17 Jan: Protest camp eviction enters second day!

[Update, 5pm, Thurs­day 17 Jan­u­ary: “Base camp” final­ly evict­ed this morn­ing. “Decoy Pond” camp still unevict­ed and acces­si­ble.]

[Update, 5pm, Thurs­day 17 Jan­u­ary: “Base camp” final­ly evict­ed this morn­ing. “Decoy Pond” camp still unevict­ed and acces­si­ble.]

The sec­ond day of the evic­tion of the anti-road protest camps in Crowhurst (“Base Camp” and “Decoy Pond” camp – see maps below) has begun this morn­ing, with activists still locked-on up trees and down tun­nels.

Please protest, sup­port and pub­li­cise!

As at 9.33am: access to the “Decoy Pond” camp is still pos­si­ble; “Base Camp” is now sur­round­ed by fenc­ing, but activists are on the periph­ery and a legal observ­er is still on site inside the cor­don. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed yes­ter­day (Wednes­day 16 Jan­u­ary), of whom 4 have now (9.33am, Thurs­day 17 Jan) been released.

Please note: This is only the end of the begin­ning for the protests against the Bex­hill Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR)! We urgent­ly need to replen­ish our finances fol­low­ing the last month of protests, so please con­sid­er giv­ing a dona­tion, using the “donate” but­ton on our web-site and Face­book page, if you are able.

Press release Combe Haven Defend­ers [1]
Thurs­day 17 Jan­u­ary
Con­tact 07926 423 033

ROAD PROTEST EVICTION ENTERS SECOND DAY AS LAWYERS SEEK 1066 INJUNCTION
Cam­paign­ers in trees and tun­nels as total num­ber of arrests reach­es sev­en­teen

Thurs­day 17 Jan­u­ary, Crowhurst: The evic­tion of two protest camps against the Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR) enters its sec­ond day today, as lawyers seek a halt to prepa­ra­tions for the Road on the grounds that Combe Haven (where the camps are sit­u­at­ed) may be the site of the Bat­tle of Hast­ings.

Five cam­paign­ers were arrest­ed dur­ing the first day of the evic­tion yes­ter­day, Wednes­day 16 Jan­u­ary. Oth­er cam­paign­ers are still locked-on up trees and down tun­nels at the two camps.

The camps, which have been in place since 21 Decem­ber, are locat­ed on the pro­posed route of the BHLR close to Adam’s Farm, Crowhurst [2].  The peace­ful protests against the road– which have now been run­ning for a month, with 17 arrests – have seized nation­al atten­tion over the past week [3].

Tree-felling work for the road start­ed on 14 Decem­ber 2012 and rep­re­sents the first sig­nif­i­cant work on the high­ly-con­tro­ver­sial 3 mile £100m road, one of over forty “zom­bie roads” that were declared dead years ago but have now been resus­ci­tat­ed as part of as part of Britain’s largest road-build­ing pro­gramme in 25 years [4, 5].

In an inter­est­ing par­al­lel devel­op­ment, Bex­hill-based anti-road group BLINKRR yes­ter­day pub­li­cised legal moves seek­ing an injunc­tion to halt the road based on evi­dence that Crowhurst is the true site of the Bat­tle of Hast­ings [6].

Con­tact 07926 423 033

NOTES
[1] www.combehavendefenders.org.uk
[2] Near­by post­code TN33 9AY. For map see http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/camp-groundrules-directions/
[3] http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/recent-media-coverage/
[4] See ‘Con­tro­ver­sial ‘zom­bie roads’ scheme to be resus­ci­tat­ed’, Guardian, 10 Octo­ber 2012, http://tinyurl.com/zombieroads
[5] http://bettertransport.org.uk/media/26-Oct-roads-report
[6] http://www.blinkrr.org/downloads/ESCC-15.1.13.pdf. For more info con­tact BLINKRR on  07989 781199