Police have carried out what is thought to be the biggest pre-emptive raid on environmental campaigners in UK history, arresting 114 people believed to be planning direct action at a coal-fired power station.
The arrests – for conspiracy to commit criminal damage and aggravated trespass – come amid growing concern among campaigners about increased police surveillance and groups being infiltrated by informers.
Nottinghamshire police said the raid on a school in Nottingham was made just after midnight this morning. The force said it seized “specialist equipment” thought to be linked to a planned protest at nearby Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, a coal plant owned by the utility company E.On.
No group has claimed responsibility for the alleged demonstration.
Experienced campaigners said no group had claimed responsibility for the alleged demonstration because they could face charges of conspiracy and a possible jail sentence.
Activists said emails setting out planned action could be used by police to prove conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass and criminal damage, as could any equipment or documentation found during the arrests, or other evidence of coordinated preparations.
This is yet another politically motivated police action aimed at undermining dissent and delegitimising protest. It looks and smells like similar arrests of activists in the past, like that of the supposed anarchists in Plymouth just before the G-20 protests, or that of high profile anti-terrorist raids like those in Forest Gate a few years back, none of which amounted to much in the end but each of which sent a clear message. Keeping in mind the context in which these arrests happened, just after the police got embarassed by the killing of Ian Tomlinson and while one senior police official already having warned about “a summer of rage”. The police fears and is prepared for a year of increasing social unrest as the economic crisis begins to bite and they are attempting to head it off at the pass through actions like this mass arrest.
Yet this story’s buried under the avalanche of manufactured outrage about e-mail gate.