Statements of Support

If you’d like to give a statement of support, please email info[at]ratcliffeontrial.org. Thanks!

Bangladesh National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Power, Port and Mineral Resources

Indeed, we are delighted to be able to express our solidarity to the brave 20 climate change activists at a moment when their sentencing has been postponed.

There is no doubt that climate change is one of the most important concerns to the majority of the population in the world today. People in the south have already begun to suffer from the climate change whilst the north is on its way to feel the effects. Both coal-fired power plants and the hazardous new nuclear plants are responsible for CO2 emissions. Due to increasing coal-fired power stations and nuclear plants the globe has warmed up to such an extent that the centre of business US declares, ‘no need to build new US coal and nuclear plant’; the US President himself recognizes the needs for immediate tackling of the climate (Energy and Environment Publishing, 22 April, 2009). As inhabitants of the global south and the worst victims of the climate change, we support the idea of shutting down the third largest coal-fired power plant in UK. A non-violent action by conscious citizens of the country to safeguard environment must be supported and appreciated as timely and most appropriate decision. We believe that if the government of a modern state regretfully failed to make appropriate and necessary decision on climate allowing carbon emissions, it is the duty of the conscious citizens of the country to take necessary step before it is too late.

Hence, we would like to express our full solidarity to the brave climate defenders who could stand up and save the climate of the planet. We will be there to lend support to the brave defenders as/when needed.

Sally Weymouth, Proud Mother

I have huge respect and admiration for the Ratcliffe 20. I have seen them in court, I have met some of them and I am the mother of one of them, of whom I am immensely proud. These people are intelligent, well-informed and full of integrity. They have far more concern and respect for the planet and its occupants than any politician I’ve ever heard. Their cause was just. They were trying to do as much as they could to reduce the climate change chaos that is threatening. They should not be punished, they should be congratulated. If only there were more like them the world would be a safer place.

Melanie Strickland – solicitor

I totally support the activists on trial. We live in a perverse society: a society which condones the systematic damage and destruction of the environment. You have to stand trial for crimes against the Crown, whilst others who are responsible for this systematic destruction line their pockets and walk free. This is not just the age of stupid, it’s the age of collective insanity.

Nic Seton – Director of Think2050

It isn’t often that a brave few take on the ills of us all. But when they do, we are invited to reflect upon our own agency. Do we condemn, or do we support? Attack, or defend? A great deal of trouble could be removed from people suffering today – even more from those soon to be affected by our ever-altering living-space. But only those who are brave enough to take a calculated risk, like those who took on Ratcliffe-on-soar’s coal burner, are able to bring this issue forward, make it real, and make it happen. Their actions served us all and I thank each and every one.

Emma Adams – Playwright

Today I read this article in the Independent by Johann Hari in which he states “The next great crash will be environmental and nature doesn’t do bailouts”. In this article he compellingly outlines the fact that the governments of our planet have chosen to ignore the scientific evidence and the desperate urgency of our situation. Next week these governments will meet in Cancun to take the next steps after the failure of Copenhagen but there is little hope that anything useful will be achieved. We are in deep trouble. We need immediate and huge reductions in CO2 emissions. Just ask the people who live in the global south. They are already feeling the full force of climate change, but we in the global north will not be far behind them.

Under these circumstances I believe that the climate activists who were planning to shut down E.ON’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar’s coal power station were acting in the very best interests of this nation, its people and indeed all the peoples of this planet. While governments fail to act then brave individuals like these who are prepared to take action should be supported.

I send my total admiration and my best wishes.

Stop Nuclear Power Network

It is widely accepted that climate change and the devastation of our natural environment are happening under our noses, accelerated by irresponsible corporate activities and government inaction. Time and again major corporations the world over, from E.ON to EDF, from BP to Areva, put profit ahead of any genuine concern for the future of the planet or its inhabitants. People around the world will feel the effects of both coal-fired power stations and the false and dangerous path of new nuclear build for generations to come. People can and should take nonviolent direct action to put a stop to such criminally irresponsible activities. We therefore offer our full support for the Ratcliffe on Trial defendants.

Polly Higgins – Barrister, international environmental lawyer, author of Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Prevent the Destruction of our Planet and proposer of the crime of Ecocide to be made an international Crime Against Peace

A system that prosecutes the eco-whsitleblowers for drawing attention to the ecocide that is taking place is a system that is protecting the interests of those who are destroying the planet, not those who are speaking up on behalf of both humanity and nature. Until we recognise that damage and destruction of our world is a crime, the scales of justice remain imbalanced and out of kilter with received wisdom and fact that coal fire stations are a major contributor to climate change.

The Philippines have recently brought in new Environmental Rules of Procedure to protect their eco-whistleblowers, including their right to raise the valid defence of protecting nature, without cost implications. Instead of prosecuting activists, the courts can issue Environmental Protection Orders to prevent the continuance of the corporate destruction of our planet. All countries should be doing the same.

Without ecocide being recognised as a crime, we cannot effectively police those who are destroying the planet. I for one will work tirelessly until such a law is in place so that brave people such as these 114 climate campaigners will have the support of the judiciary and the police in preventing the corporate ecocide, not the other way round.

Casper ter Kuile

I am grateful to those brave and decent Ratcliffe defendants who have had the courage to put their bodies in the way of the continuing injustice of our energy system. History will look back on you with a grateful smile.

Lewis McNeill – Environmental Educator

I, along with around 1000 others also tried to shut down Ratcliffe last October as part of the Great Climate Swoop. We must stop burning coal here in the UK before we can influence other nations to do the same. We must stop burning coal. When all other forms of democratic means have been shut down, and the fate of humanity sits precariously in our hands, peacefull civil disobedience is our duty. I, along with many others, in growing numbers, will try to shut down Ratcliffe again.

Amy Mount

As a young person who’s life stands to be radically altered by the impacts of climate change by the time I get to retirement age, I fully support the Ratcliffe 20. The UK has a target of reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, yet we’re not making nearly enough progress towards that. At this rate, it’ll be up to future generations to clean up the mess left by the people currently in power. The Ratcliffe 20 have my full respect for trying to change this.

Joe McCrohon

The state is run by corporations who only care about profits above all
else. We all need to take direct action if we are to have a liveable
planet in a few generations. The government and all companies that burn
coal are the real criminals
Solidarity

Liz McDowell

I just want to say good luck to you all & you’ve got my support. I might not be in Nottingham but I’m standing beside you in spirit! Thanks for taking a stance against unjust laws that deserve to be broken. Hopefully this trial will take us one step further towards changing those laws, and putting in place new rules that acknowledge the rights of future generations and vulnerable peoples around the world to escape the impacts of climate change.

Hanna Thomas

Just to wish you the best of luck for the trial, I am right behind you. I wish I was as brave as you, as I believe that actions like the one you took are becoming increasingly necessary to draw attention to the issue of climate change and to eventually put laws and instruments in place to protect our planet and our welfare. Every movement has a front line, thank you for being on it.

Hannah McKay, Newcastle Upon Tyne

Just to wish you all the best in your trial. Your action is admirable, I only wish the likes of Eon could utilise your wisdom and commitment to environmentalism, in order to run its business in ways that wouldn’t be to the detriment of the planet.

So many of us agree with your cause, and yet how many (myself included) are not taking direct and highly visible action of this kind? Your plans have been considered drastic by the authorities, but time is running out for more conventional communication methods – thank you for acting now, on a cause that cannot wait. So many of us are behind you and following your trial, thinking of you and admiring your courage to stand up for what you and so many others believe in.

I read the blog of your second day in court and it sounded really bizarre, what with the references to Glastonbury and Man Utd.! I only hope the jury has a bit more sense to recognise that you were taking action against an injustice that will directly affect billions of people, including everyone in that courtroom.

Thank you for your action and for standing up for justice. I hope that the jury recognise that political apathy and climate destruction are far more dangerous than the closure of a power station for a week – not only to future generations but today’s generation.

I wish you all the best in your trial – be strong and remember there are so many people behind you.

Kirsty Kitchen

In a world obsessed with equating wealth to happiness and characterised by naval-gazing we should all be thankful to people who give up their time and energy for a greater good. That doesn’t translate into putting them on trial while governments continue to act in short-sighted self-interest, caring only about their chances of getting re-elected.

David Hansen, Scotland

I have campaigned on climate change for years. Writing letters to politicians and newspapers, collecting signatures on petitions, dressing up like a penguin, dressing up as the Prime Minister, lobbying politicians in person, all sorts of things. There is no argument about the science and the urgency of the action it reveals. That was true at the time these thought crimes were taking place and it is true now.

What are the politicians, and others supposedly in charge, doing in the face of the science? Most of them are doing very little. They gush plenty of hot air, but their inaction reveals that they are too timid to make the changes the science shows are necessary. I saw this all too clearly when I went on a long overland journey to Copenhagen this time last year and saw the rich countries trying to shaft the poor countries by abandoning the Kyoto process.

What can concerned people do in the face of this deliberate inaction by those who should be acting? Some are concentrating on doing what they can locally. That’s great. Others are redoubling their lobbying. That’s great too. Others are undertaking direct action. That’s great too. Most are doing some or all of these things, the proportion of each varying according to their outlook.

Those who are supposed to be upholding the law are now picking people up for thought crimes. A school, next to the community centre in which the campaigners were meeting, smashed up by the police because they can get away with it, govenment would call it colateral damage. 114 people grabbed in one attack and their lives raked through by the police, looking for information to put into their “intelligence” databases. There can only be one logical reason for this, the police are trying to frighten people off taking action on climate change. They hope people will be worried about an effect on their jobs of being in these databases and so be deterred from campaigning. The police have now clearly identified themselves as being part of the problem. They have not succeeded in deterring protest, runaway climate change is far more scary than the police.

The police already have egg all over their faces. The attack on peaceful people, the fact that even the police and CPS were unable to try to take more than three quarters of those grabbed to court. I hope that the trial leaves them completely naked, as Kent Police ended up after their oppression of people at Kingsnorth.

I know a few of the accuesd. Wonderful people who are a credit to society. I’m sure the other accused are just the same. More power to their elbows.

When are the police and CPS going to take action about the criminals? Eon and the rest of them who continue to carry on set in their ways despite the cost. While those who should take action remain sitting on their backsides the public will have to do things themselves.

Dave Hampton MA (Cantab) C Eng C Env (the carbon coach)

I’d like to echo what Belinda Hopkins said above. “There is something wrong with the law in this country when it is legal to cause damage to the environment and put the long term future of the planet at risk, and illegal to try and stop this happening.” I’d like to send my support and my children’s gratitude to the defendants and I’d like to wish the judge and jury the wisdom to listen to their hearts.

Gloria Dawson

Thinking of all the Ratcliffe defendants on the first day of the trial. Your cause is just and I really hope you get the result you want. There are so many people supporting you, more than you’ll ever know. I’ll get the word out about the trial as much as possible.

Andrew Wyon, Chair of Energy Group, Transition Bath

It is clear that actions such as yours are needed to raise the idea that Climate Damage is OUR responsibility and the need for change is urgent.

Rebecca Parker

I wish you all strength and fullness of heart for the trial you begin tomorrow. I admire your willingness to act, thank you.

Robin Kinrade

This is a simple and heartfelt message from a father of two and a grandfather of one (so far). Thank you all very much for all that you have been doing to make this world a better place. You are a credit to your generation, and I hope that fate will be on your side. Remember the Kingsnorth Six.

Theo Simon, Seize the Day

We are so proud of you. You have risked your own liberty for the sake of all our families and the future of this beautiful, precious planet.

There is no greater necessity right now than raising people’s awareness and forcing the people with power to either act against climate change or stand aside. Whatever the formal outcome of this ill-concieved trial, many of us will be ready to follow your audacious, inspiring and extremely well-planned example. Bless you for all time.

Lisa Jeschke, Berlin

I fully support all those on trial. Their planned action exposes the hypocrisy of European energy policy, priding itself on its awareness of global warming while hesitating to end the period of irresponsible megalomaniac energy policies. The activists’ aim was not destructive but productive. Not only would they have actively stopped the power station’s CO2 emissions for a certain amount of time, but, even more significantly, their defence of necessity would have pointed to the necessity for action from the side of elected politicians. Their direct action can be considered as a form of demonstration in which citizens are trying to find forms of visible speech when they’re not heard by parliaments and conferences.

In Germany, from where I am writing, this need for demonstrations which are simultaneously direct and symbolic has become extremely apparent in the past few weeks when the level of protest that went into the Castor-blockade showed a new level of resistance against the coalition’s extension of nuclear power plants’ lifespans. These kinds of protests raise questions of democratic representation – and so does this trial. The defendants’ action is not to be considered along purely legal terms; it is to be situated in a wider political context interrogating the relation between representation, law-making and action.

Julie Hazelwood, Bath

I love your courage and commitment. Thank you very much for who you are and what you do.

Cormac Cullinan, Attorney, author of Wild Law. A Manifesto for Earth Justice, co-drafter of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and founder member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature

When the law makes criminals of committed, socially responsible people who are willing to act to protect our lives and well being and those of future generations, it is time to change the law. Charging these people with crimes against property obscures the fact that they are upholding and defending Nature’s right to maintain the integrity and functioning of natural cycles which keep this planet habitable for people and many other species. How many more far-sighted, socially and environmentally responsible people do we have to fine and jail before we realise that we have no future unless we change the legal, political and economic systems that drive climate change? Now is the time to stand in solidarity with these brave activists and to work for the effective recognition of the inherent rights of Nature so that those who fight to protect those rights are honoured for their leadership instead of being criminalised for acting against those who threaten our future. Change the system not the climate!

John Ingham

Only principled action like this is likely to change anything. As President Obama abandons any hope of getting his climate change bill through Congress, and we all flail around after the failure of Copenhagen, there appears to be only one approach which might work. Thank goodness there are people like those on trial ready to show us the way.

Stuart Neyton, Chair, Nottingham Young Greens

Nottingham Young Greens recognise the importance of direct action in the fight against climate change and are in full solidarity with those on trial for defending our planet. A zero-carbon future is not only achievable, but essential if we are to guarantee a sustainable future for future generations. Dirty coal-fired power stations, such as Ratcliffe-on-Soar, make any personal efforts to reduce emissions obsolete. Best of luck to the 20 defendants!

Joanna Cabello, Carbon Trade Watch

All who make use of their bodies and minds to get in the way of a system that only aims further destruction and exploitation will always have the support and strength of the many. The diverse tactics used by authorities to try to avoid dissent or opposition (being direct physical violence, surveillance, criminalization, among many others) will never stop our very alive and strong desires to search and live other worlds. It is because of those around the world who ‘act’ against global injustices that some spaces have opened for freedom, we (all of us) need to ‘do’ much more of that! … mucha fuerza y la lucha continúa!

Chris Gilbert

I just wanted to express my support for the climate 20 who are being prosecuted for doing something about a problem that will affect us all. There are many people who still don’t believe climate change is happening, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I think the key is that they don’t *want* to believe it is happening, so they choose not to.

Actions like this shows how serious the problem is, and how much of an ostrich like approach we are taking to it. Even if climate change wasn’t happening, burning millions of year old products which can’t be replaced is an insane way to provide energy for the people of this planet. We may as well be throwing priceless antiques on a giant bonfire. Our energy production is hideously wasteful and inefficient, and we should all be working to provide better solutions to our problems.

Thanks for being brave enough to risk your own livelihoods for the good of all our futures. Most people don’t have that courage in their convictions, and never could have. It takes a special person to have that much bravery, and I hope the courts recognise that.

Afua Kokayi, Nottingham People and Planet

I would like to show my whole-hearted support for those on trail. I feel it is disgusting that the government continues to ignore the urgeny needed to tackle climate change and all that it brings. Climate change is happening now, it is killing people now and action must happen now. It really upsets and worries me that an issue that threatens the existence of the human race is being left in the hands of these people. I fully support the peaceful direct action planned! Climate change needs to be tackled now and if it is the public who need to tackle it, then so be it. Please extend my love and support to those on trial, they were brave enough to take a stand on behalf of the people of the world.

Zachary Shahan

Keep positivity and strength in your minds! You did a great thing and tons of people around the world are thankful for your efforts.

Iain Findlay

You people rock! Every day the situation becomes more critical, and what you are doing becomes more important. Be strong and know that you are right.

Martin Horwood MP

UK carbon emissions are strongly implicated in increasing incidence of drought, heatwaves and other phenomena around the world which are already killing thousands each year. To allow these carbon emissions to continue unabated is frankly criminal.

Sandie Stratford

Keep strong, you brave people – we are so proud that you take this stand. May change come more quickly as a result of your action and may your names go down in history books as those who tried to bring about sanity.

Tim Beecher

Here’s what little support I can give to those who make that extra special effort to help make a difference. Here’s to those people who stand up to those who control our lives against our interests.

Jenny Chandler

Thankyou for having the courage to stand up for what so many of us believe in – creating a future for us on this planet

John Jordan, Artist/Writer

The future could be dark, this we all know. Some of us hide away, unable to face the consequences of our consumer capitalist life styles, the horrors of climate chaos and rising inequality. Others are motivated to act with courage and conviction, knowing that all of us have the potential to change what comes next. Those standing trial in Nottingham are part of a long tradition of people who have seen the future arrive and refuse its destructive shadow. Exactly 200 years ago in the same city, people were rebelling against the future that they saw coming over the horizon, a future of factories and industrial toxicity, a future where autonomy was replaced by mechanisation, a future where without money you starved. They became know as the Luddites, and the british state sent its army to kill and destroy them. The word Luddite itself has since been corrupted by language and relegated to a meaning it never had. They were not against progress, or machinery, but against a future where life would be trapped within the walls of a factory, where self sufficiency and the commons were destroyed in favour of profit for a few. If the Luddites had been successful, the present would have been very different. Rampant industrial capitalism may have been stopped in its tracks and we would be living in a world where creating wealth did not necessarily mean destroying people and the planet.

The Ratcliffe defendants do not have an army against them, but the arm of the law, yet they know that the future is born out of the present and that responsibility for the present is the only serious responsibility for the future. In 200 years time, if the world has not been turned to toast by the irresponsibility of our times, our descendants may look back at this trial and will erect blue plaques in the streets of nottingham to commemorate those who saved the future for them.

Veggies Catering Campaign

Veggies Catering Campaign is honoured to be able to give practical support during what may well be a historic and groundbreaking trial.

The time is fast approaching when those trashing the climate and causing real and escalating harm to people, other animals and the environment will be held legally as well as morally accountable for their actions. This trial will bring that day one step closer.

Bernie Barclay

With you all the way. You know you are doing the right thing for every living thing on this beautiful planet. Polluters – no passaran!

Tim Colbourn

I hope justice prevails and all 20 activists are acquitted. More importantly I hope the fact they were trying to prevent a larger crime is recognised as it was when those on trial for smashing up the EDO bomb-components factory in Brighton were acquitted (it was recognised that they were preventing the bigger crime of killing civilians in Gaza).

Kerry Lane

I think it is terrible that our country will prosecute those that are trying to save the country from its own stupidity, but lets bankers do serious damage to the nation and the government to slowly erode all our civil rights.

Cathryn Townsend

Thanks to Ratcliffe activists for your integrity in the face of destructive and furtive actions of the vandalizers of our planet. May justice prevail.

Bill Kitchen

I am delighted, amazed and thankful that people involved in ‘Ratcliffe’ , (because they are so concerned about climate change ) are prepared, selflessly, to take direct action such as this to highlight the issues of our power generation and it’s devastating environmantal impact. They surely deserve widespread support and praise.

Rebecca Lush Blum

I wish to add my statement of support to all the defendants. I hope the trial is at least going to useful to expose what is happening at Ratcliffe. Good luck with the trial. Thinking of you all.

Gemma, Gateshead

I wholeheartedly support you all. I was a youth delegate in Copenhagen last year and I know that we can no longer sit by and wait for Politicians and businesses to do the right thing. Climate change is the biggest threat to my generation, and it has a serious deadline – we need to peak our emissions in 5-8 years, or my life and that of my children is written off.

In the UK we have the Climate Change Act which requires us by law to reduce our emissions by 80% by 2050. We are not anywhere near that target, one of the main reasons being that fossil fuel subsidies are 10 times that of renewables. The people on trial are drawing attention to this disgraceful state of affairs and they should be applauded for standing up for what is right.

Belinda Hopkins

There is something wrong with the law in this country when it is legal to cause damage to the environment and put the long term future of the planet at risk, and illegal to try and stop this happening.

Blanche Cameron, Director, RESET and Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of the Environment, Centre for Alternative Technology

I would like to state my personal support for those who demonstarted against the impacts of climate change resulting from coal fired energy generation.

This is one of those situations where a major global crime justifies civil disobedience to draw the world’s attention to human induced climate change activity.

The Nagoya Summit this month aims to address issues around the impacts of human activity on biodiversity and habitat loss. The Copenhagen Summit also aimed to reduce our impacts on global and local environmental damage.

As a senior lecturer in environmental architecture and director of a charity working for better approaches to how we exist in our world of reducing natural resources, I wholeheartedly support the protesters’ acts and I am sure that many others are also grateful for their commitment and courage in the face of great personal cost.

Howard Balmer

For most of us there is a remarkable and alarming gap between our understanding of the likely impacts of climate change and our willingness to do anything practical to stop this.

Thankfully the activists who decided to shut down the Ratcliffe on Soar coal power station do not share this apathy.

These people should be applauded for their actions and supported during their trial for they have taken rational action for common good – It is those of us who weren’t there that should be on trial.

Shaun Chamberlin, author of The Transition Timeline

I have myself taken part in direct action against coal power in the past.  It is an act of desperation born of long hours spent studying climate science, allied to the failure of our campaigning and lobbying efforts.  I wasn’t in Nottingham on April 13th 2009, but I could easily have been.

In a world where the science is clear that our current path leads to climate destabilisation, the elimination of a significant proportion of the lifeforms on the planet and immense human death and suffering, I feel morally bound to pursue every possible avenue to change our course.   As the Chinese proverb has it, if we don’t change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.

John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace UK

Last year, the case for new coal-fired power stations in the UK crumbled, with the announcement that the first planned coal plant by Eon at Kingsnorth would be kicked into the long grass. This victory belonged to the grassroots direct action movement as well as the more traditional collection of NGOs that lined up against the biggest threat to our climate. Just as the Greenpeace action at Kingsnorth, for which 6 of our activists were acquitted on charges of criminal damage, came out of a deep frustration with political failure to act on climate change; the Ratcliffe 20 felt moved to take action themselves to stop emissions from the UK’s second largest coal fired power station. The right to protest and to dissent is the lifeblood of any democracy and the UK has a long and proud history of this. The challenge of tackling climate change is too important for us to be silenced.

Rosemary Bland

I agree with the importance of taking direct action against climate change. Any disruption the activists wanted to cause is nothing, NOTHING compared to the havoc that will be wreaked by the chaos of a changing climate.
They should not go to prison for trying to protect us all from a very real and present danger, that makes even terrorism seem quite insignificant.

Lin Patterson, Bath

One day the Ratcliffe 20 will be widely known as heroes. You are helping to wake us up. Waking us up to the urgency of what we must all do, especially us sleepy heads in the West, mesmerised or complacent, paralysed with ignorance, fear or confusion. Not doing enough. Not like you. Good on you!

Ms Joy Flynn

As a veteran of numerous NVDA’s starting in the 80′s I pledge my support to you all. I am appalled that even the planning of an action can now result in arrests and I have passed this information to all my friends and contacts. Our freedom to protest has been slowly eroded to nothing to such an extent we are now deemed ‘terrorists’ because we do not act as ‘sheep to Government dictat’.

I first became involved in protest with CND at the age of 17 along with my 14 year old sister, since then we have followed and acted for Greenpeace, marched to force our right to protest with the Crminal Justice Bill and various others. Although in our 40′s we still protest, use e-mail and generally spread the word. I live in Notts within sight of West Burton, Cottam and the now defunct High Marnham power stations – all being upgraded and word from contractors there is that nuclear is headed our way! I have supported local wind farms – and failed in my attempts to sway local opinions – they would rather see smoke belching power stations than relatively harmless wind farms (NIMBY syndrome).

I will become more involved – and any help I can give you all – I will. I have acted as an advocate on various legal cases (and won) – taking on the bastions of the elite – banks/utlility companies – on behalf of the impoverished, and you have my wholehearted support.