A group of Greenpeace protestors, including Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson and her sister Sophie, were prayed with manure by an angry farmer after they broke a court injunction in order to protest fracking on the farmer’s land (video below).
According to the Daily Mail, Emma and Sophie Thompson were filming a parody of ‘The Great British Bake Off’ for Greenpeace on a farmer’s land when the furious farmer drove over to the protestors on his tractor. The protestors reportedly snuck onto the land and climbed over a gate to set up on the land, which was to be used for fracking.
The actresses were filming a parody episode, titled “Frack Free Bake Off,” in order to “show the government that we will not allow fracking to scar our countryside and fuel yet more climate change.”
When the farmer spotted the group of protestors on his land, he drove over with his tractor in an attempt to drive the group away. As he then drove around the protesters, he began spraying them with manure from the back of the tractor.
In a video of the incident, the protestors can be seen screaming at the farmer to stop, but he ignores their calls and continues circling around them.
After a few times driving around the group, the farmer drove off.
Kate Styles, a local cake shop owner involved in the protest, told the Telegraph, “The stink was temporary – unlike the impact of fracking on this community if Cuadrilla get their way.”
“Celebrities from London trespassing on a Lancashire farmers land, preventing him from working whilst lecturing us on where the UK should get our natural gas is beyond ridiculous,” Francis Egan, chief executive of Cuadrilla, said.
According to the Telegraph, Cuadrilla’s application to frack on the farmland was initially thrown out by local councillors, but they appealed and the decision to accept the application will be reviewed by the government.
A spokesman for the local police discussed the incident in a statement.
“We were this morning made aware of a protest on land at Plupton Hall Farm at Little Plumpton,” the police spokesman said. “A local neighborhood patrol attended and spoke to a representative of the protestors to establish their intentions. It was not felt necessary or proportionate to maintain a police presence at the site but resources are available to attend again if necessary.”
Emma Thompson discussed her involvement with Greenpeace and the reason she chose to join the protest against fracking.
“I’ve been aware of this issue for a while with my work with Greenpeace and it came to a head for me when David Cameron went to the Paris Climate Conference and signed on to the protocol and then on the sly at Christmas, when nobody was looking, gave the nod to 200 fracking sites in Britain,” Thompson said. “It proved to me our Government is saying one thing and doing the opposite.”
