Ratcliffe-on-Soar Climate Swoop

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Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottinghamshire, UK: On Saturday 17th October 2009, up to 1,000 demonstrators from a coalition of climate change campaign groups including Climate Camp, Plane Stupid and the Campaign Against Climate Change, descended on E.On's coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant. Their stated aim was to enter the plant and shut it down. There were repeated clashes with police as the "swoopers" attempted to breach the perimeter fence. Several protestors and police were injured in the clashes.

Climate Wake Up Call

More images from Parliament Square "Climate Wake-Up Call"

There is growing concern, and increasingly frequently reporting, that rolling global climate negotiations appear to be stalling in the run-up to talks in Copenhagen in December. On the eve of the latest climate negotiation session at the UN, protestors from a coalition of groups around the world have taken part in a "Climate Wake-Up Call" to highlight the need to kick-start negotiations.

At 12:18pm, representing the 18th day of the 12th month, the date on which negotiations in Copenhagen will have to be completed, phone alarms starting ringing around Parliament Square in London. As the rings grew louder, hundreds of protestors converged on the grass in the middle of the square and started shouting, ringing bike bells and joining in a chorus of "tick tick tick...." As the alarms stopped ringing, people started calling Ed Milliband and Gordon Brown in an effort to swamp the DECC and Number 10 phone systems with "Wake-Up" calls.

Anna Roma, a freelance cabinet maker from London, managed to get through to Ed Milliband's assistant and was told that questions had to be submitted by email. Another protestor, Iris Andrews, managed to get through to Gordon Brown himself. The conversation lasted almost 5 minutes and Mr Brown gave her his assurance, as reported in today's press, that he would put pressure tomorrow on other world leaders to attend the Copenhagen talks personally. Mr Brown, under pressure from Ed Milliband, has recently announced that he will attend the Copenhagen talks in person stressing in today's Newsweek that "The negotiations are proceeding so slowly that a deal is in grave danger". In an apparent to the potential for creating green jobs as part of a green recovery, Mr Brown added "The UN talks are not just about safeguarding the environment, but also about stimulating economic demand and investment".

Tomorrow's talks at the UN in New York are crucial in getting world leaders to focus on the task in hand. There is a real danger, as reflected by recent comments from the US negotiating team, that people stop regarding Copenhagen as a key deadline for talks. There is already talk by the US team of "negotiating beyond Copenhagen". Something that the "TckTckTck" campaign want to avoid. Paul Hilder of Avaaz, one of the coalition of groups involved in the Wake-Up Call said that the success of today's action "totally blew him away" and hoped that Gordon Brown's call to other world leaders to attend Copenhagen talks would prove fruitful. "It feels like a big step forward right now. What's more . . . this is just one of 2,000 flash mobs happening all around the world from Beijing to New York wher people are calling on their Governments to do this thing. I'm excited."

A Day Of Actions

Activists from Climate Camp finished off a day of actions in central London on Tuesday by occupying the canopy above the main entrance of Shell's HQ building on the South Bank.

After earlier protests at RBS head office in Bishopsgate and at the offices of EON's PR agency Edelman, activists moved on to BP's HQ in St James Square before heading across the Hungerford Bridge to pay Shell a visit.

After speeches, several protestors climbed up onto the ledge above the main entrance. The "S" from Shell's sign was quickly removed leaving the building branded as "Hell Centre".


As campers returned to Blackheath this evening, some passing via the 10:10 campaign launch at Tate Modern, they will be hoping that today's actions have given their message a higher profile than it seems to have achieved over the past 5 days.

Today's Guardian editorial piece sums up the challenge ahead in persuading individuals, businesses, organisations and Governments to change their behaviour in order to avoid dangerous climate change: "All great causes involve a tension between collective belief and individual action".

Vestas - Green Jobs Under Threat

Since the seriousness of the Credit Crunch dawned on world leaders, there has been much rhetoric about the forging of a "green" path to economic recovery - the "Green New Deal" in the UK. Governments around the world have allocated radically different percentages of their financial bail-out packages to the "low carbon economy" and have demonstrated radically different interpretations of "green jobs". Call me a cynic, but the UK car scrappage scheme surely has to be one of the best examples of thinly-veiled greenwash of recent months. Together with the £27m of funding given to Land Rover to develop a "green 4X4", it diverts money away from industries that can offer much larger and much faster carbon savings.

So, it's with great interest that I'm following the ongoing occupation by 25 workers of the Vestas turbine blade manufacturing plant on the Isle of White. 625 "bright green" jobs are at risk on the island as Vestas plan to close the blade-making facility citing UK "regulatory and planning" obstacles to onshore wind as the main reason. 1,900 Vestas jobs could be lost across Northern Europe as "...conditions in Northern European markets have failed to meet expectations".

The "red-green" protest, named in recognition of the common ground established between unions and the environment movement, has attracted a huge amount of attention. It clearly highlights, as already experienced by the UK solar industry, how inconsistent and poorly joined up policies can scupper a seemingly blooming sector. The protest looks set to become a major demonstration over the weekend as numbers are swelled by the arrival of further environmental activists and people who were planning to attend the now-cancelled Big Green Gathering in Somerset. A legal move by Vestas to evict the workers has just been adjourned until 4th August giving more time for protests to grow.

Vestas have stated that the UK plant manufactures blades for the huge US onshore market where large scale wind farm developments are being built (BP claim to be developing a wind farm in Texas the size of Berkshire) and that it makes sense sense to shift production closer to the market. An original 2008 plan to convert the Isle Of Wight plant to produce larger 44 metre blades more suited to UK onshore and offshore turbines has now been halted.

It seems crazy, when the UK has one of the best wind resources in the world and a Government that has announced a huge programme of offshore windfarm development, that the workers at Vestas have to take this kind of action. These are workers equipped with precisely the skills that will be needed to help the UK Governemt fulfil its 2020 renewables target. Vestas, in their latest press release, have left the door ajar for 150 research and development jobs at the plant. As far as large scale manufacturing is concerned, they appear to be adopting a "wait and see" approach until the UK develops into a "strong and stable market".

As usual, it is the renewables industry and, more importantly, the green-collar workers employed in the industry, that have to deal with the uncertainty of inconsistent policy and mixed messages.

There is now a petition on the 10 Downing Street website in support of the Vestas workers.