Oli

In December 2011, South Lanarkshire council approved Scottish Coal’s proposal for a huge open-cast coal mine near the village of Glespin.

This was the nineteenth open-cast-related consent they had given, but they took this particular decision with no consultation whatsoever. Indeed the community were not even informed about it at the time.

Residents have an ongoing…

The Douglas Valley hosted the Earth First! Winter Moot at the end of February. People from across Scotland and the UK piled into the Glespin community hall to strategise, debate and plan.

Two events highlighted the importance of centring things like Earth First! gatherings in areas of community struggle.

On the Saturday, people from the local community shared their experiences of living next to opencast mines.

The anger and passion was both chilling and…

In mid-March, activists at the Happendon Wood Action Camp disrupted the South Lanarkshire council planning committee meeting that gave approval to Scottish Coal’s plans to develop Happendon Wood for opencast coal mining.

On 8 March, as the planning committee convened to rubber-stamp the decision, activists set off two stink bombs to show just how much the council stinks. Outside, activists briefly occupied part of the council HQ’s roof, and unfurled a banner reading “South Lanarkshire…

Over the past couple of months THWAC (The Happendon Wood Action Camp) has been a hive of activity, with direct action and community resistance taking place all over the Douglas Valley in South Lanarkshire and beyond.

In November the camp hosted its second gathering and on Monday 8 November, 11 activists entered Mainshill Opencast Coal Site, stopping work on site for an hour by jumping on dumper trucks and blocking the haulage road.

Two days later, an early morning…

The forced eviction of the Mainshill Solidarity Camp ended on 29 January, with over 70 people resisting the eviction, 45 arrests and a huge number of defences that kept the National Eviction Team busy for five days. At the same time digger-diving shut down the nearby Ravenstruther coal terminal for the third time in a year.

Mainshill Solidarity Camp was set up in June 2009, acting with local groups against proposed open-cast mining and its detrimental effects on public health. All…