Interview: Against Kingsnorth

David Willis - part-time polar bear - protests in Bournemouth

Wednesday, 17, Sep 2008 12:00

One of the lead protestors who carried out the citizen's arrest on Sarah Vaughan, the company director from Eon, at the Lib Dem conference two days ago has spoken out in defence of the protest.

James Willis is the Lib Dem's parliamentary party spokesman for Dartford. He was the man in the polar bear suit and speaking to politics.co.uk he says the need to protest against Eon and the proposed building of the Kingsnorth power station was vital.

"We took the action we did to draw attention to the fact that Eon should not be building or developing a coal-fired power station in Kent without carbon capture and that they are committing a criminal act in doing so. So we decided to carry out a peaceful citizen's arrest," he says.

According to Mr Willis the decision as to whether Eon will be given the go ahead to build the power station is sat on energy secretary John Hutton's desk. But he may not get the final and ultimate say. Part of the problem is local opposition to the plan is fairly significant and the result of the public inquiry appear to have borne this out. So the latest Mr Willis has heard is that the decision has apparently gone all the way to No 10 and Gordon Brown will take the final decision.

The protestors are concerned that ultimately the story here will get lost as a result. The media will write about whether Gordon Brown can take a tough decision or not regardless of what he actually decides.

It is a sticky situation the protestors find themselves in. Traditionally the moment the economy takes a dive environmental issues get swept aside in the need to secure economic prosperity. Competition from the likes of China and India is helping to create an economic situation that means it is even more important to secure this - but a lot harder to do.

Add into the mix the fact that ever-increasing oil prices are applying pressure in all corners and the geopolitical instability of Britain and the EU's relationship with Russia and local environmental issues get tossed into the waste paper basket.

Mr Willis says the protestors accept the need for energy exists but argues that energy efficiency is needed as well.

He adds: "The problem with coal is that it is the most polluting of all the fossil fuels and if we sign up to power station then we are locking ourselves into a carbon based future for the next 30 years. That isn't part of the 2050 plan to achieve carbon reduction by 60 per cent. How can we say to countries like China and India that they have to reduce their own reliance on carbon and impose reductions on emissions? How can we propose those things when we are one of the worst polluters ourselves?"

He is still hopeful that Gordon Brown will decide against allowing Eon to build the power station - particularly given the recent measures announced by the government to promote energy efficiencies to help those already in fuel poverty from falling any deeper into the well.

And while he believes this was largely an "act of desperation" because the prime minister didn't manage to impose much tougher sanctions on the energy companies – such as the windfall tax that many were calling for - what he did was "bring energy efficiency perhaps a bit more into the debate".

This may have been an unintended consequence from the point of view of the government, but action groups like those that want to prevent the building of Kingsnorth power station are taking a great degree of comfort from it.

Mr Willis says the government must now "provide schemes to make it easier, not just for working class people, everyone, to be able to use less power and make their homes more energy efficient".

But he says the government also needs to take a lead, arguing that the privatised power companies "are not helping us at all… Because it [the debate] is not nationally controlled it is difficult to bring power companies to the table. Climate change is such a serious thing but it's difficult to get the power companies to agree as they all have their own agenda".

Mr Willis says another problem the protestors face is the fact that power companies like Eon are using the threat of the "power gap" to bolster their argument in support of building a new coal fired power station.

But, according to Mr Willis, "we are OK until 2015 which is when carbon capture will become available".

"It is beyond 2015 that we have to come up with some answers. If we start work on this now, so starting to encourage people and businesses to use renewable energy and make energy efficiencies alongside the work the Lib Dems are doing in Europe to prove that carbon capture works then power stations like Kingsnorth don't need to happen," he says.

"Eon have been using threats such as the power gap to justify the need to build another power station but the reason they are doing this we think is because they do not have a very diverse power selection in their power station. They are welcome to correct me if I am wrong but I don't think they have natural gas in the UK."

He also expresses some irritation with the way in which some delegates reacted to the protestors: "Some of the people in the meeting tried to stop certain people speaking.

"It's important to point out that we didn't stop the debate taking place. I was wearing a polar bear costume to attract attention to the fact that the polar ice caps are melting and water levels are rising and we're pretty certain it's down to what we are doing to the environment.

"The questions were nearly over when we carried out the protest, we didn't try to stop the debate and we were simply trying to make the point that what Eon are doing is such a serious and damaging thing. The ten people that were involved in that action are all hard working liberal activists and what we were trying to do what point out what Eon are doing is illegal and immoral."

And what about the other protestor? Well it turns out one man tried to hijack what Mr Willis feels was his and others perfectly legitimate protest with one of his own.

"The other protestor was nothing to do with us and although everyone has the freedom to speak he kept interjecting with questions that really had nothing to do with the debate and he wasn't associated with us," he adds.

What next for the protestors? Well, they are working hard to try and get the support of the local MPs and MEPs and their next course of action will be to try to point out to Labour that it could lose votes. The protestors are hoping Nick Clegg will mention Kingsnorth in his speech to the conference. The Kingsnorth protest, they say, is going national