Over the past month we have travelled from the Mondragon Cooperative of Arrasate, in the Basque Country, and then down to Malaga, southern Spain where greenhouses are so prevalent they can be clearly seen from space. We then made our way to Scotland for Climate Camp and a confrontation with Greenhouse Feudalism.
After arriving from the super-hot and super-commercial neoliberal wasteland of southern, coastal Spain, we flew to London to stay with a good friend from UK Indymedia.
After one day of wandering around Portobello Road, we were on a National Express bus (we couldn’t afford a train) to Edinburgh, and then a local train to Lanark, where we got a lift after buying food, camping supplies, and wellies for the mud and rain.
When we arrived at Mainshill, we joined the Mainshill Solidarity Camp, on the rise of one side of the Mainshill, and pitched our tent near a line of sycamore trees that hosted tree-houses high in their branches and defensive tunnels beneath. The trees provided us with much needed protection from the prevailing wind and the rain. Later the tree-houses and tunnels were the stage for some media stunts, photos published in a few national newspapers.
When we set-up our 2 person tent, in the rain, with our Indymedia friend nearby, we were the only ones in the field, and proudly surveyed the grassy slope in front of us, and the two open-cast mines across the road from us, as if we weren’t mere trespassers, but as if we owned the joint.
Over the next two weeks we watched the full Scottish Camp for Climate Action lifecycle, and the number of tents around us multiplied. The Scottish Camp for Climate Action 2009 was hosted by the Mainshill Solidarity Camp, a resistance group which has occupied the proposed site of a new opencast mine for about 2 months.
The land is owned by Lord Home, who is not one of Grist’s green royals. In my view, it’s more of a case of a felonous Lord who is liable for forfeiture of his titles, lands and freedom. His dealings with Scottish Coal, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and politicians of all flavours — Labour, Scottish National, and Conservatives — is more a kind of Greenhouse Feudalism.
The 10-day event was very interesting as there were a number of groups with overlapping aims, with strategic and tactical differences. Sometimes these differences created such tension that there were almost breaks. However, we managed to maintain cooperation and the event was a success.
It wasn’t possible to use Climate Change as a filter, or simplify the problem via a kind of carbon rationalism. i.e. “how much emissions, by whom, when, how do we stop it?”. The Mainshill Solidarity Camp, which is a longer term project than the 2009 Scottish Climate Camp, aims to continue to physically resist the opencast mine for as long as possible, and these individuals work in conjunction with the local community.
The context of the campaign, become the Greenhouse Feudalism, the local equivalent of the Australian Greenhouse Mafia. The corrupt planning process, the distorted politics, the money, and most of all, the immediate negative health effects of opencast mining. See the Coal Health Study BLOG.
Kirstie made national press with the Coal Health Study, Sunday Herald “A climate of fear“. A new edition of the study is being prepared under the auspices of local organisations. The Coal Health Study scope is being expanded, and we are making important international connections.
