A few days ago a flare was allegedly fired at a police helicopter which was landing near the Barton Moss anti-fracking protests. At the time the allegations were strenuously denied by the organisers.
Rachel Thompson from Frack Free Greater Manchester said: “We refute this claim. Greater Manchester Police have refused to show any evidence of this alleged incident."
However, James Verdon has been looking around the activists' social media and has discovered that the identity of the culprit is well known to those in the camp including, apparently, Rachel Thompson, the organiser who issued the original denial.
Well Rachel Thompson can in her words "refute absolutely these claims" but the cruel truth is that several of us know who did this, why it was done and the reasons behind the present cover up (bad PR in short).
There are simply too many people who saw it happen to try and claim it was a cop fit up when it wasn't. I'm not in any way defending what the cops did and I was one of those who had their tent turned over by them but IMHO we are better off telling the truth, booting out the twat who did it (without informing cops of course) and moving on. This issue is too important to let it become another 'Us v Cops' slanging match (climate camp ! ) that obscures the important reason for the protesting.
Read James' article and the activists' website.