tu­al­ly have huge earth mov­ing vehi­cles and plant machin­ery tear­ing up the fields. There was no attempt by the police to stop us or ask­ing us not to go in, it was already decid­ed we were going to tres­pass, and there was no way they could keep us out any­way.

After a short breach of the bound­ary we came across a farm, com­plete with tree house, dog ken­nel with its bed­ding still inside and the odd toy in the gar­den that looked as if it had been aban­doned in a hur­ry from some pend­ing dis­as­ter. We gath­ered in the gar­den of the farm to hear a local per­son explain what was hap­pen­ing in the area.

We heard how UK Coal owns the land and that the locals in the sur­round­ing vil­lages of Smal­l­ey, Map­per­ly and West Hallem had been fight­ing against the com­pa­ny for the last 5 years against the plan to turn the area into an open cast site. Despite it being against plan­ning reg­u­la­tions the sec­re­tary of state gave the plan the go ahead in 2007. The fields we had just walked across is going to have its soil stripped in July and August of this year and the field to the south of the farm is going to be stripped this July, so it was a last look to see it in its nat­ur­al state, even though UK Coal are tak­ing the unusu­al step of return­ing the site back to green fields, not that the grass grows well or the hedgerows are replant­ed and the fields lack the nat­ur­al diver­si­ty of species.

More alarm­ing is that this is not just unique to Der­byshire; open cast­ing or strip min­ing as it is some­times known is on the agen­da of the gov­ern­ment and a change in pol­i­cy 2 years ago forced by pow­er sta­tions and coal com­pa­nies through lob­by­ing has forced it as a legit­i­mate way for them to make mon­ey, despite the fact it is seri­ous­ly dam­ag­ing to the cli­mate and the UK is not going to be able to cut its agreed emis­sions by burn­ing coal and that the Lodge House site is going to have 1 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon removed which means when it is burnt that’s 3,666,666 tones of car­bon diox­ide.

There was also a bit of brief his­to­ry of open cast min­ing in Der­byshire and the resis­tance to it in 1997 at the Tib­shelf site near Alfre­ton and how 250 activists from Earth First! NUJ and min­ers sup­port group had bussed there way to the site and caused an esti­mat­ed £375,000 to £4 mil­lion of dam­age with vehi­cles need­ing to be repaired on site as they were inca­pac­i­tat­ed!

We all moved off back into the fields with the fence an omi­nous mark­er in the dis­tance to the size and scale of what is to be lost and sat down to enjoy some food. Veg­gies had gone mobile and sup­plied us with veg­an pasties and their famous cake, so we sat in the long grass, drank some excel­lent Elder­flower Cham­paign that was being passed around while the police hid at the farm with­out refresh­ment keep­ing an eye on our activ­i­ty and social refine­ment. A kite flew over head and the chil­dren played foot­ball with the adults, all the usu­al accom­pa­ni­ments for a pic­nic.

We head­ed off through the south field and saw a bun­ga­low with its win­dows and doors sheet­ed up in steel, anoth­er vic­tim of the site I thought. Both prop­er­ties are the place most peo­ple dream of own­ing with the scenic views.

After a stroll on this bot­tom field we head­ed on to Bell Lane which divides the Lodge House site and head­ed into Smal­l­ey with anoth­er tea stop at the local Vil­lage Hall and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to use the toi­lets and more of Veg­gies cake and pasties. Some local peo­ple were there wait­ing for us and the group broke out into a meet­ing, in which we assessed the sit­u­a­tion over open cast min­ing in the UK and what we could do about it. The ener­gy and enthu­si­asm of which was enor­mous and in a very short time action plans had been drawn up. Small­er meet­ings in regions ensued so they could organ­ise into affin­i­ty groups. Peo­ple had trav­elled from Oxford, Cam­bridge, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, Not­ting­ham, Lan­cast­er, Nor­wich, Crew, Sheffield and Der­by as well as oth­er areas that I prob­a­bly missed and showed how much con­cern there was over the mat­ter of open cast min­ing

After a quick tidy up in the hall some set of back the way we came for the long jour­ney home while oth­ers decid­ed to take a slight­ly longer route over the fields of the site, just to keep the tres­pass going. We went into the main entrance of the site still unop­posed by the police after a slight nav­i­ga­tion­al error this all changed.

The local farmer had object­ed about us to our yel­low jack­et­ed escorts and we were being told we had to go back or face being arrest­ed and after check­ing the map, or not being allowed to go to the few steps more to the near­est foot­path we went back the way we came to join the foot­path at the back of the farm, again to be blocked by the police, one of which had led the farmer around the back and out of sight. One of the group decid­ed to go and have a word with the farmer and next thing we were being shout­ed to come this way; the chat with the farmer was obvi­ous­ly a suc­cess and we head­ed for the foot­path with a hap­py farmer and some of his fam­i­ly wav­ing us on like we were cham­pi­ons. This how­ev­er made us ques­tion what the police had said to the farmer?

For the lat­est infor­ma­tion on the next actions check Leave it in the Grounds web­site http://leaveitintheground.org.uk or blog http://leaveitintheground.wordpress.com

Or to get involved go to the Cli­mate Camp 3rd — 11th August at Kingsnorth http://www.climatecamp.org.uk and the Earth First Gath­er­ing 27th August – 1st Sep­tem­ber in Nor­folk http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk or find your local Earth First! group http://earthfirst.org.uk

BBC report on the tres­pass http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/7420634.stm
Do or Die http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no7/23–32.html
Phul­bari Resis­tance, Bangladesh http://phulbariresistance.blogspot.com

Why not organ­ise a protest against one of these?
UK Coal http://www.ukcoal.com/home
GMC Resources PLC http://www.gcmplc.com

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BBC report:

Tres­passers oppose coal mine plan26th May 2008
Peo­ple who do not want a new open­cast coal mine on land adjoin­ing a coun­try park in Der­byshire have held a protest.

UK Coal wants to extract a mil­lion tonnes over four years from Lodge Hill in Smal­l­ey, near Heanor.

But cam­paign­ers said this would have a dev­as­tat­ing impact on the envi­ron­ment. About 50 pro­test­ers marched on the land in a mass tres­pass on Mon­day.

UK Coal said the mat­ter had gone through a pub­lic inquiry, and been prop­er­ly approved by the gov­ern­ment.

It said Britain need­ed ener­gy, and it was bet­ter to get it local­ly than to import it.

Cli­mate cam­paign­ers from the groups, Leave it in the Ground and Earth First! joined local res­i­dents opposed the plans for the mine on land adjoin­ing Ship­ley Coun­try Park.

Oppo­nents of the plans claimed near­ly 70 acres of green­belt land would be destroyed if the plans went through and were also wor­ried about noise and pol­lu­tion in the area.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/7420634.stm (also go here for a bit of his­to­ry to the ini­tial refusal of plan­ning per­mis­sion, over­turned by the Sec­re­tary of State)

A report from peo­ple who went, plus pho­tos, to fol­low