And They Think It's All Over...!

This month saw the evictions of all the remaining camps along the route of the proposed Newbury Bypass, and what follows is one persons account of that month.

March in Newbury was an intense month. In an attempt to carry out environmental destruction within the European Environmental Law on bird nesting season, the DoT have made the ‘conscientious’ gesture of trying to destroy bird nesting sites before they build their homes in them. They announced that work would stop on April 5th, and employed a determined eviction team to blunder through the series of 29ish camps along the 9 mile route (no one ever seemed sure just how many camps there were). Bailiffs, tree surgeons, chainsaw men, ‘climbers’ and mechanical dinosaurs with hoards of wage slaves, snooping detectives and blind upholders of ‘justice’ were all employed by the State to evict a determined and innovative force of tree defenders.

The pro-active actions of the early days, where the destroyers were penned in their compounds and hindered in their early morning convoys, gave way to a more defensive mentality as the daily uncertainty of where the eviction posse was going to strike caused rising levels of insanity. They adopted tactics of chaos, dotting around the route, evicting whole camps, half camps, having night time cordons, sending the police on in advance, making ambushes and varying their times of arrival. Every eviction was different.

We developed various tactics and innovative defenses where, as well as the basic walkways and treehouse networks, there were tripods, platforms, tunnels, scaffolding poles extending from the tops of trees and various lock on techniques; and each of these worked with various degrees of effectiveness. Ground lock-ons at the base of trees and barrel lock-ons in the branches were particularly successful, with one tree lock-on lasting for six hours.

Last week a protestor was locked onto a platform attached to surrounding trees with one length of steel cable. Bailiffs scratched their heads a lot and eventually erected a scaffolding tower to get the person down. New ideas are often the best.

Richard Turner’s ‘climbers’ are now all stinking rich, hated by more people than ever and banned from various climbing centres. Meanwhile some of the climbing community have been politicised with many of them having come down to the evictions in Newbury and confronted their soul-selling counterparts in the treetops. In Snelsmore particularly, the battles between climbers on both sides were intense and at least one of Richard Turners employees resigned that day. In general though, most of them seem to be hardening to their job and they are using increasingly unsafe practices and violence.

Despite the decline in media interest, wide support continued, with food, money, materials and visiting activists arriving from all over of the country.

Newbury businessmen declared that a high proportion of them opposed the bypass, and an interfaith gathering at Middle Oak brought people together from all beliefs to pay their respects to nature under attack.

Badgers resisted eviction in their Snelsmore setts and Vertigo Moulinsiana, a very small and rare snail managed to get Rickety Bridge a ten day stay of execution in the High Court. Thousands of baked beans also made their own protest against the bypass with many of them flinging themselves voluntarily out of the treetops and onto the heads of invading climbers.

There have been over 700 arrests during the the last 3 months, and excessive bail conditions have been used against us in an attempt to try and keep people away from the route.

By the last week in March large numbers of people were gathering at Rickety Bridge and what had been one of the last camps to be established became the site for the last big eviction lasting 3 days, with well over 150 people in the trees. This eviction was a little different, as it was no surprise when they arrived, and we welcomed them with the seven dwarves singing “hi ho, hi ho it’s off to work we go” blaring over the sound system!

Camelot and King Arthur were evicted on April fools day, followed by the trees at Castlewood and Tot Hill. Mary Hare was saved (actually it turned out that it was off route) and the beautiful Middle Oak has been ‘spared’ and is now destined to live in the middle of a monster road junction.

All the camps are now evicted, trees lie fallen and funeral fires burn. But off route camps have been set up, sculptures are appearing in the wreckage and people are recuperating their energies. Ding Ding round 2.

So the route is cleared, but strangely none of the contractors are very keen to win the next phase of the contract. Are the DoT being realistic about actually building the road as we hear that they’re not doing so well with the M11?

On April 3rd Blandy went to Middle Oak to announce that all the cleared areas were now the property of the DoT, but millions of news viewers across the nation were to see his humiliating retreat from a group of protesters, with his police escort having to fun alongside his Landrover to keep up!

If anyone wants to go around to his house for tea and cake the address is: Malthouse Cottage, Nettlebed, Nr Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire. lt might also be good to go and visit Richard Turner Ltd at 101 Couple Lane, Old Tupton, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, tel 01246 861 738.

Have a good rest and extended cup o’ tea sessions.

Watch out too for the letting of the new contract sometime in April/May, and contact 01635 45544 for further campaign info.