The Battle of Drax: 38 held as protest fails to close plant

Police claimed last night to have thwarted attempts to shut down Britain's largest coal-fired power station, after thousands of officers were deployed in a massive operation to safeguard electricity supplies.

Senior officers said 38 people had been arrested in the "battle of Drax" and dismissed claims by campaigners that six activists had breached security.

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North Yorkshire Police Chief Constable, Della Cannings, defended the use of officers from forces around the country, although protestors accused them of using heavy-handed tactics, stopping and searching hundreds of people unnecessarily. "If nothing much happened people would say we were over-policing but if there had been an incursion into the power station they would have said it was under-policed," she said.

In the end, only 600 of the 2,000 hoped-for demonstrators marched on the plant near Goole. However, Campaign Against Climate Change, the umbrella organisation behind the protest, claimed a symbolic victory by successfully raising awareness of the dangers of global warming.

Drax is said to be the UK's largest CO2 polluter with an output equivalent to more than 100 small nations, according to campaigners.

One of the demonstrators, Alex Harvey, said a group of about six protesters breached the gates of the power station during the night and had climbed a lighting tower. Police said the tower was on nearby Barlow Common, and not part of the plant.

The majority of the arrests were for public order offences although two people were held under warrant, one in relation to an earlier assault.

But those that took part held the event as a sea-change in the battle against climate change. Typical among them was Shannon Smy. She recalled the moment she was required to convert her environmental beliefs to action.

Her band, the popular and overtly political folk outfit, Seize The Day, had been asked to embark on yet another international tour, this time to Israel. "We spent a lot of time discussing the difference we would make going there against the impact we would have on the planet," she said.

A veteran of protest politics from the poll tax to anti-GM crops, she and her band mates decided it was time to take a stand. They renounced flying on tour and now perform only to domestic audiences. It was a big decision, she concedes.

Her husband and fellow musician, Theo Simon, believes the time has come for the rest of us to stand up for their beliefs too. "We now have to be living what we are saying - we have reached our critical time."

Demonstrators consisting mainly of families with young children, cyclists, clowns, baton twirlers and a number dressed in white forensic suits, had earlier set off from a makeshift village at Barlow Common

Shortly after 9am they came face to face with a massive police presence.

It is estimated that more than 3,000 officers from 12 different forces have been sent to assist the North Yorkshire constabulary prevent what they describe as a "hardcore of anarchists" shutting down the plant. Interruption of supplies from Drax, however briefly, could lead to widespread power cuts, it was warned. The police were taking no chances.

Hundreds of people have been stopped and searched in the past few days, although police declined to say how many. Police were using powers brought in more than a decade ago under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which entitles them to stop, search, photograph and record the name of anyone thought to be posing a violent threat to order.

A vast area of farmland surrounding Drax had been designated a "section 60 area" and most protesters claim to have been stopped by police several times each.

Barrister, Ralph Smyth, an environmental activist of 15 years' standing, said one friend had been searched 20 times while others had had their wallets probed and cooking implements seized as they went in and out of the campsite.

"They are stopping and searching people again and again, often as little as 10 minutes apart.The notion that people are here for a fight is ridiculous," he said.

Britain's biggest polluter

* Commissioned in the mid-1970s, Drax lies just south of Selby, Yorkshire

* The station employs 625 people, mostly locals

* Coal-fired power stations such as Drax account for about 15 per cent of electricity produced by British power stations

* It supplies 7 per cent of the UK's annual electricity

* It burned nine million tons of coal and emitted 20.8 million tons of carbon dioxide last year - 4 per cent of the nation's CO2

* It went into administration in 2003 amid a UK power market slump; revived by an unprecedented rise in wholesale electricity prices

* It joined the stock market in December 2005

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