2008 overview of Shell to Sea cam­paign

An in depth account of sig­nif­i­cant events in 2008 from some­one involved in the com­mu­ni­ty led cam­paign in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land to pre­vent Shell build­ing a gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in the region.

2008 has been a year of ups and downs for the Shell to Sea cam­paign, how­ev­er gen­er­al­ly the last months of the year have been very pos­i­tive. This is a brief review of the year and a call-out for peo­ple to get involved next year when we expect a big push from Shell and the Gov­ern­ment to again try to force this project through. At the moment, we are plan­ning on the assump­tion that a pipe-lay­ing ship (Soli­taire or oth­er­wise) will be back any­time from spring next year, to try to final­ly lay the off­shore pipeline.

This year the area saw the switch of empha­sis away from the refin­ery at Bel­lan­aboy to Glen­gad where Shell wants to bring in the pipeline. While for about the first 6 months of the year peo­ple still turned up at the Shell to Sea trail­er to show their oppo­si­tion to the refin­ery, there was­n’t very much phys­i­cal direct action try­ing to stop the progress there. I think that after all the peat was removed from the refin­ery, peo­ple gen­er­al­ly resigned them­selves to the fact that the refin­ery would be built. Also some peo­ple had drift­ed away from the cam­paign, some think­ing that the out­come was inevitable, and oth­ers kept away because they were sick of being har­ried by Gar­daí at Bel­lan­aboy. Since I have come to area, a lot of peo­ple involved in the cam­paign imme­di­ate­ly around the pipeline area have always said that it would come down to the land and when Shell tries to come on the land. I always thought this was a risky strat­e­gy as if the refin­ery gets built; there would be even greater pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment to have it used, and not to allow a giant cor­po­ra­tion waste its mon­ey. How­ev­er, this is the sit­u­a­tion that we find our­selves in, but it has to be said that it is also a risky sit­u­a­tion for Shell and the Gov­ern­ment. They obvi­ous­ly thought that if they got the project this far, then the local com­mu­ni­ty would see the futil­i­ty of their fight and give up. This has not hap­pened and will not hap­pen for this next stage of the strug­gle at least.

Glin­sk Pro­pos­al

Around late April of this year, a pro­pos­al to move the refin­ery to a more remote onland loca­tion – such as Glin­sk — was backed by a num­ber of local Shell to Sea peo­ple. The pro­pos­al had been made the pre­vi­ous Novem­ber by the 3 priests of the parish to Min­is­ter Eamon Ryan but he had made no response. This move was seen by many Shell to Sea mem­bers as incom­pat­i­ble with what they had been cam­paign­ing for and it cre­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant dif­fi­cul­ties at the time. Pobail Cill Comain was formed by the local peo­ple who sup­port­ed the Glin­sk pro­pos­al and they have worked close­ly with Pobail Le Ceile which is a local busi­ness group work­ing against the cur­rent project.
While this devel­op­ment cre­at­ed some ten­sion at the time, I feel that a lot of peo­ple in the area now think that over­all it has ben­e­fit­ed the cam­paign against the Cor­rib Gas Project. The fact that there are 3 groups now work­ing local­ly against Shell might at times seem like overkill, but it has added new direc­tions and dynam­ic to the cam­paign too. It is inter­est­ing to see how the main­stream papers have tak­en to the new groups and now nor­mal­ly add Shell to Sea com­ments at the end of arti­cles in the “also said” sec­tion of the arti­cle.

Glen­gad

The big action of the year all occurred in the vicin­i­ty of Glen­gad where Shell & Sta­toil were plan­ning to lay the off­shore sec­tion of their pipeline. It is worth not­ing that this is the third attempt — and fail­ure — to lay the off­shore sec­tion. At the first attempt Enter­prise Oil pulled out because of pres­sure local­ly, then in 2005 Shell & Allseas pulled the plug under pres­sure of a High Court case in the pipeline. This year, just before the pipe-lay­ing was sup­pos­ed­ly about to com­mence, a large sec­tion of the stinger broke off and the Soli­taire even­tu­al­ly limped home for repair. How the stinger was dam­aged exact­ly remains a mys­tery.

What we do know is about the great resis­tance that took place around Glen­gad.

Mau­ra Har­ring­ton went on a hunger strike from when the Soli­taire entered Broad­haven Bay until it left Irish waters. This was a tough time for every­one involved in the cam­paign with a 24 hour vig­il held for the 11 days out­side the gates in Glen­gad where Mau­ra stayed in her car while on hunger strike. Thank­ful­ly this end­ed with a hap­py out­come and Mau­ra returned grad­u­al­ly to full health. One aspect that remained with me since this was the line from Mau­ra let­ter to Allseas in which she stat­ed the “peo­ple come and go in nano sec­onds; Place endures”. I feel that this state­ment rep­re­sents a lot of why Shell and the Gov­ern­ment have not got their way so far with this project.

Oth­er great heroes of this episode were undoubt­ed­ly Pat and Jonathan O’Don­nell and Kevin McAn­drew who in their small fish­ing boats defied the world’s largest pipe lay­ing ship and sup­port ves­sels in-order to defend their liveli­hoods, prop­er­ty and area. Pat sought the assis­tance of Gar­daí to pre­vent their lob­ster pots being dam­aged by the Soli­taire, but instead the fish­er­men were arrest­ed twice in 24 hours from his tra­di­tion­al fish­ing ter­ri­to­ry, and then released with­out charge. Pat and his son Jonathan lost approx­i­mate­ly 150 pots to dam­age from the Shell fleet. It is worth not­ing that the fish­er­men had a legal right to fish in Broad­haven Bay, but in this instance the Gar­dai hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly aban­doned the prin­ci­ple of “people’s right to go to work” so often used to break up peace­ful protest at Bel­lan­aboy.

Instead the Navy were draft­ed in along with the Gar­da Emer­gency Response Unit, Gar­da Water Unit and Kent Police (yes that’s Eng­lish police) to stop the row­dy fish­er­men, locals, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sup­port­ers.

One inter­est­ing point was how some of the media seemed will­ing to accept that when it was fish­er­men fight­ing for their liveli­hood then the protest was in some ways accept­able but (implic­it­ly) oth­er mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty have less of a right to protest unless they are as direct­ly affect­ed.

In the mean­time, mem­bers of Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and inter­na­tion­al sup­port­ers took to the seas and began harass­ing the Soli­taire while it was up in Killy­begs and dis­rupt­ing Shel­l’s oper­a­tions around Glen­gad. Again on at least two occa­sions we were extreme­ly lucky that some­one did­n’t get seri­ous­ly injured or killed when a dig­ger oper­a­tor con­tin­ued work­ing and end­ed up drop­ping tonnes of debris with­in feet of 2 pro­tes­tors. Lots of oth­er resis­tance around the time includ­ed lock-ons and reclaim­ing access to the beach (albeit tem­porar­i­ly) which was ille­gal­ly being blocked by Shell fenc­ing. Also a load of sol­i­dar­i­ty actions hap­pened all around the world at Shell sta­tions and Irish embassies, in places such as Gal­way, Dublin, Belfast, Eng­land, Nether­lands, Bel­gium, Spain and Aus­tralia. In the US, I heard of a lady who went on a 3 day fast in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Mau­ra Harrington’s hunger strike.

On the 22th of July, 13 peo­ple chal­lenged the work that Shell were car­ry­ing out on the land just over the cliff-face to the beach on a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion (SAC). They asked to see the legal per­mis­sion for the work being car­ried out. Instead of show­ing any per­mis­sion how­ev­er Supt. John Gilli­gan had the 13 arrest­ed and brought to Bel­mul­let Gar­da Sta­tion where they were sub­se­quent­ly released with­out charge. How­ev­er while in the Gar­da Sta­tion, one of the 13, Naoise O’Mon­gain was injured and sub­se­quent­ly mis­han­dled by Gar­daí and is still on crutch­es to this day from the inci­dent. These 13 arrests were the among the first of about 50 arrests that hap­pened in course of the next 2 months in Glen­gad, every sin­gle one of whom were sub­se­quent­ly released with­out charge. In some cas­es the peo­ple involved weren’t even told they were arrest­ed or what they were being arrest­ed for.

Regard­ing the per­mis­sions for the land work that took place in Glen­gad, it turned out that on the 27th of June, Min­ster for Ener­gy (& for­mer Shell to Sea sup­port­er) Eamon Ryan had giv­en per­mis­sion for the work in Glen­gad and exempt­ed the first 100 metres or so (up to the valve sta­tion) of the on-shore pipeline from the plan­ning process. How­ev­er this per­mis­sion had not been made avail­able to the pub­lic, an omis­sion Min­is­ter Ryan called an “over­sight”.

A few days lat­er, local peo­ple were pushed off a sec­tion of the Glen­gad beach by about 50 Gar­daí and about 70 of Shel­l’s new­ly employed secu­ri­ty force IRMS. Shell then pro­ceed­ed to fence off about a 100m wide of the sec­tion of the beach and so the beach remained split in two for about 4 months. In spite of Shell claim­ing in their work method state­ment that they would allow pedes­tri­an access across this zone, no mem­ber of the pub­lic was per­mit­ted through the fences for about a 4 month peri­od.

At first the secu­ri­ty force IRMS (Inte­grat­ed Risk Man­age­ment Ser­vices) ini­tial­ly took to film­ing every­one who went down on the beach includ­ing young chil­dren and swim­mers, how­ev­er the bad pub­lic­i­ty that this caused result­ed in them being a bit more sub­tle after­wards.

The works on the site have now all been removed although sig­nif­i­cant dam­age has obvi­ous­ly been done to the SAC (water pol­lu­tion, grav­el & silt remain on the beach and churned up soil on land, but this has been total­ly ignored by Nation­al Parks & Wildlife (NPWS) and the Dept of Envi­ron­ment. Hun­dreds of tonnes of placed mate­r­i­al fill were washed away, and the pol­lu­tion could be seen, the fish­er­men say, for miles out to sea at times.

One moment I remem­ber down on the beach was when I tried to point out to one of the Gar­daí there, how both he and all the Shell work­ers were basi­cal­ly get­ting paid from the same purse. He seem to think that I was sug­gest­ing that Shell was pay­ing him too. What I meant was that the tax­pay­er is pay­ing both him (direct­ly) and the Shell employ­ees (indi­rect­ly). Because of changes made by Ray Burke in 1987, oil & gas com­pa­nies can write off all their explo­ration & devel­op­ment cost against tax. So the tiny per­cent­age of the Cor­rib Gas field­’s worth that is to come back to the Irish Exche­quer is being less­ened by the amount that Shell are spend­ing on secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty bribery funds.

Polic­ing and the Courts

The deci­sion not to pros­e­cute any­one in con­nec­tion with the resis­tance in Glen­gad this year pre­sum­ably has to do with the shaky legal ground that Shell are on with some of their oper­a­tions down there. Obvi­ous­ly for the fish­er­men, their arrest was total­ly unlaw­ful as they were defend­ing their prop­er­ty and if any­one should have been arrest­ed it should have been the per­son­nel on the Shell ves­sels. Also it was nev­er made clear to the kayak­ers or swim­mers who were arrest­ed and in some cas­es ille­gal­ly detained on the water what exact laws they were break­ing oth­er than not obey­ing a police offi­cer. Also there was the case where peo­ple used sledges, car jacks and pipes to take down a num­ber of sec­tions of the fence along the beach in full view of the Gar­daí and secu­ri­ty. No pros­e­cu­tion has ever come out of this, also pre­sum­ably because of Shell breach­ing their exempt­ed per­mis­sion reg­u­la­tions.

In the courts, it has been a tor­tu­ous­ly slow progress of the cas­es dat­ing back to 06 & 07. When you see oth­er cas­es in the Dis­trict Court being dealt with fair­ly rapid­ly, it seems like­ly that part of the pun­ish­ment for being arrest­ed for a Shell to Sea protest is that the case will be dragged out sig­nif­i­cant­ly. How­ev­er it should be not­ed that this is not always to do with the Judge and some­times equal­ly to do with delays sought from the defence side. Among some the cas­es heard this year, John Mon­aghan who had been found guilty of assault before Judge Mary Devins was found not guilty of assault on appeal. Ed Collins was found not guilty of an assault on a Gar­da from an inci­dent from which he still has sig­nif­i­cant injuries. Pat and Jonathan O’Don­nell and Enda Carey were found guilty on appeal of a Sec­tion 2 assault with sen­tenc­ing being car­ried out in the New Year. Michael Healy was recent­ly found guilty of obstruc­tion, while he and 3 oth­ers who received sig­nif­i­cant injuries on the day in ques­tion were found not guilty of assault.

Also this year, Mau­ra Har­ring­ton took a Judi­cial Review of Judge Devins’ deci­sion not to allow Ms Har­ring­ton to have her own stenog­ra­ph­er present to record her court case. The High Court found that Ms Har­ring­ton had a right to have a stenog­ra­ph­er present at her own expense to record pro­ceed­ings. Anoth­er Judi­cial Review was tak­en against Judge Devins’ by a Shell to Sea mem­ber which secured the right to get a copy of a court tran­script from the hith­er­to unprece­dent­ed pro­vi­sion of stenograpy ser­vices at Dis­trict Court by the Court Ser­vices (just for Shell to Sea cas­es).

Over­all I think it’s fair­ly obvi­ous that the judi­cia­ry are not act­ing inde­pen­dent­ly and that Shell to Sea pro­tes­tors are get­ting total­ly dif­fer­ent treat­ment in front of the courts than if they had been arrest­ed as indi­vid­u­als.

Road to Glen­gad

One suc­cess that Shell seem to have had of late is that the road to Glen­gad seems to be com­ing togeth­er for them. Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil (MCC) has real­ly exposed them­selves in the man­ner in which they have pushed this through though. They have resort­ed to brib­ing, threat­en­ing and bul­ly­ing peo­ple and will now have a rea­son­ably good road for Shell come the spring. They have been work­ing on this 8km sec­tion of road for over 6 months now and bit by bit they have tak­en inch­es here and there. Recent­ly they (both Shell & MCC) have also suc­ceed­ed in turn­ing one of the local landown­ers who had been against the road, with both threats and a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey. On the road the Road Safe­ty Author­i­ty, EPA, Fish­eries Board, NPWS, NRA, Min­is­ters for the Envi­ron­ment and MCC them­selves, were all made aware of breach­es that occurred both in plan­ning and lay­ing of the road but each turned their back on these breach­es.

Onshore Plan­ning Appli­ca­tion

The man­ner in which the onshore pipeline plan­ning appli­ca­tion has been han­dled by both Shell and RPS (pipeline plan­ning con­sul­tants) to me illus­trates both arro­gance and incom­pe­tence in equal measure.Recently RPS with­drew Shel­l’s plan­ning appli­ca­tion under the Strate­gic Infra­struc­ture Act for the onshore sec­tion of the pipeline say­ing that they will need to seek minor realign­ments to the pipeline route. RPS and Shell have been work­ing on this plan­ning appli­ca­tion for well over a year now and the fact that they had to with­draw it at the final hour must have been some kick in the nuts for them. Basi­cal­ly my read­ing of the sit­u­a­tion is that Shell still hasn’t man­aged to sur­vey the approx­i­mate­ly 3km sec­tion of the pro­posed pipeline route which lies on Ross­port com­mon­age. I believe that An Bord Pleanala were try­ing des­per­ate­ly to accept Shel­l’s plan­ning appli­ca­tion (illus­trat­ed by the fact that they were will­ing to receive fur­ther infor­ma­tion from Shell on the 18th of Novem­ber), but sim­ply could­n’t because of the huge holes that exist­ed in the appli­ca­tion. These holes would no doubt have been exposed in an oral hear­ing by the moun­tains of knowl­edge that now exist in this area regard­ing pipeline sit­ing.

In recent weeks Shell employ­ees and AGEC (Applied Ground Engi­neer­ing Con­sul­tants Ltd) geol­o­gists have been try­ing to get access to the Ross­port com­mon­age to do sur­vey work but they have been pre­vent­ed from doing so by vig­i­lant Ross­port res­i­dents. The fact that it is present­ly ille­gal for Shell to do sur­vey work on the com­mon­age does­n’t seem to deter Shell from try­ing — they have been caught red-hand­ed on at least one occa­sion. In Novem­ber 07, Shell sought per­mis­sion to car­ry out the sur­vey work on the com­mon­age in Bel­mul­let Dis­trict court; how­ev­er Judge Mary Devins found that the notice giv­en by Shell was inad­e­quate and so dis­missed Shel­l’s appli­ca­tion. The fact that Shell still went ahead with try­ing to car­ry out the sur­vey work is sure­ly con­tempt of court; a sim­i­lar rea­son saw the Ross­port 5 spent 94 days in jail.

Forums

Towards the end of the year Min­is­ters Ryan & O’Cuiv organ­ised a Forum for Devel­op­ment in North West Mayo, which want­ed to link the Cor­rib Gas Project with the local devel­op­ment of North West Mayo. Shell to Sea chose not to part-take in the Min­is­ters’ Forum for one because the Forum refused to dis­cuss the sit­ing of the refin­ery, the forc­ing of a raw gas pipeline on the local com­mu­ni­ty and the great gas give­away. Also the Minister’s Forum is only open to select­ed groups; there­fore any indi­vid­ual who has ques­tions about the Cor­rib Gas Project can­not attend just to rep­re­sent their con­cerns. A sep­a­rate Peo­ples Forum, (which was open to all and ful­ly record­ed) was held along­side the Minister’s Forum and was a sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess, with local peo­ple voic­ing their con­cerns.

Con­clu­sion

The main rea­son for this arti­cle is to try to encour­age peo­ple to get involved. Even though Shell has made progress on the refin­ery in Bel­lan­aboy, they still face var­i­ous sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems in even get­ting the legal per­mis­sions from the more than com­pli­ant author­i­ties to fin­ish the project.

How­ev­er I believe that the only way that this project will be stopped is if peo­ple get involved and make it unwork­able for both the Gov­ern­ment and Shell. This is still pos­si­ble and the cur­rent reces­sion gives us more oppor­tu­ni­ties to high­light the day­light rob­bery of our nat­ur­al resources. When you hear local Fine Gael TD, Michael Ring start­ing to rail against the give­away gas deal, I sense he’s guess­ing which way the wind is blow­ing.

Indi­ca­tions at the moment are that there will be anoth­er fourth push by Shell to lay the off-shore sec­tion of the pipeline next spring. At that time we real­ly will need peo­ple to come and help us here in Erris but also to put as much pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment and Shell wher­ev­er they are.

Last August & Sep­tem­ber, even amid all the ten­sion and wor­ry regard­ing the Soli­taire and Mau­ra’s hunger strike, there was a real­ly good pro-active atmos­phere in Glen­gad and in par­tic­u­lar at the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, whose mar­quees appeared once more and attract­ed many peo­ple back to Glen­gad. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp organ­is­es from a per­ma­nent house and office at Glen­gad where peo­ple are always wel­come to come and stay and lend their sup­port. We intend to set up camp again in spring as a sol­id base for action against Shell and any new attempt of theirs to progress their doomed pipeline lay­ing efforts.

I feel it’s always good to end an arti­cle with a quote from a wise per­son. So in this case the wise per­son is Trevor Sar­gent (cur­rent Min­is­ter for Food & Hor­ti­cul­ture) and the quote is from when he addressed the crowd assem­bled on the day that the Ross­port 5 got out of jail.

“At this point I’d like to pay trib­ute to my par­lia­men­tary col­leagues in the oth­er small­er par­ties and inde­pen­dents who have kept pres­sure on this FF/PD/Shell — like — Gov­ern­ment and who con­tin­ue to stand firm with the peo­ple of Ross­port. We’re unit­ed in fight­ing the good fight. And it feels good. Because we’re going to win.”

http://www.shelltosea.com

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What did the UK Cli­mate Move­ment do in 2008?

With­out a doubt, 2008 was an incred­i­ble year for the UK cli­mate move­ment. There’s been a diverse dis­play of incred­i­ble actions from Scot­land to Ply­mouth through­out the year, as more peo­ple than ever before are real­is­ing its up to us to pre­vent cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe as no one’s going to do it for us!

In Jan­u­ary, the actions got off to a cre­ative start when 30 Pen­guins from Plane Stu­pid invad­ed the BA spon­sored ice rink at the Nation­al His­to­ry Muse­um. A few days lat­er, up in Scot­land, 20 activists block­ad­ed the entrance to Greer Avi­a­tion, a pri­vate jet com­pa­ny at Edin­burgh Air­port.

Then at the start of Feb­ru­ary bio­fu­els took cen­tre stage as protests and actions took place at Tescos across the coun­try in protest at their pro­mo­tion of gross­ly unsus­tain­able bio­fu­el use. It was back to avi­a­tion at the end of the month when 3,000 peo­ple attend­ed at ral­ly against Heathrow Expan­sion, organ­ised by HACAN ClearSkies and NoTRAG and sup­port­ed by 14
coun­cils in the Heathrow area. It was on this same day that 4 Green­peace pro­test­ers man­aged to climb on top of a short haul flight parked up in Ter­mi­nal 1, reveal­ing a ban­ner across the plane’s tail­fin. To top it off, two days lat­er 5 activists from Plane Stu­pid unfurled large ban­ners from the roof of the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment, achiev­ing angry remarks from the
Prime Min­is­ter down in the cham­ber! Up north flood vic­tims from York­shire and Hum­ber­side block­ad­ed coun­cil offices in protest at their con­tin­ued sup­port for avi­a­tion expan­sion.

In March, activists from the UK trav­elled to Brus­sels to block­ade almost all the entrances to the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket. It was all excite­ment a week lat­er when the Press Com­plaints Com­mis­sions upheld a com­plaint from the Camp for Cli­mate Action that the Evening Standard’s cov­er­age of the Heathrow protest was inac­cu­rate because it was fab­ri­cat­ed. It relat­ed to
accu­sa­tions that activists planned to leave hoax bomb pack­ages lying around air­port ter­mi­nals. Keep­ing with avi­a­tion, the sham­bles that was the open­ing of T5 at Heathrow was greet­ed by a not so sham­bol­ic flash mob of activists all reveal­ing bright red T‑Shirts with the words “Stop Air­port Expan­sion”.

The 1st of April was indeed Fos­sil Fools Day, see­ing actions against those fool­ish­ly med­dling with fos­sil fuels take place across the coun­try. E.ON’s offices were block­ad­ed in Not­ting­ham, the Ffos-y-Fran open cast coal mine was shut down in Wales; the UK’s largest off shore gas ter­mi­nal was block­ad­ed in Nor­folk; there were protests against RBS in Cam­bridge; petrol sta­tions shut down in Southamp­ton and Ply­mouth; jesters sur­round­ing the
Depart­ment for Busi­ness, Evil and Reg­u­la­to­ry Reform (DBERR); Peo­ple and Plan­et at West­min­ster; 34 SUVs and sports cars sab­o­taged in Edin­burgh; plus many more excit­ing actions and events too numer­ous to men­tion.

Yet, after all that ener­gy dis­pensed, the move­ment failed to show any signs of weari­ness. Two days lat­er Aberthaw Pow­er Sta­tion had its mul­ti­ple entrances block­ad­ed by activists from Bath, Cardiff and Oxford. Then came the news that a spy, work­ing for C2i Inter­na­tion­al, had been attempt­ing to infil­trate Plane Stu­pid. Plane Stu­pid activists weren’t hav­ing any of it, how­ev­er, and exposed him to the world. Then with one Par­lia­ment clear­ly not enough, on the 14th April activists scaled the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment roof, drop­ping a ban­ner read­ing: “Choose a Future: Say no to air­port expan­sion”. The fol­low­ing month, over 50 peo­ple took part in a mass tres­pass in Der­byshire. They were tres­pass­ing on land set aside for an open cast coal mine, owned by UK Coal and back­ing onto a coun­try park.

June saw anoth­er nation­al day of action, this time on Food and Cli­mate Change. The day saw actions and events across the land, such as free veg­an food give aways and the occu­pa­tion of a GM lab. Then the spot­light shift­ed back to coal on the 13th June in a spec­tac­u­lar action that saw 29 activists halt a train car­ry­ing coal to Drax Pow­er Sta­tion. The activists
occu­pied the train for 16 hours while shov­el­ling coal from the train onto the track. On the 17th June Plane Stu­pid Scot­land unveiled a five metre high ‘avi­a­tion ele­phant’ at a trans­port and cli­mate change con­fer­ence in Edin­burgh. Then activists showed they weren’t going to let the land in Der­byshire be destroyed for new coal with­out a fight. They occu­pied what became known as Bodge House for sev­er­al weeks, due for demo­li­tion to
enable the open cast min­ing to pro­ceed. Also dur­ing this time two tun­nellers spent a week under the ground on the Der­byshire site.

July brought with it a sec­ond ‘Stop Heathrow Expan­sion’ flash mob, this time out­side the Depart­ment for Trans­port where flash mob­bers gath­ered to hurl paper planes at the then Trans­port Sec­re­tary Ruth Kel­ly. On the 16th July the ‘Green­wash Guer­ril­las’ tar­get­ed the Guardian’s Cli­mate Change Sum­mit in Isling­ton, protest­ing against E.ON’s spon­sor­ship of the event. Mean­while, across the oth­er side of Lon­don activists simul­ta­ne­ous­ly occu­pied Edel­man PR, the world’s biggest PR Com­pa­ny, hired by E.ON ear­li­er in the year (after the Camp for Cli­mate Action’s announce­ment to go to Kingsnorth “coin­ci­den­tal­ly”). The month also saw the dis­abling of 32 SUVs in Oxford, and a Plane Stu­pid Activist super­glued him­self to the Prime Min­is­ter at 10 Down­ing Street!

The end of July saw the Camp for Cli­mate Action draw­ing near. To kick things off a con­fer­ence was held near Heathrow Air­port, the loca­tion of last year’s camp, which brought togeth­er groups opposed to the airport’s expan­sion. The fol­low­ing day the Cli­mate Car­a­van set off on its 60 mile jour­ney from Heathrow to Kingsnorth. The course of this jour­ney saw many events take place, such as the Put­ney Cli­mate Change Debate that took place in the same church as the his­toric Put­ney Debates of 1647. There were also a vari­ety of work­shops, talks, tours, and dis­plays along the way, with the car­a­van join­ing the Cam­paign Against Cli­mate Change for a march to the camp for the final hur­dle.

After months of plan­ning, 100s of activists took the site for the Camp for Cli­mate Action on the 30th July in broad day­light. The camp saw a gigan­tic and repres­sive police pres­ence, far worse than any camps gone pre­vi­ous­ly. Yet despite dra­con­ian use of stop and search pow­ers and vio­lent police incur­sions onto the site with large amounts of equip­ment seized, it was the campers who tri­umphed with bril­liant dis­plays of resis­tance through­out the week. This meant the camp proved to be yet anoth­er huge­ly suc­cess­ful week of edu­ca­tion, sus­tain­able liv­ing, and direct action attend­ed by a record num­ber of par­tic­i­pants.

The camp’s Day of Mass Action saw marchers, climbers, and rafters head from all direc­tions towards the pow­er sta­tion. Some of the marchers chose to block­ade the front entrance, while the Green Bloc scaled perime­ter fences. At the same time many par­tic­i­pants joined the Great Rebel Raft Regat­ta, which sailed its way down the Riv­er Med­way. One raft report­ed­ly caused the pow­er station’s water sup­ply to be cut off.

But the Mass Action was only one of many actions tak­ing place dur­ing the week. There were ban­ner drops at Gatwick, stu­dents tar­get­ing RBS head­quar­ters, a block­ade of Vopak Bio­fu­el Depot in Thur­rock, a naked glue-on at DBERR, an office occu­pa­tion of min­ing com­pa­ny BHP Bil­li­ton, and final­ly a group of tiny activists climbed on top of the Lego Kingsnorth
Pow­er Sta­tion at the E.ON spon­sored Legoland.

The 10th Sep­tem­ber saw a his­toric ver­dict when 6 Green­peace Pro­test­ers, who had scaled the tow­er at Kingsnorth and paint­ed it with slo­gans caus­ing an esti­mat­ed £30,000 dam­age, were found Not Guilty after argu­ing the defence of ‘law­ful excuse’, hav­ing act­ed to pro­tect prop­er­ty around the world in imme­di­ate need of pro­tec­tion from the impacts of cli­mate change.

Octo­ber saw The Cli­mate Rush, with a thou­sand demon­stra­tors gath­er­ing in Par­lia­ment Square to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of the Suf­fragette Rush. After con­gre­gat­ing in full suf­fragette cos­tume the demon­stra­tors made a rush for par­lia­ment.

E.ON, BP, Shell, and RBS were among the cli­mate crim­i­nals who had their chances of recruit­ing grad­u­ates wrecked at uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try through­out the career fair sea­son. Stu­dent activists mer­ci­less­ly dis­rupt­ed stalls and events across the UK by a vari­ety of cre­ative means. Things got so bad for E.ON that they just stopped turn­ing up halfway through their cam­pus tour.

The end of Novem­ber saw 48 hours of action against E.ON, bring­ing about immense­ly visu­al actions in many towns and cities. One such action fea­tured two minibus loads of san­tas occu­py­ing and super­glue­ing them­selves to E.ON’s head­quar­ters in Coven­try. The san­tas’ only presents for E.ON were lumps of filthy coal. Then, as an ear­ly Christ­mas present, came the
news (via The Times) that an intrud­er had bro­ken into Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion and turned off one of the gen­er­a­tors. This meant that 500 megawatts of coal-pro­duced pow­er was lost from the grid, enough the pow­er a city the size of Bris­tol. Nice one!

Despite the cold, Decem­ber saw the actions keep on rock­ing. There was the annu­al cli­mate march in Lon­don, attend­ed by thou­sands and tak­ing place simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with march­es in 70 oth­er coun­tries. Then, in the ear­ly morn­ing of the 8th Decem­ber came the won­der­ful news that Plane Stu­pid had suc­ceed­ed in shut­ting down Stanst­ed air­port. 57 activists breached
secu­ri­ty at the air­port and man­aged to pre­vent over 50 flights from tak­ing off. On the 15th Decem­ber 30 activists from Coal Action Scot­land block­ad­ed Raven­struther coal ter­mi­nal, oper­at­ed by Scot­tish Coal, for 9 hours.

So what a year it was, but with time run­ning out to tack­le run­away cli­mate change, we can only afford to make 2009 even bet­ter. Hope­ful­ly these reminders will give us all some inspi­ra­tion and ideas for what we might get up to in the com­ing months.

Come to the Camp for Cli­mate Action New Year Gath­er­ing to get involved:
31st­Jan-1st­Feb in Oxford. Every­one is wel­come! Every­one is need­ed!
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/node/471

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A fly­ing start to the new year for anti-avi­a­tion cam­paign­ers

Cam­paign­ers against avi­a­tion expan­sion are hav­ing a hec­tic start to the new year. Half of those arrest­ed for blockad­ing Stanst­ed air­port last year have now been sen­tenced and all are under threat of being sued for dam­ages. Mean­while, air­port oper­a­tor BAA have man­aged to get the Plane Stu­pid web­site tak­en down and are prepar­ing for the Cli­mate Rush action on mon­day the 12th by threat­en­ing MPs who have said they will attend the events at Heathrow and Man­ches­ter air­port. To cap it all, the gov­ern­ment is set to announce the go-ahead for Heathrows run­way three this com­ing week.

Twen­ty Two Plane Stu­pid mem­bers were sen­tenced at Har­low mag­is­trates’ court on Wednes­day for their part in blockad­ing the run­way at Stanstead air­port last month. Most were ordered to do between 50 and 90 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice each after delay­ing 52,000 pas­sen­gers.

A Plane Stu­pid spokesper­son, Leo Mur­ry said, “The sen­tences were sur­pris­ing­ly harsh but we went into it with our eyes open and we are ready to take the con­se­quences.”

Dis­trict Judge John Perkins said, “Sub­stan­tial loss was caused to the author­i­ties that were car­ry­ing out law­ful activ­i­ties. I accept there is an hon­ourable tra­di­tion of peace­ful protest in this coun­try and long may it con­tin­ue, but that does not jus­ti­fy the sort of activ­i­ty that you were involved in.”

More than 50 Plane Stu­pid activists now face being sued for dam­ages by Ryanair who have begun a £2.2 mil­lion com­pen­sa­tion claim for loss of rev­enue after being forced to can­cel 57 flights. They are also seek­ing almost £500,000 for “rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age”. At the moment the claim is against Stanst­ed oper­a­tors BAA but the air­line has refused to rule out suing indi­vid­ual pro­test­ers in the civ­il courts at a lat­er date.

The place stu­pid web­site has been tak­en offline by the ser­vice providers after pres­sure from BAA.