Crude Awakening Action Report

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 10/22/2010 - 13:26

On Saturday October 16th UK Rising Tiders joined more than 500 climate activists who descended on the only access road to the UK’s busiest oil refinery, organised under the banner of the Crude Awakening. In a hugely successful – not to mention extremely fun – action, Petroplus’ Coryton refinery in Essex was stopped from delivering oil by road for over 7 hours. Together, we halted the flow of oil from the main supplier to London’s petrol stations, airports and factories, stopping at least 50 tankers and an estimated 375,000 gallons of oil. The message was clearly sent - oil’s time is up. We are no longer prepared to sit back and tolerate the oil industry’s commitment to a product which is a massive contributor to global warming, fuels wars across the Middle East and beyond, and is implicated in human rights abuses around the world. It’s time to turn away from oil and invest in the research needed to provide clean energy to the world.

There was a great deal of mystery surrounding the action, and all we knew at the start of the day was that there were three meeting points in train stations in Central London, and that those present would be texted instructions as to where to go from there. Rising Tide joined in the Body Bloc at Victoria Station, and at 10:00 am we found ourselves in a crowd of around 250 puzzled and excited activists on the station floor. Then phones started beeping as the first text came in. We set off following the pink and black flags. At Tower Hill (an hour of rather suspicious delays later – surely Transport for London wouldn’t have held up hundreds of the ordinary public in order to try and delay some peaceful protesters, would they?) whistling erupted, and all as one we marched off the tube, around the corner, and within minutes found ourselves on a train heading out of Fenchurch Street station, bound for Stanford-le-Hope in Essex.

Body bloc gettin' ready to follow those flags ... #crudeawake

You can imagine our surprise to find that Crude Awakening had skilfully led everyone, including the police, to believe that our target was in Central London, when actually it was one of the main industrial hearts of the oil industry in the UK. You can imagine the police’s surprise too as they found themselves lost on trains heading out of their jurisdictions, and the further delays they caused working this out amongst themselves!

45 minutes later we found ourselves at Stanford-le-Hope. We walked further out of the town for a couple of miles to the large road that leads to the Coryton refinery complex. This road is the only route in and out of this hugely important refinery, but leads nowhere else, and we were all impressed by the excellent choice of target. As we arrived at the first blockade (that had been set up by the blocs that arrived before us) we were greeted with the gratifying sight of numerous bamboo tripods, protected by banners and arm-tubed protesters spread between them.

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By the time we arrived, despite their heavy presence and sneaky FIT teams, the police had retreated from any direct confrontation and accepted that the road was going to stay blocked until we decided we were ready to leave. But the Body Bloc was given the run-down of the much hairier events that had occurred before our arrival, many of which you can see on videos above this action report. As far as we understand things, the first blockaders had arrived at about 11:30 am, with a now-legendary affinity group of 12 women in two white vans. These vans were immobilised across both lanes and then activists locked-on beneath them. When the first blocs (Dirty Money and Building) arrived a little later, Building had to push through police lines and run across the fields to set up their tripods in the picturesque spot where we would join them later. Meanwhile Dirty Money held the road and joined up with the van-blockade, opening up the space between the two locations.

With the fantastic turn out and the spirit of the people present, the whole blockaded area was full of the party spirit of hundreds of people knowing they had succeeded in doing exactly what they had set out to do. There were numerous sound systems, a samba band, stilt walkers, a giant chalk army and plenty of fancy dress to keep people fired up, not to mention near-perfect weather that we all appreciated. Observed by the FIT teams and hundreds of cops, and interspersed with some intrepid local kids that we like to think we inspired a little, we made our presence felt, while oil tankers backed themselves up a few miles away at the Thurrock Services. And when we decided, by consensus, to leave at sunset, we made sure everyone left together, including the vans and the initial blockaders. The police even reserved 3 quarters of the next train out of Stanford-le-Hope for us, to get us out of there as soon as possible presumably! And amazingly, throughout the day - no arrests.

All together, this was an amazing day, and a great action that will hopefully inspire numerous more of the same ilk. Well done to all those who put in work to make this day happen and especially to the daring affinity group who first blockaded the road by locking on. The country is not run for the profit of the energy giants, and the world is not their rubbish tip. The day showed that by coming together and exerting our right to act against climate criminals we can all be part of the solution to the climate crisis.

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Thanks to the photographers too - the images here are all from Flickr

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