But what the court never heard were equally disturbing – and uncorroborated – allegations regarding the conduct of the security guards at the site, who, it is alleged, threatened to urinate in protesters’ water containers, destroyed swans nests, served injunctions themselves. shot at and injured wildlife, and blocked a public right of way by standing in the middle of it, telling members of the public that to go along the path would mean passing within five yards of them, and so breach the injunction. All or none of these allegations may eventually turn out to be true, but they deserve to be heard and tested in court.

Through the looking glass

To try and view the situation from npower’s position is to take a trip through the looking glass. Watching the video footage of Adrian Arbib being served with the injunction, I voiced the opinion that the four black-clad balaclaved strangers approaching him on an isolated country road was a somewhat intimidating spectacle. “Well, it may look that way to you”, chastised the spokesperson, suggesting that most reasonable people would be filled with elation at the opportunity to make new friends out of the approaching seventeen-stone masked heavies.

Except don’t call them that. The word “heavies” was frowned upon when I used it in an offhand way during conversation with npower’s press office. But let us face facts. There is a reason that npower’s lisping security firm Shercurity hire ex-soldiers, not ex-librarians. These are not men employed for their love of poetry or the opera. However strict their discipline and training may be, they are hired because they represent a potential threat of physical force, and are so plainly intended to intimidate. So the sight of these masked men presenting injunctions on members of the public under anti-harassment legislation transcends satire.

And let us not forget that the same security guards who found it distressing to be photographed, filmed and watched by protesters, were themselves photographing, filming and documenting what the protesters were doing.

While I can live with spin, since we began investigating the story I have been aware of the constant and pervading whiff of a pudding being over-egged. In one of my first calls, while trying to understand why their solicitors had served Adrian Arbib with the injunction, the spokesperson began to defend the whole basis of the court order, asked rhetorically: “But what would you have done if you or your family had been threatened ?”

Well, the simple answer would have been: I would contact the police, rather than putting injunctions on the reporter who knocked on my door later on to ask me about it. But I was more interested in what appeared to be evidence of a sudden escalation in the threat to the safety of npower personnel. When had these threats to family happened ? Who was responsible ? What did the police say ?

There was a pause at the end of the line. “I don’t want to go into that”. Only when I pressed the matter further did the spokesperson admit that there had been no such threats. “Forget I said that”.

A slip of the tongue ?

Which I did. It’s easy to make a slip of the tongue, and wrong to treat a simple mistake as an attempt to deceive. Except, a week later, I was reading an online article by a respected industry journalist from a well-regarded publication. It quoted a npower spokesperson, and said that their staff had been identified after photographs of their car registration numbers had been published on websites. This was evidence that destroyed all opposition to the photography injunction: there was a clear and present danger against which the injunction needed to protect.

I phoned npower. “I don’t know of any such websites”, said the first spokesperson. It was a “misunderstanding of npower’s position”, said the second. No websites. No identification of workers. No threats to their families. Two slips of the tongue. Coincidence.

And then in what is the nearest we have come to an explanation as to the events of 16th February, npower’s solicitors, Lawson Cruttenden, admitted that Adrian Arbib was served with the injunction in what they described as “an abundance of caution”, which I can only assume is solicitor-speak for “we made a mistake”. In mitigation, they added: “When he was served, it was not clear to the injunction servers who he was”. Except, as his video shows, Arbib couldn’t have made it clearer to the solicitors that he was a member of the press. Again, it is difficult to compare this statement with Arbib’s video footage without coming to the conclusion that one of these conflicting versions of events must be inconsistent with the truth.

And when it came to Channel 4’s news report from Radley Lakes, npower’s spokesperson was again keen to impress on viewers that the serene beauty spot needed its own private militia to avoid it turning into a home counties version of the Balkans. Ill-advisedly delivering his statement in front of a steaming cooling tower, he gravely informed viewers that security guards “have had stones thrown at them”.

Like the miners strike ? Like a prison riot ? Not if he’s referring to the same incident as was used in the court evidence: one stone, one security guard, one apparently spotty adolescent egged on by his mates, who sped off afterwards in a Renault Clio and who I imagine to be extremely unlikely to be connected with the protesters in any way. There is certainly no mention of the guards having recognised him as a protester before or since.

“Having a stone thrown at me greatly disturbed and scared me” said the security guard in his statement. Many of the guards working at the site list their expertise in “close protection” bodyguard work – apparently rushing forwards to take a bullet for a client, but running scared at the threat of a pebble. To quote George Monbiot: “the security company has hired a bunch of right cissies.”

“[Security guards] have had cameras put in their face, and people have said ‘We know where you live, and your family live’”, npower spokesman Richard Frost told Channel 4 News. “Is that harassment ? I think it is, and more importantly, a high court judge thought so too”

It is harassment, pure and simple. If I were applying for an injunction alleging harassment, it would be exactly the sort of incident I would have presented in evidence. Indeed, it must have been presented as evidence for Justice Calvert-Smith to rule on it. But looking through the witness statements, I can’t find reference to it anywhere. I can only assume that my paperwork is incomplete.

Admittedly, none of this brings us any closer to solving the mystery of why a well-respected environmental photographer was handed an injunction in one hand while still displaying his press card in the other. But what I believe we are seeing is the consequence of an image-conscious multinational letting its frontline PR to be conducted by a private militia of masked black-clad ex-squaddies.

In my mind, the enduring image now associated with npower is the intimidating and bizarre formation of masked security guards and their nervous solicitors they marched towards Adrian Arbib on a lonely and isolated lane last February. I doubt it’s an image that RWE npower will be printing in their glossy annual reports.

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