Scottish Coal rail terminal currently shut down — again!

Two peo­ple are cur­rent­ly occu­py­ing the con­vey­or tow­er at Scot­tish Coal’s Raven­struther Rail Ter­mi­nal in South Lanark­shire to pre­vent coal from being loaded onto freight trains and being trans­port­ed to Drax Coal Fired Pow­er Sta­tion in York­shire. The action start­ed at 5am this morn­ing – a ban­ner read­ing “Coal Kills” was unfurled on the con­vey­or tow­er.

Two peo­ple are cur­rent­ly occu­py­ing the con­vey­or tow­er at Scot­tish Coal’s Raven­struther Rail Ter­mi­nal in South Lanark­shire to pre­vent coal from being loaded onto freight trains and being trans­port­ed to Drax Coal Fired Pow­er Sta­tion in York­shire. The action start­ed at 5am this morn­ing – a ban­ner read­ing “Coal Kills” was unfurled on the con­vey­or tow­er. More updates to fol­low!

Coal Rail Ter­mi­nal Closed for a 6th time by Coal Action Scot­land sup­port­ers

At 5:00 this morn­ing two activists scaled the con­vey­or tow­er at Scot­tish Coal’s Raven­struther Rail Ter­mi­nal near Lanark, South Lanark­shire, and are cur­rent­ly occu­py­ing it and pre­vent­ing coal from being loaded onto trains which then deliv­er the coal to pow­er sta­tions. There is cur­rent­ly a freight train on the pri­vate rail sid­ings at the ter­mi­nal. The activists say they will main­tain the occu­pa­tion until they are forcibly removed by police. This is the 6th time that the site has been closed in anti-coal protests since Decem­ber 2008.

Jo Reed, one of the occu­piers at the ter­mi­nal, said: “I’m tak­ing this action to cost Scot­tish Coal mon­ey as that’s the only thing they’ll lis­ten to. The coal tak­en here and trans­port­ed to Drax Coal Fired Pow­er Sta­tion in York­shire is destroy­ing people’s health and envi­ron­ment in this area – it’s time it stopped! Burn­ing coal is caus­ing run­away cli­mate change and caus­ing harm at home and abroad.”

Today’s protest fol­lows a week-long direct action camp in July, at Glen­tag­gart East, the site of Scot­tish Coal’s new mine in South Lanark­shire. Through­out the week around 100 activists tar­get­ed infra­struc­ture in the area with an inva­sion of Main­shill Open Cast Coal Site where 45 activists stopped work on the site for the day, a block­ade of Bro­ken Cross Open­cast Coal Site and the open­cast­ing of landown­er Lord Home’s front gar­den.

The haulage of coal by HGV is a major issue in the area, and pro­test­ers are call­ing for a stop to all haulage through the vil­lages of Dou­glas and Gle­spin.

Gle­spin res­i­dent David Grey said: “Coal from Dou­glas Val­ley mines comes right through Dou­glas and Gle­spin, past two pri­ma­ry schools with no lev­el cross­ings. We were promised that this wouldn’t hap­pen when plan­ning per­mis­sion was grant­ed for the Main­shill mine. Now that the huge site at Glen­tag­gart East and 1 mil­lion tonne exten­sion to Bro­ken Cross have been approved, Scot­tish Coal want to bring even more coal through our com­mu­ni­ties. Action needs to be tak­en to pre­vent this.”

The start of a new 4 mil­lion tonne mine at Glen­tag­gart East will make these issues even more press­ing. Rob Hearne, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the protest today said: “Already over 1000 HGV trips are made through the Dou­glas Val­ley to rail­heads every week. Glen­tag­gart East will only add to this and make the prob­lem worse with anoth­er 333 trips a week.”

It is esti­mat­ed that today’s action will stop around 4,000 tonnes of coal from being trans­port­ed to Drax Coal Fired Pow­er Sta­tion and cost Scot­tish Coal at least £200,000.

Coal Action Scot­land
e‑mail: contact@coalactionscotland.org.uk
 Home­page: http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/