How We Ended Fracking In The UK

Preese Hall

On April Fools Day 2011 an earthquake hit east Lancashire. Registering 2.3 on the Richter scale, it caused traffic lights to topple and a railway bridge to crack. The police station in Blackpool shook, even as worried homeowners rang in thinking they were being burgled. 

The cause of the quake was pressure testing at a fracking well at Preese Hall, Lancashire. The government immediately announced a two-year moratorium, and the people of Britain learnt a new word. Cuadrilla Resources, the company concerned, said that this was nothing to worry about. What they didn't reveal at the time was that the quake had fractured their drill. The moratorium was essentially superfluous. They wouldn't be doing any drilling again at Preese Hall, or anywhere else, for a while. 

For most people, even most environmental activists, this was the first they had heard of fracking. Before then it had been something on the periphery of our awareness. Most serious ecologists were aware that the dash for gas, which had allowed Mrs Thatcher to close the coal mines, and BP to announce they were the good guys now, was not a good thing. It had slightly reduced carbon dioxide emissions, but at the cost of a new generation of fossil fuel infrastructure that would keep last thirty years or more. That fracking was something more than a new type of gas was probably lost on most of us at that time.

Balcombe

If the Lancashire quakes woke a lot of people up to the issue, it was events in West Sussex in the summer of 2013 that put fracking firmly in the centre of protest in the UK. Successful protests require three factors: a cause, protesters and a location. The Lancashire earthquakes had moved fracking up the list of causes, but this was not the only concerns with fracking. This was a new fossil fuel, and extracting it contaminated the air and the groundwater. 50 ton lorries would industrialise quiet English villages. Fracking was a cause that ticked a lot of boxes

Protesters, though, aren't as easy to find as you think. There would always be locals who don't want it in their back yard, but they would require help to make their voices heard. Bigger green groups could send out teams to do stunts, but people prepared to camp out 24 hours a day, seven days a week to stop something are pretty rare. However, barely a year before the test rig arrived in Balcombe in July 2013, the Occupy London protests had come to an end, and some of those people still wanted to change the world. 

Environmental campaigns can either target areas of local beauty, or issues of global importance. Fracking, did both. Also, unlike the big fossil fuel projects campaigners were usually up against, which were usually huge opencast mines or off-shore drilling operations, fracking took place at small sites close to where people lived. Almost anyone in the UK would be able to drive to a fracking site, and enough people would be able to walk to one to cause a problem. 

With the three legs of the protest in place, the first anti-fracking direct action in the UK kicked off at Balcome, West Sussex, in July 2013. Balcombe had everything the media wanted: sunshine, weird people, lots of action, and, best of all, it was close enough to London for the journos to be back for evening drinks at the club. And then, for good measure, the police accidentally arrested Caroline Lucas, the Green Party's only MP.

The industry's take was that the protests had only delayed the test drilling by five days. This may even be true, but it missed the point. Balcombe had made fracking the sexiest eco-protest in the country. For better or worse, activists forget about roads and airports and made their way to Balcombe. 

Opinion pollsters started talking about the 'Balcombe bounce. Up until then the number of people who had an opinion on fracking was too low for it to be polled, but now three quarters of the public had an opinion. Fracking was now on everyone's radar, not just the ecologists. That public opinion was pretty evenly split on the issue, with 40% opposed, 40% in favour and the rest undecided. The war wasn't won, but those were figure the ecologists could work with.

Once people opened their eyes to fracking, it was clear what a threat it was. Applications to explore for shale gas were everywhere. Anti-fracking groups were also popping up all over the place to oppose them, but the situation was confusing. There was a real danger of energy being scattered too widely to be effective.

Lancashire

The plan of the NGOs, as far as there was one, was to focus on one county council and get them to reject fracking as a first step. There were several possibilities for this, but in the end Lancashire was the target. Not only were Cuadrilla more advanced in their plans, but they were also much more politically connected. John Browne, the former BP boss, now Lord Browne, was the chair of Cuadrilla and owned 30% of the company. He had a job in the Cabinet office, from which he made a series of appointments to government departments. 

The government was clearly prepared to spend political capital on fracking. When Greenpeace got thousands of people to refuse to allow fracking under their homes the government responded by changing the law. The government was also clearly taking its instructions from the industry. When it sent out press releases about the number of jobs fracking would produce it didn't use the estimates of its own civil service, but the higher figure emailed in by the UK On Shore Operators Group. 

The industry was quite aware of the risk from protest. In 2010 a documentary had come out about fracking in the USA called Gaslands. It concentrated almost exclusively on the risk of water contamination, but had alerted people to an industry that engulfed areas of the USA. Also, just before Balcombe, there had been a series of protests in Romania about fracking. The global risk assessment company Control Risks had produced a report on anti-fracking protests, and had assessed the level of protest in the UK as 'significant'. It suggested a four point strategy to deal with this: 'acknowledge grievances', 'engage community', 'reduce impacts' and 'create more winners'. This would be used when the next anti-fracking protest happened. 

Barton Moss

Barton Moss, on the edge of Greater Manchester, was where the company IGas planned to test drill in November 2013. The travelling army of direct action protesters arrived and set up camp along Barton Moss Road. But Barton Moss wasn't Balcombe. It was wet, it was winter, and it was on the fringe of a northern city. The press wasn't really interested. The Guardian might have been, but there was the Ken Loach trial going on, and they only had one journalist north of Watford Gap. 

However, whilst the protests at Barton Moss were not national news, they were local news, both on TV and in the papers. What's more, they were local news across the whole of the northwest, including Lancashire. This meant that when the local councillors who were to vote on Cuadrilla's application to frack more sites sat down to their pie and mash, they saw Barton Moss on the TV.

IGas gave up on issuing press releases, and so it was up to the police to put out the press releases. This followed the usual playbook of well-meaning locals and violent outside agitators. The police themselves felt they lost this contest. The government too lent a hand. David Cameron didn't come to Manchester, but he went to a site in Lincolnshire and announced 'gold standard regulation' and 'more winners' in the form of a money for local authorities who frack. Lord Browne meanwhile appeared to acknowledge mistakes the USA. IGas had been promising bungs for local sports clubs, so the four point plan was going well. Except that it wasn't. The protests continued and local support was growing. 

The actual job of dealing with the protectors, as the activists styled themselves, fell to the police, who were not above dirty tricks. The police had a number of legal powers they could use against the activists, but they were only effective on the Public Highway or private land. Barton Moss Road was a public footpath and a private road. The police solution to the public footpath was to steal the sign. The solution to the private road was to pretend it was a public highway and arrest people anyway. They would then be released on pre-charge bail and if they went back to Barton Moss they'd be arrested again for breach of bail. The result of all this was over 200 arrests, almost all of whom would subsequently be acquitted. 

A more serious incident occurred just after New Year. The police claimed a flare had been fired at their helicopter as it came in to land at nearby Manchester City Airport. Nobody in the camp saw this, neither did any of the cameras at the airport, on the M62 or in the nearby Barton Moss Young Offenders Unit. Forty-eight hours later the police descended on the camp and turned it upside down. 

After that, though, it was hard to keep the protests out of the news. Public opinion in Manchester changed. Support for fracking still remained high, but the 'don't knows' gradually came off the fence on the side of the againsts. Rallies at the site increased in size, and then moved to the city centre. One held in March 2014 became the largest anti-fracking rally so far in the UK. It didn't make the national news, but was reported in the local news of every town and village at risk of being fracked. By the time IGas packed up and left, it was clear they were not wanted. One measure of the campaign's success was that when the first election for mayor of Greater Manchester was held in 2016 none of the major candidates, not even the Tory, were in favour of fracking. The winner, Labour's Andy Burnham, declared he would do all he could to stop IGas coming back. 

Campaigners from Frack Free Lancashire were regular visitors to Barton Moss. Up until then, they had fought its battles in village halls and borough councils. Now the activists from Lancashire had a bigger field to play on. They had their first experience of direct action, of speaking at large rallies talking to the global media.

The timing of the Barton Moss protests also worked out perfectly for them. No sooner had the protectors cleared away their camp, leaving Barton Moss Road cleaner than it had been before the campaign, than Lancashire County Council started hearing Cuadrilla's applications to frack Preston New Road and Roseacre in Lancashire. 

The decision was postponed repeatedly, and the councillors were threatened with personal financial liability if Cuadrilla were refused. But in the end the council rejected both applications. Everyone knew Cuadrilla would appeal, and that the final decision would be made by the government, who were hardly neutral. However, it was a huge victory for Frack Free Lancashire, and a potential delay of years for Cuadrilla.

Ryedale 

With Lancashire stalled, the focus of the campaign moved across the Pennines to the North Riding of Yorkshire, where Third Energy wanted to drill in the little village of Ryedale. The activists in Ryedale seemingly had the odds against them. A Conservative majority in the local council meant Third Energy had political support. The drilling would take place on an existing industrial site, and the gas would be piped away, which reduced the tactical options. 

However, in the end the campaign in Ryedale was the best organised anti-fracking campaign in the UK. It helped that the Vale of Pickering was drop dead gorgeous, and that the huge fracking lorries looked completely out of place in the little village with its tiny roads. However, most of the praise needs to go to the activists themselves. They ran a great campaign. They used the press well, they were creative in their actions, they worked very hard to keep tensions between the camp and the locals to a minimum, and they deservedly won.

How they won is still not completely clear, but it appears the government decided it was not going to spend any more political capital on fracking Yorkshire. Third Energy were bankrupt, but then none of the companies prospecting for shale gas in the UK were minted. These operations were loss leaders, and if fracked gold was struck they'd sell up to the big players. Then, once the place had been fracked out, they'd declare themselves bankrupt and pass the clean-up cost on to the government. Everyone knew that was how it worked. So, it was a bit of a surprise when, in January 2018, the government announced it would 'review' Third Energy's finances before giving them the go ahead. It was an oblique way of saying 'no', that stopped the government admitting it had made a U-turn. A major factor in this decision appears to have been a parallel campaign against Barclays bank, Third Energy's main funders. Barclays had fossil fuel investments all over the world, but fracking, it seems, was just too toxic for them.

Everywhere

But, of course, fracking wasn't just a risk to a couple of places in the north of England. On a shale gas map of the UK most of England ended up painted red, including a huge crescent of affluent Tory shires from the Lincolnshire to Kent. True, when the licenses were issues, they were heavily skewed towards the Labour voting north, but nobody could seriously doubt that if the industry got going, they wouldn't be coming to the home counties at some point.

Other players were also hovering on the fringe. Ineos, the UK's largest private company, bought up a lot of second-hand plant from Poland and announced it was interested in shale gas, not to sell, but to use in its chemical industries. Square in their sights was Eckington, in Derbyshire.

However, people weren't taking this lying down. Up and down the country anti-fracking groups were springing up. Some were little more than a social media page, but others, like Eckington Against Fracking, were large and well organised enough to not need outside help. Opposing fracking may have only been 'local news', but it was local news in most of the country.

What was more, direct action took place wherever, and whenever, it could. From Daneshill in Nottinghamshire, to Horse Hill in Surrey, the frackers turned up and found themselves facing slow walks and lock-ons. A, supposedly secret, meeting of the shale gas industry at Manchester Airport found itself the centre of a surpise protest. At Upton, Cheshire, the anti-frackers got onto the site first and there was an old-fashioned eviction of a defended camp which included towers and tunnels. No sooner had the police cleared the last protector, at the tax payers expense, than IGas said they weren't interested any more. The fracking revolution appeared to be running into the sand.

Preston New Road

And so the focus moved back to Lancashire. The government gave Cuadrilla the go ahead to frack at Preston New Road in October 2016, but deferred the Roseacre decision. Allegedly, this was at the request of the company, who didn't have the resources to do both at once. Cuadrilla evidently thought PNR, which was on a main road, would be an easier proposition than the little village of Roseacre. The next month Bianca Jagger led the largest anti-fracking march yet, at least 2000 people, through the streets of Manchester. 

Work started on the construction of their drill site in January 2017, and so did the protests. At first there was a 'gentleman's agreement' that the protesters would stand in front of each lorry for exactly fifteen minutes, but pretty quickly this broke down and it was a free for all. Lancashire police upped their presence. They called in help from other forces, when some of the out of town coppers behaved badly they went back to keeping it in house. Soon it was costing them £450,000 a month.

Work continued, even as fracking died in Ryedale and elsewhere. By the end of 2018 Cuadrilla were ready to start fracking. By this time the PNR site had seen virtually every type of direct action possible. There had been slow walks and lorry surfing, lock-ons and silent protest from big green groups, little green groups and locals. Cuadrilla managed to keep going through all this and finally they fired up their pumps and pressurised their well. The result was an earth tremor. Not as big as 2011, but big enough to shut them down. They tried again, but once more the earth moved. By Christmas they'd taken their rig down and removed the pumps.

Then in February 2019, as Theresa May cleared the decks for a Brexit general election, the government turned down Cuadrilla's application to frack Roseacre. At about the same time it told the company it would not be relaxing the rules on earth tremors that had stopped the drilling before Christmas. The tide had turned against the frackers. Cuadrillla's equipment returned to the site, but once again the ground shook and they had to stop. Boris Johnson became the Prime Minister the government announced a moratorium on fracking. Then, last week, UK Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said what everyone suspected: fracking was over. 

Frack Off

And so, like the government's road building program in the nineties, and GM crops in the noughties, fracking had been defeated by a combination of lobbying and direct action, carried out both nationally and locally. It is a significant victory, and one everyone involved should be very proud of. Fossil fuel projects are at their most vulnerable when they are in their infancy, and we were right to take the opportunity when it was offered. Compared to other fossil fuels, fracking was always vulnerable. Technically, it was always going to be a challenge in the UK. Financially, it never looked secure. Politically, the gas was in exactly the wrong place. 

The campaign against fracking brought together a wide variety of disparate people. Residents of leafy villages joined up with former Occupy protesters. Big green groups worked with grass roots campaigners. Direct action people worked with political lobbyists. Some of the feuds were epic, but on the whole the coalition held together well enough to win.  

But this was no easy victory. The political influence of the fracking industry, especially Cuadrilla was huge; far out of proportion to the size of the industry. As a result the government was prepared to do incredible things to please the industry, including over-riding local democracy and changing the law. Their PR campaign, inspired by the Control Risks report, was sophisticated. Almost the entire tabloid press parroted the industry line, and even supposedly serious papers like the Telegraph indulged in tabloid style attacks on activists. 

Ultimately, this was a political campaign. Every time the government changed the law, overruled a local planning decision or appeared in a photo call with the industry they expended political capital. The activists made the cost of fracking so high that in the end the government was unwilling to pay it. For the money men the uncertain political support made the industry look like a bad risk. The result was that a new fossil fuel was going to stay in the ground. It's not the end of the war, but it's a significant battle won.