protest

More awesomeness from Ratcliffe-on-Soar: the police have released some helicopter footage showing people getting through the fences.

You'll love the bit, a few minutes in, where they complain of being "overrun at gate 3". Too bloody right: great job everyone.

Source: Flickr

There are less than three weeks to go until our day of action! Just imagine… it’s the morning of Saturday 17th October. You receive a message telling you to move into position at the south side of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. The helicopter blades cut through the noise of the cars zipping up and down the M1. Your mission is clear and you’re ready to swoop.

Presented by the Camp for Climate Action, Plane Stupid, Rising Tide and Climate Rush, the swoop will see thousands of concerned individuals converging and taking over E.ON’s biggest coal fired power station.

Read the information below carefully, as it contains important planning details that aim to make the swoop the huge success it needs to be. People are being urged to arrive the night before (Friday 16th) if at all possible, where there will be an info stall at Nottingham station (6pm-9pm) directing people to a pre-action meet up point, followed by places to crash.

Bloc party

We can now announce the four blocs! Whether you want to highlight a solution or expose a problem, sign up to receive text alerts and details of your mission on the day.

Take back the power
Mission: Get to the control room and take back the power!

While the workers receive pitiful pay rises, the bosses of plants like Ratcliffe are raking in record profits. It’s time to kick start a just transition to a clean energy world by building the real solutions to climate change.

Let’s demonstrate that we can’t rely on Governments or corporations or anyone else to sort out the mess we’re in; it’s up to us to be the change we need. Join the take back the power bloc and aim for the control room to hit that big red ‘off’ switch.

Footsteps to the future
Mission: Get to the main gate and create your vision of a better future!

A bloc for the young, old and all in between to create a vision for a future beyond fossil fuels. Efficient and renewable, this bloc will be a space to show the solutions. From bike powered sound systems to solar showers, come, conceive and create.

This Bloc will be meeting at 10am on Saturday 17th at Nottingham train station to travel en masse to the power station. (However, fear not, if you are up for one of the other Blocs there will be just as clear ways to get involved on the day distributed via the text messaging system).

False solutions
Mission: Get to the coal pile and expose the false solutions!

Coal is not the answer! The only real solution to climate change is to stop burning the fossil fuels that are causing it! Let’s expose the greenwash and technofixes. Come armed with green paint! Or how about a net to capture and store some coal?! Whatever your tools and methods, decommission that coal!

Capitalism is crisis
Mission: Get anywhere in or around the power station and choose your own adventure! This is the decentralised option.

Through the fences; up the chimney; in the water. You’ve got your own ideas about making this a spectacular action. Do what you can and how you want. The economic and climate crises are linked. Capitalism is a root cause of climate change and cannot be the solution!

Every journey starts with one step, grasshopper

You have two options for how to begin your mission:

Looking for people to swoop with?

Make your way to Nottingham station between 6 and 11pm on Friday 16th October. There’ll be someone there to meet you, introduce you to fellow swoopers and direct you to accommodation if you need it. But please email info@thegreatclimateswoop.org if you will need a place to sleep. Make sure you’re ready to go at 10am on Saturday.

In an affinity group already?

That’s great! Make sure you’re in the Nottingham area at 10am on Saturday 17th October. If you need or want to get there the night before let us know if you’ll need a place to stay, but the more you can sort out for yourself the better!

SWOOOOOOOOOOP!

Whether you’ve arrived the night before or on in the morning, you’ll receive a text message with details of the next part of your mission.

Then be prepared to swoop on the power station at 1pm!

All the Spiked-baiting earlier today got me thinking (and not about revisionist interpretations of Marx): where has their front group, Modern Movement, disappeared to? Earlier this year anti-expansion campaigners were terrified at the prospect of the Living Marxism cult's latest offering: a bunch of ex-RCP types demanding we all keep flying lest it stop progress.

For those of you who didn't get the memo, Modern Movement, Spiked and the Institute of Ideas are all part of the amorphous Living Marxism network. LM, which itself spun out of the Revolutionary Communist Party, is built around the cult of Frank Furedi, a radically revisionist Marxist humanist who thinks that progress = unalloyed goodness and that anything which stops progress (like toning down the number of flights we take) is part of a Culture of Fear designed to keep us all in check.

Things which go against progress include: telling people about Swine flu, the environment, debating the merits of GM food, Plane Stupid and labour rights (except when they don't - LM/RCP types are nothing if not fluid in their thinking). Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked, really really dislikes us, and goes out of his way to invent new angles on the same, tired old story: greens are anti-progress and anti-fun (and a bit posh). It's like the only thing Furedi and his clan learnt from Marxism was to take tractor production as the sole measure of happiness.

For a while I thought that MM might have flown to Ireland to support the Thomas Cook workers, given that we've been down at Vestas and the Spiked/MM/LM/RCP lot seem to think that supporting green jobs meant opposing workers in high-carbon industries. This idea of a just transition is why the Workers' Climate Action movement has been helping everyone suffering from climate and labour issues, including the workers at the Visteon car plant and Lindsey oil refinery (workers who should, by MM's analysis, be our uber enermy, but of course, aren't) while MM have contributed sod all except some pithy text on an online magazine no one reads.

Then I stumbled upon a lead, which might indicate where Modern Movement have gone. The above video, posted on Myspace, suggests that Suzy Dean and others have reformed as an American thrash-rock band - a move I can only describe as progress. I can’t help but feel I’d feel more warmly towards them if they’d been doing this outside parliament. After all, who can forget Voltaire's famous saying: "I may not agree with what you say, but I will die to defend your right to say it loudly and angrily through the medium of thrash-rock. Dude."

P.S.: Joy of joys, I've just been handed a delightful video by another LM/RCP/IoI front, Worldbytes. Worried about the rainforests being destroyed? Chill out man, it's progress, says a very stoned Jay Kaplinsky.

Source: Flickr

Last night we saw what may turn out to be one of the crucial moments in the fight against climate change. Faced with closure and the loss of over 600 jobs, 25 workers from Britain’s only wind turbine factory occupied their workplace and vowed to remain in place until the government nationalises the factory.

The Government's reaction perfectly symbolises their refusal to take the environment or labour complaints seriously. Just days after Miliband and Brown promised to create a million green jobs comes an opportunity to demonstrate how serious they are. But instead of engaging in debate they sent in waves of riot cops while putting out press comments that lament the closure of the factory but do sweet f.a. about it.

The Vestas workers are spot on: the factory should be nationalised and turned into an icon of green employment. Don't forget that we just splashed out £400 billion on the bankers who are up to their old tricks again. Labour may bleat about the downturn, but in the real world this wind turbine factory is being closed and they are sitting on their hands. Why? Because saving jobs and preventing climate change are not the government’s priorities, no matter how much they talk about it.

That's what makes this occupation so important: workers coming together to solve their own problems. This country has a history of industrial disobedience and workers’ solidarity. Thatcher tried her hardest to bury this radicalism, but we've seen it returning to our factories and work-places as layoffs continue and bailouts go to those who can most afford a few months out of work (such as the majority of MPs, who are about to break for summer).

People are angry, taking action and getting results. Wildcat strikes in support of the Lindsey Oil Refinery got those workers re-employed. BA workers have firmly rejected their boss's suggestion that they might like to go without pay for a while, protesting outside the AGM and refusing to cave. With Ryanair cutting its Stansted flights by 40% (and already operating with as few staff as possible), how long will it be before we see workers taking over an airport to protest again job losses?

The environmental movement has started to engage in debate about what a low-carbon economy might look like, and - more crucially - how we get there. The Vestas occupation is the perfect tinderbox to ignite that discussion, take it out of the hands of Government and business and let us have a say in what our future will look like.