Vestas protests spread to second factory

Protestors opposing Vestas plans to close the UK's largest wind turbine factory further ratcheted up the pressure on the company to reverse its decision today with the staging of a second protest at another facility on the Isle of Wight.

Activists from a coalition of green and trade union groups occupied the roof of the Vestas factory in Cowes in the early hours of this morning, vowing to stay there until the workers sacked last week for staging a sit-in at the larger plant at Newport were formally reinstated.

The protest has been timed to coincide with both the Cowes sailing festival and a second court hearing, scheduled for today, at which Vestas hopes to secure a court order allowing them to evict the protestors.

An attempt last week to obtain a court order failed when Judge Graham White ruled that the Danish company had to correctly name all of the 11 protestors occupying the Newport site if it wished to have them legally evicted. He also rejected suggestions by the company that the protest had to be ended swiftly due to the risk of public disturbance at the site, which has attracted further protestors from green and trade union groups.

Yesterday, protests at the planned closure of the factory also spread to London where a group glued themselves together outside the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The protestors were later arrested, but only after they had blockaded the entrance to the building for several hours.

Meanwhile, Trades Union Congress general secretary Brendan Barber called on Vestas to reconsider its plans to close the factory and urged the government to intervene if necessary.

"Ed Miliband [the climate change secretary] has proved himself to be a champion of the green agenda and the drive to create new jobs," he said. "Now we are asking him to go the extra mile for the 600 workers and the production facility – the only one of its size in Britain – which is vital to building our low-carbon future. Everything must be done to look for positive alternatives."

Vestas last week issued a detailed statement arguing that it had no choice but to sack the protestors – a move that means they will not receive redundancy payments.

It also argued that the plant in the Isle of Wight was currently making wind turbine blades for export to the US and that planning delays that have consistently hampered the development of new wind farms in the UK meant that it could not justify converting the factory to make blades for a UK market where demand remains difficult to predict.

The government has also rejected calls to nationalise the plant, but has had to face repeated accusations of hypocrisy given that the closure of the factory comes less than a month after it issued its Low Carbon Transition Plan, including proposals for a huge expansion in wind energy capacity.