Mass protest against ‘unwanted and unsafe’ fracking to take place

Campaign groups in Manchester are organising a protest against fracking and are hoping it will be the largest demonstration against the controversial gas extraction method in the country.

Frack Free Greater Manchester (FFGM), which is organising the event, are protesting against exploratory drilling by fracking firm IGas at Barton Moss, a village on the outskirts of Manchester.

The village hit the headlines in December when campaigners delivered a giant wind turbine blade as a ‘Christmas gift’ to shale gas firm IGas, blocking the entrance to the drilling site.

But the organisers of this protest are hoping that opposition to fracking in the area will be greater than those witnessed last summer in Balcombe, where protestors clashed with police, and which even led to the arrest of the Green Party’s only sitting MP Caroline Lucas.

One resident took to Facebook to say that the locals will refuse to give “social licence” to IGas in the area.

Martin Porter of FFGM said “Barton Moss is the latest skirmish in a global insurgency against what is the last stand of the fossil fuel dinosaurs. France and Bulgaria have already said no. Fracking is unnecessary, unwanted and unsafe and we call on the people of Britain to come to Manchester to say that we don’t want it here.”

The demonstrators will assemble in Manchester Piccadilly Gardens from 12pm on Sunday March 9.