{"id":356,"date":"2018-10-24T11:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-10-24T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/global\/?p=356"},"modified":"2018-10-28T17:42:09","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T17:42:09","slug":"fracking-democracy-criminalising-dissent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/global\/2018\/10\/24\/fracking-democracy-criminalising-dissent\/","title":{"rendered":"Fracking democracy, criminalising dissent"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This article by Andrea Brock, Dr. Amber Huff, Dr. Judith Verweijen, Professor Jan Selby, Professor\u00a0David Ockwell, and Professor Peter Newell of the University of Sussex was originally published in ‘The Ecologist’<\/a>\u00a0on 18 October, 2018.\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The anti-fracking victory yesterday should not distract from disturbing trends in the criminalisation of dissent.<\/h2>\n

Three anti-fracking protesters –\u00a0Simon Blevins, Richard Roberts and Richard Loizou –\u00a0were sentenced to 15 and\u00a016 months in prison for \u2018causing a public nuisance\u2019 in\u00a0late September this year.\u00a0A fourth protester, Julian Brock, received an 18 months suspended sentence after pleading guilty to the public nuisance charges.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Frack-Free Four\u2019 had been arrested during a \u2018month of protest\u2019 in the summer of 2017 that aimed to disrupt exploratory drilling activities at Cuadrilla\u2019s Preston New Road fracking site in Lancashire. The four climbed onto lorries that were delivering part of a drill rig and remained there for up to four days impeding the vehicles\u2019 movement to the fracking site.<\/p>\n

Their sentences\u00a0were\u00a0overturned, with the judge acknowledging that they\u00a0were\u00a0\u201cmanifestly excessive\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It was a\u00a0huge victory for the anti-fracking movement, and for\u00a0everyone concerned about the right to protest in the UK and beyond.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Continued protest<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the harsh sentencing, people across the country have stood up and spoken out against the ruling.<\/p>\n

More than 23,000 people signed a petition for a parliamentary inquiry into the shrinking space for civil opposition against fracking, backed by 1,500 academics \u2013\u00a0including scientists, policy experts, ethicists, legal scholars and others \u2013\u00a0who expressed their serious concerns about the excessive punishment and increasing criminalisation of protest in the UK.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, the anti-fracking movement has shown that it is not intimidated by the ruling. On October 1st, just days after the sentencing, nine individuals blockaded the same site (now \u2018protected\u2019 with an injunction) for three days, by climbing and locking onto two tripods.<\/p>\n

In the same week, less than a kilometre away, people lorry-surfed trucks heading for the site.<\/p>\n

On October 15th, the day Cuadrilla began fracking operations at PNR and two days before the appeal hearing, four protectors blocked the entrance to the same site once again.<\/p>\n

Cultures of resistance<\/strong><\/p>\n

The prison sentences for the three lorry surfers represented the first jail sentences handed down to environmental defenders for charges of \u201cpublic nuisance\u201d since 1932. But imprisonment for environmental defenders is by no means new.<\/p>\n

For example, in 1993<\/a>, seven defenders were imprisoned for 28 days for putting their bodies in the way to stop the building of the M3 highway through Twyford Down. Others were jailed for taking action against the M11 link road in east London and the Newbury bypass.<\/p>\n

Yet others have been jailed for protesting field trials of genetically modified organisms or nuclear energy. What distinguished the prison sentences for the anti-fracking campaigners was the length: they were told that would spend almost one and a half years behind bars.<\/p>\n

The exceptionally harsh sentencing of Roscoe Blevins, Richard Roberts and Richard Loizou is important for what it signalled, and for the moment at which it occurred. The judgement has shocked many people, but should not come as a surprise when viewed in light of the tensions generated by the government\u2019s backing of fracking, despite rising concerns about climate change and growing public opposition to this highly controversial form of energy production.<\/p>\n

Only around 16 percent\u00a0of the British public support fracking development. The original judgement\u00a0highlights worrying trends in the suppression and criminalisation of protest and dissent in the UK that particularly affect environmental defenders.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the success of the appeal\u00a0should be seen as a response to the effectiveness of direct action not only in raising public awareness, resisting and stopping harmful industrial developments, but also in creating cultures of autonomy and resistance that constitute a threat to the status quo.<\/p>\n

Climate chaos<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unconventional extraction of shale gas or oil through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, constitutes the frontier of extreme energy extractivism in England. Advocates have praised fracking for ending dependence of foreign (in particular Russian) oil and gas, and the UK government included fracking in its \u201cclean growth strategy\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, fracking methods are extremely risky, leading to bans or moratoria in Scotland, Wales, France and Germany, amongst others.<\/p>\n

Peer-reviewed scientific studies and\u00a0testimonies of local residents in fracking areas confirm that the risks to human and ecological health are immense. Well-documented local environmental consequences of hydraulic fracturing include the spillage of methane and leakage of toxic chemicals from drilling wells, contaminated drinking water, radioactive waste and earthquakes (including in Lancashire in 2011<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In addition, as climate chaos is increasingly felt –\u00a0the heat wave blistering the UK this summer being one obvious example –\u00a0the continued reliance on fossil fuels seems ecocidal.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the fact the fracking at the Lancashire site was resumed just one week after the publication of a landmark intergovernmental report from the\u00a0IPCC<\/a>\u00a0about the need to accelerate action on climate change by abandoning fossil fuels shows the level of indifference and hypocrisy shown by the government to the threat of climate change and its impact on the world\u2019s most vulnerable people.<\/p>\n

Government backing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fracking is not, as advocates often claim, a pathway to achieving energy security. Nor is it\u00a0more \u2018sustainable\u2019<\/a>\u00a0than conventional techniques of extraction: when including the emissions from fracking production processes as well as consumption, the acclaimed net greenhouse gas benefits\u00a0disappear<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The development of fracking is incompatible with the 2 degree, let alone 1.5 degree\u00a0target<\/a>. It does not promote, but rather hampers a much needed sustainable energy transition and fundamental changes to our political economic system, further entrenching (fossil) capital interests.<\/p>\n

Yet, the British government is backing fracking at all costs. In recent years, it has been working hard at the policy level to clear the way for fracking development.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0of the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial strategy: \u201cShale gas has the potential to provide the UK with greater energy security, economic growth and jobs, and could be an important part of our transition to a low carbon future … and government will ensure the right framework is in place to support industry and local communities as [this] exploration, and in some cases production, moves forward\u201d.<\/p>\n

Amendments to the 2015 Infrastructure Act were made to facilitate drilling without landowners\u2019 consent.\u00a0After local councils rejected seven out of eight drilling plans in the first months of 2018, the government initiated a set of measures aimed at pushing projects rapidly through the planning system.<\/p>\n

Conflicted interests\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Under\u00a0plans<\/a>\u00a0announced by business secretary Greg Clark, initial stages in the fracking process would be classified as \u201cpermitted development\u201d, which means that no local planning application is required.<\/p>\n

In addition, fracking sites could be labelled as \u201cnationally significant infrastructure\u201d, which would allow fracking operations to bypass local-level approval. At the same time, the\u00a0energy secretary<\/a>\u00a0announced a few days ago that established health regulations around earthquakes, a frequent effect of fracking operations, might be\u00a0eroded.<\/p>\n

Anti-fracking campaigners have\u00a0documented<\/a>\u00a0that close links to the fracking industry exist at the heart of the British state. This is exemplified by the judge who sentenced the anti-fracking campaigners,\u00a0John Robert Altham,<\/a>\u00a0whose family\u2019s business\u00a0J.C. Altham and Sons is part of the supply chain for UK-based energy multinational Centrica, which has invested tens of millions of pounds in fracking.<\/p>\n

Furthermore,\u00a0at a time the government was developing its pro-fracking policies, energy industry figures like\u00a0Centrica chief executive Sam Laidlaw and BG Group director Baroness Hogg were holding\u00a0senior advisory positions<\/a>\u00a0in government.<\/p>\n

The consequence of these close ties and patterns of patronage is that the government has systematically prioritised the demands of the fracking industry over the demands of communities, sacrificing local landscapes, human health concerns and the climate. As such, it is simultaneously \u201cfracking democracy\u201d, eroding the basis of any claim the government might have to democratically legitimate policy making by denying space for local public consultation.<\/p>\n

Radical communities<\/strong><\/p>\n

For years, people have been taking action against the fracking industry, in hundreds of local groups across the country, and it has been working.<\/p>\n

Environmental defenders have worked with local communities, obstructed every step of the legal process, and have taken direct action when people\u2019s concerns were silenced. They have effectively slowed the growth of the fracking industry, despite the best efforts of companies and their government partners.<\/p>\n

John<\/a>,\u00a0from the radical political theory magazine\u00a0Aufheben,\u00a0<\/em>wrote about\u00a0the famous anti-road campaign in the early 1990s, which laid the foundation of the ecological direct action movement to which the lorry surfers belong.<\/p>\n

He said: “[B]y adopting direct action as a form of politics, we … look to ourselves as a source of change … Therefore the key to the political significance of the … campaign lies less in the immediate aims of stopping the road and in the immediate costs we have incurred for capital and the state (although these are great achievements and great encouragement to others), and more in our\u00a0creation of a climate of autonomy, disobedience and resistance.<\/p>\n

“Thus, this life of permanent struggle is simultaneously a\u00a0negative\u00a0act (stopping the road etc) and a\u00a0positive pointer\u00a0to the kind of social relation that could be: … a community of resistance.”<\/p>\n

Extractivist ideology<\/strong><\/p>\n

The harsh sentencing of Simon Blevins, Richard Roberts and Richard Loizou should be read as a backlash against the widespread and growing resistance to fracking, and as the latest example of the increased stifling and criminalisation of dissent in the UK to make way for such dangerous extractive industries.<\/p>\n

The sentence was so absurd\u00a0that it was quickly overturned, only hours into the appeal hearing. Yet, we need to stay alert. The continuation and intensification of extractivism lies not only at the heart of the industrial system, but also at the heart of modernist ideology and the state-system.<\/p>\n

Extractivism involves not just the mining of (fossil) resources, but also ways of controlling people by force, fear or by capturing the \u201chearts and minds\u201d of the population so that they never think to question the claims made by powerful proponents of harmful extractive technologies.<\/p>\n

Charm offensives are increasingly difficult in countries like England, where the \u201cindustrialisation of the countryside\u201d and ever more extreme extraction processes have become increasingly unpopular with the public. As a result, powerful alliances between fracking companies and the British government are resorting to increasingly repressive legal means, aggressive policing and erosion of local democracy.<\/p>\n

The trend is visible in developments like the granting of injunctions to pre-empt protest and protect profits; government efforts to associate opponents of fracking with political extremism and domestic terrorism; the increasingly militarised policing of protesters; and harsher punishments and compensation payments given to environmental defenders charged with minor crimes such as aggravated\u00a0trespassing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Structures of power<\/strong><\/p>\n

All this is taking place while government itself continues to erode one of the key tenets of \u2018democratic\u2019 legitimacy upon which this country\u2019s political system is alleged to rest: meaningful public consultation.<\/p>\n

Ecological direct action against extractivism represents a threat to the state, because it questions the very ideology of the state and its belief in growth.<\/p>\n

Many anti-fracking protectors demand radical changes that would undermine this ideology, calling for ecological justice that represents a rupture with the current concentration of economic\/political power and the structures that uphold this power, and that facilitate the ecocide we are witnessing.<\/p>\n

More importantly, however, direct action challenges the role of the state to trigger and manage social change, empowers and creates autonomous and disobedient populations, and, in an example like fracking, arguably represents the public\u2019s only recourse in the face of the erosion of so-called democracy.<\/p>\n

These Authors\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Andrea Brock, Dr Amber Huff, Dr Judith Verweijen, Professor Jan Selby, Professor\u00a0David Ockwell, and Professor Peter Newell\u00a0are researching the political economy of energy, resources conflicts, development and extractivism at the University of Sussex.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This article by Andrea Brock, Dr. Amber Huff, Dr. Judith Verweijen, Professor Jan Selby, Professor\u00a0David Ockwell, and Professor Peter Newell of the University of Sussex was originally published in ‘The Ecologist’\u00a0on 18 October, 2018.\u00a0 The anti-fracking victory yesterday should not…<\/span><\/p>\n

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