Events

Demonstrations in London and Manchester, Saturday 4th September

Demonstration at City Airport, London - 11.45 am

Demonstration at  Manchester Airport, 5.15 pm

London City Airport and Manchester City Airport were the settings for a Day of Action aimed at achieving an end to domestic flights in the UK. 

First off at 11 o’clock in the morning was London City Airport where over 20% of flights are internal ones and there are plans to double the number of flights at the airport. Organised with the local anti-expansion group Fight The Flights around 50 people gathered outside the terminal building to hear a wide range of speakers; GLA members   Darren Johnson (Green Party) and Murad Qureshi (Labour), the CCC’s national co-ordinator Phil Thornhill, John Stewart (orchestrator of the successful Heathrow campaign) Josh Moos of Plane Stupid, plus a letter from Baroness Sarah Ludford (Lib Dem MEP) read out by Fight The Flights’ Anne-Marie Griffin who herself made a great speech about the locals’ plight against the expansion plans. Finally, Peter Deane from 'Food Not Fuel' spoke about how disastrous it would be to use biofuels for aviation.  

We then headed off to Euston station on a red open-top bus through the streets of London with banners saying “End Domestic Flights Now!” hanging off it and the top deck full of shouting protestors.

Agrofuel Demo at DECC
Wendesday 15th September, 5.00pm

“Stop subsidising agrofuels and deforestation” 

The demonstration was preceded
by a photo-op and handing in of 
5,000 signatures (collected by Lush
Cosmetics Stores) against agrofuel subsidies at 1.00 pm.

Our demonstration was at DECC, the government Department of Energy and Climate Change, because they are responsible for classifying 'agrofuels' as a 'renewable energy' and supporting the rapid increase in their use with "Renewable Obligation Certificates" . See above our spoof photo-op where Chris Huhne, (Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change) is handing a "Deforestation Certifcate" to W4B the company that intends to build an agrofuel power station at Portland, site of our National Demonstration against Agrofuels -  and also Bristol.

DECC staff leaving the building were leafleted - including Chris Huhne himself who had one pressed into his hand. And Deepak Rughani from Biofuelwatch, plus Peter Deane, Phil Thornhill and Maryla Hart briefly addressed the crowd.

We’ve made a short MP3 of the speeches which you can download here.
 
Following the demo at 7.00 pm we held a Public Meeting at SOAS   entitled “How we can stop ‘Agrofuels’ undermining the fight against climate change.”  After a brief introduction to the issue from Phil Thornhill, CCC Coordinator,  Andrew Butler from ‘NOPE’ (‘No Palm Oil Energy”) the local campaign group down on the Isle of Portland, filled us in on how the campaign against a proposed agrofuel power station down there had started and evolved, as well as recounting his own experiences encountering the impacts of agrofuels on indigenous people in Indonesia. Next Kenneth Richter from Friends of the Earth, who was just back from talking to anti-agrofuel campaigners from all over Africa in Ghana prduced some moving testimony to the human suffering caused by agrofuels there - including film footage of an interview with one of the people affected. Next Maryla Hart, on behalf of Biofuelwatch gave a rundown on current developements including the wheres and wherefores of the current rash of agrofuel energy power stations sweeping the country. 

The meeting concluded with a lively discussion. For more about 'agrofuels' see also our Biofuels page.

Saturday 25th September

Hundreds of protesters from the local community and from all around the country gathered on the Isle of Portland, Dorset, to protest against a proposed palm oil burning agrofuel  power station. Coachloads from London and Bristol and individuals from as far as Leeds, Aberdeen and Newport joined hundreds of local campaigners to march from Chesil Beach Car Park, along the seafront to the narrow street that leads to the entrance to Portland Dock, the site of the proposed plant. 

Here Andrew Butler from the local campaigning group 'NOPE' (No Palm Oil Energy') drew a symbolic 'line in the sand' against any further expansion of the use of agrofuels for energy.

The Campaign against Climate Change joined together with NOPE ( a very strong local campaigning group see http://nope.org.uk/ ), Biofuelwatch and Food not Fuel to jointly organise the protest.

Speeches were made outside the port, and a note of support read out from Poole MP Annette Brooke. Members of  'Seize the Day' played to the crowd and many campaigners gathered afterwards at St George's Hall on the island for food, workshops and more music from Seize the Day and a local band. See a report of the demo with more photos on the NOPE website here, and there is also a photo gallery on Demotix.

The protest was filmed by BBC South (see here) and had already been widely reported in the local press (see Dorset Echo article here) Meanwhile news also surfaced that Chris Huhne, following our small protest outside DECC (see below) at which we were able to directly confront him, had reported to the 'Green Lib Dems' at the Lib Dem party conference that he was getting his lawyers to investigate the level of subsidy given to developers of the Portland agrofuel power station. We desperately need to keep the pressure up but there are some signs that our protests are already having some impact on this crucial issue.