Shell education in Barnsley

On Sat­ur­day 16th Decem­ber poten­tial cus­tomers at a Shell petrol sta­tion in Barns­ley were giv­en infor­ma­tion about the activ­i­ties of Shell in Mayo and encour­aged to boy­cott the com­pa­ny.

Barnsley Shell protest 1Barnsley Shell protest 2On Sat­ur­day 16th Decem­ber poten­tial cus­tomers at a Shell petrol sta­tion in Barns­ley were giv­en infor­ma­tion about the activ­i­ties of Shell in Mayo and encour­aged to boy­cott the com­pa­ny.

A group from Rhythms of Resis­tance North moved in on the petrol sta­tion mid-after­noon. The entrance and exit were blocked, ban­ners hung and leaflets giv­en to motorists and pedes­tri­ans with infor­ma­tion about the Mayo pipeline. Many peo­ple received the infor­ma­tion sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly. One motorist returned from the near­est alter­na­tive source of petrol, two miles away, so peo­ple could be divert­ed to it.

Sev­er­al car dri­vers how­ev­er were very con­fronta­tion­al, dri­ving into sam­bis­tas and in one case forc­ing a play­er on to their car bon­net before brak­ing to cause her to fall off.
The first police to arrive read out var­i­ous threats, which couldn’t be heard above the drum beats. Even­tu­al­ly rein­force­ments arrived, adding to the chaos with a num­ber of vehi­cles of their own. For a while they held up the traf­fic so their pho­tog­ra­phers could get a bet­ter view.

When it came to the point of inevitable arrest for con­tin­u­ing the block­ade the sam­bis­tas decid­ed it would be more pro­duc­tive to move to the pave­ment and con­tin­ue draw­ing people’s atten­tion so they could be giv­en more infor­ma­tion. A fair pro­por­tion of car dri­vers chose not to enter the sta­tion even when the entrance was unblocked.

http://www.corribsos.com/