Campaigners mobilising to fight ‘hundreds of new roads’

Cam­paign­ers are hop­ing to kick-start oppo­si­tion to ‘hun­dreds of new roads’ with actions in Twyford Down and Hast­ings this week­end.

Cam­paign­ers are hop­ing to kick-start oppo­si­tion to ‘hun­dreds of new roads’ with actions in Twyford Down and Hast­ings this week­end.

Gov­ern­ment and local coun­cils are plan­ning to spend bil­lions of pounds on dozens of new roads over the next few years, and new ‘growth’ funds and devolved spend­ing pow­ers for local coun­cils threat­en to add hun­dreds more dis­as­trous projects to this list.

In the 1990s, what was in effect a pop­u­lar upris­ing [ 1 | 2 | 3 ] brought Tory plans for ‘the great­est road-build­ing pro­gramme since the Romans’ to a screech­ing halt.

Could this week­end’s actions be the begin­ning of a new upsurge of anti-roads protests?

 

Twen­ty years ago, in 1992, protests at Twyford Down helped light the fuse of the mod­ern envi­ron­men­tal direct action protest move­ment, and hun­dreds of cam­paign­ers — old and new — will be gath­er­ing there this Sat­ur­day (29 Sep­tem­ber) to protest against the new schemes.

At the same time, activists in East Sus­sex will also be stag­ing a two-day Camp and Ral­ly this week­end in the Combe Haven Val­ley out­side Hast­ings, threat­ened by a £100m road, work on which is planned to start in the new year. The Camp will include direct action train­ing and renowned trans­port cam­paign­er John Stew­art will lead a work­shop on ‘How to stop a road’.

Of the 45 trans­port schemes approved in the bud­get by the Depart­ment of Trans­port, the Bex­hill-Hast­ings Link Road (BHLR) is the worst in terms of car­bon emis­sions.

Abby Nicol, a spokesper­son for the Combe Haven Defend­ers, who are organ­is­ing the Camp near Hast­ings, said:

Run-away cli­mate change is one of the great­est threats we face. Yet the gov­ern­ment are spon­sor­ing a new wave of road-build­ing across the coun­try, using mon­ey that would be much bet­ter spent on improv­ing pub­lic trans­port. We urge peo­ple to join us this week­end to see the amaz­ing area that will be destroyed unless we take action to stop it, and to learn about prac­ti­cal ways in which we can all peace­ful­ly and effec­tive­ly resist the con­struc­tion of this road.

A major con­fer­ence of local anti-road groups is due to take place in Birm­ing­ham in Novem­ber.