Category: South East England

South East Eng­land

A259 Link Road one hour from London help us now

The Combe Haven val­ley is a unique habi­tat which was once the port of Hast­ings (pre 1066). Evi­dence is now being obtained from a small group of entu­si­asts which proves this unique val­ley, which is in the Parish of Crowhurst Sus­sex, was the site of the Nor­man Inva­sion and also the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066.

The Combe Haven val­ley is a unique habi­tat which was once the port of Hast­ings (pre 1066). Evi­dence is now being obtained from a small group of entu­si­asts which proves this unique val­ley, which is in the Parish of Crowhurst Sus­sex, was the site of the Nor­man Inva­sion and also the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066. Our group is fight­ing a bat­tle with East Sus­sex Coun­ty Coun­cil to stop the A259 Link Road cut­ting through one of the most impor­tant her­itage sites in the land and also an invalu­able envi­ro­men­tal reserve.

Bull­doz­ers are already on the site dig­ging trench­es. An ini­tial road protest is organ­ised this week­end. Please famil­iarise your­self with the her­itage sto­ry because this is impor­tant. 5000 Eng­lish­men gave their blood in this val­ley and it should be pre­served and not des­e­crat­ed with a road that goes through open coun­try­side — see the videos on our web site — see why we are fight­ing to save this place one hours dri­ve from cen­tral Lon­don

http://secretsofthenormaninvasion.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/stop-the-road-camp-this-saturday-29th-september-2012/

 

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.

Local residents camp & rally against Bexhill-Hastings link road

Local res­i­dents have released fur­ther details of the two-day pro­gramme of events- includ­ing a camp and ral­ly — in Combe Haven Val­ley this week­end, 29/30 Sep­tem­ber, to protest against con­tro­ver­sial plans to build a £100m link road between Hast­ings and Bex­hill. The group Combe Haven Defend­ers have gath­ered experts and enter­tain­ers from across Sus­sex and beyond to join their ‘Stop the Road’ event.

 

Fol­low­ing a lunch and ral­ly around 1pm, renowned trans­port cam­paign­er John Stew­art will lead a work­shop on ‘How to stop a road’, draw­ing lessons from the suc­cess­ful ’90s anti-roads move­ment [1]. Local peo­ple will also be able to attend an’In­tro­duc­tion to Direct Action with nation­al group Seeds for Change, as they plan the next steps of the cam­paign.

Fam­i­lies will also be catered for with a work­shop and play from envi­ron­men­tal youth group The Ote­sha Project UK, shad­ow pup­petry and sto­ry-telling. Local botany expert Judy Clark will be on hand and in the evening par­tic­i­pants will be able to stargaze with a pro­fes­sion­al astronomer.

Local musi­cians have also ral­lied to sup­port the cam­paign, with evening per­for­mances promised from Tim Hoyte, Eleanor Lynn, Ani­ta Jar­dine, Las Pasion­aras, Will Davis and Krysia Mans­field. The group have stat­ed that there will be no ampli­fied music and the event will be alco­hol-free.

Guid­ed walks to the Camp site will depart on Sat­ur­day 29 Sep­tem­ber from Bex­hill Sta­tion and Bul­ver­hythe (Sheep Wash bridge) at 11am, and from Crowhurst Sta­tion at 12 noon. Details of the Cam­p’s loca­tion will also be avail­able on the Combe Haven Defend­ers’ web-site on Sat­ur­day morn­ing: www.combehavendefenders.org.uk.

Spokesper­son Abby Nicol said: ‘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. The appalling traf­fic prob­lems along the Bex­hill Road need to be alle­vi­at­ed, but the build­ing of a new road — which accord­ing to the Coun­ty Council’s own fig­ures will increase over­all traf­fic by 14 per cent — is not a sus­tain­able or finan­cial­ly viable solu­tion. We have to look to more cre­ative and sus­tain­able solu­tions to traf­fic prob­lems: the link road is not the answer. ’

NOTES
[1] John Stew­art was named “Britain’s most effec­tive rad­i­cal green activist” in the first com­pre­hen­sive list of the country’s most effec­tive greens, com­piled by The Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day – in part for his role in “co-ordinat[ing] protests that brought Tory plans for ‘the great­est road-build­ing pro­gramme since the Romans’ to a screech­ing halt in the 1990s.” For more info see www.airportwatch.org.uk/?p=2244 Combe Haven Defend­ers

SEVEN MORE DUCKS SAVED

“ALF break into fac­to­ry farm and lib­er­ate 7 Ayles­bury ducks who had no access to water. All have gone to good homes.

Until every cage is emp­ty,

The Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front”

“ALF break into fac­to­ry farm and lib­er­ate 7 Ayles­bury ducks who had no access to water. All have gone to good homes.

Until every cage is emp­ty,

The Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front”

Twyford Down anti-road protests gathering, September

There is going to be a Twyford Down anti-roads protest reunion to mark that it is 20 years since the protests start­ed.  It’s on 29–30 Sept, when it’ll be the Har­vest Moon.  

There is going to be a Twyford Down anti-roads protest reunion to mark that it is 20 years since the protests start­ed.  It’s on 29–30 Sept, when it’ll be the Har­vest Moon.  

There will be a camp run along the same lines as 20 years ago (bring what you expect to find… water butts, tents, food, etc).  That said, there will be some domes and the @ teapot are going to be doing cater­ing (Sat din­ner and Sun break­fast) — hur­rah!  Camp loca­tion to be on top of St Cather­ine’s Hill, near Win­ches­ter.

There will also be a protest / pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty about this cur­rent Gov­ern­men­t’s mania of road­build­ing. 

 Please spread this amongst your con­tacts who you think may be inter­estd.  There is a Face­book page if you do such things called Twen­ty Years Since Twyford: http://www.facebook.com/events/344190508996315/

More details and fly­er down­load­able at http://bettertransport.org.uk/blogs/roads/100912-twyford-20

Earth First! Summer Gathering Update — programme, directions, website and more

It’s only weeks until the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing begins.
Five days of work­shops, info shar­ing and learn­ing new skills, 1–5 August.

It’s only weeks until the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing begins.
Five days of work­shops, info shar­ing and learn­ing new skills, 1–5 August.

The Earth First Sum­mer Gath­er­ing takes place each year to pro­vide a space in which the rad­i­cal ecol­o­gy move­ment can share skills and plan for future cam­paigns and actions.

Dis­cus­sions around the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty build­ing in inner cities, the state of the anar­chist move­ment and patri­archy in activism.

Skill shares includ­ing wom­en’s self-defence, research­ing cor­po­ra­tions and nav­i­ga­tion.

Cam­paign round ups from Frack Off! Smash Edo and Lud­dites 2000 amongst oth­ers.

If you have work­shops you like to run or dis­cus­sions you’d like to facil­i­tate then email us at earthfirstsummergathering@riseup.net

Full pro­gramme.

Camp­ing is on a slid­ing scale of £30 to £15, pay what is gen­uine­ly appro­pri­ate.

Food will be from Anar­chist Teapot and meal tick­ets will be £5 a day.

Kids can have sep­a­rate meals if they want for £3 a day.

There will be a cou­ple of kids spaces, and spe­cial work­shops being ran for kids. If you’d like to run any kids work­shops get in touch at earthfirstsummergathering@riseup.net.

If you want you dog to come along then you’re going to have to email us at earthfirstsummergathering@riseup.net

And of course there will be enter­tain­ment and a bar open in the evenings.

The camp is ½ mile from the Berring­ton vil­lage, and 1 mile from the larg­er vil­lage of Cross Hous­es.

We encour­age non-cycling campers to use pub­lic trans­port if pos­si­ble as Cross Hous­es is on a bus route.

BY TRAIN
The near­est train sta­tion is Shrews­bury. You can then get the bus to Cross Hous­es (see below). If com­ing from a long dis­tance it can some­times be cheap­er to get a tick­et to a large sta­tion such as Birm­ing­ham, Wolver­hamp­ton, Man­ches­ter or Crewe and then a sep­a­rate tick­et on to Shrews­bury. Check nation­al rail for train times and prices. If com­ing from the Lon­don direc­tion, it’s gen­er­al­ly cheap­er to buy a Super Off­peak Return, spec­i­fy­ing “Lon­don Mid­land & Arri­va only”.

BY BIKE
See here for direc­tions and a map to the camp from Shrews­bury for cyclists and dri­vers.

BY BUS
When you arrive at Shrews­bury train sta­tion, ask some­one to point you to the bus sta­tion. It’s only a few min­utes walk from the train sta­tion. The bus ser­vice that runs from town to with­in a mile of Crabap­ple is the 436 towards Bridg­north. It runs every hour from 7.40am to 5.40pm with a “late” one at 7.40pm. The jour­ney to Cross Hous­es is approx 15 mins. You will need to press the stop but­ton when you see the sign for Cross Hous­es. Some of the ser­vices on this route are low-floor acces­si­ble bus­es. Please note that the last bus leaves Shrews­bury at 7.40pm, Mon­day to Sat­ur­day and there are no Sun­day bus ser­vices. For the bus timetable see here http://shropshire.gov.uk/bustimes/timetable.jsc?timetable=436mfi0412.
The camp itself is about 1 mile from the bus stop. From the bus stop at Cross Hous­es, walk back towards Shrews­bury past the petrol sta­tion (on your right) and take the first left turn signed “Berring­ton”. After about ½ mile, the road forks at the edge of the vil­lage. Take the right turn sign­post­ed “Bet­ton Abbots” and we’re about ¼ mile up the road on the right.
If you intend to come by bus but need help get­ting to and from the bus stop, you can arrange a pick up with us: details will be avail­able near­er the time.

BY TAXI
There is also a taxi rank just out­side Shrews­bury train sta­tion. Acces­si­ble taxis can be got from here.- but it is MUCH cheap­er to book a cab from a local com­pa­ny – Comet Cabs 01743 344444, or Vin­cent Cabs 01743 367777. Vin­cents also have a book­ing office just across the road from the sta­tion, which is handy if you don’t have a phone to book a cab in advance.

USEFUL LINKS
See here direc­tions and a map to the camp from Shrews­bury for cyclists and dri­vers.
See a map of where the site is here
See the bus timetable
Direc­tions from places oth­er than Shrews­bury

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing Col­lec­tive
earthfirstsummergathering@riseup.net

http://earthfirstgathering.weebly.com

Windsor eco-occupation

10th June 2012

a group call­ing them­selves ‘diggers2012’ and loose­ly affil­i­at­ed with the occu­py move­ment, are on route to a piece of dis­used land on the wind­sor great park estate. yes­ter­day, as they set off from syon lane com­mu­ni­ty allot­ment, police served a pre-emp­tive injunc­tion on them for­bid­ding them from enter­ing or camp­ing on crown estate land.

 

10th June 2012

a group call­ing them­selves ‘diggers2012’ and loose­ly affil­i­at­ed with the occu­py move­ment, are on route to a piece of dis­used land on the wind­sor great park estate. yes­ter­day, as they set off from syon lane com­mu­ni­ty allot­ment, police served a pre-emp­tive injunc­tion on them for­bid­ding them from enter­ing or camp­ing on crown estate land.

 

More info and videos and here

Tree protest called off after Network Rail concessions

28 May 2012

Cam­paign­ers — includ­ing three pro­test­ers who chained them­selves to a tree — claim vic­to­ry after Net­work Rail post­pones planned tree clear­ance on a rail­way embank­ment near Whit­stable in Kent.

28 May 2012

Cam­paign­ers — includ­ing three pro­test­ers who chained them­selves to a tree — claim vic­to­ry after Net­work Rail post­pones planned tree clear­ance on a rail­way embank­ment near Whit­stable in Kent.

 

More than 100 pro­test­ers held a demon­stra­tion on the Cromwell Road rail­way embank­ment in an attempt to halt the start of work to remove trees, which Net­work Rail claims could cause insta­bil­i­ty on the track.

The pro­test­ers, many of whom were local res­i­dents, are con­cerned that the works would take place dur­ing the bird-breed­ing sea­son when many are nest­ing in the trees.

A five-hour long protest, dur­ing which three female pro­test­ers in their 50s and 60s chained them­selves to a tree on the embank­ment, start­ed at 7.30am with cam­paign­ers bran­dish­ing plac­ards bear­ing slo­gans includ­ing “stop the slaugh­ter of wildlife”.

The demon­stra­tion was called off after Net­work Rail informed cam­paign­ers in writ­ing that it was halt­ing the works until Sep­tem­ber, after the bird breed­ing sea­son has fin­ished.

‘Claim­ing vic­to­ry’

The state­ment by Net­work Rail ful­fils two of the pro­test­ers’ three demands. One cam­paign­er said that they would now con­cen­trate on per­suad­ing Net­work Rail to agree to their remain­ing demand, for bet­ter con­sul­ta­tion with res­i­dents and the use of tru­ly inde­pen­dent con­ser­va­tion experts.

“Whit­stable peo­ple are now claim­ing this as a vic­to­ry,” said Julie Wass­mer, who was among the three who had chained them­selves to the tree. “Today, Net­work Rail are now aware that the peo­ple of Whit­stable are not back­ing off.”

The rail infra­struc­ture oper­a­tor planned to start remov­ing the trees because of con­cerns about sub­si­dence caused by their roots.

An inde­pen­dent ecol­o­gist car­ried out an assess­ment this morn­ing on behalf of Net­work Rail to deter­mine how many birds’ nests were in the affect­ed trees.

Fiona Tay­lor, Net­work Rail’s route man­ag­ing direc­tor for Kent, said: “After a thor­ough inspec­tion with an inde­pen­dent ecol­o­gist, the work to remove select­ed trees along this stretch of rail­way has been post­poned owing to the sus­pect­ed num­ber of nest­ing birds.

“Because this work is essen­tial for the future safe­ty of the rail­way, we will return at a lat­er date to com­plete it once the nests have been vacat­ed. Res­i­dents will receive a min­i­mum of 10 days’ notice before the start date and we will car­ry out a full inspec­tion before the work begins.”

‘Use­ful reminder’

The trees had already been giv­en a tem­po­rary stay of exe­cu­tion after plans to remove them in April were put on hold.

Mark Thomas, an RSPB inves­ti­ga­tions offi­cer, said: “The attempts by Net­work Rail to clear track­side veg­e­ta­tion from a line in Kent is a use­ful reminder to every­one that the nests of all wild birds are pro­tect­ed by law dur­ing the nest­ing sea­son.

“Thanks to protests the RSPB, Kent and British Trans­port Police, and not least local cam­paign­ers, Net­work Rail are aware of this.

We now trust they will plan their track clear­ance work out­side the bird-nest­ing sea­son where they will be able to car­ry out essen­tial work with­out caus­ing envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and spark­ing the out­rage of com­mu­ni­ties who care about their local wildlife.”

—-

Ear­li­er sto­ry, 3rd May:

CAMPAIGNERS have promised “direct action” in a bat­tle with Net­work Rail boss­es over trees.

Pro­test­ers call­ing them­selves Whit­stable Tree Savers will meet the com­pa­ny tonight (Thurs­day) to try to per­suade it to stop felling trees along the rail­way line – and have vowed to con­tin­ue their fight if the meet­ing does­n’t work.

Cam­paign spokes­woman Julie Wass­mer, who lives in Cromwell Road, said: “There will be a mas­sive protest – and I don’t mean peti­tions. They will phys­i­cal­ly be obstruct­ed from get­ting into the car park.

“Feel­ings are run­ning so high about this it is unbe­liev­able.”  More

http://saveourwoods.co.uk/get-involved/local-campaigns/tree-savers-save-rail-side-trees/

http://twitter.com/#!/TreeSavers

http://saverailsidetrees.webs.com/

Take the Flour Back

More than 400 grow­ers, bak­ers and fam­i­lies from across Eng­land, Ire­land, Scot­land, Wales, France and Bel­gium marched against the return of open air GM field test­ing today. Take the Flour Back linked arms with their Euro­pean coun­ter­parts, notably France’s Vol­un­teer Reapers and walked calm­ly towards the site, before being stopped by police lines.

Kate Bell from Take the Flour Back stat­ed that “In the past, kids, grannies, and every­one in between has decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed GM tri­al sites togeth­er. Here at the begin­ning of a new resis­tance to this obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy, we see GM hid­den behind a fortress. We want­ed to do the respon­si­ble thing and remove the threat of GM con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, sad­ly it wasn’t pos­si­ble to do that effec­tive­ly today. How­ev­er, we stand arm in arm with farm­ers and grow­ers from around the world, who are pre­pared to risk their free­dom to stop the impo­si­tion of GM crops.”

Peo­ple enjoyed a GM free pic­nic whilst lis­ten­ing to a range of speak­ers oppos­ing the tri­al, includ­ing Gra­ciela Romero, Inter­na­tion­al Pro­grammes Direc­tor of UK devel­op­ment char­i­ty War on Want. Lawrence Wood­ward, pre­vi­ous­ly Direc­tor of Elm Farm Organ­ic Research Cen­tre, for­mer head of stan­dards at the Soil Asso­ci­a­tion, and now involved in Cit­i­zens con­cerned about GM. Plus sev­er­al British farm­ers includ­ing Peter Lund­gren, a con­ven­tion­al wheat farmer from Lin­colnshire.

Gath­u­ru Mbu­ru, co-ordi­na­tor of the African Bio­di­ver­si­ty Net­work, spoke on the glob­al fight for con­trol of our food sup­ply.

Mbu­ru explained that:

“Exper­i­ment­ing with sta­ple crops is a seri­ous threat to food secu­ri­ty. Our resilience comes from diver­si­ty, not the mono­cul­tures of GM. Beneath the rhetoric that GM is the key to feed­ing a hun­gry world, there is a very dif­fer­ent sto­ry – a sto­ry of con­trol and prof­it. The fact is that we need a diver­si­ty of genet­ic traits in food crops in order to sur­vive wors­en­ing cli­mates. Above all, peo­ple need to have con­trol over their seeds”

This state­ment is released amongst grow­ing calls for the sci­en­tists to demon­strate sen­si­tiv­i­ty to pub­lic con­cern by har­vest­ing the crop before pol­li­na­tion, remov­ing any risk of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion with non-GM plants.

Two peo­ple were arrest­ed for tres­pas­so­ry assem­bly and oth­ers were searched and escort­ed on their way to the park, or searched on their way out.  Foot­paths had been closed by order, huge num­bers of cops and secu­ri­ty were in place, a cam­era on a cher­ry-pick­er close to the open-air exper­i­ment, and a spe­cial Sec­tion 14a Tres­pas­so­ry Assem­bly applied to a large area.  The peo­ple arrest­ed were in a small group, though this is only an offence for groups of 20 or more peo­ple and they may well not have known 14a was in force.