Valentinesday at Sellafield

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday February 16, 2002 14:42 by Claudia - Friends of the Earth, Ireland foeeire at iol dot ie

Eyewitnessreport with Pictures of the protest at Sellafield where almost 200 people gathered to show their opposition to the MOX plant and the contamination of the Irish Sea.

Valentines day at Sellafield

At February 14 almost 200 protestors from Ireland made their way across to Cumbria. Three coaches came directly, a smaller group had been to Faslane in Scotland already.
For all of us it meant getting up at 3am after a very short night, as the different groups only met around nine pm the previous evening.
Two of our three coaches went to one of the access roads to the Sellafield plant, another one to a roundabout nearby. As both entries were blocked off shortly after 6am, the only way for the employees to get to work was through a remaining tiny road that soon proved to be unable to hold the traffic. Should ever anything serious happen at the plant the employees will not be able to get away. To provide sufficient access for 11.000 people working at the plant the road situation there would have to be changed dramatically. If there was proper access, we hadn't been able to obstruct as much as we did.
By 7.30 the blockade had created tailbacks of six or seven miles, three schools had to remain closed for the day as the teachers were unable to make their way to work, as well as signalling staff from the railway services which were disrupted.
Some of the protesters at the roundabout locked themselves together using chains inside plastic pipes once they got off the bus. At the same time the other group made sure nobody could enter or leave the plant by simply walking, hopping and standing on the road. One employee decided to ignore the people in front of her car and tried to drive through the demonstration. Three protesters ended up sitting or lying on the still moving vehicle, one man was slightly injured and the car slightly damaged. At least the driver was the only one showing such disrespectful and endangering behaviour towards us.
Once the police arrived the group started walking down the road slowly, stopping every once in a while and chanting "What do we want? No MOX! When do we want it? NOW!". First the police was quite rough but once we started moving they chilled out pretty much. They simply didn't have enough people there to keep the road free, whenever they managed to get the protesters off one little stretch of road, more people
Walked and danced around them, proving our "ain't no thing like the power of the people, 'cause the power of the people won't stop" chant to be true.
Once in front of the east gate the group split up another time, some people went right in front of the gate, others just had a bit of a break sitting on a wall in the sunshine and some others went on to the main gate. Because of this the police had to split their forces as well, five people sitting on a wall had a police car and four officers guarding them for almost an hour…
The main gate had been nicely blocked off by the police using big concrete blocks already, so there was not much to do for us but to sit around and decide what to do next.
In the meantime the police didn't seem to have any previous experience with people being locked on at the roundabout. They tried to cut through the pipe with a rusty hacksaw right above a protester's hand. After a lot of shouting and complaining they stopped such dangerous behaviour and called the fire brigade to deal with it.
By 9 am the seven activists using lock ons had been arrested, four others were arrested soon afterwards and all were brought to Workington police station.
As we heard about people having trouble at the roundabout, we tried to get there from the main gate where everything was quite anyways, but met with the group coming from there and most people from the east gate at a small roundabout in between.
Meeting up in this way was not necessarily organised or expected to happen, but it gave the police the idea we were better organised then themselves, as one policeman said.
It was a pity that there were not more people involved from England, as the issue affects a country where one out of three develops cancer even more than us. At Faslane most of the demonstrators didn't even know there was something supposed to happen and around lunchtime at least a car arrived with supporters from there.
At around lunchtime we were too worn out and tired to do much more and even the police approached us and asked could we not please go off and get some lunch as they were starving. So we sent off a minibus to collect the people who had been arrested and got onto the coaches. After we were told by the police that they would be released once we were leaving most of us thought that they were free once we all met again at a service station some distance away. Well, all but the people at Workington, who were told they would be released within twenty minutes at two o'clock but were held another few hours after that. All charges of obstruction were dropped. Otherwise we would have all gone to demand their immediate release.
In the end everybody arrived save back in Ireland who had left with us.
The protesters aimed at highlightening their opposition to the proposed MOX plant at Sellafield as well as the huge levels of radioactive waste that are being pumped into the Irish Sea every day.
Recently a High Court Judge ruled against a case made by Greenpeace that the English Government had wrongly disregarded the £470 million it costs to build the plant when deciding that the plant was economically justified under EU law (see Earthwatch # 55).
The biggest customer for the reprocessed spent fuel was Japan. The power plant supposed to be using the fuel has not been build yet and as the Japanese Government faces growing opposition it might never be build. It is clear by now that the plant will definitely not be build before 2005. The BNFL intended to sent their radioactive loads there a lot sooner.
According to Greenpeace there were calls for the Irish Government to step up pressure for Sellafield's closure after the site was receiving more shipments of radioactive waste.
Labour Party spokesperson Emmet Stagg said it would significantly increase the already unacceptable threat posed by Sellafield to the health and safety of the Irish people. He said the whole history of Sellafield had been characterised by accidents and cover-ups.

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