Activists out­side the Ves­tas fac­to­ry on the St Cross Busi­ness Park, Dod­nor Lane, New­port, Isle of Wight have been tipped off that Tues­day 22nd Sep­tem­ber at 12 noon a ‘Blade Run­ner’ barge is com­ing down the riv­er Med­i­na to the Ves­tas fac­to­ry from Southamp­ton to pick up some of the remain­ing blades still inside the fac­to­ry. Those present expect a big police pres­ence along with big sup­port from oth­er sup­port­ers and activists. They claim they are pre­pared to do any­thing and every­thing to stop Ves­tas from ship­ping these blades or from get­ting any­thing into the fac­to­ry if that’s their plan.

The new Marine Gate (/‘Magic Swings’) camp is a very beau­ti­ful place to wake up / not go to bed! River­side views, from a Pent­house Tri­pod for those with strong arms and no sense of ver­ti­go. In the shad­ow of a mighty Oak, and sit­u­at­ed along the New­port-Cowes cyclepath — a fine stretch of Sus­trans, wood­ed, snaking along the riv­er, a mer­maid stat­ue and solar pow­ered lights to guide you…

Fire­side chats into the night are full of inspi­ra­tion. Near­by skips mag­i­cal­ly pro­duce goods wished for, while pix­ies frol­ic in the moon­less nights. There are field kitchens at both camps, but the Mag­ic Round­about hous­es the ‘Round­about 8 Restau­rant’ — so called because vol­un­tary veg­an dona­tion din­ner is served, around about eight pm (turn up at six to be assured a place at the table, bring your favourite ingre­di­ents if you want can’t cook won’t cook fun).

Get your­selves down and get involved. We can win this cam­paign and have a work­er con­trolled renew­ables fac­to­ry for 600 work­ers if we pull our fin­gers out!

(and it’s sort of on the way / the way back from Calais. ~£30 with rail­card for trip from lon­don to ryde, hitch­ing to new­port fair­ly easy. new grey­hound coach­es as cheap as £1 to portsmouth and southamp­ton. hov­er­craft portsmouth to ryde can be only £4, fast­cat is £7 with a rail­card).

there are space tents, and even the odd spare sleep­ing bag.

——

22nd Sep­tem­ber 2009
Ear­ly this morn­ing, a large num­ber of Police were in atten­dance at the river­side gate of the Ves­tas Blade plant in New­port.

The block­ade of pro­test­ers, who have been camp­ing on the tow path over the last few weeks, were dis­persed by the Police and any unclaimed belong­ings bagged up and removed.

When we arrived at the site at about 8:30am, fenc­ing was being erect­ed by secu­ri­ty staff along the path.

The oper­a­tion start­ed at about 6:30am when offi­cers issued warn­ings, under sec­tion 69 of the Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994, to around 13 peo­ple “sus­pect­ed of hav­ing com­mit­ted, com­mit­ting, or about to com­mit, crim­i­nal offences of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.”

One pro­test­er showed us a map she’d be hand­ed show­ing an area at the back of the Ves­tas build­ing. She told VB that she had been instruct­ed not return to the marked area for three months.

Tents, sleep­ing bags and oth­er items which were not claimed by those present were bagged up and tak­en to New­port Police Sta­tion as lost prop­er­ty.

The media restrict­ed
The foot­path is a busy route for cyclists as they trav­el to New­port.

This morn­ing, cyclists were told to dis­mount and were then escort­ed between the new­ly-erect­ed fences. They were then able to get back on the bikes and con­tin­ue their jour­ney.

When we approached the line of the police they offered to escort us across the area and back – but only once.

We were told by the PC and then by the Sergeant that if we want­ed to cross the path again, we would risk being charged for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

We point­ed out that this restric­tion on report­ing seemed unrea­son­able, but to no avail.

The Sergeant sug­gest­ed tak­ing it up with the Police media offi­cer, which we have done.

UPDATE 2 (12:10): Sound like this has been sort­ed out now. We’ve just heard from the Police media offi­cer that an area has been set­up for the media, up on a raised area that we can shot from.

Blades ship­ping today?
It’s under­stood that the Bladerun­ner barge is due to arrive at the river­side at noon and with high tide at 2pm and that Ves­tas will attempt to ship the final blades and equip­ment from the fac­to­ry this after­noon.

Reports about camp evic­tion and some but not all blades hav­ing been moved, at http://savevestas.wordpress.com/

——

There has been a camp out­side the Ves­tas fac­to­ry on the St. Cross Busi­ness Park, Dod­nor Lane, New­port, Isle of Wight, since at least the begin­ning of the Occu­pa­tion of the fac­to­ry on 20th July this year. The camp has a well estab­lished kitchen run by vol­un­teers who serve qual­i­ty veg­an evening meals ‘Round­about 8’, with lunch and break­fast also pro­vid­ed and some­times cooked too. Those who occu­pied the fac­to­ry are often present, togeth­er with cli­mate campers and those from assort­ed lefty groups and unions. Get down there and join ’em! …and take some cake with ya!

Also at the camp is a car­a­van serv­ing as a site/campaign office, a stand­pipe for fresh­wa­ter, a chem­i­cal toi­let, a bike-pow­ered smooth­ie mak­er (in bits), a fair amount of solar capac­i­ty and sal­vaged sealed lead acid bat­ter­ies pro­vid­ing the bare min­i­mum of pow­er to charge radios, phones and a lap­top. There’s a recent­ly erect­ed mar­quee, and a ‘liv­ing room’ of sorts, with com­fy chairs and an ever-burnin’ oil-drum bra­zier. There are even spare tents and sleep­ing bags res­cued from being sent to land­fill post-Besti­val. The weath­er is gen­er­al­ly bet­ter than the main­land, the fer­ry trip is expen­sive but beau­ti­ful and excit­ing. The locals and wel­com­ing and sup­port­ive of the cam­paign, and the island is full of beau­ti­ful coun­try­side includ­ing plen­ty of Mighty Oak trees.

The three main aims of the cam­paign and camp are to achieve:

1. Full rein­state­ment of the 11 work­ers sacked for occu­py­ing their fac­to­ry in an attempt to save the jobs of 600 employed there — these work­ers have still not been paid any redun­dan­cy though to pay them equiv­a­lent redun­dan­cy to the oth­er work­ers would cost Ves­tas a tiny £45,000. The work­ers are also cam­paign­ing for a bet­ter redun­dan­cy pack­age for all work­ers.

2. Wind tur­bine pro­duc­tion on the Isle of Wight. If Ves­tas want to shut the fac­to­ry, they must sell it. If no buy­ers come for­ward, the facil­i­ty should be nation­alised and placed under work­er’s con­trol. Car­o­line Lucas has put for­ward a pro­pos­al for the fac­to­ry to be run as a Work­ers’ Coop to the local coun­cil under the Sus­tain­able Com­mu­ni­ties Act. A female ex-work­er has also put togeth­er a busi­ness plan based on such an idea.

3. Seri­ous Gov­ern­ment poli­cies and plans regard­ing the pro­mo­tion of indus­try pro­duc­ing renew­able ener­gy equip­ment, and for renew­ables to pro­vide the required share of nation­al elec­tric­i­ty in the UK. The St. Cross site was the UK’s largest renew­able’s facil­i­ty and for the Gov­ern­ment to allow it to close as they speak lofti­ly of Copen­hagen and 1 mil­lion new green jobs is hypocrisy of the high­est order.

This is a great cam­paign, not only because of the clear jus­tice of the aims, but because it is a pos­i­tive cam­paign (rare in the Cli­mate and Labour move­ments), because it is a winnable cam­paign, because it is a rad­i­cal cam­paign, a cam­paign that has used Direct Action from the start, because it is a cam­paign with huge local, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sup­port, and with huge sig­nif­i­cance, and huge capac­i­ty to inspire fur­ther actions.

Those of you who know about the Occu­pied Fac­to­ry Move­ment in Argenti­na fol­low­ing the Decem­ber 2001 eco­nom­ic col­lapse there should know that Ves­tas is our Zanon, our Bruk­man — we need to devote ener­gy to this cam­paign.

Those of you who don’t know about the Argen­tine Move­ment should seek out Nao­mi Klein and Avi Lewis’ film ‘The Take’ or look up the slo­gans ‘Occu­py, Resist, Pro­duce’ and ‘Que Se Vayan Todos’ on the net…

There have been arrests recent­ly and an evic­tion of a 2nd block­ade camp by 120 main­land police at 6.30 am one day last week.

Sup­port in the form of dona­tions, vis­its (how­ev­er short) and sol­i­dar­i­ty actions is warm­ly received!

see: savevestas.wordpress.com for more info, and irreg­u­lar updates!