Sabotage and digger-diving – work stopped twice in two days at Mainshill Wood

For the past two weeks Scot­tish Wood­lands and oth­ers con­tract­ed by Scot­tish Coal have been dev­as­tat­ing parts of Main­shill Wood, those beyond the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. Plan­ta­tion for­est is being felled at an alarm­ing rate, with mas­sive har­vest­ing machines and JCBs tear­ing up more of Scotland’s coun­try­side. Scot­tish Coal is estab­lish­ing its own site, south of the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and right in the mid­dle of Main­shill Wood. Your sol­i­dar­i­ty is urgent­ly need­ed – this work must be stopped.

Sab­o­tage

An anony­mous com­mu­nique was received after three of the four large pieces of har­vest­ing machin­ery on site were sab­o­taged in the ear­ly hours of Thurs­day morn­ing. Work is on-going round the clock, but did not start until 4 or 5pm on Thurs­day, being delayed for many hours. The com­mu­nique reads:

“On the morn­ing of Thurs­day 8th of Octo­ber three heavy vehi­cles had their locks glued. These vehi­cles belong to Scot­tish Wood­lands Ltd, who have been sub­con­tract­ed by Scot­tish Coal to clear­fell Main­shill Wood.

The vehi­cles dam­aged have been work­ing to pre­pare the Main­shill Wood area for coal extrac­tion. If it is open cast­ed then it will join sev­er­al oth­er mines in the Dou­glas Val­ley, two of which are cur­rent­ly expand­ing.

Scot­tish Coal, the land own­er Lord Home and the gov­ern­ment and more than pre­pared to sac­ri­fice the health of local com­mu­ni­ties and envi­ron­ment, as well as con­tribute to cli­mate change and near­ly uni­ver­sal envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion for wages, bonus­es, tar­gets and prof­its.

This action was tak­en by a group of autonomous peo­ple in sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those who oppose the devel­op­ment of Main­shill Wood into an open cast coal mine.”

Dig­ger-Div­ing

On Tues­day night at around 9:30pm, long after it had got dark, res­i­dents of the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp sud­den­ly realised that a mas­sive har­vest­ing machine was cut­ting through the last line of trees sep­a­rat­ing the camp from the rest of the site, dan­ger­ous­ly close to where peo­ple live and were sleep­ing, both in tree­hous­es and tun­nels.

Res­i­dents quick­ly sur­round­ed the machine, and tried to explain that the dri­ver was putting people’s lives at risk. The dri­ver, break­ing the com­pa­nies own health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions, con­tin­ued work­ing despite peo­ple being with­in metres of the machine. At one point the saw blades on the end of the harvester’s arm were swung with­in a metre of a resident’s head. Even­tu­al­ly after much shout­ing and whis­tle-blow­ing, the har­vester was chased back to the access gate.

Short­ly after, anoth­er piece of heavy machin­ery that col­lects the felled trees tried to make its way up the access path, but was blocked by res­i­dents of the camp. The dri­ver refused to stop and kept mov­ing towards the peo­ple block­ing its path, and only did when it was clear that the wind­screen might be redec­o­rat­ed if the machine wasn’t stopped. One dri­ver exclaimed “I don’t care” in response to a res­i­dent shout­ing “you’re going to kill some­one!”, while the sec­ond dri­ver at one point jumped out of the cab in pur­suit of a res­i­dent and shout­ed “I’m going to kill you”.

That same night, a res­i­dent in a sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty had called Strath­clyde police after a house was attacked with air-rifles. The police didn’t both­er to show up. At the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, how­ev­er, with­in 20 min­utes two police vehi­cles and four offi­cers braved the mud and threat­ened to arrest any­one stop­ping work, claim­ing the res­i­dents were endan­ger­ing them­selves by com­ing close to the machin­ery, despite the fact that the machin­ery prac­ti­cal­ly came on to the camp! The only com­pro­mise was that Scot­tish Wood­lands agreed to stop felling trees at night.

The above high­t­lights the dis­re­gard that Scot­tish Wood­lands and Scot­tish Coal have for the safe­ty of Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp res­i­dents (not to men­tion the health of local com­mu­ni­ties) and how Strath­clyde Police are com­plic­it in pro­tect­ing prop­er­ty and the inter­ests of pri­vate busi­ness, and not peo­ple.

Come to Main­shill

Your sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty is urgent­ly need­ed at Main­shill. Even if just for a few hours, peo­ple are need­ed. You can go and stop work for the day, chop wood, build bar­ri­cades and defens­es, or do the wash­ing up. It is impos­si­ble to stress how fast the work on the site is hap­pen­ing, and how quick­ly the area is being dev­as­tat­ed.

Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp
— e‑mail: mainshill@riseup.net
— Home­page: http://mainshill.noflag.org.uk/