Police Brutality at Sellafield Protest
amanda | 17.02.2002 19:38
Thursdays protest at Sellafield was the first attempt at Direct Action at the plant since the beginning of the Shut Down Sellafield campaign. It was the third demo there since November. The previous two times the police were quite nice as there is a policy that anyone can go and protest at the plant. This time though the protest was well planned and the blockade began immediately once the protesters got off their buses. The protest was split in two as Sellafield has two main access roads and a blockade began in each of these areas.
At the second protest things went fairly well. The planned lock-on was deemed unnecessary, as the police were not arresting people for being on the road. The worst incident happened early on when a woman who works at Sellafield attempted to drive through the blockade aiming her car at three people and not stopping even once one of them was thrown onto the bonnet of her car.
I was at the first protest where things were different. The police were largely outnumbered and under trained. When they arrived some of them were immediately heavy handed. They pushed people with excessive force and kicked people in the lock-on. It was evident that their orders were to clear the road as soon as possible. Some of the ridiculous things they attempted to do included pulling people who were chained together in order to separate them, causing people severe pain. And attempting to saw through a pipe which people were chained together inside. The police would have had to cut through the two peoples hands in order to get at the chain. People trying to explain this to the police were pushed, hit and thrown to the ground. Many people watching this were terrified of what was happening. Most especially the man and woman who could have been sawed through.
The police did not seem to believe that the protesters were really chained together and were trying to call their bluff.
Many people have commented about what has happened on Thursday. Some saying that you will only find confrontation with the police if you seek it. Nobody in that lock-on was expecting violent confrontation from the police. Four of the six had just come from Faslane where they attended a very similar protest. There the police are specifically trained to deal with protests of this nature and do not seek to unnecessarily injure protesters. In Sellafield on Thursday the special task force trained to deal with protests was given the day off despite the fact that they knew a protest was planned that day. Why?
Two days previous in Faslane a man climbed on the gate of the base and single handedly caused the gate to be locked for nearly four hours. The police had to spend hours erecting a scaffold to remove him without seriously hurting him. A couple of comments were made that if he was dealing with the Genoan police they would have just opened the gate and let him fall. It may have been a joke but it was probably the truth. The police will for the most part follow their orders. In Faslane people are not scared to come and protest, they may be arrested but they will not be hurt. Because of this fact there is a protest twice a year and this year the February protest has expanded to last three days. BNFL do not want this to happen at Sellafield. The rough treatment of protesters was intended to prevent this kind of action there becoming a regular event.
BNFL maintain that they were not affected by the protest on Thursday. That it was business as usual. This can not be true. I have worked for large companies who, if work is delayed by half an hour need to spend three days catching up. The plant was almost completely closed for over four hours, surrounded by six mile tail backs and nobody even able to arrive by rail because rail workers were stuck in traffic jams causing the trains to be cancelled. Sellafield was not running business as usual.
Protesters that were hurt shall be making complaints about their treatment. And this was only the first of many direct actions at the plant. Don’t let police treatment of peaceful protesters scare you, they are not as scary as Sellafield. Lets make sure that just like at Faslane it will never be business as usual at Sellafield again.
At the second protest things went fairly well. The planned lock-on was deemed unnecessary, as the police were not arresting people for being on the road. The worst incident happened early on when a woman who works at Sellafield attempted to drive through the blockade aiming her car at three people and not stopping even once one of them was thrown onto the bonnet of her car.
I was at the first protest where things were different. The police were largely outnumbered and under trained. When they arrived some of them were immediately heavy handed. They pushed people with excessive force and kicked people in the lock-on. It was evident that their orders were to clear the road as soon as possible. Some of the ridiculous things they attempted to do included pulling people who were chained together in order to separate them, causing people severe pain. And attempting to saw through a pipe which people were chained together inside. The police would have had to cut through the two peoples hands in order to get at the chain. People trying to explain this to the police were pushed, hit and thrown to the ground. Many people watching this were terrified of what was happening. Most especially the man and woman who could have been sawed through.
The police did not seem to believe that the protesters were really chained together and were trying to call their bluff.
Many people have commented about what has happened on Thursday. Some saying that you will only find confrontation with the police if you seek it. Nobody in that lock-on was expecting violent confrontation from the police. Four of the six had just come from Faslane where they attended a very similar protest. There the police are specifically trained to deal with protests of this nature and do not seek to unnecessarily injure protesters. In Sellafield on Thursday the special task force trained to deal with protests was given the day off despite the fact that they knew a protest was planned that day. Why?
Two days previous in Faslane a man climbed on the gate of the base and single handedly caused the gate to be locked for nearly four hours. The police had to spend hours erecting a scaffold to remove him without seriously hurting him. A couple of comments were made that if he was dealing with the Genoan police they would have just opened the gate and let him fall. It may have been a joke but it was probably the truth. The police will for the most part follow their orders. In Faslane people are not scared to come and protest, they may be arrested but they will not be hurt. Because of this fact there is a protest twice a year and this year the February protest has expanded to last three days. BNFL do not want this to happen at Sellafield. The rough treatment of protesters was intended to prevent this kind of action there becoming a regular event.
BNFL maintain that they were not affected by the protest on Thursday. That it was business as usual. This can not be true. I have worked for large companies who, if work is delayed by half an hour need to spend three days catching up. The plant was almost completely closed for over four hours, surrounded by six mile tail backs and nobody even able to arrive by rail because rail workers were stuck in traffic jams causing the trains to be cancelled. Sellafield was not running business as usual.
Protesters that were hurt shall be making complaints about their treatment. And this was only the first of many direct actions at the plant. Don’t let police treatment of peaceful protesters scare you, they are not as scary as Sellafield. Lets make sure that just like at Faslane it will never be business as usual at Sellafield again.
amanda
Comments
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A view from Ireland
18.02.2002 14:21
This range of tactics may succeed in convincing some to vote for one party rather then the other. But it's not going to shut Sellafield. Indeed all this 'activity' has the unfortunate consequence of stopping us considering what is actually required to shut Sellafield.
Lets be clear - it is possible for ordinary people to not only have an impact on nuclear power but to actually succeed in stopping the construction of nuclear plants and forcing governments to re treat from pro-nuclear projects. It was done right here in Ireland when massive protests over several years stopped the construction of a nuclear power plant at Carnsore.
In Germany the government has been forced to retreat from and scale down their nuclear policy. While the politicians are eager to explain this in terms of the electoral success of the German Green party the reality is that it was the direct actions of tens of thousands of ordinary people that literally brought the nuclear trains to a halt.
Mass protests took place throughout the 1980's and 90's, involving hundreds of thousands of people. The German government has been forced to agree to phase out Nuclear power by 2025. Anti-nuclear activists quite rightly consider that this is not soon enough and continue to blockade trains carrying nuclear waste. In March of 2001 the government, which includes the Green Party, mobilised 20,000 police in an effort of force one such train through the blockades. Despite hundreds of arrests and a police riot the protesters succeeded in delaying the train for over a day.
Contrast this effective action with what has been happening here. Joe Jacobs, Minister of State for Public Enterprises promised that the government had begun a legal battle that would not cease until they saw the Sellafield plant closed down. The Government had begun "a long journey of legal initiatives from which we will not be diverted" he said. This is most reassuring coming from the same idiot who told the country on national airwaves that he had a national emergency plan in the case of a nuclear disaster in his hands, only for him to be later proven to be lying about this.
Since 1997 there has been press releases of discontent from Fianna Fail. They promised to give their backing to the people of Dundalk who were taking a case against BNFL which begun back in 1994. In March 2000 our brave government lined up with Denmark to once again be strongly critical of the plan to expand and develop a second plant. As quoted in the Irish Times at that time "The Taoiseach emphasised to Mr. Auken (Danish Minister) that the closure of Sellafield's reprocessing plant was high on the Irish Political agenda, a Government spokesman said, and Mr. Ahern had made it clear to the British Prime Minister, Mr. Blair, at their recent meeting in Lisbon."
This frankly is bullshit. The Irish government knows that supporting Nuclear power is a central policy of many European governments. France and Lithuania get around three-quarters of their power from nuclear energy, while Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia and Ukraine get 35% or more. In that context neither the European Union nor a European court is likely to make the sort of strong anti-nuclear decision that could shut Sellafield.
Yet stopping the opening of the MOX plant in Sellafield had been "High" on the Irish Political agenda for the last two years and the politicians utterly failed to stop that plant opening. Pathetically Fianna Fail even took out a full-page critical advertisement against Sellafield in the Times of London newspaper thus neatly illustrating the incapacity of the Irish government to act or do anything meaningful about this issue.
So what can be done? We must take a lesson from our own past (Carnsore) and from the highly successful anti-nuclear movement in Germany. We must recognise that the British government, far from being willing to consider closing Sellafield, wish to expand it. The only way they will be forced to retreat from this position is, if like the German protesters, we push the political and economic costs of keeping Sellafield open way up.
This requires a very different approach to the one adopted to date. We need to start off by recognising that without a huge level of active support and solidarity from ordinary people in Britain we will get nowhere. An accident at Sellafield after all would not just devastate parts of Ireland but also huge sections of England, Wales and probably Scotland.
We need a movement in Ireland and Britain that will seek to mobilise hundreds of thousands of people to not just protest against Sellafield but also take direct action against the nuclear industry. Of course this needs to be level headed - we wouldn't want to cause a nuclear accident! But the German example shows that direct action can safely be taken against this industry by blockading nuclear transports, mass invasions of parts of nuclear plants and occupations of sites where construction of new plants is going on. If such a movement emerges the British government will be forced not only to halt further expansion but also to start to decommission the entire industry.
No Nukes
More sellafield Reports
18.02.2002 14:31
Valentinesday at Sellafield
by Claudia - Friends of the Earth, Ireland Sat, Feb 16 2002
Eyewitness report with Pictures of the protest at Sellafield where almost 200 people gathered to show their opposition to the MOX plant and the contamination of the Irish Sea.
Sellafield Blockade, why it happened.
by Tim Hourigan Sun, Feb 17 2002, 9:08pm
Letter by protester to the Whithaven News, Cumbria.
Audio Interviews with Sellafield protestors
by SoundOut - AudioHead Sat, Feb 16 2002, 5:10pm
Audio interviews with Sellafield protestors.
REAL AUDIO PLAYER: (.rm)
- Interview 1
- Interview 2
WINDOWS MEDIA AUDIO: (.wma)
- Interview 1
- Interview 2
Peaceful Action at BNFL HQ - report and pics
by Marc and Anita - AlternativeTimes Sat, Feb 16 2002,
On Wednesday 13th, enroute to the Valentines Day, blockade at Sellafield, a bus load of protesters stopped to stretch their legs outside the BNFL Head Office, Risley, Warrington.
irishheads