 Twyford Down and the State

TWYFORD DOWN IS a beautiful area of high ground lying
SE of Winchester in Hampshire.

It is rich in historical features such as the site of an Iron Age
village, pre-Roman field systems, and ancient trackways known as
the Dongas, which a group of protesters have named themselves
after. They have been camped on the site to defend it since at
least last summer and constant actions have been going on with
locals, Friends of the Earth supporters (who soon dropped out) and
above all Earth Firsters who have been consistently in action
against the proposed M3 eight-lane motorway beside the already
existing four-lane bypass near Winchester College. Their
tactics include sabotage against the main construction company
slowing down work and a national Day of Action last November in
which they stopped some destruction of landscape.
Then on 9 December Winchester College got an eviction order from
their land which they had sold to the Department of Transport.
Group 4 Security guards were hired and physically fought with
the protesters and brought in bulldozers. There was considerable
violence on this day, including some alleged sexual assaults on
women protesters. Now the earthmovers have moved in as of 23
February to start the destruction of' the Down .
The fight to save the Down lasted a week, with the protesters
finally being evicted with great brutality. In one opinion poll only
five per cent of Winchester's population wanted the Twyford
Down cutting. 'Green celebrities' like Porritt and Bellamy as well as
the Friends of the Earth lent their support to the campaign and
direct action to save the Down was even mooted by the thoroughly
respectable Residents' Association and Twyford Down Association.
But this was all rhetoric and was, unsurprisingly, never put into
practice when the DOT with the hired security men ruthlessly
evicted the Dongas protesters .

Class Struggle

To many, Twyford Down may seem like another Not in My
Backyard (NIMBY) of little relevance to class struggle activists. But
the Twyford Down affair, like the planned destruction of Oxleas
Wood for similar reasons, is part of an international attack on the
countryside and the environment for the needs of capitalism. The
British State will tolerate no opposition to its plans, and will use
State violence if it feels it to be necessary. The government has
the powerful backing of the road lobby, and has need of a road
infrastructure geared to compete with the high-speed rail link to
the Channel Tunnel. Besides Twyford Down, there are over 15 new
road schemes in preparation or under construction
Government expenditure on road schemes has gone up
phenomenally since 1979. A vast number of historic and
environmental sites are under threat. And this is just in Britain.
The road scheme here is part of an international plan to provide
Europe with a modernised road system geared to the free trade
principles of the Single Market. France plans to double its road
system by the year 2000, including driving a  road though the
Massif Central mountains. The European Commission plans a 50%
growth of the road infrastructure.
This is not all. 'The European Community is providing funds f or
several  environmentally damaging hydro-electric projects. 'These
include the diversion of' the Aeheloos River in Greece, which will
threaten many species of bird and ruin the livelihood of hundreds
of fishing families; the funding of 250 dams in Spain, which will
destroy more than 100 ecological sites; the funding of a large
bridge over the Tagus in Portugal, where the most
environmentally damaging of three routes was chosen.
The fight against the Twyford Down cutting has
relevance to the fight backs against roads in the rest of Britain
nation-wide fight back again t roads would include mobilisations
against the Oxleas Wood development and the M11 link road
through Hackney Marshes. It would need to link up with the
developing opposition to road schemes and other forms of
ecological damage throughout Europe.
The fight at Twyford Down was bogged down in legalistic appeals
to the European Court, and a letter-writing campaign to the
Government and the Queen! The Dongas Tribe, to their credit did
attempt to use direct action to stop the development. What was
lacking however, was a mass mobilisation, so that the cutting
could be physically stopped due to weight of numbers. There is an
urgent need to link up the fight against road schemes to the fight
of rail workers and  bus workers. The car economy promoted by
capitalism has to be directly related to the attacks on public
transport, and the vision of a new society which would be geared
to environmental harmony and the expansion of a free public
transport system. The fight in the countryside has to go in tandem
with inner-city actions against road schemes, such as
Carmageddon mass blockages of roads that are beginning to
develop.

Organise! No. 30 Apr-Jun 1993



