Mainshill Solidarity Camp Update: No eviction this morning, but drilling workers

22.06.2009
After a whole night of dig­ging in and strength­en­ing defences, the rumoured evic­tion this morn­ing has­n’t hap­pened. How­ev­er, the sol­i­dar­i­ty shown by the num­ber of peo­ple who joined us over the week­end has been fan­tas­tic and allowed huge amounts of build­ing work to hap­pen, mak­ing the site well defend­able.

Mainshill protest camp banner22.06.2009
After a whole night of dig­ging in and strength­en­ing defences, the rumoured evic­tion this morn­ing has­n’t hap­pened. How­ev­er, the sol­i­dar­i­ty shown by the num­ber of peo­ple who joined us over the week­end has been fan­tas­tic and allowed huge amounts of build­ing work to hap­pen, mak­ing the site well defend­able.

Instead of police or court bail­ifs, a van-load of Apex work­ers tried to gain access to the site to con­tin­ue bore-hole work on the site, vital to the coal min­ing oper­a­tion. Bore-hol­ing and clear-felling had been hap­pen­ing before the site was occu­pied, and since the occu­pa­tion no work has been car­ried out. It is thought that this work is ille­gal as Scot­tish Coal have to car­ry out an exten­sive wildlife sur­vey before felling any trees or start­ing work as a con­di­tion imposed by the coun­cil.

Access to the site and Apex machin­ery was blocked with a vehi­cle, and Apex work­ers respond­ed by threat­en­ing to smash the wind­screen if it was not removed from in front of the gate. Very quick­ly, the peo­ple inside the vehi­cle were joined by campers and car loads of locals who came out in sup­port and to avert an evic­tion. The Apex work­ers backed down after this show of strength!

In a plea of sol­i­dar­i­ty to con­tract work­ers car­ry­ing out the bore-hole drilling and clear-felling, they have been asked to side with the com­mu­ni­ty and camp against their boss­es and refuse to car­ry out work on the site.

The Chief Inspec­tor for the area has stat­ed that the police have no inten­tion of remov­ing the camp at present, but will let us know if that changes. It is thought that a court order is being sought to evict the camp.

Lord Home, the land own­er, Scot­tish Coal, the min­ing com­pa­ny, and Scot­tish Min­is­ters can stop this project – if they were to come down and see the lev­el of sup­port and involve­ment in the camp from the local com­mu­ni­ty they would see how strong the oppo­si­tion is to this mine. If they don’t decide to over­turn the deci­sion, they will have a very expen­sive evic­tion on their hands.

Your sol­i­dar­i­ty is still need­ed! We can stop this coal mine from going ahead, both by defend­ing the site and work­ing with the local com­mu­ni­ties to take back deci­sion-mak­ing pow­er and get per­mis­sion over­turned. Please join us as soon as you can – see the web­site for details.

Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp web­site: http://coalactionedinburgh.noflag.org.uk/?page_id=415