At 11pm last night, a group of about 30 people from Manchester, Lancaster, Leeds, Hebden Bridge & Bolton turned up at the Sainsbury's Haydock depot, Merseyside. The action was one of several happening around the country to force Sainsbury's to remove GM-fed animal products from their shelves.
The main gates and emergency gates were locked shut with chains & D-locks as seven people chained themselves together through armtubes in a circle in front of the main entrance and a car protected them from the other direction. Several people with flouro jackets and stop signs stopped and talked to lorry drivers while others informed security of the situation.
We got loads of support from Sainsbury's workers & drivers, due to get paid overtime for as long as we delayed operations, and the atmosphere was great - no rain, a great support crew and Radio Merseyside keeping us entertained. The police turned up after an hour, clearly unprepared to deal with the technical difficulties in removing us and we left at our agreed time of 3am. No one was arrested, no one's details were taken and we didn't lose any equipment, save the locks on the gates, which we left for the police to deal with - we think it will have taken them at least another 20 minutes to get them off.
We'd been told that every hour we stopped operations at our depot would cost Sainsbury's £100,000 - £150,000, so we'll probably have cost them about half a million. The knock-on effect should see shelves looking fairly empty from this afternoon and into Saturday.
There will be video footage available shortly from Beyond TV (www.beyondtv.org) and others.
The main gates and emergency gates were locked shut with chains & D-locks as seven people chained themselves together through armtubes in a circle in front of the main entrance and a car protected them from the other direction. Several people with flouro jackets and stop signs stopped and talked to lorry drivers while others informed security of the situation.
We got loads of support from Sainsbury's workers & drivers, due to get paid overtime for as long as we delayed operations, and the atmosphere was great - no rain, a great support crew and Radio Merseyside keeping us entertained. The police turned up after an hour, clearly unprepared to deal with the technical difficulties in removing us and we left at our agreed time of 3am. No one was arrested, no one's details were taken and we didn't lose any equipment, save the locks on the gates, which we left for the police to deal with - we think it will have taken them at least another 20 minutes to get them off.
We'd been told that every hour we stopped operations at our depot would cost Sainsbury's £100,000 - £150,000, so we'll probably have cost them about half a million. The knock-on effect should see shelves looking fairly empty from this afternoon and into Saturday.
There will be video footage available shortly from Beyond TV (www.beyondtv.org) and others.
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