can i suggest that an attempt is made to gather together some artifacts from the site, such as the handpainted camp signs and donate them to a local museum like low moss in hamilton or people palac in glasgow, aloing wuth any stories and photos?

This is really painful to see after experiencing the site before, tree-covered, running with wildlife. Well done to all those resisting the destruction. Shame the whole local population who this will affect, didn't turn out to block the bulldozers. I know many were/are involved over years and a fatalistic sense can set in after a while. But wider communities let down these local protestors who were there for the long run. Enough people CAN stop something happening. There's just never enough people who care enough.

Actually the local support through the entirety of this campaign has been amazing. To expect local people to come onto site and block machinery is a bit much in my opinion, especially during an eviction. You have to remember that through the freezing winter these people were constantly out to site bringing hot soup and water almost everyday, [not to mention the christmas dinner!].

It's a sad enough time with Mainshill Solidarity Camp gone without people criticising the actions of people who have been involved in this campaign. Everyone has done what they felt they were able to and that is more than enough.

Well said anoymouse agree totally.
Alex there was no surprise when the police came as the Camp had a very strong tip off for the 25th
Respect to all that were there at the end and the fight goes on!

Yeah - I was there. A few people WERE amazing and brought soup and clothes, not to mention the never-ending supply of heavy containers of water most days. If you read what I said, it was that if the whole local population had turned out, we might have succeeded. It's those few amazing people that have been let down by the much much larger number that didn't get off their arses.

'more than enough' - no, it wasn't. We, and I mean all of us, have to stop the self-congratulation while the war goes on and the land is being ripped up around us. We failed. Many people were incredibly brave and resiliant and I'll always think of them with admiration but we have to admit to ourselves that we failed. If we don't, we are forever stuck with thinking that anything we do is 'more than enough' - just cos it's more than our neighbour sitting in front of their tv does. It's not lacking in solidarity or taking away from amazing individual actions to admit failure. It will help us stay angry and determined to find more ways of defending the earth.

Whether or not we failed depends on what our aims were. We may have failed to stop the destruction at Mainshill, but we achieved so much on so many other fronts. We cost the UKs largest opencast mining company millions, delayed an opencast for seven months, built strong and lasting connections with a community and vastly expanded the radical environmental direct action movement in Scotland. There have been so many victories over the past 7 months, so to just say we failed seems harsh. As with the experience of the anti roads protest movement, most occupied sites were evicted and trashed - but the real victory was all the sites that didnt have to be occupied because the road building pogramme was scaled back so much, and because no one wanted to build roads. Which is why our victory will only come with keeping up momentum and pressure on these companies and politicians, and by occupying more sites - Mainshill was just the beginning.