The 3.5 mile M11 link road in east London was constructed in the mid 90s. It destroyed 350 houses, parks and woodlands. It forced those in the way to move away. It crushed the community spirit of those who remained by depriving them of easy contact with one another. It gave them nowhere to go to walk their dogs. Meanwhile, it saved commutors the grand total of 7 minutes in journey time to get to their jobs in the City.
The campaign built around saving the area affected by the proposed M11 really kicked off in December 1993. Claremont Road in east London was taken over by activists after a chestnut tree was cut down by the local council. For over a year, the occupation of the road, the squatting of the houses, the street theatre and sculpture offered a living testamony to the creative energy of the protest, and a determination to build a culture of resistance that followed closely in the footsteps of the earlier Twyford Down campaign.
Like before, the strategy of the protest was to make it more and more expensive for the road builders the longer they stayed away, and drive a wedge between themselves and the government who refused to underwrite the costs. In the case of the occupants of Claremont Road, it took 700 cops, 400 private security guards, 120 vehicles, and 89 hours to evict the street at a cost of 2m pounds. Barricades, lock-ons and a greasy scaffold all helped to frustrate the authorities, boosted with the new powers given them by the British Criminal Justice Act passed a month earlier (October 1994) which virtually illegalised civil dissent.
However, the protest helped raise an awareness of the damage inflicted on our environment on a daily basis. The atomization of communities, the danger to our health (Greenpeace International calculates 7.5m elderly people and 9m children are at risk of contracting asthma and bronchitis caused by exhaust pollution), the lack of space (a car travelling 40kph requires more than 3 times as much space as one travelling at 10kph; a person driving a car at 10kph needs 6 times as much space as a bicycle travelling at the same speed - figures from Where There's Brass There’s Muck - Ecology and Anarchism) are all related to the increasing tarmacing over everything green.
What as anarchists can we do about this? Get involved in local campaigns, forge links with transport workers and those threatened by road schemes, build support amongst the local community. What do we want? An accessible public transport system involving popular planning, minimising the need for transport through self-reliance, less pollution and disturbance to the environment, and ultimately a society with more walkers and cyclists on our streets.
Thi article was originally published in Resistance.
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