If you can’t beat them, join them!
Bailiffs drill 10ft shaft in bid to flush out HS2 protesters
HS2 bailiffs were unable to remove a protester from his underground tunnel network – so dug their own 10ft-deep shaft to try to winkle him out.
It came as activist Lazer Sandford’s father – a millionaire Scottish laird – said he feared his son and daughter, who is also underground, would die in their tunnel.
Last week it emerged environmentalists spent months digging the 100ft-long subterranean network near London Euston in protest against the £106billion high-speed railway. Nine are still down there.
Bailiffs yesterday resorted to drilling in an attempt to remove Mr Sandford from his ‘lock-on’ – a metal tube for his arm buried in concrete to prevent himself being pulled out.
They spent more than 18
‘I was scared they would die’
hours trying and failing to remove the 20-year-old.
An HS2 spokesman said he was offered safety goggles, masks, ear protection and a fire blanket for dust.
In a video released yesterday afternoon by protesters, Mr Sandford can be heard saying: ‘A bailiff has been sitting on me for at least an hour.
‘ I’m finding it incredibly uncomfortable as you can imagine. It would be nice if he could get off me.’
The HS2 spokesman last night refused to comment on the claims made in the clip.
But the activist’s father Roc Sandford, a member of environmental group Extinction Rebellion, said he was worried for his son and daughter Blue, 18.
The 63-year-old told the BBC: ‘Lazer, who is locked in the downshaft, keeps getting things dropped on him, choked, put in wrist-locks or being stood or sat on. I was really scared they would die down there and I would never see them again. They shouldn’t have to be doing this. They should be studying.’
But he added: ‘My children and their fellow tunnellers are fighting for all our lives and I’m really proud of them.’
Roc Sandford made his millions in property and tourism and now lives on his ‘off-grid’ Hebridean isle Gometra.
A spokesman for HS2 said yesterday the safety of staff, protesters and emergency services was ‘of paramount importance’.
He added: ‘We are doing all we can to end this illegal action safely, and progress has been made with access secured to the underground tunnel.
Lazer Sandford has called for HS2 to be ‘scrapped’, saying: ‘I’m only doing this because I don’t have a choice.
‘HS2 uses huge amounts of high-carbon steel and concrete and it will only make the climate emergency worse.’