It very much time to make the ignominy of our class history, 75 people gathered outside Rio Tinto building that is one of the world’s biggest mining and exploration companies, and a nexus of the global coal industry.
Between the 3rd and the 10th of August the first Camp for Climate Action was successfully held in Scotland. Climate Camp Scotland occupied Mainshill wood, the site of a proposed new open cast coal mine. The location was chosen in solidarity with local residents who are outraged at the proposed development, and to support a tree-sit already set up in the area to resist the mine.
Why were they there?
Scottish Coal, the UK’s largest open cast producer, has been given permission to mine 1.7 million tonnes of coal from Mainshill Wood in South Lanarkshire by South Lanarkshire Council, a decision that enraged local residents who for years have campaigned against the mine. There are four other mines in the area, making it one of the most heavily mined areas in Europe, as well as an area with the highest cancer rates in Scotland.
We neither have time for opencast coal mines we took action some years back and trashed a sight at Dolehill in Derbyshire, there are no leaders for the free now we should have all fucked off when the damage had been done, instead we decided to go and do a occupation, we was all charged with the theft of a yoghurt and weeks of court cases ensued the ignominy of our class had no solidarity with the working class involved, you never learn a lesson but the hard way, so for some time we continued to live under the delusion these fair weather friends was on our side.
It soon become clear they was nothing but, so why when the G8 Circus come to Sheffield why did we work with the soap dodgers again?, nothing but to the detriment of our self and our own health, some years on we still have a deep psychosis along with other issues, this said we have along the way learned som hard lessons along with making some real friends, so when Felix, Bertie, Robin, Oliver, Jasmin and a Clemmie state they understand your class struggle, lets remind them of people like Thomas Rainsborough
I shall blow up your buildings a little more and be less open with you than I was before. I wish we all truly wanted to change this cesspool we live in. And, sir, to say because a man pleads that every man hath a voice by right of nature, that therefore it destroys by the same argument all property That there’s a property, the Law of God says it; else why hath God made that law, Thou shalt not steal? I am a poor man, therefore I must be oppressed: if I have no interest in the kingdom, I must suffer by all their laws be they right or wrong. Nay thus: a gentleman lives in a country and hath three or four lordships, as some men have (God knows how they got them); and when a Parliament is called he must be a Parliament-man; and it may be he sees some poor men, they live near this man, he can crush them– I have known an invasion to make sure he hath turned the poor men out of doors; and I would fain know whether the potency of rich men do not this, and so keep them under the greatest and your sister too tyranny that was ever thought of in the world. And therefore I think that to that it is fully answered: God hath set down that thing as to propriety with this law of his, Thou shalt not steal. And for my part I am against any such thought, and, as for yourselves, I wish you would not make the world believe that we are NOT for anarchy BECAUSE WE ARE. NOW LET THE WORLD REST IN PEACE AND ANARCHY!
I suspect this is how Gandhi would have managed, using 21st century technology...
