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Bullying Council Takes Anti-Open Cast Community Council to Court

Doug Well | 30.08.2010 18:28 | Climate Chaos | Health | Repression

South Lanarkshire Council threatens Douglas Community Council after they reveal corruption.



The on-going battle over open cast coal in the Douglas Valley has had a shocking development, with South Lanarkshire Council issuing each member of the Douglas and Glespin Community Council with legal notices that proceedings against them are to begin at Lanark Sheriff Court over alleged libel claims. This move is seen by the community as an attack on their freedom of speech.

This latest dispute, where South Lanarkshire Council under the auspices of Archie Strang, council Chief Executive, are taking primary school teachers and pensioners to court in an effort to silence their dissenting voices, comes because of a logo reading “South Lanarkshire COALcil” and an article titled “South Lanarkshire Council and Scottish Coal Hand-in-Hand at Community LIE-aison Meeting”. The logo superimposes the Council's logo with that of Scottish Coal, and the article was a repost, linked from the Coal Action Scotland website.

The article described a liaison meeting between the community, Scottish Coal and South Lanarkshire Council. At this meeting, the council made every effort to exclude the community from it, misrepresented what was said in minutes and council workers were indistinguishable from Scottish Coal representatives.

Coal Action Scotland are demanding that South Lanarkshire Council end all legal proceedings immediately and issue an apology to the Community Council.

Fiona Reed from Coal Action Scotland said today: “It is unbelievable that the Council would take legal action over what is essentially a link, and not even contact the original authors of the article. This is nothing more than an attempt to limit the Community Council's freedom of speech. The community has to put up with ill health, environmental and economic degradation from open casting, and now the politically-motivated bullying of this deceitful council. Take it back and say sorry Archie.”


Coal Action Scotland are also asking people to stand in solidarity with the Community Council and post up the controversial logo and article on their websites and blogs.


- The original article can be found here:  http://coalactionscotland.org.uk/?p=1635
- Douglas Community Council have been opposing the decisions by South Lanarkshire Council to allow numerous open cast developments throughout the valley for close to 20 years, with the campaign against Mainshill Open Cast Coal site, where over 650 letters of objection were submitted to the council and a survey by MSP Eiline Campbell found that 70% of residents opposed the mine.
- Coal Action Scotland works with communities affected by coal mining and infrastructure and takes direct action in support of campaigns, such as the recent 7-month occupation of Mainshill Wood in South Lanarkshire
- South Lanarkshire Council is renowned in the area for being pro-open cast coal and for putting the interests of Scottish Coal before those of the people in South Lanarkshire. Indeed, the council has never refused an open-cast application by Scottish Coal, despite overwhelming community opposition.

Doug Well

Comments

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Bluff? Get advice!

31.08.2010 16:51

As far as I'm aware, you can't libel a local authority. They could only have grounds for a libel claim if some-one has said something about an individual member or employee of the council that went beyond a fair criticism of how they do their job and accused them of something that is untrue and would damage their personal reputation. And at that, the individual would have to serve notice that he/she personally was going to sue if they don't withdraw the statement, whatever it was. If the local authority collectively has issued libel threats, write back and ask them to quote the law which allows a local authority as a body to sue for libel. You'll probably find there isn't one.
If they make out that individuals have been libelled and the individuals intend to sue, well, do you fancy doing a "MacDonald's Two" style campaign?

Annie Citizen
- Homepage: http://www.rightsandwrongsuk.blogspot.com


The council can't take this action; it's lawyers don't know their business

06.09.2010 15:46

There are two long articles about this case by Jonathan Mitchell QC at  http://www.jonathanmitchell.info/. He says in one of these "I have never before heard of a Scottish local authority attempting to bring a defamation action at all, let alone one like this which is done purely to shut up ordinary political criticism. No authority with any appreciation of the right of free speech, and its relationship with the rule of law, could abuse the legal system like this. This sort of legal action happens in Russia, which is one reason why Russia keeps the European Court of Human Rights so busy: but until now, it didn’t happen in Scotland.

In bringing this action, the Council shows itself not merely to be, as others have commented, in the business of bullying those who criticise it; but also to have no legal knowledge of its position. A local authority has no power to bring such proceedings. In Derbyshire CC v Times Newspapers Ltd [1993] AC 534, [1992] UKHL 6 the House of Lords held, in a decision which has never been doubted or challenged, that a local authority had no power to sue for defamation.

Ari