Drax coal hijackers fail to re-create Kingsnorth verdict

A group of environmental protesters has failed in its attempts to justify the hijacking of a coal train under the same terms that were applied to similar direct action at the Kingsnorth power station.

According to a report in the Guardian, eight members of a 29-strong team of environmental protesters were sentenced to community service and ordered to pay costs and compensation to train company Network Rail.

The judge in the case at Leeds crown court said the action had resulted in losses to the companies involved of about £37,000. "You were involved in an elaborate plan to interfere with other people going about their lawful business. Each one of you was involved in this scheme to disrupt the influx of coal to Drax power station."

The coal delivery was on its way to the power station in Yorkshire, which has been described by Greenpeace as the "single biggest source of CO2 pollution in the UK, pumping out 22.7 million tonnes each year".

The direct action against the Drax coal train, which took place in June last year, involved the protesters posing as rail staff to stop the train. The protest lasted 16 hours according to the Guardian, during which time the protesters disrupted other passenger and freight deliveries.

In October last year, Drax announced that it has signed a £10m contract with Doosan Babcock to provide a facility that will burn biomass alongside coal, reducing its carbon emissions by more than 2.5m tonnes a year. The company said that on completion, the biomass co-firing facility will be the largest of its type in the world.

Six Greenpeace activists were charged with causing £30,000 of damage to the Kingsnorth power plant in Kent last October. But in September 2008, they were acquitted of criminal damage, with the jury agreeing by a 10-to-two majority that "emergency action" could be used to stop damage to the environment.

Greenpeace argued that under the Criminal Damages Act of 1971, the campaigners had a lawful excuse to cause the damage as they were trying to prevent even greater damage being caused by the contribution the plant would make to climate change.

Commenting on the actions soon after the Kingsnorth verdict, Jonathon Porritt, former director of Friends of the Earth, said the ruling was a sign that power companies could find themselves subject to increasingly tight legislation.

"This has sent tremors through the power companies, tremors through government, and earthquakes through the Daily Mail, which is totally horrified by the idea that civilisation has collapsed," he said. "For a long time energy companies have been warned that a situation will emerge in which they become similar to the tobacco companies, which for many years sought to deny that they had any corporate culpability for the damage done to personal health."

In September last year Al Gore, former US vice president and environmental campaigner, claimed that it might be time for young people to take direct action against new coal- fired power stations through acts of civil disobedience.

"If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now – and not done – I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Reuters reported him as saying.

The rise of direct action by environmental groups in the UK could also be given a boost by the announcement by gay rights protester Peter Tatchell that he is planning to stand as an MP for the Green Party. "I suspect I might be quite a troublesome MP," he told the Guardian.

In 2001, Tatchell was injured by bodyguards assigned to Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe after the activist attempted a citizen's arrest of the African leader.