After spending a full day locked onto conveyor belts inside Kingsnorth coal fired power station - potentially the site of the first new coal plant in the UK for over 30 years - most of our volunteers in the conveyor belt team were arrested last night, after E.ON served an injunction.
The small team at the top of the chimney (above) spent the night 200-odd metres above safe ground. They’re still up there but, having placed the ball firmly in Gordon Brown’s court on whether the UK faces a new coal rush, they’ll be starting the long climb down soon. It sounds as though spirits are high, if a little exhausted.
Now it's up to Brown to decide whether he's serious about tackling climate change, or whether he's going to give the go ahead to a new coal plant in Kingsnorth and, with it, 24 countries’ worth of carbon emissions a year.
Please help us put the pressure on by writing to Brown asking him to say no to new coal and yes to a genuinely clean and efficient energy future.
More updates later. In the meantime, here’s the story from PA:
Protesters who evaded police and spent the night on a power station chimney in Kent have been served with an injunction demanding that they come down.
Eighteen demonstrators were arrested on Monday night, but the five remaining members of the group painted "Gordon" down the side of the 656ft (200m) chimney.
About 26 Greenpeace campaigners staged a protest at the Kingsnorth power station in Medway on Monday.
Six activists climbed the smokestack at about 5am while 20 others chained themselves to the station's conveyor belt to prevent it burning coal.
They urged Prime Minister Gordon Brown to reject plans for Britain's first new coal plant in more than 20 years.
Power company Eon wants to build a plant on the site which could supply electricity to 1.5 million homes.
Activists warn it will pump harmful carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and create a precedent for more coal in the future.
Greenpeace spokesman Niall Bennett said: "We are pleased with what we achieved in the protest. This site is at the forefront of the fight against climate change. "
Either Gordon Brown red-lights this plant and we know he's serious, or he allows it and we know he's not serious about the issue."
The protesters are making preparations to descend from the chimney, but the climb down, aided by ladders inside the stack, will take several hours.
