The Nanas came to be because of fracking but have evolved into so much more; supporting communities and other groups across the UK when they need to rise-up and stand strong against harmful industries and practices. We do whatever we can to help organise, inform and shine a spotlight on dangerous plans like coal mines or oil fields. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder and using all our might, warmth and experience to help in whatever ways we can.
Our Story:
We first set up a camp in a field in Lancashire at 5am on 7th August 2014 and stayed for 3 weeks in order to alert our friends and neighbours to just how close they were living to a proposed shale gas fracking site.
Since then, it's been a heck of a journey that included touring license areas with public meetings, supporting anti-fracking camps across the UK and culminated with a 1000-day protest at a site in Lancashire that finally saw fracking halted in November 2019.
THEN..
September 2022: the new UK Prime Minister lifted the moratorium on fracking and has said new licenses will be up for grabs! We pressed our tabards and gathered up our knitting, drums and tea urns to got back out again and do what was needed to get a U-turn and IT WORKED!
We continue to need help to ensure we get a ban on fracking and other dangerous industries that wreck nature and our environment. We take action, arrange rallies and protests, oppose licenses and join with residents and campaigners to ensure a strong, unstoppable opposition to the dirty energy sector and every penny truly helps. We also need sharers, observers and objecters too.
Residents in license areas were in fear of this starting over and bringing all the worries and seismic activity with it! Thank goodness it's stopped again for now thanks to so many campaigners and Nanas.The Lancashire site saw 57 seismic events that peaked on August bank holiday in 2019, with the UK’s strongest fracking-induced earth tremor, measuring 2.9ML.
What's fracking?
Fracking involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of vast quantities of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer in order to get at the gas inside. It's a dirty industry involving a huge amount of traffic and waste, pollution, a risk to water quality and methane leaks as well as seismic activity.
It WON'T bring down UK energy bills because any gas would be on the international market at market prices and NOT allocated for UK use. It WON'T be a quick solution either - sites take years to develop and all developers so far, have failed to get the gas out. UK shale and UK geology is just not suitable.
[Jim Watson, professor of energy policy at University College London, said: “There is huge uncertainty about the economic viability of fracking, and it may take a long time to produce relatively small amounts of gas.”
Stuart Haszeldine, professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, said: “Fracking in the UK is a very high commercial risk, as the geology is wrong, and almost all of the oil or gas has leaked away millions of years ago. Analyses of the shales recovered while drilling for fracking in Lancashire showed the wrong type of shale and no oil or gas present.”
Why Nanas?
Arriving with tea and cake in order to ease communication at otherwise contentious places; providing information about risks to communities; and researching and sharing our collective knowledge, connections, and future plans is how we do our bit to help support communities all over the country. We also knit, dance and generally cause 'mischief' when those pesky developers and their trucks try to get into sites.
We're non-violent yet firm in our determination to make the world a better place, starting right here in our own back yards (because that's where the children play ♥).