Drax protester trial: Lessons from the Great Train Ambush

The hijack of a coal train by climate protesters and their ensuing trial both played out in a uniquely British manner, writes Martin Wainwright It was a lovely sunny morning in perfect English countryside, but somewhere among the fields between the M62 and Drax in North Yorkshire, something extremely atypical of this tranquil landscape was about to happen. I wasn't sure exactly what, but on the empty lanes not long after dawn it was easy to guess that the railway line servicing Drax power station might be in the sights of the climate change campaigners' next rumoured protest. Access isn't easy to the completely rural stretch of track, the sort of winding line which earlier campaigners rhapsodised about when they tried to stop Beeching's 1960s railway cuts. But after several cow-parsley fringed dead ends, I saw a man in a... [read full story]                    

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