Following a court injunction earlier this month which banned direct action against fracking at Cuadrilla's Preston New Road site in Lancashire*, this morning six protesters locked-on to devices outside the compound to highlight what they called 'an abuse of the law'...
"We are using our enshrined-in-law human rights to protest, to challenge a polluting industry that holds no social license in our community" said a spokesperson for the group "This industry has gone to extreme and expensive lengths to manipulate the law, via a court injunction, to prevent protest in meaningful forms. We're here today to challenge that. Fracking has no residential support within the UK, with the government pushing it upon communities who have already said 'No'.
"Why should a national government overrule local governments, to force this industry on communities?" they asked "Why has the law been misused for the benefit of wealthy corporations? There has to be a strong line drawn under such abuses of law and democracy: this today, is our line."
Meanwhile, this afternoon, the Tory Government gave Cuadrilla a permit to begin fracking at the site, the first since a new regulatory regime was introduced. Fracking is expected to start at the end of August or early September. The decision has been met with derision by campaigners...
"Frack Free Lancashire are saddened that the Secretary of State has granted permission for Cuadrilla to frack regardless of the opposition of local councils, MPs and population" the group states "They have now proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that localism is a sham.
"The irony of allowing this water-intensive industry to go ahead at exactly the moment when the country is in the grip of the worst drought for forty years and the area in which Cuadrilla will be fracking has been hit with a hosepipe ban, will be lost on nobody" it adds.
"The fact that they are also proposing to kill off small-scale renewable investment by removing the feed-in tariffs at the same time as enabling fracking is further evidence that this Government's energy policy is hopelessly out-of-step with the real world and the issues that we all face as a result of imminent climate change."
* See also previous Salford Star article – Judge Bans Anti-Fracking Direct Action At Cuadrilla Site – click here
Photo shows this morning's lock-on
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