The Great Climate Swoop

Over the weekend of October 17th and 18th activists associated with Climate Camp staged a direct action protest to at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar, coal fired power station in Nottinghamshire, UK.

Broadly speaking this was undertaken to highlight the urgent need for the Copenhagen Summit to take action on Climate Change and draw attention to the fact that coal fired power stations are by far the largest contributor to man made greenhouse gas emissions. More specifically Ratcliffe-on-Soar was chosen to highlight the hypocrisy of so called greenwashing. This is the collective name given to a range of practices undertaken by energy companies to convince the public that they are trying to be environmentally responsible while at the same time continuing to pollute as if there's no tomorrow and fighting any attempts to make them clean up their act. E-On, who own Ratcliffe-on-Soar, are notorious for this especially through their commitment to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. Although there are a number of ways to go about it CCS basically involves using filters to remove the carbon from the smoke produced by burning coal before it is released into the atmosphere and then storing the carbon under ground. As it is possible that, over time, this carbon could be turned back into coal CCS is the holy grail of energy research as it has the potential to turn coal into a carbon neutral, renewable energy source.

The problem is that it doesn't exactly work yet so the British Government have made funding available to one lucky energy company to develop the technology. E-On have entered the competition for this funding and have made it the centre piece for a marketing campaign that bills them as the industry leader in CCS technology. Of course what E-On are less keen to have known is that their bid to develop CCS involves building a new, massive coal fired power station of which less then 2% will actually be involved in CCS. In order to fuel this new power station they also want permission to build a new open cast coal mine because obviously CCS requires special, magic coal that can't be brought on the open market(!)

The Swoop itself took the form of a traditional red zone assault with the protesters forming up into five blocs;

1. Footsteps to the Future whose "mission" was to march to the main gates of the power station and wave banners and placards highlighting the complaints against E-On.

2. Bike Bloc whose mission was to noisily and colourfully cycle around the roads encircling the power station to draw attention to the fact there was a protest going on.

3. Take Back the Power whose mission was to go over, under, through or around the power stations two perimeter fences in order to occupy the main control room.

4. False Solutions whose mission was to go over, under, through or around the power stations two perimeter fences in order to occupy the main coal pile.

5. Capitalism is Crisis who were an autonomous bloc with no pre-determined role or mission.

Over the two days a total of around 1500 protesters took part in the demonstration with varying degrees of success. With their relatively simple missions the Footsteps to the Future and the Bike Bloc's were a complete success achieving everything they set out to and more. The False Solutions bloc was a partial success breaching the power stations inner perimeter allowing a few protesters to reach the coal pile. The Take Back the Power bloc was pretty much a total failure with the protesters failing the breach the inner perimeter let alone reach the control room. With no stated purpose it is hard to tell if the Capitalism is Crisis bloc was a success or failure. Collectively though the Swoop was a complete success because the extra security required to keep the protesters out meant that the power station was unable to operate safely. This meant that E-On were forced to power down the plant to tick over on Friday and hold it there over the weekend before bringing it back up to power on Monday in spite of their claims that the plant continued to provide power to to 3 million homes throughout the weekend. This claim is made even more ridiculous when you consider that Ratcliffe-on-Soar only has the capacity to power 2 million homes.

Obviously the police were out in force to meet the protesters and because their Blackheath Climate Camp ruse fell flat on it's face they seem to be back to their pre-G20 violent best. This took the form of the usual baton strikes, kicks, punches and pepper spray along with the interesting technique of using police dogs to attack people sitting quietly having a picnic in a field. This more traditional approach to policing led to the usual range of minor injuries to the protesters including bruises, sprains and more then a few dog bites. The most serious injury sustained by a protester was a heart attack and although it is unclear what, if any, role the police had in inducing the attack they did prevent the casualty receiving medical assistance for 1 hour. Fortunately the actions of the protesters own medics prevented a loss of life and the man made a full recovery.

The police also reported that a small number of their officers suffered minor injuries although it will take a freedom of information request to find out if these were as a result of contact with protesters or from the average police officers seeming inability to drink a cup of tea or get up from a chair without hurting themselves. The most serious injury sustained by the police was a head injury which resulted in the officer being airlifted to hospital although he was released from hospital within the standard 3 hour A&E waiting period for non-urgent cases. This incident was captured on video by both a protester and the BBC although the BBC seem unwilling to admit it let alone show the tape. Even though the injury occurred just after the police had been given the order to advance on the crowd with force it is unclear from the video if the officer received a blow from a police baton or simply suffered a fainting spell and hit his head on his way down. Either way it is obvious that the officers injuries were not serious enough to warrant an airlift. People familiar with the police's attempts to cover up Ian Tomlinson's death at the G20 protests will find it highly ironic that there is a delay in the injured officer receiving treatment because the police were pelting the protesters with plastic bottles.