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A Tale of Two Road Blockades - Blackwood

Friends of Blackwood | 02.03.2004 18:07 | Ecology | Free Spaces

Tree defenders have been regularly making small blockades on the old railiway track, which is part of the road route and passes the two tree camps. Costain and co who are felling the trees, have to keep removing them to enable access. Not to be outdone, on St. David's Day, contractors themselves erected their own concrete blockade, to block vehicle access to the tree camps!

stopping machinery
stopping machinery

sitting on blockade
sitting on blockade

contractors make their own blockade with concrete posts
contractors make their own blockade with concrete posts



The Blackwood camp is in court this coming wednesday.
An eviction is expected soon after.
Local support is still high.

Friends of Blackwood

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

Lock ons?

02.03.2004 19:19

Jeez! these look like very easy to remove blockades. Have you considered using lock ons, D-locking vehicles etc?

What kind of reaction are you getting from security, police etc?

Arm Tube

Situation

03.03.2004 07:52

Yes, many of them are small and easy to remove, some are bigger and consist of larger felled tree trunks, but even these are pretty simple for a jcb digger to shift.

The contractors in the pictures simply walked away when faced with around six / seven young people. There are not that many bailiffs / security across the 2 mile route, but then most of the time there are really not that many protesters. Local kids / teenagers have been brilliant doing as much as they can and stopping work has been relatively simple when the numbers are there. Well done to all those that care.

Some out of order roughness was seen a few wks ago from some of the bailiffs / security, but this seemed to have calmed down a bit. So far no one has been arrested and it seems as yet they have not used this 'harry potter' injunction - which basically says that persons un-named ie _anyone_ can be immediatly removed from the area / route. My guess is they've been reluctant to use this so far because of the high level of support from local people.

The message really is that at the moment anyone with any experience or anyone wishing to take direct action can really make a difference at Blackwood. Even people with just a camera to take pictures would be of great help.

The court case over the tree camps is today.

on the ground