I WOULD like to correct a misconception on your article Protest claim dismissed.

Frack Off Our Forest has never demonstrated against Forest of Dean District Council – only against the would-be frackers, South Western Energy.

We were not “kicking against an open door” as Cllr James says, because we were not - as we made very clear in our publicity at the time – demonstrating or otherwise trying to persuade a council we already knew were opposed to fracking.

What we were doing was persuading South Western Energy that if the government overruled our local councillors we, the majority of the people of the Forest, would have been uncompromising in our direct opposition.

We held just one very noisy and disruptive – as well as lawful and peaceful – demonstration outside the council offices.

Our aim was to nip the threat in the bud by showing our opposition – and I think we were successful.

Some councillors (not all) may have been upset and wrongly thought the demonstration was targeted against them (although we tried very hard to communicate to them it wasn’t).

It was unfortunate if they had this impression but if we had not noisily demonstrated, the energy firm may not have been aware of the level of determination to not allow them to impinge on our Forest.

The most important result is that we demonstrators helped send South Western Energy packing.

Opposition from councillors at parish, town, district and county level also played a key part, as did local experts and the Review!

It is far more important than squabbling over who opposes fracking the most that we continue to prevent this threat from returning, as it could do.

In July 2017, Gloucestershire County Council is due to publish its Minerals Local Plan.

Hundreds of us put our objections into the draft version which is giving fracking more or less an open door – we hope planners have taken note of the points many of us raised and altered the draft.

It may not be in the news, but every weekday since the start of January a few miles outside Blackpool there are anti-frackers being physically removed and sometimes injured by dozens of police charged with facilitating fracking giant Cuadrilla in building a fracking site.

We know our local police will be relieved that we didn’t get to this stage in the Forest of Dean, as it have been very likely to divide our communities, provoke resentment towards the police and also impinge heavily on their already over-stretched budgets.

In Lancashire, the parish, district and county councils all voted against fracking but our government overturned the local democratic decision.

Now all that is left is pure people power to try and stop fracking from happening there.

And now the police there are obliged to turn against the very people they have a duty of care to protect in order to facilitate the government’s wishes.

None of us, I’m sure, wants to get into this situation in the Forest.

Therefore I hope that we and all our local representatives can continue working to get as much protection and deterrent as we can against the threat of fracking coming back.

Events in Lancashire will prove the litmus test for whether it does try and return to Gloucestershire – currently frackers are waiting in the wings in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, including Sherwood Forest, and Somerset to get started.

While licences were eventually declined by South Western Energy here, the government has told us it would consider reissuing them if requested by a fracking firm.

Another thing I need to make clear is that many are still claiming there was no real threat because there’s no gas in the Forest coalfield.

We agree that there is no gas within the coalbed itself, but as evidenced by the licence applications and the licences that were to be issued, South Western Energy’s target was the lower limestone shales which lie under and around our coalfield, rather than in the coalbed itself, where the gas yield would have been tiny or non-existent.

They aimed to explore at a depth of 1000m which is at least several hundred metres below the coal measures.

Would they have found shale gas? Who knows, but we aren’t prepared to let them find out.

Thank you to Forest of Dean District Council and the other councils for helping to protect us and passing these motions.

I won’t apologise for any noise and disruption demonstrators caused on that April afternoon, because it was part of the necessary effort to get South Western Energy to "frack off", which they eventually did in September, also chickening out of taking part in any public debate.

– Owen Adams, Frack Off Our Forest