Tina Louise: Day 42 in the Cuadrilla House...

Day 42 in the Cuadrilla House… and the good people are clearly shaken; shoved from a world once known as ‘normal’, to the hard, ugly brutality of what saying NO! to your government looks like. None of us wanted this, most didn’t expect it to be like this and all wish for anything but this awful reality. But here it is, presenting itself each day with fresh assault, after fresh assault on deepening wounds. Some are ragged and unsettled but I have never seen such strengthening of determination that each assault brings. I see no-one backing down but instead, moving forward. What we’re moving forward to though is the unclear bit. Today I only managed a couple of hours, during which the awful mood of staff on site was apparent as their vehicles were stopped sometimes going in, sometimes out, until a mass of green-glowing police arrive, shuffle everyone aside, release the vehicles… rinse and repeat. There appear to be no slow-walks of 15 minutes, just stoppages before police move Protectors along. Few vehicles came and certainly not the 50+ per day that Cuadrilla planned for by this stage. I saw no violence today but as the last few days have seen so much – maybe someone finally pressed pause – especially as injuries were incurred and included older people and Councillors. I only endured a short time as my temper got the better of me when I saw a new injunction notice with my name on it on all site entrances and nearby field gates…

So I went to a conference I was invited to in Norway on Monday and got back yesterday – it was organised by a Professor who came and witnessed much of the planning and appeal process here in Lancashire and wrote a peer-reviewed paper on it. Academics gathered to discuss studies done in the energy sector and I presented about what some of those studies do in the wrong hands, to communities like ours. It was fascinating, hugely helpful and provided much to be grateful for that is happening in that arena. I had a blog forming to tell all about it and even had some lightly amusing bits about the how Norwegians seem to have a thing for adding little fish to just about every meal… but that all seems very far away now as I walked onto PNR today to find a dear friend walking with a stick due to injury and an injunction with my name on it (again).

The injunction dated 28 Feb 2017 looks to be a weighty chunk of a thing that clearly took forests to create – I have no way of knowing the full contents just yet but am aware that it came about as a result of a phone call apparently made to Cuadrilla’s legal firm Eversheds. ‘Evidence’ for the need for the injunction is said to come because the caller, described as claiming to be an anti-fracker called ‘Danny’ with a Manchester accent said that “thousands of people were intending on entering a field and need to know if still injuncted?” Apparently he said if it was, then he’d tell everyone not to do it. He said the action was for the coming Saturday (25 Feb 2017) and that he had all the previous injunction paperwork but couldn’t make sense of the legalese,.

The previous paperwork on the inunction (lasted from Oct 2014-Oct 2016) I only forwarded to a handful of people so find this both unsettling and interesting – the story could be made up in order to get the injunction or it may be genuinely a concerned Protector – whatever it was should become clear as I have asked a lawyer to see about the circumstances and how to get my name removed as I’ve not been in the fields referred to… they say they have the mobile number for ‘Danny’ and they may well have recorded the call so I’ll see what we can find out and let you know when I do. His call is said to have first been made at lunchtime on 22 Feb 2017 and returned as lawyer was out, later that afternoon. He is said to have ended the call by saying he “may just let them get on with it and sit back and laugh”.

So what does this all mean? It means a lot of bloody reading and calls and interruptions to the true tasks of stopping fracking. It means nothing much to me in other ways as I do not intend on occupying these fields. What it means legally I will see within a few days but essentially it is saying don’t go on Cuadrilla’s land – which is kind of an obvious request of theirs anyway. Had anyone occupied the land prior to this newly issued injunction – they could have done so by causing a land dispute that would have led to eviction and eventual injunction –this is nothing new or unexpected, just how it works. What is bad about it is that it happened without an occupation of the field that would have raised awareness and maybe been able to hold based on numbers and time required for legal actions against it – had one been done. But we won’t know as the call was made, the injunction brought and should someone now want to go into the field – it would be illegal… but then again, much that we see in our government appears to be abuse of law or at least corrupted. ‘Legal’ as a term grows foggier by the day.

Life is knitted only with this bloody stuff now… high points pop like bubbles too soon, in the sharp reality of life at the roadside and if there was a way to throw my hands up and swear’ F it all!’, I possibly would… but children live where this industry threatens; it would be criminally negligent to walk away when the evidence makes us acutely aware - of what that would mean accepting as reality for them. So that’s that, still stuck. In the background I can feel it building too in other areas of life, the pressure on those behind and around us who are trying to keep it all together… family mainly – this has become their reality too because we each bring it with us like a bad smell or a vile mood. It’s not just that this is all so damned time consuming – it’s that it infests every moment, that there is no let up from the thinking about it, the planning, the wishing you just knew ‘how the hell this could be stopped?’...

All previous answers to that question have been shot to pieces as we watched the saviour ‘democracy’ crumble for the pile of lies that it is… as we watch daily that the ‘regulatory bodies’ are revealed for the toothless, ineffective, under-funded, woefully inept things that they are and entirely absent from PNR… as we hear from ‘the media’ nothing but fabrication, myth and fantasy as they paint Protectors in shades of evil and this industry in pure white-wash... and as we sense with each passing day that ‘truth & justice’ cannot be found at the roadside of PNR or anywhere else we’ve searched for it. There’s us and there’s this industry snuggled cosily inside the circles of power and influence… how do we get them out? What next? Please help. See you tomorrow? x

*Highlight of the day: seeing Miranda smile despite it all.