But­ter­fly

Man­ches­ter is the home of sev­er­al peat moors, all under threat from extrac­tors prof­it­ing from the destruc­tion of some of the most pre­cious areas in the UK. But togeth­er we can stop them, and save our moors!

WILDLIFE UNDER THREAT

Peat moors are home to a vast range of plants, insects, but­ter­flies, and birds. Often they are offi­cial­ly recog­nised con­ser­va­tion areas and have been proven to help pre­vent cli­mate change. How­ev­er, due to exten­sive ‘min­ing’ of the peat, main­ly for use in home gar­den­ing, these pre­cious habi­tats are dwin­dling. We must fight to pro­tect these unique havens of wildlife, before cor­po­rate lob­by­ing destroys our moors for­ev­er.

MANCHESTER’S FORGOTTEN PEAT MOORS

Man­ches­ter is not often thought of as an area rich in bio­di­ver­si­ty, but with­in the bounds of Greater Man­ches­ter, there are sev­er­al peat moors, or moss­es under threat. From large sites like Irlam Moss, run by Scotts and Peel Hold­ings, to small­er sites like Salter­s­ley Moss in the near­by Wilm­slow. Extrac­tion is already under­way, but the dam­age done is reversible if we act quick­ly.

MANCHESTER IS FIGHTING BACK

We have decid­ed to do some­thing about this destruc­tion of our nat­ur­al her­itage by form­ing a local peat cam­paign. We will focus on a wide, inclu­sive cam­paign against peat extrac­tion on Salter­s­ley Moss and more tar­get­ed cam­paign­ing on oth­er Man­ches­ter-area moss­es. If you would like to get involved, please con­tact us.

For more details, con­tact Man­ches­ter Peat Cam­paign on Man­ches­ter Earth First! on 0161–226 6814

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/manchester/peat/

A deal was announced today (27th Feb­ru­ary 2002) between Scotts and Eng­lish Nature, to restore major peat­bogs as eco­log­i­cal sites.

The deal is undoubt­ed­ly very good news, but it is cer­tain­ly not the end of the sto­ry. The main pointsof the deal are giv­en below.

* Thorne Moor, South York­shire, and Wed­holme Flow, Cum­bria to be restored to raised bog habi­tats. This will be start­ed imme­di­ate­ly; no more peat will be extract­ed from the site.
* Hat­field Moor, South York­shire, to be con­tin­ued to be mined for peat for a fur­ther two years, although only on half the site — the oth­er half will also now be restored.
* For this, Eng­lish Nature will pay Scotts £17 mil­lion as com­pen­sa­tion. Scotts will take on much of the respon­si­bil­i­ty for car­ry­ing out the restora­tion.

Clear­ly this is very wel­come, but the fight is far from over. Some of the prob­lems that remain are:

* Car­ry­ing on extract­ing peat for anoth­er two years could make a cru­cial dif­fer­ence to the chances of a raised bog habi­tat re-evolv­ing on Hat­field Moor. The depth of the peat is get­ting star­tling­ly low on many parts of the site, and below a cer­tain depth the eco­log­i­cal val­ue of the sys­tem that will regen­er­ate will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced.
* In many places the bot­tom of the peat has been breached, and the sand lay­er has been dug into. This intro­duces exces­sive nutri­ents into the water table, which means the peat may not sup­port many impor­tant plants. Con­tin­ued dig­ging will almost cer­tain­ly exac­er­bate this.
* Scotts bear much of the respon­si­bil­i­ty for car­ry­ing out the eco­log­i­cal restora­tion work. How­ev­er, giv­en their track record of destroy­ing eco­log­i­cal sys­tems, what are the assur­ances that they will not put prof­itabil­i­ty before doing a good job?
* Scotts will con­tin­ue to oper­ate their oth­er peat­land sites in the UK. In par­tic­u­lar, Carn­wath Moss in Scot­land is a des­ig­nat­ed SSSI, and they have said that they will con­tin­ue extrac­tion there for the fore­see­able future.
* There are many oth­er peat com­pa­nies who also still mine peat from valu­able wildlife sites. In par­tic­u­lar Wm. Sin­clair Ltd, who make J. Arthur Bow­ers brand com­post, con­tin­ue to mine at Bolton Fell in Cum­bria, and have pledged to legal­ly chal­lenge gov­ern­ment plans to des­ig­nate it a Spe­cial Area for Con­ser­va­tion (this sta­tus would mean they would have to stop extract­ing peat). They also mine at Whim bog, an SSSI in Scot­land.
* With the clo­sure of UK peat mines, the prob­lem may well just be shift­ed over­seas. Import­ed peat will form a grater pro­por­tion of the mar­ket, with new bogs being destroyed in Ire­land or the Baltic States.

So let’s be encour­aged by the lat­est news, but not stop until the peat indus­try is no more!

Cor­wen peat (nation­al day of) action

Across the UK offices, fac­to­ries and peat extrac­tion sites belong­ing to The Scotts Com­pa­ny (the world’s largest hor­ti­cul­tur­al com­pa­ny) were today occu­pied or dis­rupt­ed by activists protest­ing against the con­tin­ued destruc­tion of rare raised peat bog habi­tats. Sev­en facil­i­ties belong­ing to Scotts were tar­get­ed by Peat Alert, a recent­ly-formed nation­al cam­paign net­work, which aims to stop peat extrac­tion in the UK and Europe. “We want Scotts to know that they can­not con­tin­ue dec­i­mat­ing our wild places with­out attract­ing this type of dis­rup­tive oppo­si­tion”, said Danielle Locke, a spokesper­son for the net­work.

************************************************************************************************************************

Godalm­ing, Sur­rey - Head Office At around 2pm 20 peo­ple went into the offices for about an hour & a half before police with dogs arrived and peo­ple left. Most of the office was closed down and the front doors were locked using bicy­cle D‑locks. There were only about 70 work­ers, so they made quite an impact. After leav­ing the demon­stra­tion a van load of pro­test­ers were pulled over. By around 5pm 15 peo­ple were arrest­ed and tak­en to Guild­ford police sta­tion, charged with bur­glary. They were released at 3am the fol­low­ing morn­ing, not charged but bailed to reap­pear on one of two dates in April.

************************************************************************************************************************

Cor­wen, North Wales — PBI Home & Gar­den fer­til­iz­er & pes­ti­cides man­u­fac­tur­ing plant. “a fun day out had by all! Ear­ly this morn­ing (well about 8 am) 13 welsh and eng­lish activists descend­ed on Cor­wen home and gar­den plant in north wales — owned by Scotts — and pro­ceed­ed to dis­rupt work at the fac­to­ry. The office was occu­pied as was the fac­to­ry floor. A ban­ner was hung over­look­ing the A5 road. The gates were tem­porar­i­ly locked shut. Ini­tial­ly sur­prised work­ers were main­ly friend­ly — even pleased to see us!- and had no love for “par­ent ” com­pa­ny Scotts, who are rumoured to be about to sell off the plant leav­ing work­ers in the lurch. Sev­er­al already knew about Scot­t’s oper­a­tions at Hat­field Moor.

After a cou­ple of hours’ hang­ing around get­ting in the way, more police showed up (it took an hour 4 the first ones 2 get there despite the cop shop being lit­er­al­ly 500 yards down the road!!) and it was leave or get nicked time. We left, leav­ing one pret­ty pissed- off man­ag­er who claimed to be miss­ing a back- up com­put­er disc. we then went for a scram­ble around the ruins of Llan­gollen castle…lovely. “actions- bet­ter than work!” ”

************************************************************************************************************************

Bram­ford, nr Ipswich, Suf­folk
A group of 15 activists arrived at Scotts Fer­til­iz­er plant at 9am. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the secu­ri­ty were just secur­ing the site after being noti­fied of anoth­er action in Cor­wen Wales two min­utes before.

Four peo­ple rushed into the offices and two were evict­ed very quick­ly. One man­aged to find his way into an office with a paper ‘Scotts A Peat Strat­e­gy’ on it but after bar­ri­cad­ing the front door, the per­son whose office it was entered through the back door. One man­aged to hide in an office and not get noticed, even when the police searched the build­ing, unfor­tu­nate­ly the only thing in there was archives.

One group closed and D‑locked them­selves to the exit gate, and one group head­ed for the entrance gate, but could­n’t lock it shut, so entered the lor­ry yard. After one per­son clung to the under­neath of a lor­ry, most of the rest of the peo­ple were bun­dled out of the yard. The lor­ry dri­ver and his mate tried to use force to remove the per­son cling­ing on and punched an activist who stood in their way.

Out­side the Entrance gate a lor­ry pulled up and was imme­di­ate­ly D‑locked to under­neath, start­ing the tail back process which had up to twen­ty lor­ries in it with many more being turned away. The block­ade last­ed for 3 hours, it took them about an hour to bolt­cropp the activist from under the lor­ry free. The police then arrest­ed five peo­ple for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass or obstruc­tion of the high­way.

Arriv­ing at the site just after us was the direc­tor of the inter­na­tion­al fer­til­iz­er divi­sion, Eric von Karthoven, who had trav­eled over from Hol­land for a meet­ing. He was thor­ough­ly grilled by cam­paign mem­bers.

************************************************************************************************************************

Hat­field Moors, South York­shire — Between 11.30 and 12.30, 15 activists arrived at Hat­field Moor, and spent the day car­ry­ing out con­ser­va­tion work on the moor, includ­ing fill­ing in drainage ditch­es to pre­vent the moors dry­ing out. There were no police, so they just got on with it and left the moor around 5.00. They then pro­ceed­ed round to the front gates and stopped work in the fac­to­ry for about half an hour, leav­ing before the police turned up because they were knack­ered.

************************************************************************************************************************

Wed­holme Flow, Cum­bria. About 10 peo­ple spent the day on the site of Scotts peat mine in Cum­bria. There was­n’t much work going on to dis­rupt, so they decid­ed that time was best spent build­ing dams to inter­fere with Scotts attempt to drain the land ready for har­vest­ing peat in the spring.

************************************************************************************************************************

Goole, East York­shire — At around 11.30 two women entered the offices of the Scotts fer­til­iz­er & pes­ti­cide man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty, stay­ing only to send a fax to Nick Kirk­bride, UK Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at the Head Office in Godalm­ing, announc­ing their pres­ence and oppo­si­tion to Scotts involve­ment in peat extrac­tion. At the same time a set of gates were locked shut by oth­er activists.

Text of the fax:

Dear Nick

By now you will know that sites across the coun­try are being tar­get­ed for demon­stra­tions. This is because of Scotts’ involve­ment (or should that be “cham­pi­oning”) of peat extrac­tion from rare raised bog habi­tats, in the UK and glob­al­ly.

You will have been aware of the enor­mous oppo­si­tion to this prac­tice when you bought up the peat facil­i­ties. You have been involved in nego­ti­a­tions around “Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion” sta­tus for Thorne, Hat­field and Wed­holme Flow & oth­ers, and have slowed them down at every stage. You know you will be forced to stop soon­er or lat­er, so GO PEAT-FREE NOW, while you can still save a shred of rep­u­ta­tion and there remains a chance to save the moors.

26/11/2001 Work stopped for 3 hours at Hat­field Moor Works

On Mon­day 26th Novem­ber a group of around 30 peo­ple entered the site of the Scotts Com­pa­ny UK Ltd.

As work on the sur­round­ing peat moor­land has stopped for the win­ter, the action was con­cen­trat­ed on the adja­cent works, where peat is processed and bagged for send­ing off to farm­ers and gar­den cen­tres around the coun­tries.

A group of peo­ple blocked the bridge lead­ing off the site whilst the rest tried to shut down machin­ery and occu­py the offices. Thanks to health and safe­ty, all machin­ery was switched off as soon as every­one arrived on site, and the time was spent explor­ing the site, chat­ting to work­ers and blockad­ing the front gate. The group that was blockad­ing the bridge received a lot of has­sle off secu­ri­ty, man­age­ment, and dri­vers try­ing to leave. There were too few peo­ple and after a few nasty con­fronta­tions with pro­test­ers almost being run over they left the bridge and joined every­one else in occu­py­ing the works.

The rest of the day passed smooth­ly with pro­tes­tors giv­en a guid­ed tour of the site by work­ers. A lot of infor­ma­tion was gath­ered and a few pix­ies par­tial­ly dam­aged the back up gen­er­a­tor. Lots of keys went miss­ing includ­ing the key for the main com­put­er process con­troller which was left turned off and bro­ken in the lock.

After about 3 hours the most amus­ing­ly polite police you could ever hope to meet turned up in suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ties to remove peo­ple from site, after issue­ing each per­son a notice that they would be arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass should they return with­in 3 months.

Ha! As if that will stop us!

Ten peo­ple from Not­ting­ham vis­it­ed Hat­field Moor as their part of the days of action against peat min­ing.

Despite a large amount of pre-pub­lic­i­ty there was no police pres­ence when we arrived and we entered the moor with no has­sle.

See­ing dust in the dis­tance we head­ed towards where they were work­ing, and they tried to dri­ve off. We tried to head them off and despite their half a mile head start we still man­aged to trap the machines and pre­vent­ed them from work­ing for the rest of the day.

After about an hour and a half, two police offi­cers and the site man­ag­er turned up to say that so long as we did­n’t dam­age any­thing they would­n’t arrest us.

Use­ful­ly one of us man­aged to over­hear a con­ver­sa­tion between the boss and the police about how dis­rupt­ing the fac­to­ry works would cause them mas­sive prob­lems.

So what are you wait­ing for?

On Sat­ur­day the 25th August dur­ing the North­ern Green Gath­er­ing a Mass Tres­pass was planned.

About 70 peo­ple left the gath­er­ing and met up with a few peo­ple from The Ram­blers and oth­er local con­ser­va­tion groups. There was a very low police pres­ence, which was gen­er­al­ly ignored and the major­i­ty of peo­ple tres­passed onto the moor. A ‘Bog off Scotts’ ban­ner was held up for pho­tos.

Then peo­ple spot­ting dust in the dis­tance decid­ed to go and stop work. The police refused to go any fur­ther, cit­ing Health & Safe­ty Reg­u­la­tions. Peo­ple ran towards where the cut­ting was tak­ing place at which point the work stopped and the work­ers des­per­ate­ly tried to move the machin­ery away before peo­ple could stop them. A train try­ing to speed up to escape from a group chas­ing it, went too fast and derailed itself, and oth­er machin­ery was stopped and sat on, pre­vent­ing it from going else­where to work. Anoth­er train was found and rocked off its rails. Anoth­er group of peo­ple mean­time had been mak­ing them­selves busy, destroy­ing the plas­tic used to keep the cut peat dry whilst it’s stock­piled for win­ter, they also man­aged to block two of the largest and most impor­tant drainage ditch­es caus­ing Scotts to give up on that area for the rest of the sea­son. A dig­ger was tin­kered with and almost jump start­ed, but unfor­tu­nate­ly the police heli­copter arrived with most unfor­tu­nate tim­ing so it was just trashed instead. It is still there and seems to have been aban­doned.

This time the police, who were unpre­pared and in very small num­bers, did­n’t even both­er with try­ing to take details and every one left after a few hours and head­ed back to the gath­er­ing.

An action was planned to coin­cide with the EF! Gath­er­ing at the start of August.
A group of about 30 peo­ple head­ed off to the peat works after anoth­er action against prison labour in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Mark Barns­ley.

The action was announced in the morn­ing meet­ing at the gath­er­ing, and when we arrived police (with hors­es) had occu­pied the works. Speak­ing to work­ers after the event we were told that the police had claimed that 100 vio­lent anar­chists had planned to come and destroy the works.

How­ev­er this was our most suc­cess­ful action to date, because an advert on a board claim­ing we would be going back on Mon­day after the gath­er­ing caused the police to shut down the works for 3 days and leave 300 police there for the whole of that peri­od.