Since February this year protestors, made up of the grannies and granddads of Cockfosters, have been taking direct action to protect an environmentally sensitive site at Cat Hill in north London from destruction and redevelopment by a housing company.

The proposed development consists of 231 houses and is on land previously owned by Middlesex University. The police, as usual, have taken no action to stop the developers, L&Q, from attempting to illegally destroy the green site even though the site manager has attempted to run over protestors and a security guard has threatened the environmental protectors with a metal pole. The site is home to ancient woodlands, including some trees that 400 years old, and Great Crested Newts, a protected species, proving L&Q clearly didn’t bother to search the area at all before commencing their redevelopment work.

Natural England, which was set up to protect areas just like this have explicitly told the developers that they must comply with the regulations of their licenses, but haven’t attempted to enforce them, although they have told protestors at the site that they are currently investigating the situation.

The pensioners and protestors guarding the site have been fighting tooth and nail to turn away almost all attempts to bring contractors onto the site at one time managing to turn away 20 lorries in one day!

PISSED OFF AS NEWT.

L&Q is now in the process of attempting to evict all protestors at the site from the area even though legal proceedings have been adjourned until later this month.

The site manager, presumably the same one who attempted to run over the protectors, twatted one of the activists camped on the site with a spanner, drawing blood. But he managed to explain it was all a harmless accident, so the police did nothing, naturally. The developers have said "We are not disturbing the newt breeding pond, we are not felling trees", which activists claim is clearly utter bollocks as is shown by these photos. Newts have been found on the site and contractors have broken the fence that is supposed to keep the newts out of danger. Contractors on site have even been breaking their own health and safety rules, such as no smoking, as documented on the Cat Hill Protest twitter feed and Facebook page.

With eviction imminent more people are needed on site - all the usual stuff is needed but there is the added bonus of regular live music in the evenings.