Work stopped at Mainshill Wood — Crucial time at Mainshill Solidarity Camp

23rd Sep­tem­ber 2009

23rd Sep­tem­ber 2009
Yes­ter­day peo­ple from Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp took action to stop work on the pro­posed site for Scot­tish Coal’s open­cast mine. One per­son climbed up to the top of the drilling rig and stopped their work for five hours. The police arrived and the pro­test­er was told that she would be arrested…if only they could get her to come down. Even­tu­al­ly, after much head-scratch­ing, spe­cial­ist police climbers man­aged to remove her and she was arrest­ed, appear­ing in Lanark Sher­iff Court this morn­ing.

Over the past week, drilling equip­ment has been moved onto the site as well as har­vest­ing machines to log plan­ta­tion trees to make way for the coal exca­va­tion. This work has been delayed by peo­ple from the camp and mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty approach­ing machin­ery and explain­ing the dev­as­tat­ing effects that the coal mine will bring — rang­ing from impacts on local com­mu­ni­ty health, to cli­mate and eco­log­i­cal dam­age. The work that is being done now is all in prepa­ra­tion for the open­cast and needs to be stopped.

This is a cru­cial time for this cam­paign to show Lord Home, the wealthy land own­er and Scot­tish Coal that we will not allow this project to go ahead.

This morn­ing, police escort­ed felling machines and Scot­tish Wood­land work­ers onto the site, remov­ing a bar­ri­cade and cut­ting down a tree defence that had blocked the track. The police’s involve­ment in pro­tect­ing the inter­ests of aris­to­crat Lord Home and pri­vate com­pa­ny Scot­tish Coal over the inter­ests of the local com­mu­ni­ty is very dis­ap­point­ing.

Now is a great time for peo­ple to come and join us at the camp and to take action to con­tin­ue our resis­tance.

For more infor­ma­tion on the ongo­ing cam­paign and news from the Pub­lic Meet­ing on Com­mu­ni­ty Health, which is tak­ing place tonight in Dou­glas, see http://mainshill.noflag.org.uk.

keep Backwell beautiful

Sep­tem­ber 21 2009
no more quar­ry blast­ing!

Back­well is a beau­ti­ful place but is under threat from the expan­sion of Bris­tol air­port over head and from Tar­mac under the ground.

Tar­mac said they will stop blast­ing at Back­well Quar­ry this year but have now asked for a ten year exten­sion!

We object­ed but they ignored us.

Sep­tem­ber 21 2009
no more quar­ry blast­ing!

Back­well is a beau­ti­ful place but is under threat from the expan­sion of Bris­tol air­port over head and from Tar­mac under the ground.

Tar­mac said they will stop blast­ing at Back­well Quar­ry this year but have now asked for a ten year exten­sion!

We object­ed but they ignored us.

We were inspired by the tac­tics of direct action used by the Co-Mutiny group.

So we went to the quar­ry and dis­abled two dig­gers.

Next time it will be more.

No more blast­ing in Back­well Quar­ry!

Activists drop 70′ banner off of NIAGARA FALLS to tell Canadian PM ‘NO TAR SANDS oil!’

A small team of cli­mate activists rap­pelled from the US obser­va­tion deck at Nia­gara Falls. Dan­gling hun­dreds of feet above the ground, they sent a spe­cial wel­come mes­sage to Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er ahead of his first offi­cial vis­it to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.

Tar Sands OilA small team of cli­mate activists rap­pelled from the US obser­va­tion deck at Nia­gara Falls. Dan­gling hun­dreds of feet above the ground, they sent a spe­cial wel­come mes­sage to Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er ahead of his first offi­cial vis­it to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.

Dur­ing Harper’s first offi­cial trip to meet Oba­ma in the U.S., the two lead­ers are expect­ed to dis­cuss cli­mate change and ener­gy pol­i­cy ahead of the upcom­ing G20 Sum­mit. Cana­da sup­plies 19% of U.S. oil imports, more than half of which now comes from the tar sands, mak­ing the region the largest sin­gle source of U.S. oil imports. The expan­sion of the tar sands will strip mine an area the size of Flori­da. Com­plete with sky­rock­et­ing rates of can­cer (by 400%!) for First Nations com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing down­stream, bro­ken treaties, tox­ic belch­ing lakes so large you can see them from out­er space, churn­ing up ancient bore­al for­est, destroyed air and water qual­i­ty, the tar sands have been called the most destruc­tive project on Earth.

For the full sto­ry and more infor­ma­tion vis­it http://understory.ran.org/2009/09/15/breaking-activists-drop-70-banner-off-of-niagra-falls-to-tell-canadian-pm-no-tar-sands-oil/

Calais: Solidarity Needed!

Around 2000 migrants liv­ing in squats and camps in Calais, France, are under threat of evic­tion and depor­ta­tion as the French immi­gra­tion min­is­ter has vowed to destroy their homes. Reports (includ­ing a state­ment by the French immi­gra­tion min­is­ter) sug­gest large-scale clear­ances of camps could take place this week.

Around 2000 migrants liv­ing in squats and camps in Calais, France, are under threat of evic­tion and depor­ta­tion as the French immi­gra­tion min­is­ter has vowed to destroy their homes. Reports (includ­ing a state­ment by the French immi­gra­tion min­is­ter) sug­gest large-scale clear­ances of camps could take place this week. Activists, locals and migrants are work­ing to oppose police bru­tal­i­ty, depor­ta­tions and the destruc­tion of the camps.

Calais is just one of many points across Europe where repres­sion against migrants is at its most vis­i­ble. Here, around 2000 peo­ple, unable to cross the bor­der into Britain, are per­se­cut­ed by French police; beat­en, harassed, forced to sleep rough in near­by woods, & attacked dur­ing the night.

Peo­ple are urgent­ly need­ed in Calais to sup­port the migrants in their fight for free­dom of move­ment. Come and do some­thing real­ly mean­ing­ful and direct­ly effec­tive now!

Check out Calais Migrant Sol­i­dar­i­ty http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/ for info on con­tact­ing peo­ple there, what to bring, where you can stay. (You can get a fer­ry cross­ing for £10!)

More back­ground infor­ma­tion on the sit­u­a­tion in Calais at http://london.noborders.org.uk/calais2009

Sol­i­dar­i­ty call-out http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/09/438182.html

Homeless penguins at Bristol Airport and debunking BT Pensions greenwash

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide actions dur­ing Co-Mutiny week

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide actions dur­ing Co-Mutiny week
Ris­ing Tide was one of many groups tak­ing part in the Bris­tol Co-Mutiny week of action. While we are group of activists focussing on tack­ling the root caus­es of cli­mate chaos we want­ed to make the links with oth­er issues and cam­paigns. In par­tic­u­lar we want­ed to show that the exploita­tion of fos­sil fuels by big cor­po­rate inter­ests is result­ing in mass migra­tion, resource wars, and wide­spread social injus­tice. Like all the groups involved in Co-Mutiny, we want to con­front the forces of cap­i­tal­ism. This is the root cause of cli­mate chaos. Key tar­gets in the week of action were Bris­tol Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, BT Pen­sions who are invest­ing in open­cast coal min­ing in South Wales and the big banks which finance the oil, gas, and coal indus­tries.

On Thurs­day 17th Sep­tem­ber, a dozen home­less pen­guins invad­ed Bris­tol Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and hand­ed out leaflets high­light­ing the impact of air­port expan­sion, and there­fore increased CO2 emis­sions, on cli­mate change. Due to the cur­rent pace of cli­mate change and result­ing melt­ing of the ice sheet some Emper­or pen­guin colonies have halved in num­bers.

The planned increase in com­mer­cial flights at Bris­tol from 6.2m in 2008 to 10m by 2016 will also con­tribute in the increased suf­fer­ing for mil­lions of humans. From flood plains in Bangladesh, to islanders in the Mal­dives being forced to leave due to sea lev­el ris­es, and Africans faced with drought — large areas of the world are becom­ing unin­hab­it­able as a result of cli­mate change. The poor­est peo­ple are the worst affect­ed — peo­ple who will nev­er fly any­where.

Local­ly the BIA expan­sion will mean a flight every 210 sec­onds over 16 hours of nor­mal open­ing hours and thus more noise pol­lu­tion for local res­i­dents. Increased pas­sen­ger num­bers mean increased road traf­fic with a pro­ject­ed extra 2 mil­lion car jour­neys per year, and an esti­mat­ed cost to the local coun­cil of £50m in order to extend the Bus Rapid Trans­port sys­tem from cen­tral Bris­tol

The avi­a­tion sec­tor cur­rent­ly amounts to 13% of the UK’s total cli­mate impact and this will grow to 30% with BIA and oth­er UK air­port expan­sion plans. This is at a time when the UK Gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted the UK to an 80% cut in CO2 emis­sions by 2050. In order to achieve this with the cur­rent plans for air­port expan­sion across the coun­try such as that at BIA, we would need to reduce emis­sions from all oth­er sec­tors by an addi­tion­al 10% to 90%. In order to make up this addi­tion­al 10% ordi­nary peo­ple are expect­ed to work even hard­er just to com­pen­sate for com­pa­nies like BIA, Easy­jet and Ryanair expand­ing their prof­its. Once again the gov­ern­ment is clear­ly putting big business’s inter­ests first – this has been a con­stant theme of the Co-Mutiny week of action.

On Fri­day 18th Sep­tem­ber dur­ing the Co-Mutiny Repos­sess the Banks protest, Ris­ing Tide took action against BT offices in Bris­tol to high­light the link between the BT Pen­sions Scheme and the giant Ffos y Fran open­cast coal mine at Merthyr Tyd­fil in South Wales. Fake coal was strewn on the floor of one office and walk­ing lumps of coal attempt­ed to enter anoth­er. A num­ber of activists were arrest­ed.

We want­ed to show the lie to the claims made by BT Pen­sions Scheme that their invest­ments are made with any regard to social, eth­i­cal, and envi­ron­men­tal cri­te­ria. BTPS own Her­mes, an out­fit that admin­is­ters the pen­sion scheme who in turn own Argent — a part­ner in Miller Argent the devel­op­er of Ffos y Fran, one of Europe’s largest new open­cast coal mines. This open­cast mine is a mas­sive scheme that will blight the lives of peo­ple in Merthyr Tyd­fil for at least 17 years. It is only 37 Metres from the near­est hous­ing estate and is on the edge of a large com­mu­ni­ty. The coal from Ffos y Fran is going to Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion which is the biggest pol­luter in Wales. In 2006 the pow­er sta­tion pumped out more than 7.4million tonnes of CO2 and is in the top 5 largest pol­luters in Britain.

The first Cli­mate Camp Cym­ru was held at Merthyr Tyd­fil in August part­ly to sup­port the local cam­paign against Ffos y Fran and to high­light the mas­sive devel­op­ment of new coal projects through­out the UK .

http://comutiny.wordpress.com

Climate activists pay Jeremy Clarkson a visit

17th Sep­tem­ber 2009
This morn­ing sev­en activists from Cli­mate Rush on the Run decid­ed to pay Jere­my Clark­son a vis­it.

“Sev­en of our activists dumped dung on Jere­my Clark­son’s front lawn this morn­ing – he can deal with our emis­sions since he won’t deal with his!” — Cli­mate Rush on the Run

Climate Rush dump dung at Clarkson's17th Sep­tem­ber 2009
This morn­ing sev­en activists from Cli­mate Rush on the Run decid­ed to pay Jere­my Clark­son a vis­it.

“Sev­en of our activists dumped dung on Jere­my Clark­son’s front lawn this morn­ing – he can deal with our emis­sions since he won’t deal with his!” — Cli­mate Rush on the Run

“I’m the biggest lib­er­tar­i­an of them all — I’m dump­ing dung at Clark­son’s gates so he might under­stand that his atti­tude will land us all in the shit.” — Tam­sin Omond”
“Jere­my is keen to land us in the shit! So he can have ours … ’ — Cli­mate Rush on the Run

At a cost to the envi­ron­ment of an esti­mat­ed 1.7 tonnes of CO2 emis­sions, petrol head Jere­my Clark­son drove to the Arc­tic to delib­er­ate­ly antag­o­nise envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

The Arc­tic is a frag­ile envi­ron­ment. CO2 emis­sions in the Arc­tic has a dis­pro­por­tion­ate bad impact. The Arc­tic is warm­ing much faster than pre­dict­ed, the ice is melt­ing much faster than pre­dict­ed.

Tem­per­a­tures are ris­ing fastest at the poles. The Arc­tic Ice Sheet is van­ish­ing. Were the Green­land Ice Sheet to melt, sea lev­els would rise by 17 metres. Many coastal cities, includ­ing Lon­don, Bangladesh, South Pacif­ic Islands, would not sur­vive these sea lev­els.

The Arc­tic is expect­ed to be ice free in the sum­mer­time some­time between 2011 and 2015, that is 80 years ahead of what was pre­dict­ed only a few years ago!

Cli­mate Camp on the Run are wend­ing their way through Eng­land from Sip­son near Heathrow to Totnes in Devon. They are high­light­ing and rais­ing aware­ness of cli­mate change with the occa­sion­al direct action against cli­mate crim­i­nals.

Ratcliffe on Soar installing new fences — in time for the Great Climate Swoop

Rat­cliffe on Soar are cur­rent­ly installing new perime­ter fences (12ft chain link).

Rat­cliffe on Soar are cur­rent­ly installing new perime­ter fences (12ft chain link).

As I went past on the train today they were installing new met­al fences (about 12ft tall) near the train line. The fence is met­al met­al chain-link (the new­er heavy duty design) and has ver­ti­cal wire run­ning accross the top 4ft sec­tion (does­n’t look to be elec­tro­cut­ed or razor wire). They are also installing large amounts of portable pedes­tri­an bar­ri­er the oth­er side.

In this a coin­ci­dence? It may be part of the ongo­ing works at the pow­er sta­tion and part of the com­ple­tion of new train sta­tion placed next to pow­er sta­tion (East Mid­lands Park­way). After cli­mate camp went to Drax they installed new fences at a cost of £3-£4Million (source — tour guide at Drax pow­er sta­tion).

—-

http://www.thegreatclimateswoop.org/

17–18th Octo­ber 2009

Don’t be con­fused — 2009 is just anoth­er year of cli­mate talks, in which gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions will con­tin­ue busi­ness as usu­al and tell us how a load of cor­rupt (but prof­itable) trad­ing is in fact a real attempt to save the world.

To solve cli­mate change we’re going to have to get togeth­er and make a real noise. CO2 lev­els are ris­ing 20,000 times faster than at any point in life’s aston­ish­ing bil­lion year his­to­ry and coal is the biggest source of emis­sions. If we burn all the coal in the ground we’re toast. No but­ter, no jam, just toast. So stop­ping the burn­ing of coal in the rapid­ly warm­ing world is a good place to start.

That’s why on the 17th & 18th Octo­ber 2009 we’re hav­ing a mega get togeth­er to close one of the UK’s biggest coal fired pow­er sta­tions, E.ON’s Rat­cliffe-on-Soar in Not­ting­ham.

Anoth­er end of the world is pos­si­ble.

Vestas Solidarity Action At SEEDA Offices

17 Sep­tem­ber 2009

SEEDA banner drop17 Sep­tem­ber 2009
Through­out the coun­try today actions are tak­ing place in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the work­ers of the Ves­ta Blades fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight. This morn­ing the offices of the South East Eng­land Devel­op­ment Agency (SEEDA) was tar­get­ted by pro­test­ers who dropped ban­ners and built a mini wind­farm in the lob­by. SEEDA is being pres­sured to with­draw £3m of pub­lic mon­ey they’ve said they’ll give Ves­tas for a R&D facil­i­ty despite the Dan­ish com­pa­ny pulling its man­u­fac­tur­ing from the UK. Tonight there will be a protest at the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment and Cli­mate Change, in White­hall Place, cen­tral Lon­don.

PRESS RELEASE — CHATHAM OFFICES IN WIND POWER PROTESTS

SEEDA (South East Eng­land Devel­op­ment Agency) offices in Chatham, Kent where today vis­it­ed by pro­test­ers, as part of a nation­al day of action for Ves­tas wind tur­bine work­ers.

Occu­py­ing the lob­by of the build­ing after hang­ing ban­ners from the bal­cony of the top floor, the pro­test­ers built a mini wind farm on the devel­op­ment agency’s mod­el of the Med­way estu­ary.

Paper wind­mills were hand­ed to work­ers along with a satir­i­cal guide on build­ing wind­mills, which instruct­ed SEEDA to cut up the con­tracts promis­ing to give Ves­tas mon­ey for noth­ing.

Pres­sure is mount­ing on SEEDA to with­draw the offer of £3 mil­lion (part of £10 mil­lion of pub­lic mon­ey being giv­en toVes­tas by the gov­ern­ment) unless the Dan­ish multi­na­tion­al stand aside and allow their closed fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight to con­tin­ue to be used for tur­bine blade man­u­fac­ture.

Ves­tas closed the fac­to­ry to move pro­duc­tion to the U.S. and slash­ing 600 green UK jobs. The work­ers then occu­pied the fac­to­ry and are demand­ing that the gov­ern­ment nation­alise the facil­i­ties, the only sig­nif­i­cant blade man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in this coun­try.

“By fail­ing to act on the clo­sure of the Ves­tas Blades fac­to­ry, and sup­port­ing a return to out­dat­ed coal pow­er (like Eon’s Kingsnorth pro­pos­al), the Gov­ern­ment is show­ing it cur­rent­ly has no seri­ous com­mit­ment to build­ing a low car­bon econ­o­my or pre­vent­ing cat­a­stroph­ic run­away cli­mate change.” Anas­taz­ja Jarek, Kingsnorth Cli­mate Action Med­way
“Ves­tas work­ers have fought mag­nif­i­cent­ly to save jobs and essen­tial wind tur­bine man­u­fac­tur­ing in Britain. The gov­ern­ment say that Ves­tas have refused to sell them the fac­to­ry, yet it is still reward­ing Ves­tas with pub­lic mon­ey through SEEDA. The gov­ern­ment needs to stop pussy­foot­ing around big cor­po­ra­tions and take seri­ous action to pro­vide jobs and pre­vent cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change.” – Steve Wilkins, Med­way Trades Coun­cil

tippingpointmedway@gmail.com

Penan tribe arrested outside government offices in Borneo

16 Sep­tem­ber 2009
The arrest­ed indige­nous peo­ple and activists have been released on bail and charged with ille­gal assem­bly. The group, who num­ber 15 peo­ple, are due to appear in court on 29 Sep­tem­ber. They main­tain that they have com­mit­ted no crime. Sur­vival has writ­ten to the Malaysian gov­ern­ment express­ing its con­cern over the arrests.

-—

16 Sep­tem­ber 2009
The arrest­ed indige­nous peo­ple and activists have been released on bail and charged with ille­gal assem­bly. The group, who num­ber 15 peo­ple, are due to appear in court on 29 Sep­tem­ber. They main­tain that they have com­mit­ted no crime. Sur­vival has writ­ten to the Malaysian gov­ern­ment express­ing its con­cern over the arrests.

-—

At least four­teen peo­ple, includ­ing six mem­bers of the Penan tribe, were arrest­ed in Malaysia today as they tried to voice their oppo­si­tion to hydro­elec­tric dams that will force them off their land.

The group of indige­nous peo­ple and activists were arrest­ed out­side the offices of the Chief Min­is­ter of the state of Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Bor­neo. They were attempt­ing to hand in a state­ment call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to stop the con­struc­tion of dams that are to flood the land of many Penan and oth­er tribes­peo­ple, destroy­ing their for­est and bur­ial grounds. Over 600 Penan have added their sig­na­tures to the protest.

Ray­mond Abin of the Sarawak Con­ser­va­tion Action Net­work was one of those arrest­ed. Speak­ing from police cus­tody, he told Sur­vival that they had not been allowed to hand in the state­ment, so had wait­ed out­side. After four hours, the Chief Minister’s office called the police and they were arrest­ed. No charges had so far been made against them.

One Penan man told Sur­vival ear­li­er this year, ‘This land is my ances­tral land. It has been used by Penan for ten gen­er­a­tions. We don’t want to move, and we don’t want to give this land to any­one.’ The peo­ple of his vil­lage have been told they must move to make way for the Murum dam, which is already being built by the con­tro­ver­sial Chi­nese state-owned Chi­na Three Gorges Project Cor­po­ra­tion.

Survival’s direc­tor Stephen Cor­ry said today, ‘Sur­vival is extreme­ly con­cerned that the Penan and oth­ers have been arrest­ed for try­ing to voice their con­cerns about these dams which, if com­plet­ed, will dev­as­tate their lives. Instead of lock­ing them up, the Malaysian gov­ern­ment should lis­ten to them.’

In a sep­a­rate devel­op­ment, Malaysian police are report­ed to have dis­man­tled three road block­ades mount­ed in August by twelve Penan com­mu­ni­ties against the log­ging and plan­ta­tion com­pa­nies that are destroy­ing their for­est.

-—

Six mem­bers of the Penan tribe were arrest­ed along with nine oth­er indige­nous peo­ple and activists as they tried to hand in a let­ter voic­ing their con­cerns to the Chief Min­is­ter of Sarawak.

The Penan say in their state­ment:

‘We have not come to Kuch­ing city for plea­sure but full of con­cern, anx­i­ety and tears. We bring the deep pain in the hearts of all the peo­ple of the Penan vil­lages on the Peleiran riv­er because of the heavy con­cerns with how our lives have been since the start of the con­struc­tion of the Murum dam project.

‘If this Murum dam con­tin­ues, the water from the dam will flood our tra­di­tion­al lands includ­ing our vil­lages, prop­er­ties, gar­dens, pad­dy fields and farm­lands, fruit trees, graves etc. The for­est areas and resources that sup­port our lives will be destroyed. We will be forced to move to an area that we do not know and is not com­pat­i­ble with our life con­di­tions.’

Murum is the first in a series of twelve new hydro­elec­tric dams planned for Sarawak. It is being con­struct­ed by the Chi­nese state-owned Chi­na Three Gorges Project Cor­po­ra­tion.

State­ment in full

Vestas Protestors Occupy Crane and Boats in Southampton — update

15.09.2009
Blade Run­ner Protest launched from Pow­er Boat [post-arrest update at bot­tom]

Using Southamp­ton’s Boat Show as cov­er, pro­test­ers have arrived by pow­er-boat this morn­ing to occu­py cranes and ves­sels at the city’s docks.

Vestas Southampton docks occupation15.09.2009
Blade Run­ner Protest launched from Pow­er Boat [post-arrest update at bot­tom]

Using Southamp­ton’s Boat Show as cov­er, pro­test­ers have arrived by pow­er-boat this morn­ing to occu­py cranes and ves­sels at the city’s docks.

Com­ing from the Ves­tas fac­to­ry block­ade on the Isle Of Wight, the group aim to pre­vent the load­ing of wind-tur­bine blades from the New­port plant, which was closed in July with the loss of 600 jobs.

“We made these blades, and now Ves­tas want to take their prof­its and leave us high and dry,” said ex-Ves­tas work­er Jamie Rig­by, who is sta­tioned at the dock entrance, Jamie was one of 11 work­ers sacked for occu­py­ing their fac­to­ry after Ves­tas announced the mass lay-off in July. The occu­pa­tion end­ed in August after 18 days, and on that occa­sion Jamie leapt unin­jured from a bal­cony rather than be escort­ed out by bailiffs.

Jamie is joined today by sup­port­ers from the island com­mu­ni­ty, cli­mate activists and work­ers from the main­land, who have hung ban­ners say­ing “Wind pow­er to the peo­ple” and locked them­selves to a crane load­ing blades onto the BBC Ohio in Empress Dock. Oth­ers have occu­pied the so-called ‘Blade Run­ner’ Barge which is need­ed to fetch the remain­ing blades from the St Cross fac­to­ry in New­port. They have a ban­ner which reads, “Our blades, Our pow­er”. The barge is vis­i­ble to the east from the Town Quay, which is also a Red Star Ter­mi­nal for IOW pas­sen­gers.

On the crane at Empress Dock, Jack­ie Sheedy said, “ After the fac­to­ry occu­pa­tion end­ed, Ves­tas and the gov­ern­ment hoped we’d all just qui­eten down. But we’re unit­ed in this block­ade. The island work­ers need those jobs, and we all need them if we want even a chance of com­bat­ing cli­mate change for our chil­dren.”

Speak­ing by phone from the occu­pied Blade Run­ner barge, Robin Siva­palan, a Uni­son mem­ber from the group Work­ers Cli­mate Action, said “Work­ers like Jamie were vic­timised and robbed of their redun­dan­cy pay for tak­ing a stand on behalf of all of us,. If Ves­tas want the block­ade lift­ed, they had bet­ter start talk­ing about re-instate­ment and terms. And if the gov­ern­ment want the protests to end they had bet­ter drop the green­wash and start tak­ing some real action for a renew­able pow­er indus­try in this coun­try”.

Mean­while, oth­er sacked Ves­tas work­ers are at the TUC con­fer­ence in Liv­er­pool, lob­by­ing the labour move­ment for sol­i­dar­i­ty action and sup­port on Thurs­days “Nation­al Day of Action”, while

work­ers from the Lush Cos­met­ics fac­to­ry in Poole, Dorset, are tak­ing part in direct action train­ing at the Ves­tas Marine Gate block­ade on the New­port-Cowes cycle path, New­port IOW.

ENDS

Loca­tion: BBC Ohio and cranes — Empress Dock, East­ern Docks, Southamp­ton

Blade Run­ner barge – Oppo­site Town Quay, (Red Fun­nel Ter­mi­nal)

Best view: Blade Run­ner east from Town Quay;

BBC Ohio and cranes – restrict­ed access through Oceano­graph­ic Cen­tre, or by sea/air.

Con­tacts:

On the Docks protest: Jack­ie Sheedy, 07944 744922;
Jamie Rig­by (sacked Ves­tas work­er), 07875 441668 and Mar­tin Shaw 07950539254 at END OF TOWN QUAY, Southamp­ton.
Robin Siva­palan, 07974 331053

For inter­view off site: Ian Ter­ry at TUC con­fer­ence, 07970 739921
Mark Smith at TUC con­fer­ence, 07980703115
Lush Cam­paigns Man­ag­er: Andrew But­ler on 07876 596541

Back­ground:

http://savevestas.wordpress.com
http://ventnorblog.com

Cam­paign Video includ­ing Jamie’s jump: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4CrTEFtSGU

Ship­ping and Docks info:

http://www.ais-live.co.uk/AIS%20Live/aissolent.html and http://www.abports.co.uk/files/southampton%202008.pdf

workersclimateaction.info@googlemail.com
http://workersclimateaction.wordpress.com

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Update: Ves­tas Crane Activists Charged and Released

16th Sep­tem­ber 2009 — 3pm

The four Ves­tas sup­port­ers arrest­ed yes­ter­day have just been released after 17 hours of deten­tion in Southamp­ton police sta­tion. Orig­i­nal­ly threat­ened with arrest under the Ter­ror­ism Act they have now been charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass after spend­ing sev­en hours locked on to Ves­tas cranes in Southamp­ton Docks.They have been bailed to return to court on the 29th of Sep­tem­ber. Their bail con­di­tions include non-asso­ci­a­tion with one anoth­er and they have been banned from enter­ing all Ves­tas sites in Southamp­ton and on the Isle of Wight. One of the activists suf­fered minor injuries dur­ing the trau­mat­ic police removal.

The four now intend to press charges against Ves­tas ship­ping man­ag­er for order­ing the two crane dri­vers to reck­less­ly endan­ger their lives by turn­ing on both cranes and mov­ing the boom whilst one pro­test­er was attached to the mov­ing parts that were then pulled voilent­ly through her arms and legs whilst police watched on and videod the inci­dent.

One of the four, Jacque­line Sheedy said: ”Through­out the action we were peace­ful­ly occu­py­ing the crane and Ves­tas arro­gance and quest for prof­its drove them to risk our lives in order to remove us in an attempt to car­ry on load­ing the blades as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. The behav­iour of Ves­tas man­age­ment through­out has shown scant regard for the health and safe­ty of their work­force and lit­tle sign of human­i­ty in deal­ing with the clo­sure of the fac­to­ry. Dock work­ers in Southamp­ton were call­ing us dur­ing this inci­dent incred­u­lous that this could hap­pen, as did the RMT legal team. We were inun­dat­ed with mes­sage­sof encour­age­ment from work­ers and activists around the while on the cranes and this is yet more proof that this cam­paign is far from over and that it is only a small part of what will soon prove to be a much more wide­spread strug­gle for work­ers rights and the envi­ron­ment.”

It has been revealed that the actions have delayed trans­port of the wind tur­bine blades to the US by a day, as was intend­ed. How­ev­er there is lit­tle doubt that the blades will even­tu­al­ly be moved due to the lack of demand for wind farms in the UK. We have the com­po­nents for green ener­gy right here, right now so why are we not using them to full effect?

Ves­tas work­ers have been talk­ing about their strug­gle at the TUC con­fer­ence hap­pen­ing this week in Liv­er­pool. There is also a nation­al day of action tak­ing place in sup­port of Ves­tas work­ers tomor­row, Sep­tem­ber 17th. The protest will con­tin­ue untill the demands of the cam­paign have been met.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please call: 07950 539254 or Jamie ex-ves­tas occupier:07875441668

For fur­ther cam­paign infor­ma­tion see web­site: savevestas.wordpress.com