Above Photo: From occupy.com
“Public support was paramount and I believe it made the judge acutely aware that this was not a simple case that I had wronged [U.K. fracking firm] Cuadrilla and owed them money,” Tina Rothery explains. “This was greater: it was about communities coming together. The huge public support showed the weight of my legal argument, and I think the judge could see that.”
Rothery, a grandmother and resident of Blackpool in North England, was met by a jubilant crowd of hundreds outside Preston Court on Friday, December 9, when the verdict of her freedom was announced. People of every age, from each corner of the British Isles, turned out for the decision and spent all day waiting outside the court to hear it.
Rothery was under threat of prison after taking part in a peaceful protest camp against Cuadrilla’s plans to frack her region in 2014. At that time, the anti-fracking group The Nanas organized a three-week occupation in a field adjacent to the site where the company ought to drill. Grandmother Ros Wills explained then to Occupy.com the strategy The Nanas used to legally occupy the field.
In solidarity with the locals, national activist group Reclaim the Power joined. From the field encampment, they launched more than a dozen direct actions against the fracking industry, their PR teams and governmental departments, helping shape national public opinion against the drilling efforts. Due to The Nanas’ and their allies’ strong opposition, which remains today, no substantial fracking has yet occurred in the U.K.
But that doesn’t mean the protests’ organizers have stopped being targeted for arrest. On August 26, 2014, the anti-fracking groups left camp and cleaned the field with a “finger-tip search.” But two days later, a joint claim by the landowners and Cuadrilla brought the case to Manchester High Court to get an injunction, even though the field was already empty. The injunction was granted against “person’s unknown.”
What followed has been a saga of legal hearings and procedure, with Rothery stepping in as the named defendant. Before her final court appearance last Friday, she told Occupy.com why she put herself forward on behalf of the thousands who visited and stayed at the occupation.
In part, she said, she was concerned that Cuadrilla may single out one local elderly resident or other vulnerable person to pursue in the civil action. Additionally, she said the legal case’s claims would have gone uncontested without a named defendant. Those claims included the establishment of another camp (which, in fact, turned out to be a local children’s treehouse), and the accusation that a cow had died and milk yields had dropped.
Rothery explained last week that farming veterinary records revealed no cow had died – in fact, that there were no milk cows in the vicinity.
Cuadrilla and the other claimants used the civil courts to try to make Rothery repay £60,000 in legal costs. The courts later adjusted that figure to £50,000. Without any means to pay, Rothery refused. By pursuing the grandmother for over two years, the fracking firm was effectively trying to get her imprisoned.
Rothery clarified why she feels a special duty to resist fracking. “I’m a grandparent, I’m someone with carer responsibilities for children and therefore it is my obligation based on the knowledge I have of the risks coming towards them, that I must stand between them and those risks,” she said.
“Nothing will make me move from my obligations. This is why I am a grandmother, and that is what we do.”
In court on Friday, the judge expressed open frustration with Cuadrilla, whose large PR infrastructure had given the impression all week in the press that the company was not behind the case, even though its lawyer was present in court. Before the trial, with prison looming, Rothery said it was a matter of principle not to comply with Cuadrilla’s compensation claim. The original £60,000 was largely the sum of lawyer’s fees.
“Cuadrilla has money, expertise and knows how it can use our legal system as a weapon,” Rothery told Occupy.com. “Their lawyers know how to drive the machine. I don’t. And I have no access to the same expertise. It all makes a mockery of our legal system as it may be abused by people with power and money.”
Rothery made the decision not to comply when she read the first line on the cost award – the official legal document claiming £60,000. It said: “The claimant [Cuadrilla and co] may not profit from these costs and may not use these costs as punishment.”
For Rothery, the significant amount and the 8 percent annual interest added up to what she considered extortion. Rothery also pointed out that the prosecution legal team chose public occasions to serve papers on her. She said their aim was to make an example of her.
Often in civil cases, when large corporations are attempting to end a peaceful occupation, they don’t pursue the individuals actually involved but are content to settle with land repossession and injunction. But Cuadrilla, in this case, seemed to take the profits-at-any-cost approach a step further. After spending lots of money on expensive lawyer fees, they expected a lone grandmother would pick up the tab.
Perhaps the most spectacular failure for Cuadrilla was the impact this case has had on the firm’s already highly contested public image. Part of the £60,000 original claim involved £7137.15 to the PR firm PPS, which is part of Newgate Communications, for what it called “advertising costs,” and a further £6,975 to international PR firm Bell Pottinger.
The public can do the math on how much bad PR Cuadrilla gained by attempting to send a grandmother to prison in the lead-up to Christmas – especially as the company willfully misguided the public by trying to deny that they were driving the case.
