Stop Rosebank court case rally

A land­mark fight against drilling in the Rose­bank North Sea oil field took anoth­er step on 12 Novem­ber, with the first day of a court hear­ing in Edin­burgh to argue the ille­gal­i­ty of exist­ing licences. Mem­bers of Protest in Har­mo­ny were there to sup­port the court cas­es, led by Uplift and Green­peace and sup­port­ed by the #Sto­pRos­e­bank net­work. The choir was led by Jane Lewis in a spir­it­ed ren­di­tion of words by K R Hon­ey to the tune of Handel’s Hal­lelu­jah Cho­rus.

Speak­ers at the ral­ly out­side the Scot­tish Supreme Court paid trib­ute to an amaz­ing coali­tion of organ­i­sa­tions that have worked hard for years to stop oil giants destroy­ing the plan­et. The Green­peace speak­er said the organ­i­sa­tion was going into court know­ing that the gov­ern­ment has dropped out of defend­ing the case and called on the Scot­tish court to uphold the law. The demon­stra­tors also includ­ed mem­bers of North Sea Knit­ters, who had kit­ted out David Hume’s stat­ue with a nat­ty red scarf. The demon­stra­tion con­clud­ed with Jane Lewis and Protest in Har­mo­ny lead­ing the crowd in singing Somos Todes, writ­ten by musi­cian-activists in Chile, Cana­da, USA, Scot­land and Eng­land, in sup­port of the com­mu­ni­ty of Putaen­do as they resist Cana­di­an min­ing com­pa­ny Los Andes Copper.

The ral­ly got plen­ty of media atten­tion, with Protest in Har­mo­ny mak­ing it onto the BBC Scot­land lunchtime news.