Update:
18 peo­ple were arrest­ed and some held for over 24 hours at Ystrad Mynach police sta­tion before being charged a with:
An unlaw­ful act with intent to obstruct the rail­way under the Mali­cious Dam­ages Act of 1861.
This Vic­to­ri­an law designed to pro­tect the inter­ests of rail own­ers has a mxi­mum penal­ty of life. We would not antic­i­pate fac­ing any such penal­ty as we took great care to ensure the safe­ty of all tak­ing part and had made cer­tain that the coal train would not leave the load­ing area before the line was blocked.

The 18 were held inco­mu­ni­ca­do for a por­tion of the time they were in the cells and were only allowed to phone out after 11.00 am yes­ter­day. The house of one of those involved was raid­ed by 8 police offi­cers who spent 3 hours search­ing their home.

The last per­son was released at 7.30 pm last night. All had bail con­di­tions stip­u­lat­ing that they should not go on the rail­way with­out writ­ten per­mis­sion — but we were allowed to catch the train home!

The arrests were made by British Trans­port Police backed up by a large con­tin­gent of the South Wales police force. A heli­copter was also used in the oper­a­tion The cut­ting team removed the last block­ad­er at 8.10 pm. after the line had been closed for over 8 hours.

All 18 have been bailed to appear at Mythyr Tyd­fill Mag­is­trates Court on 10th May at 10.00 am.

.….

lat­est update is that absolute­ly every1 involved has been nicked up to about 17/18 peo­ple all told I reck­on, includ­ing dri­vers, legal observers, etc. Vehi­cles believed to have also been impound­ed. 🙁 A sec­ond wave lock-on with more heavy duty gear believed to have attached them­selves to track short­ly after 1st wave cleared; all arrest­ed lat­er that aft/eve.

The activists, part of the Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide direct action group, reached the rail track at mid­day today, and phoned the secu­ri­ty at the coal mine to warn them about the protest. Three of the activists then used chains and pad­locks to lock them­selves to the train tracks. Two of the activists went to a near­by van­tage point where they could warn any approach­ing trains The activists also stretched a large ban­ner across the line.

Police arrived at around 2pm, and warned the activists that they would be arrest­ed for tres­pass­ing and obstruct­ing the train line. They arrest­ed the activists not attached the train-line and began cut­ting through the pad­locks at around 4pm. The last activist was tak­en away from the scene at 5.15pm. But a sec­ond group arrived and locked on fur­ther along the line. Police are now deal­ing with them.

27 April 3pm update: The police have released a state­ment say­ing a total of 18 peo­ple — 11 men and sev­en women — were arrest­ed yes­ter­day. The train line reopened at 8.10pm last night.

——-

Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide Stop Coal Train – Hap­pen­ing Now !

Please Call 07835366330 for on-site inter­views and updates.
Alter­na­tive num­ber (off site): 07909172768

Kim Green from Ris­ing Tide (UK) said:

“We are protest­ing the con­tin­ued extrac­tion and burn­ing of fos­sil fuels in the face of a glob­al cli­mate emer­gency. The fail­ure of the Copen­hagen cli­mate talks to deal with this huge prob­lem, and the obvi­ous pol­i­cy inad­e­qua­cy the three main UK par­ties con­test­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion to take the nec­es­sary action to tack­le the prob­lem has high­light­ed the need for the peo­ple to take grass-roots direct action.”

Kim Green con­tin­ues:

“This action is also in sup­port of the local peo­ple of Merthyr Tyd­fil whose cam­paign ‘Res­i­dents Against Ffoss y Fran’ have been fight­ing the mine for over six years. The mine caus­es noise pol­lu­tion for up to 16 hours a day, dust and dirt are car­ried into the town by the wind, and it turns the rain black.”

The process by which Miller-Argent were able to get the go ahead to exploit this resource at the social cost of both the local and glob­al com­mu­ni­ty, high­light­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic deficit in the plan­ning process, which takes in to con­sid­er­a­tion the social-envi­ron­men­tal impact of such projects. The new­ly formed quan­go “The Plan­ning Com­mis­sion” will only make these things worse, being able to ignore any con­sid­er­a­tion in favour of prof­it.

Miller Argent have been quick to pres­sure their small work­force into mobil­is­ing against local con­cerns — but their appar­ent con­cern for their work­ers is betrayed by the fact that they are actu­al­ly look­ing to sell the mine as the quan­ti­ty of high qual­i­ty coal is only about as half as good as they ini­tial­ly believed. They are in fact mak­ing a loss on the project.

Notes To Edi­tor:

1. Ris­ing Tide is an inter­na­tion­al net­work of groups tack­ling the Root Caus­es of Cli­mate Change and Cli­mate Injus­tice. http://www.risingtide.org.uk/

2.Aberthaw Pow­er Sta­tion is the biggest pol­luter in Wales. In 2006 it released 7.4. mil­lion tonnes of Co2. It is Pro­ject­ed to run until 2025 with NO PLANS to fit car­bon cap­ture stor­age (CCS) tech­nol­o­gy. 40% of the coal for the pow­er sta­tion is sup­plied by Ffos y Fran. It was tar­get­ed by Bris­tol & Cardiff Ris­ing Tide in 2008.

3.Miller Argent own and run Ffos Y fran. Argent are in turn owned by the BT Pen­sions Group. Both of these organ­i­sa­tions make much of their eth­i­cal and sus­tain­able prac­tices But in this case they seem to be plac­ing prof­its over and above any ele­ment of social respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Bris­tol and Bath Ris­ing Tide
info@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk