In the same way that timber corporations have replaced workers with feller-bunchers here in the US, mining corporations in the British Isles have replaced the labor-intensive deep-pit mines with opencast mines in the interest of profit. These strip-mines are massive pits, hundreds of acres across and dozens of meters deep.
Opposition to opencast mining has really kicked off in Britain. A diverse coalition of eco-freaks, current and former miners, anarchists and social justice advocates has engaged in a series of hard-line actions over the last several years to oppose the brutal strip-mining of what was once a green and pleasant land. In the process, they have hit the industry with massive financial losses and have built significant relationships between enviros, workers and communities (understandably pissing off a few people in the process).
Most of the mining is for coal, but there are also rock and mineral quarries. All three are used by the road building cartels, making them particularly heinous to anti-road activists.
The damage to environmental and human health is dreadful. Opencast is notorious for air, water and noise pollution and is linked to respiratory diseases. There is a significantly higher incidence of asthma in many opencast areas. Biodiversity and heritage are replaced with either landfill (a profitable sideline for opencasters) or "plastic countryside" - a monocultural desert where trees are held up with wire and streams are culverted.
Opencast mines also destroy the social cohesion and economy of an area. Although the working conditions may be safer in this new type of mine, other problems are exponentially worse. Once a massive hole is dug and the resource is gone, so are the jobs. Afterwards, the soil is too polluted for farming or any reforestation other than tree farms. Mining is perhaps the ultimate, unsustainable sunset industry.
When activists first moved onto the site at Selar and started to build treehouses and tunnels, the local population got involved, offering help and support. After several weeks of fortifying the site, the authorities were brought in to evict the camps, spurring a three-day battle involving an estimated 200 police and professional climbers. The sight of convoys of riot vans revived unpleasant memories for the community of the virtual police state that ruled during the miners' strike of 1984-85. The last remaining deep pit in the coal field, Tower Collier (now under a form of workers' control) sent help and coal for the protesters. What's left of the old Selar farm is now an 880-acre slimy hole, purportedly the largest in Europe and visible from the moon.
According to Schnews, "The action was a total success... There was nobody manning the office or machinery! All surveillance cameras were quickly taken out of action. There were people up every crane, on top of offices, up lights, up chimneys! The pumps at the bottom of the quarry were stopped. A section of railway line mysteriously disappeared. One of the air conveyor belts, which had been mysteriously trashed due to a stray fire extinguisher, made an excellent trampoline!"
Interestingly enough, quite a few of the 60 folks arrested for aggravated trespass were acquitted. One bloke claimed he was too drunk to understand police instructions to leave, and another gentleman argued that the protest chants of "Hanson, Hanson, Fuck Your Hole" (which was duly and merrily sung to the judge) made it impossible to hear the coppers! Last winter, the railway tracks at Whatley again mysteriously fell apart and disappeared, resulting in charges against several people for conspiracy to cause criminal damage and endanger life.
British campaigns often enjoy three advantages which we don't: relatively strong squatting laws, (allowing protesters to occupy a site for a long time before being evicted), close proximity to urban centers and, often enough, massive local support. Extolling such virtues, a friend encouraged me to go out to South Wales and visit an occupation site, recounting how even a local under-sheriff picked her up hitchhiking, drove her to the Selar basecamp and donated $30 to the cause.
So I went to Brynhenllys and experienced an EF! action entirely different from the way we Yanks do things. The Brynhenllys opencast site is a 770-acre monster. In '95, it witnessed the longest eviction in the British Isles since WWII (until that point), the result of a fierce resistance put up by EF! with local support.
In February 1996, another EF! national action descended upon the opencast beast, shutting down work for the day at Brynhenllys. About 100 folks, the majority in balaclavas and face scarves, drew around the rim of the pit; huge excavators and 'dozers ripped apart the earth below. Shouting and whooping, people ran and slid down the embankments and swarmed onto the moving equipment, forcing the operators to shut down. A number of machines were damaged, though not as flagrantly as at other actions.
Your faithful correspondent unfortunately managed to get nicked, and at the gaol I gave the forest name that I used whilst abroad, Edward Abbey. A Special Branch agent told the cops that Edward Abbey founded Earth First! and wrote eco-terrorism manuals, which provided some comic relief when I was removed from the cell I shared with several colleagues and put in a cell of my own for the safety of the other inmates. Needless to say, when the authorities discovered Abbey had died a decade ago and their big chance at catching an international terrorist had disappeared, they weren't very amused.
They lodged a planning application to opencast a small area of Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine's estate. Anyone, you see, can lodge a planning application, whether they own the land or not. One misty November morning in 1995, they set up the site. Areas were cordoned off and signs put up to hide the fact that they were digging a reasonable-sized hole in the front garden. The local village constable arrived, realized that there were far more of them (about 25) than him and got two of his mates to come and watch it all from a distance. Even the tabloids took up the story, and we got great coverage in every single one.
The action was repeated a year later, as the planning process was still ongoing and the miners needed to test that there really was coal (there is). On another occasion, Heseltine found several tons of coal dumped outside the gate of his mansion with a love note from the miner's union, which stated eloquently, "Up Yours." The 68-acre mining application is currently in the hands of the Environment Minister, though Heseltine fiercely opposes it, claiming it was made "without his consultation." Indeed.
Campaigners from all over the country also descended on the country spread of a major opencast supporter, the Duke of Devonshire. The Miner's Support Group was met with a large police contingent but managed to make its way to the Duke's stately mansion. Three people went inside and hung banners from the roof, and a lively protest was maintained outside as a speaker blasted the sounds of an opencast mine in operation.
"No Opencast" then targeted Richard Budge, chief of RJB Mining Ltd, the biggest coal-producer and open-caster in the country. After a failed attempt to opencast his lawn (foiled by the police, who put up roadblocks in a two-mile radius), two activists were injuncted from going near any RJB sites or Budge's home. Shortly afterwards he got a message on his wall, reading, "who will u injunct 4 this?" in two-foot high white paint. In mid-May his garden was successfully dug up by a nocturnal group.
Clearly, anti-opencast protesters take very seriously the concept that, "The Earth is not dying, it is being killed. And those that are killing it have names and addresses."
"A nasty big opencast coal mine in Derbyshire was put decidedly out of action by the amassed forces of miners, ex-miners, radical ecologists, ghosts, witches and vampires. The action kicked off at 6 a.m. and enjoyed the passive cooperation (if not support) of the Derbyshire constabulary, whose scant number of officers looked on as an estimated รบ350,000 of damage was joyously wreaked upon machinery. One activist told Schnews 'machinery was dismantled, engines clogged, windows broken, tyres slashed and wiring ripped from vehicles. Several generators and rigs 'fell' over the side of steep cliff edges as bemused workers stood back and laughed.' Rumours that the larger scale damage only began after the proprietors of the mine refused to proffer up sweets to trick or treat activists are unconfirmed. What is known, however, is that by the time the protesters made good their escape after two or three hours of industrious activity, the site had been pretty comprehensively trashed; a spokesperson for mine owners HJ Banks confirmed, 'every item on site was damaged.'"
At that point, 50 people went off to take over the offices of Harry Banks in nearby Chesterfield, where they stayed for nearly four hours. They attempted to send a fax from Banks' offices, but were strung along by the office staff and made sitting ducks for the police. Forty-seven people were arrested, even those sitting in front of the building.
Just another day in Merry Old England.... For more information, contact the following groups: No Opencast, 190 Shepherds Bush Road, London, W6 7NL; 0181 767-3142 or 0181 672 9698. Schnews: POB 2600, Brighton, E. Sussex, BN2 2DX, England; 01273 685913; e-mail: schnews@cbuzz.co.uk, http://www.cbuzz.co.uk/SchNEWS/index.html.