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Climate Camp: Kingsnorth Power Station Breached

Indy Dispatch | 09.08.2008 11:43 | Climate Camp 2008 | Climate Chaos | Energy Crisis

Saturday August 9 is the Climate Camp Day of Mass Action, when "the climate camp will go beyond talk and culminate in a spectacular mass action to shut down Kingsnorth. Permanently!"

Campaigners intended to try and shut down the power station by land sea and air - with some success - with four main colour-coded "blocks." The Blue Block (or Great Rebel Raft Regatta) attempted to approach Kingsnorth power station by water along the River Medway. Not wanting to be outdone, the Silver Block had planned to approach from above. The Green Block meanwhile focused on making its way through the undergrowth, with the Orange Block completing the set with a children-friendly march to the main gates.

Photos: The road to Kingsnorth | Knives out for the GRRR! | GRRR....launch pictures at last | Silver Group: Patsy The CCS Pig Flies! - Action Day Pics | Police at the gate of Kingsnorth | Children of the Kingsnorth March 9th August 2008 | Christian Cafe Crew give Last Rites to Kingsnorth | Kingsnorth Fence Breach Pictures | Climate Hazard Raft Banner at Kingsnorth Pics | Orange Group March: Climate Camp 2008 | Breaching the Kingsnorth Fence | Rebel Raft Protest Land on Kingsnorth Jetty - Pics | Rebel raft approaching Kingsnorth | Orange Bloc Protest - March to Kingsnorth Pictures | electric pylons-kingsnorth protest photoset | Protestors using 1st fence to scale 2nd fence at Kingsnorth | Photos of protestors at Kingsnorth fences | Pics Orange Bloc / Kids March leaving camp | Green Bloc Heading Towards Kingsnorth

Newswire: Water inlet shut down by activists | E.ON's Defences Breached Following Olympic Efforts by Protesters | Video of climate camp orange bloc march to Kingsnorth | Climate Camp Radio - Saturday evening show for download | Climate Camp 2008 March to Kingsnorth | Police Assault Teenage Activists at the Climate Camp Children's Revolution | Eco Hero Kayak Crew splash out on the Medway | Climate Camp Radio - Saturday lunchtime show for download | Kayakers arrested in the Medway | Climate Camp Radio, day of mass action. Listen to live stream 1pm and 7pm. | Children's Revolution March From Climate Camp on Kingsnorth Day of Mass Action | Rebel Regatta and Section 21 of the Medway Ports Byelaws | Climate Camp Silver Group- Call Out For Flying Devices | Children's Revolution at the Camp for Climate Action Plans Peace Campaign

Links: Climate Camp website | Great Rebel Raft Regatta | Full Climate Camp 2008 Coverage | the very latest: Climate Camp timeline

Climate Camp Flying High
Climate Camp Flying High


As in previous years, there have been actions targetting climate criminal throughout the camp, but this is the day when the large numbers brought together by the event coordinate their activities in order to maximise disruption.

The Blue Block promised "a futuristic flotilla of crafts of every shape and size, from recycled rafts, to viking ships, pirate punts to gondolas". The police quickly moved to ban this event ostenisbly under Section 21 of the Medway Ports Byelaws and confiscated the safety boat which was supposed to accompany the flotilla at 8am on Saturday morning.

Undeterred, 9 rafts, 11 treasure island boats, 8 kayaks and 1 currach(made in the woods the previous night) were successfully launched on the Medway to converge on the coal loading jetty. Eight kayaks got very close to the station and were detained, but not arrested. Three people did manage to reach the jetty and almost got over the fence, meanwhile other rafters dropped a banner reading "COAL: Starter Gun For Climate Chaos", on a fort opposite the power station.

One raft did break up in the river, but the campers, all wearing lifejackets, were able to clamber onto a nearby BBC media boat. Bizarrely, a number of BBC reports have subsequently claimed that 120 people had to be rescued from the Medway (see for instance this report on BBC 5 Live), presumably basing this wholly inaccurate claim on a confusingly worded statement by Kent Police which reports that "Police boats and the Medway Ports Authority Harbour Masters’ launch took 123 people out of the water," and claims, "Many of the protesters, say the officers, were very glad to be rescued."

The Green Block left the camp via a back fence, but quickly picked up a police escort. Nebertheless, once they reached the power station, cheeky protesters dismantled the first fence and used it as a ladder to climb over the second one. Happily, E.ON have decided not to emulate the repressive tactics of the Kent police and switched off the electric fence – the final fence surrounding the power station - as soon as the protesters got near it. A seperate branch of the Green Block managed to breach the first fence and hang a banner on the inside.

4 activists from the Green Bloc got in the Power Station, climbed the water inlet and shut it down; directly contradicting EOn's media statement that the actions had no effect on the running of the station.

The Orange Block left the camp shortly after 9am, with big multi-coloured dragon. There was a good atmosphere with mainstream media in attendence. The march was held up in the lane outside the main gate. Police were told that people would not arrive until 10am and would not let them move until that time. Although this march was largely chilled out with lots of singing and chanting as the sun shone, there was at least one arrest for criminal damage/resisting arrest and a brief fracas which resulted in several protesters being truncheoned by police.

Around 1,000 people marched to the gate where they held a party. There was a brief "freeze" by this group to symbolise the need to freeze economic growth. The police informed campaigners (from a helicopter) that "if you do not disperse by 1pm, dogs, force and long handed battons will be used." Most people left and returned to the camp, but a small group refused to leave as a protest in response to police threats of violence and were surrounded by riot police. Arrests were made for violation of the restrictions imposed on the march. People passively resisted arrest and several were dragged away.

Unfortunately, strong winds appear to have put paid to the plans of the Silver Block. Nevertheless, a number of actions did take place. A banner reading, "Shut Down Kingsnorth" was hung from a pylon by 4 climbers who then occupied the structure and were later arrested. A group of Christians on the Orange Block sat down near the gates to the powerstaion and prayed for forgiveness for all the damage the plant has created during its life-time and sung simple chants.

Indy Dispatch

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

Surely no coincidence

09.08.2008 19:19


Man's body pulled from mudflats
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7551510.stm

A body has been found in mudflats on a Kent river after a fisherman reported seeing a man in difficulty.

The man, whose identity has not yet been confirmed, was found by the police marine unit in the River Medway near Rochester at 0900 BST.

A fisherman had reported seeing someone in the water at about 0630 BST.

A spokeswoman for Kent Police said there was "no reason at the present time to link the death to the Camp for Climate Action protest".

Campaigners are holding a day of action a few miles away at Kingsnorth power station near Hoo.

fisherman


Umm - surely shutting down a power station might risk power supply?

10.08.2008 08:28

Umm - I may not know much - but as someone who works in IT - I know that we need reliable power supplies for our economy....

Surely trying to shut down a power station is madness?

Alex Cockell
mail e-mail: alcockell@eclipse.co.uk


It Does not matter

10.08.2008 09:09

..As it didn't work - this was more of a long drawn out stunt accompanied by a lot of optimistic posturing.

Madness


if only!

10.08.2008 09:55

The real madness is that we depend at all upon something so harmful. How vulnerable humanity is that we can't even feed or shelter ourselves without the use of fuel based power! If you'd gone to the camp you'd have seen that apart from direct action there was plenty of education in how to be a more healthy, resilient and caring society - once you're at that point everything else is irrelevant and even capital becomes what it really is - imaginary.

Sanity


Alex Cockell

10.08.2008 13:10

"I know that we need reliable power supplies for our economy...."

That's where you're wrong. We need reliable power supplies for the earths population, not an economy. Who wants to be run by an economy? Who wants the economy to come first before humanity? Life has value, banks and businesses do not, have we forgotten this?

Fossil fuels are as reliable chocolate teapots.

IT nerd


re: Alex

10.08.2008 15:15

My thoughts exactly. I consider myself a revolutionary socialist and a radical environmentalist, but I don't care about this sort of activist crap. I actually was swept along by the hype enough to attend the G8 protests in 2008. The media and the government love these sort of naive, "shut down a big symbolic target" protests. They discredit what are extremely laudible goals in the public's eyes by overstating their immediate tactical aims for the sake of headline grabbing. They emphasize spectacle over analysis, fake inclusiveness over argument, and excuse their lack of focus by a load of nauseating anarcho-syndicalistic bureacratic buzzwords like barrios, workshops and self-organisation.

What would actually happen if Kingsnorth had been shut down? The results could have been worse than open revolutionary violence, which few of these hippies would advocate, even though that would have been a lot more productive and dicriminating in it's victims. I mean, hospitals and telecommunications going offline is very very serious.

These protests subsume meaningful analysis under infantile nonsense about "marching on" things and "shutting things down". They play up to media tropes about radical politics as some kind of youth cultural 1960s scene, with all the complacency and spectacle that sort of symbolism propagates to media audiences. Ultimately they are self-serving events for a self-selecting group of urban middle class vegan activist types, the vanguard of which lust after becoming the new Swampie/Joss Stone/Che Guevara etc etc

anonymous


Re: Surely no coincidence

10.08.2008 23:49

Actually, it does appear to be just a coincidence.

Seems someone drank too much in Chatham and decided to go paddling in the river, nothing to do with Kingsnorth.

jenny


Oh for goodness' sake

11.08.2008 07:10

The body in the Medway was some poor soul who jumped off a bridge - nothing to do with the camp.

And disrupting Kingsnorth's operations wouldn't have any effect on the local electricity supply - there's loads of slack on the national grid and power stations are switched off all the time for maintenance and so on. The whole "lights going across across the South East" argument is misleading codswallop that E.ON have been spreading around.

By the way, we DID disrupt the power station - check out this quote from the charge sheet of a group a rebel rafters who got close to the station:

“they did an act, namely disrupting the running of the power station by causing the water inlet cooling system to be shut down.”

Power stations can't run without their cooling system. Tee hee.

The whole day way magnificent and utterly inspiring for everyone involved - this movement is only getting more powerful. Check out www.climatecamp.org.uk for the latest updates.

Camper


Climate Camp Tactics

13.08.2008 07:09

I don't know if these are the best tactics to change our attitude to climate change but what I can say is that I've spent over twenty years trying to push this issue through mainstream political processes and seen nothing change.....for good anyway.

We are now looking at global changes that are without doubt apocalyptic (and I'm not one for over-statement either) and yet this gets very little mainstream media attention, so maybe the direct action is the only way to raise awareness.

So for those who worry about the odd power station being disrupted for a short while, you really do need to get a grasp of the scale of changes coming.

R Gross
mail e-mail: roly_gross@hotmail.com