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Activism United Kingdom

June 13, 2008 – activists stop coal train, throw coal off. Convictions eventually quashed…

On June 13 June 2008 climate activists involved in the whole “camp for climate action” thing stopped a train heading to Drax power station in Yorkshire (the site of the first Camp for Climate Action, in August-September 2006).

They shovelled coal off it before the police arrived and arrested them all.

See Indymedia for more pictures.

They went on trial A year  later 

“Twenty nine people were convicted in July following a four-day jury trial at Leeds crown court. Today, at the same court, Judge James Spencer QC, ordered five, who had previous convictions, to do 60 hours unpaid work and three were ordered to pay £1,000 in costs and £500 compensation to Network Rail. The judge said the loss to the company had been almost £37,000. Twenty one members of the group were given conditional discharges for 12 months.”

And in January 2014… those convictions were quashed because the driver for the activists had been… undercover cop Mark Kennedy.

A re-do action by Greenpeace in September 2014 got no coverage, as best I can tell…

Why this matters. 

We should know about the brave history of direct action on climate change. It didn’t start with Extinction Rebellion.

What happened next?

Drax is now telling the world it will be storing its emissions under the North Sea