Direct action road protest veterans delegation to Dept for Transport

Well done! Was thinking maybe it would have been even more powerful if you also had asked along representatives from ongoing/recent anti-roads campaigns? Such as people from Bilsten Glen, Blackwood, etc? Or did you and nobody had time? It feels like this sort of action is one which could help strengthen links and support between anti-roads campaigns past and present and that would not suffer too much from a bit of discreet advance networking outside "the old mates" network.

hi - i completely agree. this action was thrown together at very short notice by ringing round some old mates, so that we could do a rapid response to the 10 year plan / white paper. someone did come from blackwood though. but time was very short. next time we will be better organised. becca

The most upsetting about this post is its list of failure. A wonderful group of people who have campaigned against a vast amount of road building and yet when we look at the names of the places they failed at all of them.

Everyone one of the roads got built.

Good point Sophie.

The activist movement in the UK with respect to road building is one of complete failure. The original posting is a classic example, some friends go and stand around with nice little signs and ...... well that's it really.

Sophie and Micky, you were either still in nappies when all that stuff was going on or you were just too dim to ever see the larger picture.

So how about all the other protests going on today?
War in Iraq and Afghanistan, were they stopped as a result of protests? No!
G8 summits etc, have they been stopped as a result of protests? No!
The world bank and IMF, have they been disbanded as a result of protests? No!
Climate change and deforestation, have they been reversed as a result of protests? No
Nuclear power and arms industry, have they been closed down? No!
Global capitalism, has it been overthrown as a result of protests? No!
GM, Has it been abandoned as a result of protests? YES! (well in this country at least)

Do both of you make similar negative and snidey comments about every protest reported on this site that doesn't achieve instant success? If not, then why not? Be consistent please. Are you so shallow and immature that you always expect instant gratification?

I find your remarks thoroughly disrespectful to all the thousands of dedicated activists who became criminalised, injuncted, imprisoned, beaten up, injured and marginalised because they heroically chose to defend YOUR environment against a reckless onslaught by the corrupt government, greedy big business and the bleating road lobby.

The tory government's £23 billion "roads for prosperity" programme announced in the early 1990s was hailed as the greatest road building spree since the Romans. We could have all sat on our arses (would you have?) and done absolutely sod all as vast areas of British countryside were irreversibly destroyed by the bulldozers. Fortunately some of us did decide to go dozer diving, firstly at Twyford Down in a desperate attempt to stop this insanity. Doubtless many fervently believed we could stop each individual road scheme. Some of us, myself included, quickly realised that it was a very long shot. After all, this was the same government that had vindictively destroyed the entire British mining industry as punishment for when the miners had previously brought down the earlier Heath Tory government back in the 1970s. They would hardly want to be seen to give in directly to a rag tag bunch of hippies. Yet we all continued unabashed and the protests kept on escalating.

So it was, that after only a few years, this truly mad roads programme was massively slashed, (supposedly to save costs, yeah!) sparing dozens of other threatened areas of countryside from the bulldozers. I'd call that a pretty big success, what do you still think? The simple fact was, that the embarrassment we were causing government ministers, by continuous, unrelenting direct action protests in their face, on their roofs even and regularly across their newspapers and TV screens just became too much for them to endure. Not only that, our protests also served to highlight that we cannot keep destroying the environment in the name of "progress". Mainstream society too, sat up and really started to take on board the previously under reported fact that you cannot build your way out of traffic congestion, they have to stop relying on their cars so much as it's just not sustainable. Not only that, but so many of all the different protests going on today, listed at the beginning of this comment, have borrowed techniques from, and were in no small part, spawned from the original Twyford Down protests. These had initially comprised of just a small handful of very courageous, brilliant and completely dedicated people who didn't just give up after being viciously assaulted by an army of Group 4 thugs on Yellow Wednesday back in 1993. Don't go declaring that all activists today are somehow superior or more successful than the road protestors of then. Many so-called "activists" of today seem incapable of showing sustained interest in any important cause unless it involves regular partying. We were usually way too busy charging around in seas of mud or barricading houses to spend much time on frivolous activities back then.

The delegation on Wednesday was put together at ridiculously short notice and yes, we could have listed all the areas of countryside that were SAVED as a result of our protests. The simple fact is, is that such names are far less memorable or poignant to everyone than the places that were destroyed forever. Being honest, I can't easily recall the names of any axed road schemes but could quickly rattle off the names of just about every bit of countryside or community permanently destroyed during those insane times. Nostalgia can be quite a powerful emotion.

So in future you may consider directing further snivelling and trolling remarks to sites where they'd be more appreciated such as the rabid association of British drivers.
www.abd.org.uk
I'd suggest you also remember that wars aren't always won overnight as a result of winning individual battles. Always look at the bigger picture.

just so people know there was, two years ago this summer, an anti road camp in Binsted woods in Arundel. Despite being very small we still managed to stop the road from even being considered just because we were there and, as a previous poster correctly points out, because the government did not want to risk another newbury or twyford. so chin up everyone because what may seem like small successes are in fact huge fuck ups in the governments eyes.