First lessons in road protests
on March 5, 2007
in local
Last month’s tree-sit by environmentalists in the Rospuda Valley showed their determination to fight and win. Come spring, we might expect masses of green-minded supporters from all corners of Europe (see this). But perhaps it’s worth mentioning where today’s protesters took their first lessons.
Throughout the early 90s of the last century post-Thatcher Britain witnessed a flurry of actions aimed at stopping new motorways being build. Earth First! groups, together with many other groups, then became involved in the road protest, as an attempt to reverse the government’s road-building programme. The first road protest happened at Twyford Down where a permanent protest camp was set up. The Donga Tribe arose from this camp.
Between 1993 and 1995, groups like the Donga Tribe built tree houses and tunnels to delay the extension of the M3 through St Catherine’s Hill. Although unsuccessful, the protests eventually led to a re-think of road policy.
Following “Yellow Wednesday”, when hordes of police and security guards invaded the camp to bulldoze the area, the Dongas left Twyford Down for Bramdean Common. They constituted about twenty people in their early twenties. Some of the Tribe maintained an involvement in various subsequent road protests (Solsbury Hill, North Wales, Newbury bypass), but gradually morphed into a semi-nomadic tribe, travelling the South West of England on foot, squatting various hill-forts and putting on seasonal gatherings in an attempt to reawaken a sense of connectedness with the land. The last of the nomadic Dongas were travelling in Cornwall until the end of 1999, after which some of them moved to France to continue their nomadic lifestyle. There were many subsequent road protests including Newbury bypass, the A30, the M11 link road protest in London, where whole streets were “squatted.”
Swampy became well known during the eviction at the A30 camp, although there were many other smaller road protest camps. Some camps did actually result in roads being cancelled, the first such cancellation occurring in London.
Building, or destroying?
