Tina Louise filmed and you can watch her footage here.
Hello Blackpool. We bring you greetings from Manchester, and apologies for Morrissey.
I’m Martin,
one of the coordinators of the Manchester Greenpeace Group. We have some other
Greenpeace local groups here, as well as Frack Free Greater Manchester. I used
to help them too, so I’m not sure exactly which hat I’m speaking through today.
Well, here
we are in Blackpool again, where it all began. There are two annual traditions
that bring us up here. One is the Illuminations, and the other is Cuadrilla
removing it’s equipment from Preston New Road. And, like the playing of
Christmas music in the shops, it gets earlier every year.
So we’re
here for a sort of ‘almost victory’ celebration. Fracking clearing isn’t going
anywhere, but it’s not gone yet. Instead we have a zombie industry that’s not
doing anything, just hanging around. As a result, this could be the last Green
Monday at Preston New Road. In the past you’ve had George Monbiot and Kate
Rowarth, and today you’ve got me, which I think just shows how fracking has
just fizzled out and died up here. Cuadrilla now can’t even get anyone famous to
oppose them.
It’s been
quite a story how we got to here, but you already know it so I’m not going to
tell it you again. Instead I’m going to tell you the story of what happened
when the frackers came to Manchester.
Barton Moss
really is the edge of town. On one side is the great Manchester, Salford and
Stockport urban conglomeration. On the other it is countryside as far as
Warrington. Historically, Stephenson’s Rocket once ran along the nearby
railway. It has the first canal in Britain, the Bridgewater, and also the last,
the Manchester Ship Canal. In 2013 it became the site of test drilling by IGas.
Earlier in
the year direct action against fracking had started at Balcombe in Sussex. The
media lapped it up. The weather was good and the journalists could be back in
London for gin and tonics by sundown. Barton Moss was different matter. The
weather was, well, Manchester, and as far as the press were concerned, we were
off the edge of the Known World. Even the Guardian, who were sympathetic,
didn’t cover us as their only journalist north of Watford Gap was covering the
Ken Loach trial.
There was a
camp, there were protectors, and every working day for five months they stood
in front of the daily convoy and walked them in and out of the site, with the
occasional lock-on. And, of course, there were arrests, about two hundred of
them in all. Usually five people were arrested every day. No more, no less,
giving a new meaning to getting your ‘Five a Day’.
At first
these were for Obstruction of the Public Highway, until a judge ruled that
Barton Moss Road was a private road, and not a public highway.
After that
people were usually arrested for Aggravated Trespass. It’s a pretty catch-all
offense, but it does require people to be actually trespassing, and we were all
fairly sure that Barton Moss Road was a Public Footpath. There was a little bit
of doubt though, as about half way through the campaign someone nicked the
Public Footpath sign from the top of the road. We did get a look at the
suspects through. They were wearing dark blue trousers, high-viz jackets and
they loaded the sign into a white van with blue lights on the roof. If you see
anyone matching this description, please let me know.
But we were
not completely forgotten. The anti-fracking campaigners of Lancashire came to
support us. I think I met most of you down there before I met you up here. Thanks
to your support we organised what where the biggest environmental protests
Manchester had ever seen.
My role was
media coordinator. IGas were claiming the Protectors were disrupting local
people whilst the media was clearly showing local people disrupting Igas. After
a few weeks IGas pretty much gave up on that front and Greater Manchester
Police took over the PR campaign. By Christmas we were starting to get noticed
in the press, mainly thanks to Reclaim the Power, who had Father Christmas drop
a wind turbine blade at the gates. Greater Manchester Police then gave us
another huge publicity boost with Flaregate.
The flare
allegedly fired at a police helicopter. It missed the helicopter, it was also
missed by everyone in the camp, everyone at the airport, the cameras on the
M62, the cameras on the secure unit and the entire population of Irlam and
Cadishead. However, it wasn’t missed by the press, and after that a lot more of
my press releases got published.
I don’t know
what effect this had on the campaign here in Lancashire. You were all busy
lobbying your local counsellors to oppose this development here, but as you
were doing that inglorious work the politicians were see us on TV, listening to
us on the radio and reading about us in their papers. I don’t know what effect
it had on them, but it changed public opinion in Manchester from 43% of
Mancunians supported fracking, to 73% now opposing the process four months
later. When we voted for our first Greater Manchester Mayor in 2017 all four of
the main candidates: Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green and Conservative, opposed
fracking.
Well, the
Barton Moss campaign ended, we had a party, cleaned up the site and left. The
focus of opposition to fracking moved north. A year after IGAs left Manchester,
Lancashire became the first county council to reject a fracking application. It
wasn’t the end, unfortunately, but it was significant. It meant that Cuadrilla,
when they arrived, did not have a social license for what they were doing, and
they still don’t.
Opposition
to fracking always existed on two levels, the local and the global. It causes
localised pollution and globalise warming. Stopping fracking is about both local
democracy and global responsibility. Here in Lancashire it must seem that every
day is the same, but in the wider word things have changed. Since we drove IGas
out of Barton Moss, Greenpeace have driven Shell out of the Arctic. We’ve had
the Paris Conference and Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and the School
Strike for Climate. Fracking was always a toxic industry, but fossil fuels in
general are now a toxic brand. No New Oil has been a campaign slogan for a
while, but maybe, after the abject failure of fracking in Lancashire, there
really will be no new oil.
Fracking was
always the last gasp of the fossil fuel dinosaurs. Now extinction is a very
real possibility, and they know it. Few people in this country had heard of
fracking before the earthquakes in Lancashire in 2011, and after this year I
imagine very few people will hear about it again. Cuadrilla will be forgotten,
as they should be. But you people, the campaigners from Manchester, and
Lancashire, as well as those in Yorkshire, and Sussex and everywhere else, will
not be forgotten. Barton Moss was the ‘rise of the resistance’. Here was where
is reached its peak. Here is where you won. Here is where we said the final
‘frack off’. Well done.
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