ARRROOOGA!!!! A Brief History of the Anti-Roads Movement with a focus on the UK
"'Land is the only thing that amounts to anything, for 'tis the only thing in this world that lasts, and don't you be forgetting it! 'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting forworth dying for" - Gerald O'Hara, 'Gone With the Wind' Before and after picture of the Minnehaha Free State/ No-I-55 Protest Site
Pre-history Throughout the 1970’s and 80’s groups like Friends of the Earth contested road building projects with an emphasis on meetings, lobbying, and fundraising.
The tactics and fundraising of Fo. E left many people disillusioned and led to the start of Earth First! UK and a number of other regionally based eco -defense groups. In the mid-1990’s the Labour Party adopted Thatcher’s multi-billion pound road building scheme. This plan would be targeted and destroyed by anti-roads protestors well before the end of the decade.
The Beginning Of The Anti-Roads Protests "Over two thirds of the population believe that there are times when breaking the law is justifiable"
Twyford Downs saw the first coming together of local citizens' anti-road construction campaigning groups and direct action activists in 1992. It was an important meeting space for rural travellers and early EF!ers. The setting was rural and the actions were galvanizing but also isolated. Twyford Downs set in place the local and national ties and the support from the traveller culture that would be a defining point in the British anti-roads movement.
No M-11 Road The No M 11 campaign in the London area came together in 1993 and 1994. Issues went beyond purely ecological concerns to the social costs of car culture and the eviction of dozens of families. An entire urban street was squatted and fortified to resist the road. The eviction required hundreds of cops.
The protest involved many story high scaffolding and hundreds of feet of netting going over the roadway connecting the houses.
Newbury Bypass Road Protest The second fight against the Newbury bypass in 95 and 96 eventually led to the creation of 30 separate camps across the 18 miles of construction.
Girls and boys come out to play Reclaim the Streets is here today! Bring your spraycan and bring your brew And come and trash the Cenotaph Reclaim the Streets helped channel energy from anti-roads occupations to offensive actions that were celebratory in taking back public space from car culture.
Energy from anti-roads struggles also fuelled other efforts, such as solidarity campaigns with locked-out dockworkers in Liverpool and against mining and other capitalist infrastructure projects.
Eco-Defense and Anti-Road Camps have spread throughout the world…
…from Guatemala . . to Russia
. . from Israel … to Honduras … to elsewhere
…and the Minnehaha Free State in Minneapolis
"If you hate 'progress' so much why don't you go back to living in trees, motherfuckers!" US Offroader. A tree house. A free house. A secret you and me house. A high up in the leafy branches. A happy as can be house. A street house. A neat house. A be sure to wipe your feet house, is not the kind of house for me. Let's go and live in a treehouse
Freedom lies in revolt! Security lies in the land! No Compromise!
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