Work stopped again at Mainshill as loggers are blockaded out of the Wood

Ear­ly yes­ter­day res­i­dents of the Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp in South Lanark­shire stopped log­ging for the day by putting their bod­ies and inge­nu­ity between machin­ery and the trees, rig­ging up a sky raft across a log­ging path used by heavy machin­ery to rip up unoc­cu­pied parts of the site.

Sky raft blocks access
No tree felling todayEar­ly yes­ter­day res­i­dents of the Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp in South Lanark­shire stopped log­ging for the day by putting their bod­ies and inge­nu­ity between machin­ery and the trees, rig­ging up a sky raft across a log­ging path used by heavy machin­ery to rip up unoc­cu­pied parts of the site.

In the past week Scot­tish Wood­lands Ltd have been remov­ing trees from the site of the camp. The clear felling is facil­i­tat­ing the cre­ation of a new open cast coal mine on the site by Scot­tish Coal Ltd. Despite local out­rage at the devel­op­ment plan and over 700 let­ters of objec­tion sent to the coun­cil in protest, plans are going ahead to cre­ate what could become the 5th mine in this already heav­i­ly pol­lut­ed area of Scot­land.

But peo­ple from all over the world and all walks of life are deter­mined to stop them! Res­i­dents of the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp sus­pend­ed a sky raft above the access road with one per­son in it, effec­tive­ly pre­vent­ing the tree har­vester from gain­ing access to part of the wood where felling was to resume. The block­ade last­ed for 8 hours, after which one arrest was made at 12:30pm.

Res­i­dents of the camp con­demn the behav­ior of Scot­tish Wood­lands Ltd in the last few weeks, who have endan­gered peo­ples’ lives by work­ing dan­ger­ous­ly close to tree hous­es and con­tin­u­ing work despite being with­in a dis­tance deemed inap­pro­pri­ate by health and safe­ty stan­dards.

Despite dan­ger­ous con­di­tions and wors­en­ing weath­er, campers remain deter­mined to con­tin­ue fight­ing against the injus­tice of this devel­op­ment and to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the local res­i­dents of Dou­glas who have been ignored at every lev­el of the plan­ning sys­tem.

As one inhab­i­tant of Main­shill camp site stat­ed ”We will not allow work to con­tin­ue on the Main­shill site as long as we are here. Plans for this new open cast coal mine are a bla­tant case of putting prof­it before the health of Dou­glas Val­ley res­i­dents and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, in par­tic­u­lar cli­mate change.”

The camp needs YOUR sup­port today. Go to http://coalactionscotland.noflag.org.uk/ for infor­ma­tion on what help is need­ed, and how to get to the site.

No more mines in the Dou­glas val­ley! No New Coal!

http://coalactionscotland.noflag.org.uk/?p=814