Anti-coal campaigner gathering in Westminster in September 2021 to call on the government to scrap what they called “insane” plans for a new coal mine in West Cumbria. Activists left messages opposing the mine on cut-outs of yellow canaries outside the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as a four-week public inquiry into plans for the UK’s first new deep coal mine in over 30 years begun. The action is an allusion to the old mining practice of bringing a caged canary down a coal mine, to test if conditions underground were too toxic for miners, with campaigners comparing humans to the canaries. A simultaneous demonstration was held outside the site of the proposed coking mine, the Woodhouse Colliery near Whitehaven. The protests were coordinated by Coal Action Network, along with local campaign group South Lakes Action on Climate Change (SLACC) and Friends of the Earth.