Oxford Tree Protest Tomorrow (plus more photos & personal account)

11.01.2008

Protest at mid­day tomor­row (Sat­ur­day) in Bonn Square. The pro­posed expan­sion of Oxford’s West­gate Cen­tre does­n’t just threat­en a group of beau­ti­ful trees, it also threat­ens to turn yet more of our city cen­tre into a night­mar­ish con­sumer waste­land. Thanks to the peo­ple who’ve been up the trees, the Coun­cil are now on the back foot and there’s a chance we could force them to scrap the whole stu­pid scheme — but we need peo­ple there!

There’s cur­rent­ly a bat­tle going on in town between some peace­ful but deter­mined tree-defend­ers, the Coun­cil, the West­gate Cen­tre and the police (see http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/389089.html). Essen­tial­ly, the Coun­cil decid­ed to clear away some trees in prepa­ra­tion for the pro­posed West­gate expan­sion with­out telling any­one, but a group of locals found out and rushed to the trees’ defence.

Obvi­ous­ly, just los­ing the trees would be bad in itself, but this is also the tip of a much big­ger ice­berg. The pro­posed West­gate expan­sion has been crit­i­cised and chal­lenged all the way through the plan­ning process (it would require the demo­li­tion of a whole street of shel­tered hous­ing and fails to meet the Council’s own cli­mate change build­ing stan­dards, quite apart from being a hor­ri­ble and unnec­es­sary exten­sion to what is already an ugly tem­ple to ram­pant con­sumerism suck­ing the lifeblood from inde­pen­dent shops and the char­ac­ter out of Oxford city cen­tre). The Coun­cil has seemed deter­mined to push it through at any cost, despite all the protests and com­plaint.

How­ev­er, one of the major retail­ers with a place booked in the pro­posed exten­sion – John Lewis – have report­ed­ly start­ed to get ner­vous about being asso­ci­at­ed with such a con­tro­ver­sial devel­op­ment. Enough bad pub­lic­i­ty from the bat­tle over the trees might just be the last straw that could con­vince them to pull out – and with­out John Lewis, the whole exe­crable expan­sion plan could col­lapse!

This is where your help could make a real dif­fer­ence. Tomor­row is the anti-SOC­PA protest in Lon­don, and peo­ple are feel­ing we should have our own demo (about free­dom to protest as well as stop­ping the West­gate devel­op­ment) in Oxford rather than all our activists going off to Lon­don at what could well be the cru­cial moment. So if you’re up for it please come to Bonn Square at 12 mid­day tomor­row. Bring ban­ners, noise and every­one you know.

In the mean­time, please do go down to show your sup­port (there weren’t many peo­ple around this after­noon) and see what needs doing.

Hope to see you tomor­row!

oarc@riseup.net

—————–

I spent 2 days up a tree out­side the West­gate Cen­tre in Oxford. This is a short an account of the how and why

Out of My Tree

I thought it might be inter­est­ing to any read­ers who have been fol­low­ing the Oxford Bonn Square and West­gate Cen­tre tree saga last week to put down what hap­pened from my point of view, see­ing as it was me that spent 24 hours up the tree out­side the West­gate and even good jour­nal­ists, let alone read­ers, are bound to draw con­clu­sions that are wide of the true mark
On Wednes­day 9th Jan, I received invi­ta­tions down to see what was hap­pen­ing around the West­gate Cen­tre, where I was told that a num­ber of trees were about to be chopped down. I was a bit dubi­ous about going, as I was about to head off job hunt­ing, my last job hav­ing fin­ished just before Christ­mas but I went down intend­ing to give my sup­port for a short while. All seemed pret­ty peace­ful down at the West­gate and I felt that there was­n’t much I could do as work appeared to have been stopped on the tree-chop­ping front. I was about to leave when there was a flur­ry of activ­i­ty round the cor­ner from where we were, between the West­gate Cen­tre and the mul­ti-storey car park. They had fenced off the area.
Work­men had begun chop­ping off the branch­es of one of the mag­nif­i­cent Plane trees next to the car park. Deb­o­rah Glass Wood­in was vis­i­bly upset by this and was try­ing to pre­vent the work­men going any fur­ther. As a Coun­ty Coun­cil­lor she felt that she had been insuf­fi­cient­ly informed that this was to hap­pen. It was heart-wrench­ing to see a con­cerned five-foot female coun­cil­lor being dragged off in tears by two carthorse police­men who seemed total­ly uncon­cerned that she was doing her duty. This was prob­a­bly due to ‘Oper­a­tion Rum­ble’ where­by the police are instruct­ed to auto­mat­i­cal­ly arrest any­body inter­fer­ing with coun­cil work­ers going about their job. How­ev­er, as a coun­cil­lor, Mrs Glass Wood­in was going about her job by ques­tion­ing the work that was going on as she had not been prop­er­ly informed about it. Despite this she was dragged, tear­ful and wretched into a police car and pre­vent­ed from doing the job she was demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed to do while the police shoved the rest of us try­ing to help her out of the way.
Once this bit of excite­ment was over, a friend and I watched sad­ly as the first of three trees des­ig­nat­ed for the chop was sawn up nois­i­ly with chain­saws and then fed into a pulp­ing machine. I looked at the next tree in the line. It is a mag­nif­i­cent Lon­don Plane, prob­a­bly around a hun­dred years old. Its branch­es soar up over the top of the four storey car park and brush against the top of the West­gate cen­tre. Each branch forks repeat­ed­ly into less­er branch­es and at their very ends are twin seeds that dan­gle down like spiky chest­nut baubles. There are thou­sands of them dec­o­rat­ing the extrem­i­ties and the tree’s ele­gant, stretch­ing branch­es claw­ing up into the sky are more nat­ur­al and beau­ti­ful than any spire and a wel­come relief to the grey sur­round­ings of the con­crete blocks it sep­a­rates. A num­ber of peo­ple who live and work in the area have told me that they find them very com­fort­ing and I can ful­ly appre­ci­ate why now that I have spent a cou­ple of days in one. For any­one con­tent with replac­ing them with saplings, I would say that they are decades out of date.
The first tree was removed in under half an hour and it was awful to think that this hun­dred-year-old exam­ple was about to fol­low it effi­cient­ly into the pulp­ing machine. There were police­man patrolling around the eight-foot fence in front of it and we watched as a lad­der was rest­ed up next to the tree, ready for the work­men to begin the job of saw­ing off the limbs. A lit­tle sun­shine lit up the soft kha­ki colours of the patch­work bark in fawns, greens and browns. The police­men in front of the fence moved away and with the flash of a grin telling us we were doing the right thing, my friend and I sprint­ed spon­ta­neous­ly at the fence. Sud­den­ly I was over it and run­ning for the lad­der before any­one could stop me. Next thing I was scram­bling onto the low­est branch look­ing down at the work­men who frus­trat­ed­ly removed the lad­der. I looked back in vain at my friend, who had sad­ly been pulled back by police­men. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for me, he still had the back­pack with a ther­mos of hot cof­fee in it on his back. Noth­ing, how­ev­er, could deflate the tri­umphant sense of sat­is­fac­tion I felt that for a while at least this exem­plary Plane tree was free from the vio­lent sev­er­ing that had just been vis­it­ed on its neigh­bour.
Why have these trees been des­ig­nat­ed for hack­ing? The pow­ers that be at Oxford City Coun­cil have seen fit to bless us with a brand new shop­ping cen­tre to mas­sive­ly extend the one we already. The land itself is owned by the Coun­cil and is on a 150 year lease to Coal Pen­sion Prop­er­ties Ltd that start­ed on March 3rd 1986. The orig­i­nal lease says that there should be “no more park­ing spaces” on the land than at present and some­how the plan­ning depart­ment have inter­pret­ed this as to say that “it is incum­bent upon the city coun­cil to pro­vide at least the same num­ber of park­ing spaces” there. Giv­en that it is a res­i­den­tial area con­sid­ered an ‘Air Qual­i­ty Man­age­ment Action’ (AQMA) zone due to the ille­gal­ly high lev­el of pol­lu­tants in the air, then sure­ly less park­ing should be pro­vid­ed there and per­haps more sto­ries added to the Park and Ride car parks that are so often full on the out­skirts of the city. This solu­tion would endan­ger the local res­i­dents’ health a lot less and ben­e­fit us all by let­ting fresh­er air sweep through­out the city.
There is some doubt as to whether the devel­op­ment will hap­pen at all. Cap­i­tal Shop­ping have said that if they are to go ahead than they also require the land at Abbey Place across the road from the car park, which at present is home to 18 vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in 14 hous­es. This more dras­tic part of the plan is still under review and could scup­per the whole project if it is deemed a bad idea. So why are these amaz­ing Plane trees, whose var­ie­gat­ed bark actu­al­ly absorbs air pol­lu­tants, being chopped down before it is sure that the devel­op­ment will go ahead? Accord­ing to shop­keep­ers in the West­gate, some of whom have con­tracts for their busi­ness­es on the site until July 2010, Cap­i­tal Shop­ping have giv­en the Coun­cil half a mil­lion pounds to get on with the job and clear the way for the devel­op­ment. Could they have done this so that if the devel­op­ment comes up against any objec­tions, then the devel­op­ers will be able to say “..well the trees have all gone now so we have to get on with it any­way”? The very rush­ing of the job makes one sus­pi­cious.
Liv­ing in a tree is not a way of life I would rec­om­mend. Wedg­ing one­self between two trunks so that one does­n’t fall out at night is an exceed­ing­ly uncom­fort­able way of try­ing to sleep, par­tic­u­lar­ly in win­ter. Our sys­tem of democ­ra­cy is not per­fect in that we only get to vote once every four years and are then oblig­ed to hand over the deci­sion mak­ing to a hand­ful of peo­ple whose deci­sions we may often dis­agree with. What is known as ‘protest­ing’ is sim­ply exer­cis­ing our endan­gered right to dis­agree with these deci­sions and ask if there may not be a bet­ter answer to the ques­tion in hand. Eng­land has a proud his­to­ry of protest that has brought about a num­ber of great ben­e­fits to our soci­ety, includ­ing the eman­ci­pa­tion of women.
The amount of sup­port I received while up the tree from both friends and passers-by has been absolute­ly extra­or­di­nary. I have had more thumbs-up than Jen­son But­ton in a race and it is heart-warm­ing and mag­i­cal to tap into the invis­i­ble sol­i­dar­i­ty of the usu­al­ly silent pub­lic in this way. The most extra­or­di­nary event was on Wednes­day evening when a group of 9 fairies skipped past in pink dress­es and fairy wings. They looked no more than ten years old. They shout­ed up ask­ing what I was doing and I answered sim­ply that some peo­ple want­ed to chop the tree down and I didn’t want them to. They waved their mag­ic wands and skipped away chant­i­ng “Save the Tree! Save the Tree!” It was the sweet­est moment. I only hope their mag­ic holds and our wish is grant­ed.
If the devel­op­ment is planned on ‘coun­cil land’ means that this is Oxford City land. That means that this is our land as res­i­dents and tax­pay­ers and so deci­sions on cut­ting down trees should be decid­ed by all of us. There are a num­ber of aspects about the future West­gate devel­op­ment that have been unsat­is­fac­to­ri­ly con­clud­ed. To begin with, it does not meet a num­ber of rea­son­able envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards…
Per­son­al­ly I don’t think we need any more shops in Oxford. This is a small city with only 140,000 inhab­i­tants. With all the won­der­ful archi­tec­ture we have here it seems fool­ish to try and turn it into a shop­ping cen­tre when that would risk spoil­ing the beau­ty of the city we already have. If we detract from the city’s attrac­tive aes­thet­ic then less peo­ple will want to vis­it here and less mon­ey will be spent on local busi­ness­es. It seems detri­men­tal, in more ways than one to spend so much mon­ey replac­ing one shop­ping cen­tre with anoth­er one so that we can have more shops that will drain mon­ey out of the local econ­o­my. Sure­ly we have enough shops already and do we real­ly want to cut down 42 dec­o­ra­tive trees in order to make way for more? My fool­hardy ges­ture of spend­ing 24 hours in a tree was a per­son­al chal­lenge made in order to ask a ques­tion that on fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion appears to have an answer in the neg­a­tive: Is it absolute­ly nec­es­sary to chop these 42 mag­nif­i­cent Plane trees down? Well is it?
While I am in awe of Gabs Cham­ber­lain who has spent over a week defend­ing the beau­ti­ful Plane tree in Bonn square by liv­ing up it, I don’t intend to fol­low suit. I feel that I have made my state­ment and asked my ques­tion and if any­one would like to take over the defence of the West­gate Planes then I would enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly encour­age them to do so. While I have great affec­tion for them, they are not mine to defend, they are every­body’s. I hope some­body else will. Mean­while I will take the advice so kind­ly offered to me by one unsym­pa­thet­ic pass­er-by and go and get a job. After all, if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to afford any of the doubt­less fab­u­lous prod­ucts that the West­gate II will have to offer off the stumps of our beloved Lon­don Planes.