If you tolerate this...

This is a guest post from a local campaigner fighting to gain support for a renewables development at Lenchwick in Worcestershire. You can support this wind farm here, and visit their campaign blog here.

There’s nothing quite like discovering that you’re surrounded by Nimbies.  Those who have seen either version of the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” will have some idea of what it’s like.  It’s terrifying.  Suddenly, seemingly intelligent and rational people become the victims of some strange cult-like mind control.  They attack, threaten and betray their neighbours.  And they’ll believe and say pretty well anything if they think it will advance their “cause”.

Such things as facts, evidence, eyewitness testimony, common sense and the fundamental principles of science, democracy and civilised behaviour mean nothing to them.  They will hijack any group, any occasion, any opportunity for their own devious ends.

Our very own Nimby nightmare began towards the end of 2008, with the announcement by ScottishPower Renewables that they were considering the area around my Worcestershire village as a potential site for a wind farm.  Within hours, it seemed, a small number of local fanatics had got busy and were posting atrociously inaccurate anti-windfarm propaganda through people’s doors.

By early 2010, supporters of the proposed Lenchwick Windfarm had successfully appealed to the independent Advertising Standards Authority about the outrageous claims the protest group VVASP (‘Vale Villages Against Scottish Power’) had been making since the start.

Sadly, too much damage had already been done.  A form of mob-rule had been unleashed by a retired scientist who appointed himself Chief Nimby and proceeded to hoodwink, delude and terrify local villagers with his half-baked lies about wind turbines.  The die was cast.  We were living in Nimby hell.

Local democracy was quickly overturned.  The parish councils nearby had carried out polls which revealed that, regardless of the crazy rumours spread about by VVASP the majority of residents either approved of the windfarm or couldn’t be bothered to reply.  VVASP got rid of one conscientious parish council by disrupting all its meetings; their head honcho refused to cooperate with the acting Chair of the parish council in preserving some sort of order, and the councillors resigned en masse.  The Nimbies took over the parish council.

They then set up something they called a “Windfarm Working Party”.  They insisted that a councillor from each of the five adjoining parish councils be co-opted onto it and demanded an initial payment of £750 from each parish council towards its function of “information gathering and sharing”.  This money would be accounted for retrospectively every three months.  That was last summer.  As far as can be ascertained, no accounts have yet been presented to explain the expenditure of some £4,500 of tax-payers’ money.

There is no evidence of the “Windfarm Working Party” visiting a working windfarm or contacting groups in favour of renewables.  They did however sit down with VVASP as soon as they’d got their hands on our parish council money and agreed on how they were going to share it.  Whether we like it or not, public money is seemingly going to a consultant advising the Nimby group on how to object to the planning application.  Attempts by local residents to solicit information regarding the “Windfarm Working Party” – its constitution, activities and use of our money – have been met by a stone wall.

It was this sort of lawless behaviour that prompted the “Wind of Change” blog, along with the constant barrage of lies.  The anti-windfarm protest group insists that it’s not a protest group and it’s not anti-windfarms.  Their website claims to be providing “comprehensive information” so that the community can make an “informed decision”, and yet not one single article has ever appeared which presents data favourable to windfarms or renewables in general.

At public information sessions held by ScottishPower Renewables, the Nimbies were out in force, making sure that nobody got to hear the truth.  Anyone who expressed even mild support for the turbines was accused of being in the pay of a wind power company.  If you want to feel threatened, just tell a Nimby that windfarms aren’t as noisy as they claim they are.  Or just ask them a question.  In fact, just say anything that doesn’t conform to the brainwashed Nimby line and you’ll soon find yourself in trouble.

The blog – www.lenchwind.blogspot.com – has been running since the beginning of May 2009.  The British Library has now added it to its web archive, so that future generations can see how disgracefully certain newcomers to a rural community responded to a 21st century opportunity (by and large, it’s the recent “immigrants” from the cities who oppose the plans and not our “native” residents or the farming community, who recognise that the countryside is a working environment).

Like those irresponsible right-wing newspapers, the Daily Mail and The Telegraph, our local Nimbies are simply refusing to accept that we are living in the 21st century.  They demand the right to consume at 20th century levels on the grounds that they won’t have to pay the bill.  They have glimpsed the future in the form of elegant, inspirational, exhilarating wind turbines and have decided that they want to go backwards and let the UK fall behind the rest of the world.

Most of all, they care nothing for the environment, the planet, the needs of the many or of future generations.  Their petty-minded and dishonest Nimbyism is a product of selfishness, pure and simple, combined with a kind of deliberate ignorance.  Oh, and arrogance, too – the arrogance of people who are convinced that they alone have the right to an opinion.  The arrogance of those who can afford to move into a “nice” country area and then seek to dictate what can and can’t happen there.  The arrogance of the bully who has found something they can use to whip up hysteria and hatred and thereby become leader of the gang.

We can and we must oppose them.  The “Wind of Change” blog will show you how you can help to overcome such mindless, mendacious and anti-social opposition to a beneficial and necessary scheme.  And please – support your local windfarm.

“AEOLUS”