Tassie’s forestry wars echo UK’s motorway wars …

“Mum and dad’’ demonstrators, fiery activists, a government intent on silencing environmental protesters, the battle of Twyford Down in Britain two decades ago has an echo in the latest phase of the forestry wars in Tasmania.

It was a battle the British Government under John Major would ultimately win, even though it can now be said the Conservative administration lost the war.

The victory, though, in pushing through plans to build a motorway cutting across verdant downland where the poet Alexander Pope had often walked as a schoolboy would leave a scar on both the British countryside and the British psyche.

It was also a battle that reinforced the rights of concerned citizens – as opposed to “rent-a-crowd” activists – to demonstrate over projects of national interest that conflicted with how they viewed their immediate neighbourhood.

At its height a High Court judge described the majority of protesters as “fundamentally decent and motivated by a concern which to them overrides anything else”.

I might be using a long bow to link the motorway wars in Britain with the Tasmanian forestry wars but the efforts of the Tasmanian Government to introduce new laws to restrict protest here, when laws are already in place to deal with such issues as public nuisance and trespass, travels familiar territory.

Riding the Devil’s Highway

I had a grandstand view of the battlelines high on Twyford Down overlooking the ancient city of Winchester when I visited Hampshire to make a citizen science study of motorways and the affect they were having on Britain’s wildlife. What I learned about roadkill – and its affects on badger populations – has in part informed a book I have just written about roadkill in Tasmania, Riding the Devil’s Highway, which is due to be published later this year.

But all those years ago my thoughts strayed from roadkill on the M3 motorway to the protest over the excavation of a vast cutting through the chalk of Twyford Down.

When Britain’s Department of Transport (DoT) announced the scheme to replace the A33 Winchester Bypass with the final section of the M3 motorway, there was widespread outrage. The road would destroy two Sites of Special Scientific Interest, two Scheduled Ancient Monuments and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

This was the most protected landscape in southern England, yet in just two years it was to change from a beautiful piece of historic land to the route of a motorway.

The scheme was opposed for decades and became the subject of an official European Community environmental complaint. The European Community was ignored by the UK Government, and the complaint was later dropped amid allegations of back room negotiations. The initial protest was led by the Twyford Down Association, local people who loved the down, and adopted the conventional campaign tactics of lobbying, rallies, marches and legal appeals. They succeeded in getting the scheme reassessed, and reassessed again, but the Government finally went ahead, despite numerous legal and political challenges.

Threat of massive legal costs

Although this was a local affair, the national Friends of the Earth intervened at the start of construction with non-violent direct action, but were forced to back off by the threat of massive legal costs.

Then hard-line activists joined in, represented by a movement called Earth First, which had elements of protesters dubbed the Donga Tribe, travellers and non-conformists living in caravans and tents.

The Dongas took their name from the ancient system of trackways that criss-crossed the downs.

Friends of the Earth regarded the Earth First and Donga activists as a rogue element –an unpredictable ally who rejected conventional campaign tactics. The campaign not only pitted concerned citizens against the Government, but elements of the “soft” or “pale greens” against the hardline “dark greens”. Overall it was a battle between moderates and militants in the environmental movement.

When the bulldozers arrived on Twyford Down in February, 1992, they met with massive resistance from all sorts of people. Despite their ideological differences, 70-year-old life-long Conservatives stood firm beside the young Earth First activists and the Dongas Tribe.

Soon after the Tribe made camp on the Down, and began a campaign of non-violent disruption. The state fought back.

The violent eviction of the Dongas by the private firm protecting the site, Group 4 Security, in late 1992 became known as “Yellow Wednesday” after the colour of the security guards’ yellow jackets. This was the first time that a private security company had been used to evict protesters and the security guards were considered by the protesters as little more than paid thugs. They were described as unidentifiable, unaccountable and often undisciplined.

Direct action continued throughout the spring and summer of 1993, including “Operation Greenfly’’ in May, when 200 protesters occupied a temporary bridge on the work site. It took 300 police in riot gear all night to evict them. There were 57 arrests.

The next big challenge to British Government power came in July 1993. The High Court granted the DoT an injunction against named protesters entering the site. Two days later more than 500 people marched onto the Down, including several named on the injunction. Seven of those named were later sentenced to 28 days’ prison.

Reminiscent of Ghandi’s refusal

It was a classic of non-violent direct action, reminiscent of Ghandi’s refusal to recognise British law in the fight for India’s independence.

Mr Justice Alliot, one of the presiding High Court judges, described the protesters as, “fundamentally decent and motivated by a concern which to them overrides anything else”.

A year later, 1500 people attended the largest-ever Twyford demonstration, a mass trespass against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 designed in part to curb such demonstrations. The wide range of groups at the protest showed how strong the alliance had now become. Friends of the Earth, GreenPeace, Earth First, Liberty, the Green Party and dozens of others were represented. In a move calculated to frighten moderates away from supporting roads protests, the DoT tried to sue 76 named protesters for £1.9 million, sparking an Adjournment Debate in the House of Commons. They later offered settlement on payment of £1000, which all the protesters refused to pay.

The court action finally ended in the summer of 1995, when the DoT asked the court to drop the case.

The motorway was completed as planned, and provided an important link of continuous motorway between Greater London and the South Coast ports. Nevertheless, the protests attracted interest from the national media, and drew attention to this form of campaigning.

The Conservative Government’s policy on motorways shifted considerably after Twyford. Government-sponsored research into its road-building program showed that more roads created more traffic, and greater pressure on the English countryside. It opened the way for greater investment in public transport, especially the rail network.

Before the Conservative administration ended, to be replaced by a Labor Government under Tony Blair, there was one more major motorway conflict, this concerning the Newbury bypass in Berkshire. But subsequent road schemes were altered to take greater account of the environment, or cancelled altogether. Several protesters at Twyford Down subsequently went on to form campaign groups such as the influential Campaign for Better Transport.

In a memo allegedly leaked from the DoT, a senior Government civil servant admitted after the Twyford battles that the protests had been effective. And Steven Norris, the Tory transport minister who approved the Newbury bypass, finally admitted in 1997 that protesters were right to oppose the building programme.