The Great Climate Swoop

Oct 20, 2009 by phinharper    2 Comments    Posted under: Span That World

Last weekend I took part in the direct action protest “The Great Climate Swoop” at Ratcliffee-on-Stour coal fired power station near Nottingham. I was heartened to see young people who are or were members of The District Fellows Movement had also chosen to go and show their individual support. Hopefully in this post I can give you a flavour of what went on. What worked, what could have been better, what hurt.

The Basics

The Swoop was a collaborative effort between 3 groups; Camp for climate Action, Plane Stupid and Climate Rush with the overall aim of raising awareness of the huge holes in the clean coal energy plan, focusing attention on the upcoming Copenhagen summit with the desperate need for a strong deal to come out of that and also to try and shut the power station down. Over 1000 protesters showed up to decend on the station which is owned by Electricity Giant and greenwash master e-on. The Swoop worked on several levels; some people stood and shouted the message, some filled roads with bikes causing traffic chaos around the site and others tried to scale the fences and manually force the power station to shut down.

Preparation

A Consensus Direct Action is a funny creature. The Swoop didn’t happen by itself, there was planning happening long in advance, someone chose the date, someone chose the muster points someone maintains the website and yet at the same time no one is in charge. There isn’t a leader, there is barely an elite, some are more involved, some are less involved. I was definitely less involved and so got most of my information through the website and the few friends i have already in-the-know. None the less come swoop day I had failed to print the site maps, forgotten to buy food, unrehearsed the media messages, worn the wrong shoes and left my tent at home. Luckily for me I was able to leech of the awesome goodwill of others. If there is one thing that can be said of activists - they look after each other.

So we meet at dawn on some cold steps, bundle into a minibus and its off to the zone to await the swoop text that contains a grid reference. We then have roughly an hour to make our way by foot to a muster point, wait for the numbers to build then march on in. Its all a bit nerve wracking. High in the sky police helicopters are already buzzing about well aware of our movements and the huge looming cooling towers drive home the awesome scale of our challenge.

Go Time

Off we trot…there are less of us than planned, perhaps the highly advertised event has deterred veteran activists certain that e-on’s security plan will by now be full proof. We rock down the hill, across some fields, are mildly amused by the distant site of police on motor cross bikes. Then through a hedge and it begins. Some launch themselves at the fences and climb, others pull cutters from nowhere and begin to cut. Grappling hooks are flung and ropes tighten. Unfortunately for the Swoopers the Police far outnumbers the protesters, no sooner have we stepped over the threshold as they charge to meet us with horses, batons, body armour and bulk. Its a painful and frustrating struggle. Fences do come down all along the North East side of the station but the police are on both sides blocking the way and arresting individuals separated from the mele.

Its though to describe without being there – i recommend taking a look at some of the footage on Climate Camp’s website. Essentially the protest is non-violent in that the swoopers don’t want to hurt anybody, simply to get past the fence. However the police’s loyalty lies exclusively with e-on so their job is to stop us getting in. Unfortunately the way this is usually done is a mash up of grabbing, kicking and using pressure points with a minimum of restraint. The result: a lot of hurt protesters and a few hurt cops. It gets worse as the day goes on with the police bringing out aggressive dogs that are perfectly happy to close their jaws on your arm or stomach.

The Day progresses with a similar flavour of high energy rushes being beaten back by police power untill dusk when the swoopers pitch camp in a small wood right next to the station.

Camp

Camp was ace. Small fires spring up, tarpaulins are hoisted into the canopy to create shelter. Somebody even has a stab at setting up a make-shift compost toilet. By this time many of the protesters have had to leave so the scale is more cosy. Knackered from a day of adrenalin most of us sleep fantastically. In the morning it isn’t long before a police helicopter starts megaphoning at us to move on and soon a line of high vis stomps though the wood and off we go, but not before knocking together a plan.

Day 2

The plan is to launch one final swoop at the south side of the power station. We try but the police have obviously upped their tempo and the teeth of the dogs and the weight of their fists soon push everybody back to the road. Here however is where is gets really interesting. The Cops have designated a “legal protest zone” on a bridge near the power plant. Now the swoop is not really there to bend over backwards to the peculiar powers of legislation that police now have at their disposal but none the less we are now all in what we are told in the legal protest zone so surley thats the end of the violence….wrong.

The police start to move us all down the road towards East Midlands Railways Station – by force. Anybody who dawdles is either pushed or arrested. At this point many of us are thinking about heading home but we are prevented from leaving as the cops surround us on all sides and slowly move us down the road. Then we are stopped. No explanation, no signal as to what happened to the legal protest zone, still the helicopter, still the dogs, still the horses. Essentially we are being kettled or at the very least detained on mass. I should point out that this mass detention is everybody. Its not just those trying to breech the fence, its the cyclists, the placard holders, the children, the swoop press and legal team – everybody. This behaviour of the police is totally out of order. Quite simple they are acting illegally but they keep us in check by occasionally snatching individuals from the crowd seemingly for no reason and arresting them under bizarre charges like “disturbing the peace”

After a while the kettle moves us onto East Midlands Railway station and from there we are “allowed” to buy train tickets or arrange lifts away provided the lifts are escorted by twin riot vans to the M1.

Impact

Hard to say and the media coverage was often one-sided and ignored the issue in favour of describing “violent clashes”. The Power station didn’t get shut down but e-on will have taken a big dent in its public image and budget (they spent around £4 million on extra fencing in anticipation of the swoop). Hopefully one message has broken through it is the need for a strong deal to come out of the Copenhagen talks. If you are interested in going yourself there are many many ways to look into but why not check out Climate Camp’s action.

Thoughts

- Its funny isn’t it the country we live in. We are told be everything and everyone that violence is always wrong, that we should treat others with respect. And yet such rules don’t apply to the police – the figureheads of integrity, self control and good behaviour. If I trained my dog so I could use it like the police use theirs it would be put down. If I rode my horse into a dense crowd of young people I would surly end up without a horse and possibly behind bars. If I push a cop or even kick a police dog to stop it biting me I can be arrested for assaulting an officer yet the cop whacks me with a batten, kicks me with a tipped boot, or lets the dog sink its teeth into my stomach and the best I can hope for is somebody caught it on camera and even then unless I am seriously injured you can be sure nothing will come of it. Should the police allowed the monopoly on violence and what happens when they break the law themselves?

- Ratcliffe- On-Stour power station will have the same carbon emissions as Ghana for the next 30 years. That amount of damage is going to destroy lands, fuel chaotic weather, cause drout, flooding and tsunami – essentially the power station is killing people. If I scaled a fence or cut one down to save somebody from drowning no matter who owned the fence i would be hailed as a hero. Why then when Swoopers try to save thousands if not millions of lives by similar means do they end up criminals?

- When a police helicopter tells you to get to “the left hand side of the road” which side does it mean?

Thanks for reading. If you want to find out more about The Swoop please do scour the UK media websites but also check out the Climate Camp News Feed or Indymedia.