Bristol, UK: Aviation Fuel Tankers Targeted
In the heart of Easton, next to a school, in a busy residential area between a well used railway line and a motorway, is enough aviation fuel to cause a major explosion. Aviation fuel contains over 2,000 chemicals. Once ignited it has a much higher BTU (British Thermal Unit) than gasoline and can burn much longer. In Easton, there are 6 white tankers, each 60 foot long.
We are often labelled “terrorists” but if we were then… boom! bye, bye! Instead, we decided to attack these containers with dark blue paint. In executing this small act of defiance we hope to highlight their existence, and the danger they pose. This prank was also done to add to the current discourse and campaigns around the expansion of Bristol Airport.
The huge quantity of aviation fuel is kept in case there is ever a shortage at the airport. The reality is that the existence of these tankers puts people’s lives at risk everyday, just so that corporations can continue “business as usual” at all costs. If anything was to happen at Bristol Airport, then this fuel would be taken to Filton Airfield. Filton Airfield is currently used by the National Police Air Service to fly the police helicopter (residents of Bristol will be all too familiar with it’s oppressive presence). Filton is also home to a large Airbus Factory, which was occupied in 2018. Airbus supply the Turkish regime with missiles, fighter jet components and other technology.
The Bristol Cable have previously investigated these connections.
The ports and docks of Bristol have a long history of profiting from slavery, the military, and, most recently, the distribution of fuel. Q8 Aviation recently celebrated the fact that over 10 million tonnes of aviation fuel had passed through Bristol dock. There is a huge network of pipelines that start in Bristol and were used in so-called ‘World War 2’ to disseminate fuel. The comedian Mark Thomas has commented on the volatility and precarity of this. The pipelines form a network all over this island. Thomas highlighted the use of signs on farm land in the South West to warn against digging (due to the pipelines). These signs are still visible near Avonmouth and the Severn Estuary, and the pipelines are an accident waiting to happen.
Bristol Airport has put forward plans for expansion, and wants to double it’s capacity (to 12 million). It has used green washing to legitimise this, publishing a ‘Carbon Roadmap’ which claims it will become “carbon neutral” by 2025.
The Amazon is on fire and we are sleep walking into an unprecedented ecological disaster. Claims by any corporation to be “carbon neutral” are a sick joke at the expense of the planet. This is no time for offsetting.
We are not XR. We ask for nothing, and make no demands. We are accountable only to ourselves. We don’t think that our action will change much, but we hope that it will make people think.
Solidarity with the Indigenous Mura people in Canutama, Brazil who are fighting the destruction of the Amazon. Also, belated solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners (following the week of action 23rd-30th August), especially Der Drei Von Der Park Bank.
source: anarchistsworldwide.noblogs.org