Blockade Success

South West Against Nuclear aka SWAN had a very inspired time being part of the camp & blockade of Hinkley Point as part of the Stop New Nuclear Alliance, activists involved with SWAN helped to organise the blockade, helped find bits for & construct the camp, designed fliers for both the demo & the blockade & on the day provided pedal-powered smoothies healthy in more ways than one to very hot & thirsty blockaders.

Due to the polices position of not arresting blockaders & 'permitting' the blockade you could be forgiven for thinking that the blockade was just another demo or rally as on the day blockaders & non-blockaders were pretty indistinguishable.

However we must remember that this was an Non Violent Direct Action victory in more than one sense of the word - the main victory being that over 100 people were prepared to risk arrest & were trained in what this involves, the other sense in which it was a victory was the fact that the disruption we intended to cause to EDF by our civil disobedience was achieved without us actually being arrested!

EDF made much of the fact that they were able to get their essential staff on-site before the blockade began, trying to play down the disruption that they were caused - what that misses is that all of the non-essential staff were given the day off (although they claimed they worked from home the reality is that this would only be possible for certain kinds of staff i,e admin) the majority of the rest of the workers will have stayed at home whilst having to be paid by EDF. EDF had to pay for toilets for the police & protesters to use as well as the wages for people who weren't working. And this is just the first action - next time we might not give them so much warning...