Mainshill Wood Occupied

19.6.09
URGENT: No Open Cast Here! Join the fight against open cast coal min­ing, cli­mate chaos and com­mu­ni­ty destruc­tion! Come to the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

Last night activists occu­pied the site of Main­shill Wood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties in the UK suf­fer­ing from the impacts of open cast­ing and resist­ing new mines.

Scot­tish Coal have been giv­en per­mis­sion to mine 1.7 mil­lion tonnes of coal from Main­shill in South Lanark­shire, a deci­sion by South Lanark­shire Coun­cil and lat­er Scot­tish Min­is­ters that enraged local res­i­dents who for years have cam­paigned against this mine. There are four oth­er mines in the area, mak­ing it one of the most heav­i­ly mined areas in Europe.

This new coal mine is only one of 20 such oth­ers to have recent­ly been giv­en plan­ning per­mis­sion in Scot­land. If we are to have any chance of lim­it­ing dan­ger­ous cli­mate change and pro­tect­ing com­mu­ni­ties from car­bon-inten­sive indus­tries we must take mat­ters into our own hands.

We have tak­en this autonomous and free space for those who wish to cre­ate pos­i­tive, cre­ative and
egal­i­tar­i­an solu­tions to eco­log­i­cal col­lapse, cli­mate change and envi­ron­men­tal injus­tice. Prof­i­teer­ing com­pa­nies, land own­ers and gov­ern­ments will not mine for new coal here!

Sup­port Us

We need:
Peo­ple – to hold this site we need peo­ple to join us. The site has a safe spaces pol­i­cy and wel­comes all who share our desire to live in a space free from hier­ar­chy, oppres­sion, dis­crim­i­na­tion and coal mines!
Climb­ing equip­ment – any you can donate will be put to good use
Build­ing mate­ri­als — suit­able bits of wood, rope, polyprop, pal­lets
Food — lots of it!
Mon­ey — run­ning a camp can be expen­sive, if you can donate to us please do
Oth­er equip­ment — head torch­es, tools, con­tain­ers, tarps, water­proofs, sleep­ing bags

How to get to the camp:
Bus­es run to Dou­glas from Lanark and Hamil­ton. Both Lanark and Hamil­ton have train and bus sta­tions and are easy to get to from either Glas­gow Cen­tral Train Sta­tion or Buchan­non Street Bus Sta­tion. From South of the bor­der, going to Glas­gow is the eas­i­est way to get to Dou­glas. Bus­es from Lanark to Dou­glas are much more fre­quent!

Bus from Lanark:

The Ser­vice Num­ber 9 (William Stokes & Sons) runs from Lanark — Gle­spin, stop­ping in Dou­glas (ser­vice every 49mins past each hour). Get off at the Egger­ton Bridge stop just before Dou­glas — you’ll see the camp on your left just after the M74 under­pass!

Bus from Hamil­ton:

The X50 (Hen­der­son Trav­el — http://www.henderson-travel.co.uk/) Hamil­ton-Gle­spin runs Hamil­ton, Inter­change — Les­ma­hagow, Church Hall — Rig­side — Dou­glas, leav­ing Hamil­ton at 17:05 (one ser­vice per day)

From Dou­glas:

The bus will stop before Dou­glas at Egger­ton Bridge and you will see the camp on your left after the M74 under­pass. If you miss this stop get off in Dou­glas and walk North East back up the A70 for 1km and the camp will be on yout right just before the M74.

Hitch­ing:

If you hitch, the camp is right next to the M74 which runs from Glas­gow to Carlisle. Get dropped of at junc­tion 12 and walk South West down the A70 towards Dou­glas and the camp is a few hun­dred metres on your left. Hap­pen­don ser­vices are close to junc­tion 12 — if you end up there­walk South down the B7078, turn right onto the A70 towards Dou­glas, which takes you under the M74 and as above.

If you need a ride…

…from some­where close by call the site phone and we’ll try to sort you out.

Con­tact Us

Call the site phone on: 07806 926 040