Littlehampton campaigner’s call to make a stand against fracking

Lilias Cheyne, a Green party member and former Parliamentary candidate, was speaking during a brief break at home in Kent Road, after spending ten days with anti-fracking protesters at Balcombe.

American company Cuadrilla this week began exploratory drilling for oil on farmland in the village, after being granted a licence by West Sussex County Council, but insists it has no plans at present to seek permission to use the process which has become known as ‘fracking’ to extract shale gas.

Surveys have shown there could be large reserves of gas beneath West Sussex.

Lilias, 60, drove over to Balcombe with supplies of food and water in her camper van, which for three days became the main kitchen for the camp until another cooker was brought in.

Her opposition to fracking is based on the use of chemicals in the process, the large quantity of water needed and the threat to the water supply from pollution, as well as the potential production of cheap gas perpetuating the use of damaging fossil fuels.

Today she was planning to return to the camp, where she has featured prominently in television and national press coverage.

“It’s corporate business taking over our country and thinking they are going to get away with it. This is the right time for us all to stand together and say we didn’t go through two world wars to defeat the Nazis, only to see big business come along and frack our countryside,” said Lilias, who has five children and three grandchildren.

Her comments came as Nick Herbert, MP for Arundel and South Downs, claimed that the threat from fracking was now similar to the fear of new housing developments.

“It is the fear of the unknown that is exacerbating local concerns,” he told The Telegraph.

However, Arun councillor for Arundel and the council’s cabinet member for the environment, Paul Dendle, replying to a Littlehampton woman’s concerns, said he supported the concept of fracking ‘within a tight regulatory regime and with ample reward to the local community’.