As expected, the greens are trying to use physical coercion to prevent Cuadrilla going ahead with their test drilling at Balcombe. Over the weekend Sussex police reported that a number of people had been charged arrested, most of them subsequently charged with one offence or another.
Ezra Lynch, 31, a circus employee; Samantha Duncan, 29, of Beaconsfield Villas, Brighton, and Marcin Swiercz, 35, a handyman from London, have been charged They will appear before Crawley Magistrates on 14 August along with Mark Mansbridge, 51, a voluntary charity worker, of Paddock Road, Lewes; Nancy Walker, 25, of Over Street, Brighton; Richard Millar, 29, of Upper Gloucester Road, Brighton; Frances Crack, 31, a teacher, of Taffs Well, Cardiff, and Justin Preece, of Pontypridd, Mid Glamorgan.
Although this is not the full list, it is representative: none of those charged appears to have been from Balcombe itself. In fact the Sun reports the chairman of the parish council as saying that he didn't recognise many local people among the protestors at all.
It's fair to say then that the attempts to use physical force are the work of "usual suspects" - not that that evidence of the kind I have just outlined will weigh on people like Louise Gray of the Telegraph, who tweets that "You can't put a good middle class protest down".
As Nick Grealy is at pains to point out, Cuadrilla are aiming to extract oil rather than gas from the site, so the protests are a bit cockeyed. But there is little doubt that the greens see Balcombe as absolutely pivotal and their media campaign, aided by their integrity-challenged supporters in the MSM, is gearing up.
Meanwhile, Cuadrilla's Twitter feed has been silent since the protests began. You can't help feeling that the company is simply not geared up for this kind of a fight.