Dear Prime Minister...

Sent to Theresa May
....................................

Dear Prime Minister,
About the fracking of our country – we really need to talk. Currently there is a daily nightmare unfolding on Preston New Road in Lancashire; relieved only by the beauty of watching a community come together in defense of its young. For more than six years now your party has sought to inflict this dangerous industry on innocent residents and for more than six years now, those residents have pulled together and grown and stopped you every step of the way.

Each year the industry promises ‘full production within the year’ and each year I mark another that the UK remains frack free. You have gifted this industry subsidies and tax breaks as well as adapting laws to fit this industry’s needs. You have walked all over local democracy where councils said no and worked with clearly manipulative reports to fake safety. You are a disgrace and positively criminal in what you are willing to do to us and our children.

It’s NOT WORKING! We aren’t going to give up or give in – we read the same evidence that all those other more wise governments did that then banned it. What are you ignoring, that they saw… and why? Day in day out I have journeyed these years of resistance and seen your government flounder at every turn – whilst we flourish in ever greater number, beautiful creativity and strengthened bonds. You are not one for plans it seems so I see the pointlessness of this question regarding our situation in Lancashire right now… that’s been going on since 5th January 2017.

What’s the plan then?

We keep jumping on the trucks, blockading the routes, gaining support with wide-reaching campaigns and non-violently clawing back our right to peaceful protest and you? Via your police force, you dangerously run the trucks ever faster to evade us, throw more and more police into our blockades to tear us from them, use trained police as body-guards for trucks and security guards for gates (no wonder you didn’t approve a payrise for them – you don’t value them) and continue to find ways to make our lives ever more difficult with countless, pointless (soon to be thrown out of court) arrests – more restrictions on parking to keep us further from where we need to be and deny the right of those less able to reach us. You force propaganda through the old-world press (thankfully we counter with alternative media). As plans go – this one really sucks.

So really… let’s talk about a Plan B.

Tina Rothery