Judge backs wind turbine firm as Isle of Wight protests spread to second factory in row over green jobs
The owners of a wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight won a repossession order today in their attempt to end an occupation of the plant by workers protesting at planned job losses.
A judge at Newport county court granted the order after environmental activists staged a protest at a second wind turbine factory on the island as part of a campaign to save hundreds of jobs in the green energy sector.
A barrister for the original group of 11 protesting workers told the court the order had not been properly served, but the judge, Graham White, granted it.
A notice of eviction will now be sent informing the workers of when bailiffs will arrive. Typically a few days notice is given.
Peter Kruse, a spokesman for Vestas, suggested the eviction would not take place today. “We are in no hurry,” he said. “We are as patient as we have been all the way. We will remain patient optimists hoping for a peaceful solution in the interests of all the parties, particularly including the people inside.”
After the court hearing, a group of about 200 supporters marched to the plant on the St Cross industrial estate where they were greeted with cheers from the occupying workers on the balcony. Gathered outside the building they chanted: “We fight on.”
One of the workers inside spoke to the assembled crowd, calling for national days of action on Saturday and Wednesday when other workers in the country should down tools or hold a rally to support them.
“We want the protest to continue,” he said. “But we want it to remain peaceful. This place has a future and we shall not give up on that.”
Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT union, who was in court for today’s hearing, said the union would continue with its campaign to save the jobs. “The court has made its decision, but we will continue with our campaign and the right to work on green energy jobs,” he said.
Crow attacked both Vestas and the government, saying ministers had been “despicable” in failing even to meet the workers or the union to discuss the possibility of other work going to the factory.
The campaigners at the second protest occupied the roof of the Vestas Wind Systems factory in Cowes, vowing to stay there until the sacked Newport group were reinstated.
Three activists could be seen on the roof of the Cowes building, which faces the waterfront. A fourth protester appeared to be abseiling from the roof to attach a banner that read: “Vestas Workers – Solidarity in Occupation. Save Green Jobs.” He waved to ferry passengers in the harbour, who whistled back from the boat.
Speaking before the verdict, the Newport workers said their morale had been boosted by the sit-in at Cowes. Ian Terry, one of the 11, said: “It is good to know that others are willing to stand up and fight for green jobs.”
The Cowes factory was occupied at 4am by a Climate Camp group and a member of the RMT union. The protest was timed to coincide with Cowes week, the annual sailing regatta. The activists issued a statement saying tens of thousands of people were visiting the island for an event celebrating the natural power of wind.
“At the same time,” they said, “workers at Vestas are struggling to keep Britain’s only wind turbine blade manufacturer open. Factories in Cowes, Newport and Southampton are being closed with the loss of over 600 jobs, as well as many more in support industries.”
The group criticised Vestas for leaving employees “high and dry” and accused the company of paying “peanuts” in redundancy settlements and leaving workers with little hope of finding other jobs on the island.
One of the group said: “We are staying here until everyone is reinstated and the closure decision is reversed.”
Yesterday, climate change activists were arrested after gluing themselves together outside the headquarters of the Department of Energy and Climate Change in London in support of the sit-in workers. The protesters, who held up banners saying “Take back the wind power”, blockaded the main entrance to the building for several hours before they were detained.
The Trades Union Congress general secretary, Brendan Barber, urged Vestas to rethink its closure decision. He said: “Ed Miliband [the climate change secretary] has proved himself to be a champion of the green agenda and the drive to create new jobs. Now we are asking him to go the extra mile for the 600 workers and the production facility – the only one of its size in Britain – which is vital to building our low-carbon future. Everything must be done to look for positive alternatives.”
Is the Big Green Gathering another victim of the crackdown on dissent?
August 4, 2009Organisers of the long-running festival have reason to believe that an excuse was contrived to bankrupt them
Is it paranoia, or are they really out to get us? Most of the time it’s paranoia. Every week I’m approached by people whispering about vapour trails from planes being used to control our minds, free energy devices suppressed by oil companies or missile attacks on the twin towers. Sometimes, as we saw at the G20 protests on 1 April or at climate camp last year, they are out to get us. The policing of these events shows that some of the UK’s public authorities really do regard political activism as a threat that must be contained or eliminated.
So what do you make of this story? Right now the last stragglers should have been packing up their tents at the end of the Big Green Gathering. It’s a festival in Somerset that attracts about 20,000 people to listen to music, plan protests and raise money for green causes. It has been running since 1994 and there has never been any significant trouble.
But this year the gathering didn’t happen. On Friday 24 July, five days before the festival was due to open, the district council applied to the high court for an injunction against it. If they failed to abide by the injunction, the directors of the Big Green Gathering could have their assets seized and be fined or sent to prison.
The council’s witness statement contained an impossible bind. It maintained that “the requisite consents cannot at this late stage be granted”, then went on to explain that the order “contains a proviso which will permit this event to run” – as long as the gathering obtains the requisite consents. No one could blame the organisers for accepting defeat, handing back their licence and cancelling the festival. The Big Green Gathering will now go bankrupt. It’s unlikely ever to happen again. Cock-up or conspiracy?
As any old hippy will tell you, festivals aren’t what they used to be. Gone are the days when you could announce a happening, call up a few mates with drums and guitars, and put the word out that something groovy and free was about to kick off. In these buttoned-down times, it would be treated like an al-Qaida training camp. Today, you must apply for a licence and spend months of your life filling in forms and liaising with the various responsible authorities. There are good reasons for this: it ensures that no one is crushed to death and that local people aren’t harried by intolerable noise and disruption. There are also bad reasons: the controlling, snooping, curtain-twitching state tendencies which insist that all spontaneity be planned six months in advance, that no one can ever take her top off or smoke homegrown weed or get a little bit outrageous – even within a festival site – for fear of offending some tight-arsed busybody in desperate need of a life.
The organisers applied for their licence in February, and spent the intervening months trying to meet the conditions. These included 450 security guards, a steel perimeter fence and watchtowers, and free wristbands for 12 undercover police officers, who could move through the crowds ensuring that no one was enjoying themselves too much. The site would have more of the ambience of a prison camp than a hippy festival, but at least it would conform to regulations.
The gathering submitted a 100-page management plan. On 30 June the various authorities (police, fire, environmental heath, county council and the rest) said they were satisfied with the arrangements. The district council gave the festival a licence. But in July the security company suddenly demanded that the gathering pay the whole fee up front. The festival refused and hired another company, which would take some of the money after the event.
So there was a cock-up. But it doesn’t wholly explain what happened next. On 23 July, the organisers were suddenly confronted with a list of demands that they believed they had already met. The Devon and Somerset fire brigade demanded to know that the company hired by the festival, Midland Fire Services, had “an acceptable level of competency”. As Midland Fire Services has been employed by the gathering for several years without complaint, and as it does the same job for the Royal Tattoo, Womad, the Reading and Leeds festivals and other public events, the organisers couldn’t understand why, at the 11th hour, its competence was suddenly being challenged. The fire brigade hasn’t been able to answer my questions.
But the real sticking point was the road closure order. To keep its licence, the festival would need an order from Somerset county council to shut the local roads to any traffic except the gathering’s. The organisers thought it was a formality: there had never been a problem before. Out of the blue on Friday 24 July, the county council told the gathering that its maps were incomplete, and that its signs did not conform to regulations and some of them “are located within North Somerset and therefore we cannot approve their use”.
The organisers responded that the maps and signs are the same ones they had used in previous years, since when the regulations haven’t changed, and that the county council claims jurisdiction over the whole of Somerset, including the north. It approved the same signs in the same places in 2006 and 2007. But – or so it seemed – the county council would not budge. The application the district council sent to the courts insisted no road closure order had been granted. Strangely, however, the only authority that did not submit a witness statement was Somerset county council.
So the organisers surrendered the licence, cancelled the festival, and set about the sorry task of clearing the site. But as they were doing so, an odd thing happened. They found two notices, one on a fence post, another in a hedge. I have photos of them. They are issued by Somerset county council and dated 20 July 2009. They announce the closure of the roads leading to the festival.
So was a road closure order issued or not? Somerset county council sent me a response but didn’t answer my question about whether or not an order had been granted. The county council, the district council, and Avon and Somerset police insist they have done everything to facilitate the gathering, but that the organisers hadn’t got their act together.
The organisers allege a deliberate attempt to bankrupt the Big Green Gathering: they say that the authorities left their new objections until the last minute. This meant that they carried on spending right up to the eve of the festival, and that by then it was too late to get legal advice and mount a challenge. They point out that if the road closure order had, in reality, been issued, the main sticking point was a fake one: the authorities had manufactured an excuse to close them down.
Are they being paranoid? I don’t know. But it looks pretty odd to me.