Newbury Report

Seventy five people engaging in riotous applause and later enjoying tea and sandwiches with Arthur Scargill at Newbury’s Community Centre requires how many police? Try ten riot vans, pursuit and patrol vehicles, a helicopter and TSG! Rumours of ‘Police Intelligence’ are clearly false, but this was 3 days after the reunion rally. This is half the number of police that attended Scargill’s speech at the rally and there were none present when he spoke later that day in Reading. As Arthur said in Newbury, “All the freedoms we now take for granted have been won by people who, when conscience dictates, have been prepared to defy the law”. Well said.

Costain: First crash victim at Newbury? Friday 8th February is the deadline, we hope, for Costain’s sale of it’s US coal assets. If this fails then refinancing arrangements with Intria and other Malaysian industrialists will not occur. Bye bye Costain! Who knows... a final Costain EGM to celebrate?

The Third Battle is cost cutting, right sizing, out sourcing and teleworking. The office financed by Third Battle and Friends of the Earth has now closed. Telephone, fax and the Post Office box are still open with the information number: 01635 550552. Regular meetings and events continue, as well as hopefully actions.

A recent WWF report shows the failure in attempts to translocate species. Although there is no information yet as to the survival rate of the Desmoulin’s Whorl snail relocation at Newbury, things don’t look good especially when one considers the sensitivity of this extremely rare species. It’s going to be one of those ‘we told you so’ situations isn’t it? Sorry DoT we really don’t appreciate your sick PR exercise - just admit it you might just have well run them over.

CAMBUS, the business group against the bypass, have launched a 3 year programme to monitor the effects on the water quality of the bypass construction, including the Lambourne and Kennet rivers, two of Britain’s finest chalk rivers. The work by Surrey University is co-ordinated by Dr Neil Ward whose work on the M25 allowed wealthy landowners, the Alfieds, who own Harrods, to reach an out of court settlement of over a million pounds with the Department of Transport for pollution from vehicles carried by motorway water runoff. Local residents are establishing a monitoring network to complement the CAMBUS programme which will report and log failures by contractors as they occur.

Future events? There is a Beach Party expected this summer. Bring your bucket, spade, deckchair and radio! Let’s build sand castles on the route of the Newbury Bypass! Expect hills to be cut and valleys filled during spring and summer this year.

There are quite a few people serving time at the moment for Newbury offences, call for more details and support them wherever possible. Contact Third Battle of Newbury on: 01635 45544.