Peat Bog protesters found not guilty & coal train stoppers mixed result

Two envi­ron­men­tal activists who chained them­selves to machin­ery at a peat bog extrac­tion site at Chat Moss, Sal­ford, Greater Man­ches­ter were acquit­ted by Sal­ford mag­is­trates court last Mon­day 5th July 2010.

BBC News cov­er­age: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI9U5rcrK2w

Iain Hilton from Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action and Son­ny Khan from Earth First! North West were accused under Sec­tion 4a of the 1986 Pub­lic Order Act for alleged­ly caus­ing “harass­ment, alarm or dis­tress” against employ­ees of Joseph Met­calfe Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Ltd and AW Jenk­in­son For­est Prod­ucts Ltd for their part in a peace­ful protest on Thurs­day 15 April 2010.

http://manchesterclimateaction.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/action-aginst-peat-bog-destruction-in-greater-manchester/

Dur­ing the protest, the court heard how Khan climbed up and locked onto a JCB dig­ger to pre­vent it load­ing peat into a deliv­ery lor­ry. Hilton mean­while scaled and locked him­self to the deliv­ery lor­ry to pre­vent it leav­ing the site. The two defen­dants were protest­ing against the envi­ron­men­tal impacts of peat extrac­tion – which caus­es 3 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 emis­sions per year in the UK accord­ing to Nat­ur­al Eng­land – the equiv­a­lent to the aver­age emis­sions of 350,000 house­holds. [1]

Upon hear­ing evi­dence from three employ­ees who appeared in court as pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es, the Dis­trict Judge Jonathan Finestein said that while the protest was “cer­tain­ly an irri­ta­tion and cer­tain­ly cost [the com­pa­nies] mon­ey” he had seen no evi­dence that the defen­dants intend­ed to, or did cause har­ras­ment, alarm or dis­tress as the pros­e­cu­tion had alleged and found them not guilty with­out wait­ing to hear evi­dence from the defence.

A request for a restrain­ing order ban­ning the two defen­dants from peat bog site in Chat Moss was also reject­ed by the Judge.

The pro­tes­tors were joined inside and out­side court by local cam­paign­ers from Save Our North West Green­belt. [2]

Speak­ing out­side court after the ver­dict, Iain Hilton said, “We’ve very pleased with the ver­dict. Our actions were rea­son­able, peace­ful and jus­ti­fied. The entire demo­c­ra­t­ic process of the City of Sal­ford from the Coun­cil to local MPs is against peat extrac­tion and have called for it to stop. The peo­ple of Sal­ford don’t want the peat to be extract­ed, so all we did was enforce everyone’s wish­es.”

Peat bogs are formed over thou­sands of years by the decay­ing rem­nants of plant mat­ter and active­ly soak up car­bon from the atmos­phere, mak­ing them extreme­ly valu­able in the fight against cli­mate change.

Over 94 per cent of the UK’s low­land peat bogs have been dam­aged or destroyed, most­ly in the last 50 years. The pro­tes­tors argue that pro­tect­ing the remain­ing intact peat bogs and restor­ing dam­aged or degrad­ed ones could lock car­bon in the soil and help to active­ly reduce the UK’s car­bon foot­print, as well as help­ing to pro­tect many rare species of plants and ani­mals, pro­tect­ing bio­di­ver­si­ty and a wild and rare habi­tat.

Sal­ford Coun­cil agree that peat extrac­tion must stop and are propos­ing a ban on future extrac­tion at Chat Moss.[3] Plan­ning lead mem­ber Coun­cil­lor Derek Antrobus said: “Curb­ing cli­mate change is a cen­tral aim of the plan­ning sys­tem and peat bog­land is an impor­tant car­bon sink. The Gov­ern­ment has announced the phas­ing out of peat for gar­den­ing so there can be no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for its con­tin­ued exploita­tion.”

The site at Chat Moss, as well as oth­er peat extrac­tion loca­tions in the area, is owned by cor­po­rate giant Peel Hold­ings, the empire of tax-shy bil­lion­aire John Whit­tak­er. Backed by oil mon­ey of the pow­er­ful Sau­di Olayan fam­i­ly, the group var­i­ous­ly owns: the Traf­ford Cen­tre, Man­ches­ter Ship Canal and three oth­er ports, four air­ports and MediaC­i­tyUK in Sal­ford, just a few famous names with­in a huge prop­er­ty port­fo­lio. They also have a large stake in UK Coal, involved in the con­tro­ver­sial Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age coal pow­er plant pro­posed in Ayr­shire in Scot­land, where a direct action cam­paign is also expect­ed by envi­ron­men­tal­ists. Peel are dis­put­ing the ban, which they claim is unjus­ti­fied.

Rachel Dawes from Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action said, “Peel Hold­ings have huge polit­i­cal pow­er in the North­west. Finan­cial gain is their only inter­est and this comes at the expense of the envi­ron­ment, local­ly and glob­al­ly. Tak­ing direct action is an essen­tial part of the strug­gle against big busi­ness and in sit­u­a­tions like this we have to stand up and say enough is enough.”

Hilton added, “The release of green­house gas­es through peat bog extrac­tion has a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the world’s cli­mate and the destruc­tion of green belt land is deplorable. These are places that should be enjoyed by every­one and not carved up for the sake of prof­it.”

Also speak­ing out­side court Khan said, “We’re hap­py with the sup­port of the local Save Our North­west Green Belt group. We hope it encour­ages more peo­ple to stand up and take action to stop envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.”

Notes
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[1] Nat­ur­al Eng­land report — http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/regions/north_east/press_releases/2010/180310.aspx

[2] Save our North West Green Belt and Green Spaces face­book
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&viewas=0&gid=201970218853

[3] http://manchesterclimatefortnightly.blogspot.com/2010/05/mcfly-047-peat-leave-it-as-ground.html

e‑mail: manchester@climatecamp.org.uk
Home­page: http://manchesterclimateaction.wordpress.com/

Oth­er press links
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The Mule — http://manchestermule.com/article/climate-activists-found-not-guilty

Sal­ford Star — http://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=618

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Coal Train Court Ver­dict
July 09, 2010

Eigh­teen peo­ple from Bris­tol and Bath were in court yes­ter­day to answer two charges of obstruct­ing the rail­way at Ffos-y-Fran open-cast coal mine in Merthyr Tyd­fil. Sev­en peo­ple who had chained them­selves to the track and six who had been act­ing as sup­port and legal observers all plead­ed guilty to Sec­tion 36 of the Mali­cious Dam­ages Act 1861, and not guilty to Sec­tion 35 of the same act (the sec­tion car­ry­ing the infa­mous life penal­ty). Five peo­ple includ­ing a legal obvser­er and dri­vers plead­ed not guilty to both charges.

Sec­tion 35 was dropped against all 18, cru­cial­ly acknowl­edg­ing that this was not a mali­cious action as orig­i­nal­ly alleged, and Sec­tion 36 was dropped against the 5 who had plead­ed not guilty to it and had clear­ly had noth­ing to do with the obstruc­tion.

Five of the eigh­teen walk out of court with no con­vic­tion. For the oth­er thir­teen, sen­tenc­ing will be on August 13th at Merthyr Crown Court. There will be no prison sen­tences, how­ev­er it appears restrain­ing orders and an £8000 com­pen­sa­tion claim are being con­sid­ered.

Those involved are very grate­ful for the con­tin­ued sup­port of friends in Merthyr Tyd­fil, Bris­tol, Bath, nation­wide and beyond. Hope­ful­ly there will be a big turnout for sen­tenc­ing, when those fac­ing restrain­ing orders will explain for the record why they felt it nec­es­sary to block­ade a coal train.

This Sun­day, Bris­tol & Bath Ris­ing Tide host an evening at Kebele Social Cen­tre in Eas­t­on, recount­ing train block­ades car­ried out by Bris­to­lians over the past 30 years oppos­ing social injus­tices from cli­mate chaos to nuclear waste. Film, food and dis­cus­sion from 6:30pm.