Epsom Eviction

The Silver Beeches camp at Epsom, set up last year to defend woodland against a car park and access road was evicted in January.

Up to 500 police, accompanied by bailiffs, the Forward Intelligence Team, scab climbers and tunnellers and the Under Sheriff of Greater London, arrived at the camp in an operation believed to have cost around £100,000.

The camp had in fact been abandoned (and partly burned out) a month beforehand and when the police arrived it was to find only one man living in a van.

A local councillor justified the operation saying that they 'didn't know how many people were going to be on that site' despite the fact that it was located right next to the local police station.