‘GREEN MONDAYS’
Monday 14 August, saw the official launch of a series of ‘Green Mondays’, as part of a peaceful campaign to bring a large number of protesters to Cuadrilla’s fracking site at Preston New Road in Lancashire. To help get it off to a flying start, former Green Party leader Natalie Bennett came over, with other supporters from Sheffield.
Natalie said:
“I’m disappointed to be having to make my third visit to the Preston New Road site. The public of Lancashire, indeed the UK public, have made it very clear that they do not want fracking. Lancashire County Council said no, the protectors on site, working day and night for months in the face of aggressive policing, have said fracking must not happen here, yet still Cuadrilla is throwing its shareholders’ money into a project that doesn’t have community consent.
“The Green Party has supported anti-fracking campaigns from the start, and the campaigns have been highly successful in preventing the start of an industry whose existence is indefensible on climate change, safety and wellbeing, and economic grounds. We, and the protectors, are also championing the alternatives – community-owned renewables and energy efficiency, which create business opportunities, jobs and energy security.”
This ‘Green Mondays’ venture follows on from the brilliantly-inventive and successful month-long Rolling Resistance protests organised by Reclaim The Power throughout July. The main idea behind ‘Green Mondays’ is to maintain the pressure on Cuadrilla’s fracking project which – as a result of the protests which have been taking place since January – is currently five months behind schedule. This has led to a fall in Cuadrilla’s share prices, and to increasing problems for them in obtaining further bank loans.
Although the idea of ‘Green Mondays’ initially began with discussions between some North West Green Party members – such as Anti-fracking Nana, Tina Rothery; and Green Lancashire County Councillor, Gina Dowding – the description ‘Green’ had, from the beginning, a really inclusive meaning, deliberately wide enough to include all those campaigning organisations, and individuals, concerned about the very dangerous impact of fracking on the local and global environments.
As a result, various NW Greenpeace and NW Friends of the Earth (FoE) groups became involved at a very early stage – with some of these groups having just began, independently, to discuss what they could do after Reclaim The Power’s efforts were due to end. As a result of this co-operative effort, environmental protesters, from the Fylde and across the NW, gathered at the fracking site on Monday.
Emily Heath, of North Lancashire Green Party, stated that:
“It’s really important to support this protest, to try to prevent fracking getting a foothold in England. Fracking has caused environmental devastation and misery in countries like the USA and Australia. There are bans on fracking in France, Germany and Ireland, and I want to see it banned in England too. We need to invest in renewable energy instead of extracting yet more fossil fuels.”
Gina Dowding (Green Lancashire County Councillor) said:
“Our voices have not been listened to, so it’s now time to take action with our bodies. Being at the site demonstrates our strength of feeling against this toxic industry, and reminds the company and the Government that the community will not roll over.”
As Dot Kelk of Central Lancashire FoE said:
Fracking – the unconventional and risky extraction of shale gas and oil – poses a serious threat to our world’s climate, and to local environments and communities. Catastrophic and abrupt climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity, and extreme weather events are already having an impact in the UK and around the world. To avoid the worst impacts of global warming, the world needs to stop burning fossil fuels as fast as possible.”
Liz Stanton of Preston Greenpeace said:
“Greenpeace are joining with other anti-fracking groups to try and stop Cuadrilla from fracking Lancashire. It has not brought employment to Lancashire, it won’t bring our energy prices down, but it will damage our environment. We need to look to the future and make sure our energy is clean. Renewable, clean energy has brought jobs to the northwest, it makes energy more affordable and it’s clean!”
Allan Todd, of Allerdale and Copeland Green Party, said:
“Apart from the many proven dangers of fracking, it’s worth stressing that Cuadrilla have already backtracked on two of the promises they made when they first applied for permission to frack in Lancashire.
“Firstly, although they originally claimed that fracked gas would result in lower gas prices for consumers, they now say fracking will have a ‘basically insignificant’ impact. Secondly, despite earlier promises of creating thousands of local jobs, it seems that the total number of new local jobs will be…11! Put that next to an internal government report in 2015 which concluded that agricultural and tourist businesses ‘that rely on clean air, land, water and/or a tranquil environment may suffer [job] losses’, and it becomes clear that fracking’s only benefit is to the dividend cheques paid out to shareholders.
“Given that Cuadrilla UK is just one of the many subsidiaries of Cuadrilla Resource Holdings, which is 45%-owned by an Australian-based company, and 45%-owned by a company based in the Cayman Islands (a notorious offshore tax haven), this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Such dirty-energy corporations always put their short-term profits before the wider interests of local communities and the global environment.”
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