It is not enough for the anti-cuts movement to be a defensive, responsive movement. It is not enough to point out the flaws in the arguments for austerity (as the False Economy website does so brilliantly).
If we are going to have a world worth living in, we are going to have to merge together the agendas of the anti-cuts movement, the green movement, the labour movement and the peace movement.
We are already arguing for…
For those who know the valley – and the smaller valleys that feed into it – you will already appreciate the peacefulness of the places, and a sense of remoteness that is utterly amazing considering that just over the hill is a population of 140,000 people.
You'll also know that the valley contains records of human habitation going back 4,000 years, with evidence of bronze age settlements, Roman pottery and Saxon trackways. The valley was certainly part of the theatre of…
At the end of September, a new local campaigning group calling itself 'Combe Haven Defenders' staged a weekend camp on the site of the proposed Bexhill-Hastings Link Road on England's South Coast. The temporary camp brought together 200 people with a shared concern for saving the valley and a willingness to explore the possibilities for action.
It also attracted a lot of media attention, including the Sunday…
Let us agree about climate change. It is happening fast, potentially spiralling out of control. The latest messages from scientists who have been measuring the shrinking arctic ice cap demonstrate that the situation is dire.
However, our problem is that very few people are heeding the climate threat.
It has been said that the environmental and climate movement is the 'largest mass movement ever' (Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest, Penguin 2007). Maybe. But the movement is…
Road building is back on the national agenda. Courtesy of the chancellor, George Osborne. It had been assumed that major new roads were a thing of the past, killed off by the 'anti-roads' protests of the 1990s. But, in an attempt to pull the country out of recession, the treasury has been looking to invest in infrastructure projects, including new roads.
The first major scheme to come on-stream could be the £100 million, 5.6 km Bexhill to Hastings Link Road. It would cut straight…
On 7 September, two Bristol-based anti-fracking protesters were found not guilty of aggravated trespass, but a third was convicted of failing to leave as soon as practicable, at the Cuadrilla Resource’s test drilling rig beside the Ribble estuary in Lancashire. The three had shut down the gas-extraction operation for 13 hours on 1 December 2011.
During the trial it was established that Cuadrilla had been drilling for two months longer than allowed at the time of arrests.
…
On 17 July, four members of “Frack Off”, which campaigns against fracking for shale gas, were found guilty by Preston magistrates’ court of ‘disrupting lawful activity’, and sentenced to two years’ conditional discharges with £750 costs each.
During the four-day trial, expert witnesses testified to the threat to the global climate and human health posed by the expansion of fracking.
The four had occupied the Cuadrilla Resources drilling rig off Lancashire for 11 hours last…
On 14 July, 45 people invaded Scottish Coal’s Mainshill open-cast coal site near Douglas, South Lanarkshire, and shut it down for the day. Machines including a ‘prime mover’ were occupied and all work was stopped completely.
The occupation was part of an action camp held in Douglas Valley in the Southern Uplands from 12-18 July. Other actions included blockading the entrance of Broken Cross open-cast coal site and ‘open-casting’ the lawn belonging to Lord Home, who makes…
On 23 June, Climate Siren activists hung banners on the gates of Buckingham palace. PHOTO: Peter Marshall
The human race may be pushing the Earth towards a rapid, catastrophic and irreversible ‘state shift’ leading to mass extinctions, according to a paper by 22 leading scientists published in the world’s top scientific journal, Nature, in the run-up to the failed Rio+20 environment conference. The Nature paper set out possible measures for avoiding or limiting the state shift, which may…
In December 2011, South Lanarkshire council approved Scottish Coal’s proposal for a huge open-cast coal mine near the village of Glespin.
This was the nineteenth open-cast-related consent they had given, but they took this particular decision with no consultation whatsoever. Indeed the community were not even informed about it at the time.
Residents have an ongoing…
‘Hold this a moment, while I staple these.’ Ninety minutes and nearly a mile later, I was still holding aloft the mid-section of the giant green dinosaur, and being used as cover by some masked youths making a grab for some plastic barriers. ‘If the police move in to arrest people, I’m off,’ the hind legs told me.
Several hundred people – variously dressed as Robin Hood and giant flowers – had met outside the Grange Hotel near St Paul’s cathedral, venue of the UK Energy Summit, for…
Between 12 and 24 May, trade unionists and climate activists from the One Million Climate Jobs Campaign will be touring the UK in a Climate Caravan inspired by the Trans African Climate Caravan of Hope of 2011.
This month’s British Climate Caravan is demanding massive government investment to create one million new ‘climate jobs’.
Climate jobs are not ‘green jobs’ in the national parks or in pollution control. Climate jobs actually cut emissions of greenhouse gases: insulating…
On 29 January, as part of an Occupy-style protest, six Fuel Poverty Action activists barricaded themselves into meeting rooms on two floors of the British Gas offices in Staines, Middlesex.
The protests were part of Fuel Poverty Action’s ‘Winter Warmup’ weekend, drawing attention to a situation where a large portion of the population must choose to either ‘heat or eat’.
Protesters also held demonstrations in Cambridge, Leeds, London, Manchester and Swindon, targeting the ‘Big…
Over 350 people, most of them on their bikes, gathered outside the office of the Scottish government in Edinburgh on 11 January. They came to support Stop Climate Change’s campaign to increase funding for cycling and walking instead of expensive road-building programmes that will increase Scotland’s carbon footprint.
Scotland has shown global leadership by setting the most ambitious emissions reduction targets in the world, including a target to reduce Scotland’s emissions by 42% (…
