Npower uses Thugs to Evict Radley Lakes Environmental Activists

At approx 5am Tues­day 6th Feb­ru­ary 12 bailiffs dressed from head to foot in black and wear­ing bal­a­clavas with­out warn­ing smashed through the win­dow of the occu­pied npow­er prop­er­ty show­er­ing sleep­ing activist in glass. They then pro­ceed­ed to cut the air sup­ply to a for­ti­fied bunker with­out check­ing if it was occu­pied, smash there way into a for­ti­fied loft with­out check­ing that the occu­pant Dave was safe. Not long after this they climbed onto the scaf­fold tow­er posi­tioned on the garage roof and topped with a wood­en box con­tain­ing a 45 gal­lon con­crete lock. Chris who was in the box at the time said they climbed on top of the box and start­ed to rock the tow­er before break­ing in with sledge ham­mers. Vet­er­an road pro­test­er Mup­pet Dave said ‘it was one of the most dan­ger­ous evic­tion he had expe­ri­enced and that it was only luck that nobody was seri­ous­ly hurt’.

Radley baliffs tip lock-on barrelAt approx 5am Tues­day 6th Feb­ru­ary 12 bailiffs dressed from head to foot in black and wear­ing bal­a­clavas with­out warn­ing smashed through the win­dow of the occu­pied npow­er prop­er­ty show­er­ing sleep­ing activist in glass. They then pro­ceed­ed to cut the air sup­ply to a for­ti­fied bunker with­out check­ing if it was occu­pied, smash there way into a for­ti­fied loft with­out check­ing that the occu­pant Dave was safe. Not long after this they climbed onto the scaf­fold tow­er posi­tioned on the garage roof and topped with a wood­en box con­tain­ing a 45 gal­lon con­crete lock. Chris who was in the box at the time said they climbed on top of the box and start­ed to rock the tow­er before break­ing in with sledge ham­mers. Vet­er­an road pro­test­er Mup­pet Dave said ‘it was one of the most dan­ger­ous evic­tion he had expe­ri­enced and that it was only luck that nobody was seri­ous­ly hurt’.

Two activists were arrest­ed and one sub­se­quent­ly de-arrest­ed and Chris is due in Did­cot Mag­is­trates Court on Thurs­day 15th charged with obstruc­tion of the Bailiffs. Short­ly after­wards npow­er swift­ly cor­doned of the lakes despite a ongo­ing legal chal­lenge by the local “Save Radley Lakes” group for it to be recog­nised as com­mon land.

The prop­er­ty was occu­pied with the inten­tion of cre­at­ing a field cen­tre to raise aware­ness and pre­vent these beau­ti­ful lakes being in filled with tox­ic ash from the burn­ing of coal at the Ger­man owned RWE npow­er Did­cot pow­er sta­tion. How­ev­er, despite mas­sive sup­port from the local com­mu­ni­ty, where there is over­whelm­ing oppo­si­tion to npower’s plans, and near­by envi­ron­men­tal groups it soon became clear that npow­er were hav­ing non of it, so we decide to oppose the repos­ses­sion and dig in. This deci­sion instant­ly cre­at­ed more media inter­est embar­rass­ing npow­er and under­min­ing their green­wash and it was prob­a­bly for this rea­son that they decide to dis­re­gard the safe­ty of indi­vid­u­als and send in the heav­ies. We are no seek­ing to take legal action against Sher­cu­ri­ty Ltd for the lack of health and safe­ty pro­ce­dure and endan­ger­ment of life. How­ev­er, we ful­ly intend to con­tin­ue our cam­paign to save the lakes and against RWE npow­er for both local and glob­al pol­lu­tion of the plan­et.

Sher­cu­ri­ty Ltd — have dealt with protest evic­tions (& squat­ters) before:
Main Tele­phone num­ber: +44 (0)845 890 9220
Fax: +44 (0)0845 890 9221

Com­pa­ny Offices
Sher­group House, Brain­tree Freeport, No 3 Freeport Office Vil­lage, Cen­tu­ry Dri­ve, Brain­tree, Essex CM77 8YG

Lon­don: 20–21 Tooks Court, Lon­don EC4A 1LB

http://www.shercurity.net/