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- 01/05/2002 Power Lines Come Down at Hatfield Peat Works
We recieved an anonomous tip off that on the night of May the First a small group of people
visited Hatfield Peat Works at night. They attempted to bring down the two power lines that provide
electricity to the works. One of the support posts for one of the power lines was succsefully brought down,
but unfortunetly the other line proved to be indestructable. However with limited power major disruption was caused to their operation.
- English Nature and Scotts announce
a £17million deal for the future of Thorne and Hatfield
Moors, as well as Wedholme Flow in Cumbria. An important victory,
but we haven't won yet.
- Come to the Easter Blockade
2002, March 25th - 28th. Four days of direct action at Hatfield
Peat Works
- 18/2/2002 National Day of Action against Scotts. Direct
Action hits seven of Scotts' facilities around the country simultaneously.
Read more about it here.
- 26/11/2001 Work stopped for 3 hours at Hatfield Moor Works
On Monday 26th November a group of around 30 people entered
the site of the Scotts Company UK Ltd. As work on the surrounding
peat moorland has stopped for the winter, the action was concentrated
on the adjacent works, where peat is processed and bagged for
sending off to farmers and garden centres around the countries.
Thanks to health and safety, all machinery was switched off as
soon as everyone arrived on site, and the time was spent exploring
the site, chatting to workers and blockading the front gate. After
about 3 hours the most amusingly polite police you could ever
hope to meet turned up in sufficient quantities to remove people
from site, after issueing each person a notice that they would
be arrested for aggrevated trespass should they return within
3 months. Ha! As if that will stop us!
- 21/10/2001 Ten people from Nottingham visited Hatfield Moor
as their part of the days of action against peat mining.
Despite a large amount of pre publicity there was no police
presence when we arrived and we entered the moor with no hassle.
Seeing dust in the distance we headed towards where they were
working, and they tried to drive off. We tried to head them off
and despite their half a mile head start we still managed to trap
the machines and prevented them from working for the rest of the
day. After about an hour and a half, two police officers and the
site manager turned up to say that so long as we didn't damage
anything they wouldn't arrest us. Usefully one of us managed to
overhear a conversation between the boss and the police about
how disrupting the factory works would cause them massive problems.
So what are you waiting for?
- 26/5/2001 Mass Trespass to protect peat
This event was timed to coincide with the start of the peat-cutting
season, which can only begin when the peat has dried out enough.
All morning Leeds & Sheffield Friends of the Earth and others
collected messages from the people of Thorne and the surrounding
area, on cards, placards and balloons. They got a really good
response from the local population who are well aware of the damage
being done to their moors. At the same time activists from the
north were taken on guided tours of the site and learnt as much
as they could about the peat-cutting process.
After lunch everyone gathered at a friendly pub and then set off
in a procession to the peat works. Some of the (smaller) messages
collected during the morning were handed in to a poker-faced security
guard and then around 50 people strolled into the processing plant,
past him and the four or five bumbling police officers. They had
a good look round the vast site and inside lots of buildings,
they conga'd through the piles of stacked up compost bags and
ceilidhed alongside the railway line. There were no arrests as
we danced out of the site and back to the pub. After a lovely
day we decided to have a bigger, better and longer trespass of
the site and the moors on Tuesday 25th June, with some camping
available the night before - more details available from Leeds
EF! Other actions will of course be going on all the time…
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