Chrissie Hynde and Ray Davies' daughter Natalie arrested after gluing herself to boyfriend during fracking protest
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Your support makes all the difference.Natalie Hynde, the daughter of The Pretenders’ singer Chrissie Hynde and The Kinks’ Ray Davies has been arrested after apparently gluing her hands to her boyfriend during a protest against fracking.
Ms Hynde, 30, reportedly glued herself to Simon Medhurst at the entrance of a test drilling site near Balcombe, West Sussex this morning.
The couple are among a group of protesters who have been camping outside the site for around a week.
They are protesting against plans by Cuadrilla, a fracking company chaired by former BP chief executive Lord Browne, to explore the area for oil and gas.
The company says it may not need to resort to fracking to extract any oil and gas it finds on the site and it has neither sought or received permission to do so.
Ms Hynde and Mr Medhurst were separated by police and led into separate police vans.
“Hopefully we have stopped Cuadrilla by some point,” Mr Medhurst said after he was freed, with Ms Hynde adding she was “OK”, the Times reports.
Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan told Radio 4’s Today programme this morning that drilling could start within a day or two despite the protests. He said: “There are a lot of protesters. We have no issue with peaceful protest in Balcombe, we respect people’s rights to do that.”
It is the second time in a matter of months that Ms Hynde has been held by officers for engaging in an environmental protest.
In February she was arrested after bolting herself to a tree to defend an area of ancient Sussex woodland from a new bypass linking Bexhill and Hastings.
Ms Hynde, who grew up in north-west London and moved to Leonard’s -on-Sea in Hastings two years ago, works as a painter and decorator. She is also a veteran of the Occupy London campaign.
In an interview earlier this year Ms Hynde told The Independent : “If I can use who I am to bring attention to our cause then that’s great.”
Fourteen people were arrested in Balcombe on Friday and at least nine more arrests have been made as the protest moved into its seventh day.
Video: Cuadrilla boss on fracking
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