British magazine/review "Do or Die" has been a key forum for writing and debate in the english language circles for many years. Born out of Earth First and the struggles against road construction in the early 1990s, this was the same milieu who began Reclaim the Streets and generally mixed themselves up in any mischief that was available. In their most recent issue they announced that this was the end of the road. The publication is well worth getting a copy of not least for the end of an era which it documents. This issue opens with a long narrative review of the ten years which made the writers what they are and which I'd encourage everyone to read.


Part 1 ::::
Part 2
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Part 3

Recent Pre-History

An Insurgency of Dreams

"Defend the Collective Imagination.
Beneath the cobblestones, the beach"

- Slogan daubed in Paris, May 1968

The radical ecological movement was born from the world-wide revolutionary
upsurge of the 1960s and '70s. Love of the earth and for each other has always
been with us, but in that period these feelings exploded across the world in
a way they hadn't for decades. In nearly every land people came together and
resisted. In some areas there were decisive victories for people in the battle
against power; in others, power won hands down.

The epic struggle of the Vietnamese people and the anti-Vietnam war actions
across the world; urban guerrillas across Europe; barricades in Paris; the
European squatting movement, the brutal end of the Prague Spring; the rise
of the Black Power movement.

This upsurge brought with it the (re)birth of the feminist, ecological, indigenous
and libertarian ideas that now form the basis of our worldview.

Authoritarian Communism had dominated the radical movements ever since the
Bolshevik counter-revolution. After having been physically exterminated in
country after country, anarchist/libertarian groups started once again to grow.

Industrial development accelerated in the 'Third World' following World War
Two. The global elite extended its tentacles, attempting to assimilate or exterminate
tribes and band societies outside its control. In turn 'indigenous' peoples
fought back. In the 1970s the American Indian Movement (AIM) re-launched indigenous
armed resistance in North America, reminding us that even the capitalist core
countries were always colonies.

Seeing the horrors inflicted on our imprisoned non-human relations - in laboratories,
abattoirs and factory farms - the animal liberation movement was born with
sabotage at its centre.

New generations took up the standard of Women's Liberation, challenging not
only the dominant society but also its patriarchal (loyal) opposition that
forever sidelined women's lives in the cause of the (male) workers struggle.

After decades of almost universal techno-worship, not least by radicals, many
people began to see that the earth was being destroyed, and started trying
both to defend it and regain understanding.
The Rise of Environmentalism

"It's time for a warrior society to rise up out
of the Earth and throw itself in front of the juggernaut of destruction."

- Dave Foreman, US EF! co-founder.

The Western environmental movement grew as part of the upsurge, but also in
large part as a postscript. When the barricades - both actual and metaphorical
- were cleared, a generation of Western radicals looked to new fronts while
many others retreated to rural idylls and communes. What they both found was
strength in nature and a burning urge to defend it. This early environmental
movement fundamentally challenged the established conservation organisations
which for so long had acted as mere (ineffective) park keepers.

At sea a raw energy propelled tiny dinghies to confront the nuclear and whaling
industries. On land new organisations were forming, fighting toxic waste dumps,
logging, mining and other essentials of industry. Scientists were uncovering
huge cataclysms facing the earth and - to elite horror - breaking ranks. This
environmentalism had a threatening potential that had to be defused - an army
of hacks, cops, advertisers and ideologues got to work.

Capital and state both attacked environmentalists while simultaneously funding
counter-tendencies to steer the movement away from confrontation and towards
co-operation. This carrot and stick approach co-opted many; groups which had
looked promising succumbed to respectability and corporate funding. Environmentalists
were given a seat at the table but the talk was not of nature but of compromise,
techno-fix and corporate greenwash. Assimilation.

In fact, as early as 1972, The Ecologist magazine (at the time printing
articles on the links between ecology and anarchy) carried an editorial entitled
'Down with Environmentalism' saying: "We must repudiate the term environmental.
It is too far gone to be rescued."[1]

All through the '70s environmental groups were gaining increased support and
membership lists were expanding dramatically. By building mass based
organisations environmentalism was split into campaigners and supporters. Bigger
offices and bigger salaries were needed to manage the movement. This
division - a creation of scale - acted (and still acts) as a terrible internal
pressure crushing the radical content and practical usefulness of groups.

Those attracted to 'campaign' jobs were often exactly the wrong class of
people (inclined to paper pushing rather than physical action) while most of
the support their 'supporters' gave was the annual return of cheques and membership
forms - conscience-salving exercises. When serious people got involved in groups
their action was often curtailed by other 'campaigners' (or the cop in
their own head) reminding them that it could alienate the 'public' and thus
cut into membership and funding.

This process was as prevalent in what was then the most radical of the environmental
groups - Greenpeace (GP). In 1977 Paul Watson one of GPs directors (who became
an icon when he drove a dinghy straight into the path of a whaling harpoon)
was heading an expedition to the Newfoundland ice floes. At one point he grabbed
a club used to kill baby harp seals and threw it into the waters. The sealers
dunked and nearly drowned him yet worse was to come on return to the office
- betrayal. Throwing the club into the sea was criminal damage and he was told
by a faceless lawyer, "I don't think you understand what Greenpeace is all
about." He was expelled from the corporation.

Watson went on to found the whaler-sinking Sea Shepherd (more of them later)
while Greenpeace just got bigger, gaining millions of members while all the
time becoming more symbolic and less of a threat. As GP's founder Bob Hunter
said with an air of depression. "Nothing could be done to stop it from growing.
It'll keep growing and growing, a juggernaut that is out of control."[2]

Meanwhile the global attack on the wild was left largely unabated. Christopher
Maines in Green Rage put it well:

"Like the Youth movement, the women's movement, and rock and roll, the reform
environmental movement suffered from its own success. It entered the '70s as
a vague critic of our society and exited as an institution, wrapped in the
consumerism and political ambitions it once condemned. In their drive to win
credibility with the government agencies and corporations... the new professional
environmentalists seemed to have wandered into the ambiguous world of George
Orwell's Animal Farm, where it was increasingly difficult to tell the farmers
from the pigs."[3]

The Birth of Earth First!

"So, from the vast sea of raging moderation,
irresponsible compromise, knee-jerk rhetorical Sierra Club dogma, and unknowing
(OK,
sometimes knowing) duplicity in the systematic destruction of the earth,
a small seed
of sanity sprouts: Earth First!"

- Howie Wolke, EF! co-founder.

In 1980 five friends hiked into the desert. All long term activists sick with
careerism, legality and failure, they knew a new kind of group was needed.
One that would break the law, push open the envelope, hit the corporations
where it hurt (in the pocket) and most of all never EVER compromise in defence
of mother earth. Around their camp fire Earth First! was born.

EF!s first act was one of sarcastic symbolism - and defection. In a land full
of memorials to the genocidal victor, EF! raised a plaque commemorating Victorio,
an Apache who wiped out a mining camp.

"Victorio, Outstanding Preservationist and Great American.This monument celebrates
the 100th Anniversary of the great Apache chief, Victorio's, raid on the Cooney
mining camp near Mogollon, New Mexico, on April 28, 1880. Victorio strove to
protect these mountains from mining and other destructive activities of the
white race. The present Gila Wilderness is partly a fruit of his efforts. Erected
by the New Mexico Patriotic Heritage Society"

The next action EF! pulled off was at the Glen Canyon Dam, where a three hundred
foot polythene banner was unfurled down the side of the dam, looking for all
the world like a vast crack opening up. The demonstrators chanted RAZE THE
DAM. People had campaigned in the past against new dams but no one had ever
had the audacity to campaign to pull down those already built. The Glen Canyon
Dam in fact held special significance. In a sickening deal the big environmental
groups had accepted the damming of the canyon in return for the cancellation
of a dam elsewhere. This was exactly the kind of compromise EF! was founded
to resist.

Thus from the very beginning EF!ers set themselves not only the task of defending
the last fragments but of reversing the process: pulling down the dams and
the powerlines. EF! launched its proposal for a network of vast wilderness
preserves - half of Nevada for instance would be declared "off limits to industrial
human civilisation, as preserves for the free flow of natural processes." EF!
didn't want people to wait for the state to set them up. Instead the people
themselves should make them happen - direct action. If logging needed stopping
- stop it, blockade it, trash the machines. If a road needed digging up - DIG
IT UP! This militancy was a touchstone of even early EF!, but it wasn't just
its militancy that made it stand out globally (though it shocked Americans).
All around the world groups were turning to direct action in environmental
struggles. In both Britain and Germany, for example, anti-nuclear mass action
had been growing apace. What was really unique in the environmental movement
was EF!s militant biocentrism.

The wilderness proposals preamble stated: "the central idea of EF! is that
humans have no divine right to subdue the Earth, that we are merely one of
several million forms of life on this planet. We reject even the notion of
benevolent stewardship as that implies dominance. Instead we believe that we
should be plain citizens of the Land community."

Echoing The Ecologist's earlier denunciation of environmentalism Dave
Foreman goes one step further.

"Wilderness is the essence of everything we're after. We aren't an environmental
group. Environmental groups worry about environmental health hazards to human
beings, they worry about clean air and water for the benefit of people and
ask us why we're so wrapped up in something as irrelevant and tangential and
elitist as wilderness. Well, I can tell you a wolf or a redwood or a grizzly
bear doesn't think wilderness is elitist. Wilderness is the essence of everything.
It's the real world."[4]

Within a year EF! moved beyond symbolism to direct struggle. Around the country
a combination of civil disobedience and sabotage halted logging and oil drilling.
Groups were setting up all over. What many in industry had originally written
off as a joke was quickly becoming a nightmare. In 1985 EF!ers published Ecodefence:
A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. This was unashamed, heads held high 350
page manual on how to trash pretty much any machine with which civilisation
attacks the wild. Written by over 100 contributors to the Earth First! Journal,
this book was information for action.

Diggers trashed, forests occupied, billboards subverted, logging roads dug
up, trees spiked, offices invaded, windows smashed, snares disabled, computers
scrapped - EF! was on the move.

But so now was the state.

The FBI wasn't about to let a crew of hippies, feminists, cowboys and desert
anarchists continue to hammer company profits. The late '80s onwards saw a
wave of reaction that included infiltration, set ups, conspiracy trials, raids,
corporate directed anti-environmental hate groups and even assassination attempts
on 'leading' EF!ers. This was a continuation of the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counter
Insurgency Programme) previously unleashed in the '60s/'70s upsurge against
the Weather Underground, the New Left, the American Indian Movement, the Black
Panthers and the Puertorican liberation movement. Now some of the same agents
that had destroyed those movements were overseeing the attack on EF!

Pre-existing divisions over philosophy, tactics and not least of all personality
were exacerbated by the crisis that engulfed EF! A split begun to emerge between
supporters of EF! co-founder Dave Foreman and long term California organiser
Judi Bari. All the while both were under serious corporate/state attack. Foreman
was woken up one morning with an FBI gun to his head and charged with conspiracy
to down power lines. Bari was carbombed.

The split and state attacks seriously weakened US EF! and it would never fully
recover it's accelerating drive. Nevertheless survive it did and at the beginning
of the '90s it was still the kick ass environmental movement of the
developed world. It's actions, ideas and attitude would inspire a massive wave
of action across the Atlantic.

IMAGE: Corporate/state repression of EF! led to its logical conclusion with
the car bombing of California EF! activists Judi Bari and Daryll Cherney. They
were targeted during the successful Redwood Summer forest blockades. The bomb
exploded directly below Judi, who awoke in hospital with major injuries. The
police then attempted to frame her for her own bombing. Judi is now dead, but
her estate has continued to drag the FBI through the courts.
EF! Crosses the Atlantic

The climate in Britain in 1991 was similar to that
which had given birth to US EF! Organisations that had started off quite radical
in the '70s were well and truly assimilated. Big offices, good salaries, lobbying
and little else.

Back in 1972, in its first ever newsletter, FoE UK stated:

"We want to avoid the centre-periphery situation, whereby an organisation's
forces and resources tend to be drawn to the centre, to 'head office' while
patently the strength of the group... is derived from experience in the field."[5]

By the '90s FoE had undeniably FAILED to avoid the 'centre-periphery situation'
(to put it politely). Greenpeace was even more centrist - its local groups
simply fundraisers.[6] The late '80s had seen a massive increase in support
for environmental groups yet nothing real was happening. Something more radical
- and practical - was needed.

On the south coast in the seedy kiss-me-quick seaside town of Hastings some
sixth form students were plotting. They were bored out of their minds by A-levels
and disillusioned with FoE. In contrast the biocentric approach of US EF! and
its victorious direct action tactics were inspiring. The wild was calling...

They formed Britain's first EF! group with a handful of people and no resources.
Within a few months they would be making headlines - for now they spray painted
Hastings. A year later they had kick-started the biggest wave of ecological
defence Britain has seen since the vanquishing of the peasantry...[7]

So as to cover the last decade relatively briefly I'm going to have to paint
with big strokes. The time covered divides (pretty) neatly into three overlapping
stages:

• Earth First! Birth Period (1991-1993)
• Land Struggle Period (1993 - 1998)
• Consolidation and Global Resistance Period (1998 - 2002)

EF! Birth Period (1991-1993)

Earth First! hit the headlines when two EF!ers flew
from Britain to the rainforests of Sarawak. At the time the Penan tribes were
barricading logging roads and standing up to the corporate attack on their
home - the forest. The two joined the blockades and for their efforts were
locked up for two months in a stinking Malay jail. This news story went through
the roof - much to the annoyance of both the Malaysian government and the UK's
leading environmental groups.

FoE Central Office publicly denounced EF!, arguing that by taking action in
Sarawak the EF!ers AIDED the Malaysian government who wanted to paint all opposition
as emanating from the West. This position ignored that the Penan had requested
that people join them and that the Malaysian government was unlikely to halt
the destruction without increased PHYSICAL opposition. As one of the imprisoned
EF!ers said:

"In our absence from Britain we had been tried and convicted by the mainstream
groups. They have convicted us of a crime they themselves could never be accused
of: action. With friends like these, the Earth doesn't need enemies."

This was the first of many public attacks on the new generation of radical
ecological activists by the headquarters of the environmental NGOs. The difference
between the two tendencies was shown in July 1991. While the Sarawak Two were
in prison the annual meeting of the G7 (worlds seven leading state powers)
came to London. EF!ers with no money and few numbers carried out a number of
actions - banner drops outside and disruption of meetings inside. The NGOs
submitted reports. This mobilisation by EF! was small but a portent of things
to come. The next time the G7 came to Britain the radical ecological movement
would field not dozens but thousands...

Thanks to the Sarawak campaign the Hastings lot quickly began to make links
with people around the country from a variety of pre-existing networks: Green
Anarchist, the (embryonic) Rainforest Action Network, ALF, Green Student groups,
peace groups, local FoE and the hunt saboteurs. Out of a generation largely
consisting of students and doleys disillusioned with mainstream environmentalism,
groups sprang up in London, Brighton, Glastonbury, Liverpool, Oxford, Manchester
and Norwich.

IMAGE: Penan logging blockade. Without either large numbers or decent
arms the Penan were always unlikely to win. However they might have had a better
chance had they been given direct aid by Western environmental groups - which
at the time were bringing in MILLIONS on the back of rainforest imagery. Bar
EF!/RAN no-one provided any meaningful aid. Many of those who manned the logging
barricades in 1991 were forced into becoming loggers due to the destitution
their struggle's defeat left them in. Some rebel tribespeople continue to hide
out in the forest remnants.

IMAGE: EF! organises 400 people to blockade entrances
and occupy cranes, closing Liverpool docks as a shipment of rainforest timber
arrives.
Roads, Rebels and Rainforests

Inspired by abroad the handful of new activists went
about importing the North American/Australian model. What this meant was a
combination of non-violent civil disobedience, media stunts, and monkey-wrenching.
Actions were organised as part of international rainforest days co-ordinated
in the US and Australia. Australia had seen some recent big dock blockades
and the tactic was quickly brought to Britain.

On 4th December 1991, in what was EF!'s first really successful action, 200
people invaded Tilbury docks in London. That month the EF! Action Update also
reported under the headline 'Reclaim the Streets' a small roadblock done by
South Downs EF! More was to be heard of Reclaim the Streets...

Tilbury was followed by a 400 strong protest at Liverpool docks.

"On the first day we stormed the fences, occupied cranes, piles of dead rainforest,
observation towers and machinery; we hung banners off everything and blocked
the busy dock road... Police relations were good; because of full liaison work,
violence on both sides was prevented and we all got on like good mates. This
was helped with good legal backup, and non-violence training from experienced
CND activists... People stayed up the cranes all night... The second day saw
a complete change in attitude by the authorities. They'd let us have our fun
on the first day and they were determined that the ship would dock on the Wednesday.
Under fear of violence, our press office got the media straight down there
- our strongest weapon against foul play, but already the police were wading
in and holding people in a big cage."[10]

The description of state force as 'foul play' and our greatest protection
from it being the media illustrates well the startlingly naive views held by
many at the time. The dock-workers refused to unload the shipment while EF!ers
were still running around in danger. Eventually the police cleared the dock
and the shipment was unloaded.

February saw the first anti-road direct action at Twyford Down. FoE held a
symbolic chaining up of the site which they ended when injucted. At the request
of the Twyford Down Association EF!ers from all over the country started a
wave of site actions, sabotage and blockades.

Offices started to be targeted around this time with an example being the
chaining up of the Malaysian airline office by 29 activists in solidarity with
31 Penan on trial.[11]

While the national days of actions at Twyford continued down south, up north
the campaign to stop peat extraction from Thorne Moors hotted up. On Monday
13th April £100,000 of damage was done to Fisons machinery. A telephone
call to the media claimed the action for Earth First! FoE central office quickly
condemned the action on television.

In many ways the first few months of 1992 set a pattern of activism prevalent
for much of the next decade - a cycle of national actions, anti-road campaigns,
office occupations, night-time sabotage and street blockades.

The South Downs hosted Britains first EF! gathering in April 1992. Around
60 people turned up to discuss direction, aims and plan future actions. While
EF! was quite unified at the time, divisions were definitely present. The recent
Moors sabotage and unwise interviews to the press concerning the future environmental
use of explosives caused quite a stir. Most agreed that if EF! itself was seen
to do criminal damage then it would put groups at risk. A line of 'We neither
condemn nor condone' was agreed upon. For some this was simply a legal technicality
- in reality EF!ers would still be doing damage. For the less militant faction
it was seen as meaning civil disobedience was the tactic for EF! while
sabotage was secondary, separate and something done by others. Though I'd still
say that the wet faction was wrong, it was understandable given the widespread
paranoia following the then recent Arizona conspiracy trial and the FBI bombing
of EF!ers.

In this period EF! was primarily involved nationally in two campaigns: rainforests
and anti-roads. While similar tactics were used for both they had fundamentally
different characters. While rainforest days of action would trail off, anti-road
action would get bigger and bigger.

While the rainforest actions were often very successful - on their own terms
- they rarely lasted more than a day. On May 11th '92 over 100 invaded the
yard of Britain's biggest mahogany importer. Though a successful action in
itself, it remained in the whole a media stunt. The site remained operative,
the offices weren't trashed and next day it opened up again as usual. We all
felt empowered by the action, but there was a different feeling at Twyford
Down. At Twyford the movement could engage in protracted physical resistance.
It was a land struggle. You could feel the land you were struggling over with
your hands and your soul. When people started to move onto the land itself
they connected with it, became part of it. Standing in the sun, grass between
your toes looking to the diggers on the horizon the rage grew. It wasn't
a single issue - it was war.

On an entirely practical level it was a focus; an easily accessible battleground
local groups could drive their vans to. In this struggle EF! grew and evolved.
Most actions through '92 were done by between 10-50 people and commonly resulted
in minor arrests for breach of the peace. Sabotage commenced almost immediately.
The site was regularly flooded by redirecting the River Itchens water and machines
were wrenched. Just as it was new for us so too it was for the state, who were
suprisingly unprepared. In these first few months it would be case of running
onto site, climbing a crane or locking onto a digger. An hour or so later the
state's most regular foot-soldier would arrive - Bill Aud, a copper with a
sideline in mobile disco.

Friend or FoE?

In the early 1990s Friends of the Earth (FoE) central office made a concerted
effort to restrict the growth of the new movement. Negative public statements
about EF! were issued (most notably about the Sarawak jailings) but it
wasn't until the April 1992 Thorne Moors sabotage that FoE central office
showed its true colours when Andrew Lees - then head of FoE - condemned
the action on TV.

"We have to be very careful that this style of anti-environmental action
does not actually get misrepresented as something the environment movement
support. We decry, we deny it. It has no place in a democracy which relies,
and must rely, on public demanding the politicians deliver the goods."[8]

This public condemnation of the very essence of direct action showed how
far FoE central office had come from its early radical days. Contrast it
with a statement by FoE's first director twenty years previously.

"Whilst it is the case that the Japanese experience of people physically
fighting the construction of an airport or motorway has not been repeated
in Britain that is not to say that it will not occur here. Indeed... it
is almost inconceivable that clashes... will be avoided... When patience
runs out we won't really be - what's the word? - militant. After all is
said and done, putting sugar in a bulldozer's petrol tank is relatively
undramatic compared with blowing up a mountain."[9]

After slagging the action publicly Lees got to work on his own members.
Worried (correctly) that many local FoE groups were showing interest in
direct action an edict was issued banning them from working with EF! It
even went as far as to warn FoE groups that if they demonstrated with EF!
their right to use the FoE Ltd. name might be revoked. This intimidation
was too much for some of the FoE grassroots. At FoE National Conference
local groups led by Birmingham and Brighton challenged Lees on this and
defeated him.

Lees and others at FoE Central had seen the new movement as a potential
threat to power. They thought they could nip it in the bud - they couldn't.
It would grow much bigger and gain vast public sympathy. The strategy of
FoE changed - from one of strength to one of weakness. By the mid-'90s
a new director was trying to court EF! - even turning up to an EF! Gathering
with a large block of dope (whisky for the natives). He invisaged a series
of meetings at which he and two or three other top staff could meet a similar
number of EF! 'representatives' behind closed doors. This was of course
out of the question. Just as no-one could represent EF! at a national level,
EF! could not represent everyone involved in eco-direct action. Over twenty
EF!ers came to the first meeting, most to make this point and make sure
no one could sell the movement down the river. FoE said it had learnt from
its past mistakes - most EF!ers looked sceptical.

At the same time the Newbury Bypass saw FoE central's biggest push to
capitalise on direct action. It even managed to take over the campaign's
media liaison, (resulting in a major increase in its media profile and
resultant subs money). Promises not to publicly slag direct action were
hastily forgotten when over a hundred stormed an office throwing computers
out of the window. When hundreds took part in the festive burning of diggers,
FoE Central once again condemned the resistance.

The experience of dealing with FoE Central would be just the first of
its kind. A few years later, following the J18 global day of action, the
Socialist Workers Party (another reformist hierarchical racket) would try
to boost its membership by fronting itself as the backbone of the movement.
Just like FoE it condemned militant and genuine resistance while trying
to build bridges to mainstream groups.

NGOs, political parties. These professional priests of assimilation are
simply vampires - let's do some staking.

The Camps Begin...

The need for groups to have somewhere to sleep after
travelling distances for days of action was the catalyst that set up Britains
first ever ecological direct action camp. A traveller site had long graced
one side of the hill, but in June an obviously separate action camp was set
up on the dongas - an area of threatened downland furrowed deep with sheep
droves. This became a base for action against the road-building that was going
on further down the hill. On the dongas a real feeling of tribe developed as
many more were attracted to the site by summer beauty and direct action.

While some travellers had early on got involved in EF!,[12] it was at Twyford
that a real mix started to develop between (predominately urban) EF!/Animal
lib types and (predominately rural) travellers. Each threw different ingredients
into the campfire cauldron (of veggie slop). The activists - action techniques.
The Travellers - on the land living skills. Teepees and benders sprung up,
machines were trashed. This crossover would propel ecological direct action
into a potent cycle of struggle with big numbers and big successes.

However while both sides complimented each other it would be ridiculous to
iron over the very real family squabbles. As the summer progressed there was
tension within the Dongas Tribe over what offensive actions should be taken
and what defensive measures should be put in place. Discussion of how to resist
the (obviously imminent) eviction was silenced with the classic hippy refrain:
'If you think negative things, negative things will happen'. It was even suggested,
in a basically religious formulation, that mother earth would simply not 'allow'
the destruction of the dongas to happen. This tendency grew as the months went
on until by autumn serious conflict reared up. Following a threat by security
to repeat an earlier arson attack on the camp in retaliation for site sabotage,
offensive action was actually 'banned' by a 'meeting of the tribe'. Hippie
authoritarian pacifists[13] practically 'banished' EF!ers who had been involved
from the start. Predictably, however, the state wasn't standing idle - it was
preparing.

Elsewhere the campaign against roads was building apace. New road openings
were disrupted and the newspapers were already talking about the 'next Twyford'
- the battle for Oxleas Wood in London. Across the country the government boasted
it was building the biggest road programme since the Romans. These roads smashed
through some of the most biologically important areas - SSSIs (Special Sites
of Scientific Interest) and so it was obvious that by fighting roads one could
take on Thatchers 'Great Car Economy', while directly defending important habitat.
Direct action was starting to spread beyond roads. At Golden Hill in Bristol
an impressive community resistance against Tesco destroying local green space
resulted in arrests and mass policing. A new air was definitely abroad.

Back at Twyford the inevitable eviction came brutally on the 9th of December
- Yellow Wednesday. A hundred flouro-jacketed Group 4 security guards escorted
bulldozers in to trash the camp. Throwing themselves in front of the landrovers
and machines those in the camp slowed the eviction - suffering arrests and
injuries. Two were rendered unconscious by cops; lines of coiled razor wire
crossed the down. The drama appearing live on television brought local ramblers,
environmentalists, kids and the simply shocked to the site, many of whom without
hesitation joined the resistance. Others came from around the country, making
the eviction last three days. The eviction was an important moment - deeply
depressing to most involved, it nevertheless captured the imagination of thousands.

"Many, particularly the media, who like a nice neat story - will see the move
of the Dongas Camp as the closing act of the Twyford drama, but the battle
has not ended - it's beginning. If they think they can stop us with threats
and violence, we've got to make damn sure they don't. Hunt sabs regularly get
hassle but carry on regardless - let's learn from their example. Obstruction
on site needs to be co-ordinated and supported. The number of days work lost
is what counts. To broaden it out nationally, every Tarmac and associated subcontractors
office, depots and sites in the country should be targeted. Every leaflet produced
should contain the information needed for a cell to wreak £10,000 of havoc
against the contractors and even put smaller sub-contractors out of business.
No Compromise in Defence of Planet Earth!" - Do or Die No.1, Jan 1993
IMAGE: Reformist groups organise a symbolic 'vote' at Twyford in the run
up to the 1992 general election. After the photo opportunity, the crowd goes
down the hill, many spontaneously joining an EF! road blockade, pickaxing a
dam and flooding the site, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage. Sunny
sabotage - a far better message to send the politicians.
From the Ashes... Twyford Rising!

In February following an eventful invasion of Whatley
Quarry, a new camp was set up at Twyford. Off route and up on the hill overlooking
the cutting, this camp, and those that followed it, would have a very different
attitude than the one on the dongas. Not defence, ATTACK!

Starting with half a dozen campers (Camelot EF!) the site steadily grew through
spring with direct action practically everyday - and many nights too! Some
actions were carried out by a handful of people locking onto machines, others
were mass invasions by hundreds. Diggers were trashed, offices invaded. A sunrise
circle-dance was followed by an eight car sabotage convoy.

The state response to these actions grew more organised: hordes of guards,
private investigators and cops were stationed daily to stop the actions. They
failed. Endless arrests, restrictive bail conditions, camp evictions and harassment
only hardened resolve. By late April the Department of Transport was in the
High Court pushing for an injunction on 76 named individuals. To back up their
case they produced evidence nearly a foot thick with hilarious daily reports
from Twyford. A not unusual entry read thus:

"At 0845hrs a group of protestors raided one of the small earthmoving operations
at Shawford Down and did some very severe damage to the excavator before making
off. There were between 35-50 of them and they seemed to know exactly what
to do to cause the most damage to the machines."[14]

Unsurprisingly the High Court backed the DoT and injuncted the 76. The reaction
from our side was swift, two days after the hearing 500 joined a Mass Trespass
at the cutting. In a moving sign of multi-generational resistance the crowd
was addressed by Benny Rothman, one of the leaders of the 1932 Kinder Scout
Trespass. The mass injunction breaking resulted in six being sent to jail for
a month - the first of many to end up in the clink for fighting road building.
On the day of their release they were greeted by friends, smiles, hugs and...
sabotage. In Collingham, Linconshire, under the spray painted title 'For the
Prisoners of Twyford Down', the following was wrenched: 3 bulldozers, 3 Tarmac
Trucks, 2 Diesel Pumps, 1 Work Shed and a Control Station.[15]

Tarmac PLC was feeling the pressure. Across the country many of its offices
were occupied, its machines targeted. When its AGM was disrupted the directors
made their fears known. Thanks to good corporate research their home addresses
had been uncovered and published. Some had been freaked enough to hire security
guards - their apprehension heightened by past targeting of directors by Animal
Liberationists. Considering the relatively few 'radical eco' home visits since,
this may seem surprising. However at this time the movement was influenced
by quite divergent groups. The fact that directors were largely left unscathed
in the years to come was not a given - it was a choice.

During that summer everything from Druid curses to burning tarmac was hurled
at the contractors in a hectic campaign which was; "a symbol of resistance,
a training ground, a life changer and a kick up the arse to the British green
movement.'[16] Nevertheless, though it slowed it, the M3 was not stopped. 'The
cutting at Twyford Down gets ever deeper and the down, the water-meadows and
of course most of the dongas are now destroyed, but it's destruction has given
birth to a movement and the fight goes on."[17]

As the resistance at Twyford waned anti-road actions were spreading across
the country like wildfire. Digger diving was organised on a near daily basis
at Wymondham near Norwich, and in Newcastle hammocks were strewn in the trees
at Jesmond Dene. Like Twyford, once again it was local EF!ers and residents
that catalysed the intial actions that burgenoned into widescale tribal resistance
on the land.

Further north, action was hotting up in Scotland with tree and crane sits,
some lasting days, connected to the M74 in Glasgow. Even further north was
the campaign against the Skye Bridge, a monstrosity cutting across the Kyle
of Lockash, immortalised in the environmental classic, The Ring of Bright
Water. The bridge not only affected the direct habitat (famous for its
otters) but connected the Hebrides into the mainland infrastructure, endangering
the whole regions ecology by exposing it to further development.

Unfortunately at the time there was only limited active local support for
resistance. The first and only day of action against the building was carried
out by around a dozen, who, bar a few from Skye and Glasgow EF!, were all from
'south of the border'. As cops stationed on the island could be counted on
one hand, reinforcements were brought in. Inflatables were launched as the
main work was being carried out off barges. The reaction of the construction
firm was brutal - industrial hoses were used as water-cannons in an attempt
to knock those up floating cranes into the sea. The Scottish press were present
in numbers and also enjoyed some corporate PR. The front page of The Scotsman put
it like this:

"Journalistic objectivity is a wonderful thing. However, it is easily damaged,
especially by people trying to ram your boat, sink you, throw rocks at you,
then threatening you first with a crowbar and then a grappling hook, not to
mention attacking you with a tracked excavator."[18]

The boats were impounded and most were arrested. Bussed a hundred miles away,
the group was given strict bail by an all-powerful 'Roving Sheriff' (another
great colonial legacy) not to return to the Highlands and Islands for over
a year. Police escorted the van most of the way to the border. Elsewhere actions
were taken against the projects funders, The Bank of America, but the campaign
was effectively stillborn by low local involvement and immediate corporate/state
'direct action'.

A very different situation had produced a very different result at Oxleas
Wood in London. These woods in SE London were widely believed to be the next
big battle and 3,000 people had signed a pledge to 'Beat the Bulldozers'. After
over a year of direct action at Twyford and with resistance spreading the government
knew it couldn't risk hitting such a beautiful place within 'recruitment distance'
of millions. The summer of 1993 saw this £300 million scheme dropped,
a major victory after just a year of sustained action against infrastructural
growth.
Not Single Issues, Just One War

This success was all the more impressive considering
that this campaign, though then becoming the dominant terrain of struggle for
the movement, was still only one of the battles it was involved in. The daily
fight on the land was interspersed with national and local days of action across
the country on a range of issues.

Timber depots in Oxford, Rochdale and London were all targeted by days of
action. One national week of action against mahogany saw 'ethical shoplifting'
(the seizure of illegally logged timber from shops), in towns across the country;
and abroad the simultaneous total destruction of logging equipment by the Amazonian
Parkana Indians![19] Other actions included bank occupations (against Third
World debt), an ICI factory invasion (to highlight continued ozone depletion),
road blockades (against car culture) and regular quarry blockades at Whatley
in Somerset. These different battles were all viewed as part of the same war
by EF!ers. Many of the hundreds that invaded Oxford Timbnet for the second
time had come direct from a weekend of action at Twyford. The next day a cavalcade
moved onto Bristol to help disrupt the opening of the disputed Golden Hill
Tesco. Then, as now (maybe more so) many EF!ers were also also involved in
the animal liberation movement.

The campaigns were carried out in a global context of escalating radical ecological
resistance. Anti-road campaigns in the (French) Pyranees, anti-whaling action
by Sea Shepherd (around Norway), the campaign against the Narmada Dam (in India),
the Ogoni struggle against Shell (Nigeria), EF! defence of the Danube (in Slovakia),
biotech companies bombed (in Switzerland), GM crop experiments dug up (in the
Netherlands), and of course anti-logging battles (in N. America, the Pacific,
the Amazon and Australia).

It's a long way from North America to Newcastle but in 1993 the tactic of
protracted tree-sits crossed the Atlantic. Following demos earlier in the year
the bulldozers had gone into Jesmond Dene unannounced on June 16th. The state,
however, hadn't factored in skiving Geordie kids, who stopped the machines
working while the alarm went out. The next morning protestors barricaded the
site entrance. More kids came back and shovelled earth with plastic flowerpots
to build up the barricade - the Flowerpot Tribe was born. The campfire was
set burning and a strong community formed. A combination of 'local talent'
and reinforcements from Twyford and elsewhere, made the next five months an
avalanche of site occupations, tree-sitting, piss-taking and nightly sabotage.
The legendary winds of Newcastle seemed to blow down the construction site
fencing again and again! The kids sang: "The Chainsaws, the Chainsaws - they
cut down all out trees. The Pixies, the Pixies, trashed their JCBs." Of course
despite the laughs it was hard.

"Everyone is getting very knackerd and pissed off - tree sitting is saving
the trees that are hammocked, but it's tiring, cold, stressful and often boring.
Ground support people face prison for breaking injunctions as they take food
to trees. It's GRIM for sitters when the trees are felled near them. Local
people sab a Cement mixer under the copper beech by throwing rock salt into
it - a workman goes berserk and tries attacking the beech with a JCB, trying
to knock the tree-sitters out. He survived but the copper beech loses another
couple of branches."[20]

In 1991 EF!'s handful of activists were the radical ecological movement.
By the end of the summer of 1993, EF! not only had 45 local groups but had
catalysed thousands to take direct action - mostly not under the EF! banner.
Now one could really begin to talk about a movement. After the Jesmond Dene
camps were evicted one of the Flowerpot Tribe wrote:

"Those who've been involved are also gearing up to fight other schemes...
What we've learnt will spread out to other road and environmental protests...
it just gets bigger and bigger. If we can't stop the bastards totally we can
COST them, show them there's no easy profit in earth rape. They've already
been cost millions - let's cost them some more.''[21]
Land Struggle Period (1993 - 1998)

Land struggles were infectious, the next period seeing
an explosion of activity. The winning combination was relatively solid networks
of long term anti-road campaigners (ALARM UK), a nationwide network of EF!
groups and most importantly a swelling 'tribe' willing to travel across the
land.
Welcome to the Autonomous Zones

While the state had backed down at Oxleas it intended
to go full steam ahead with the M11 link through East London. DoT bureaucrats
and politicians probably thought the movement wouldn't pull together over the
destruction of a small amount of trees and hundreds of working class homes.
They were wrong.

Hundreds of the houses were already squatted, long since having been compulsorily
purchased. This vibrant scene was joined by others from Jesmond and Twyford.
With much of the road smashing through a long-term squatting community and
a solidly working class area, this more than any previous anti-road campaign
was a defence of human lives as well as wildlife. Nevertheless, there were
beautiful patches of overgrown gardens and copses, and the struggle was also
understood in the national ecological context.

"By halting the road in London we can save woodlands, rivers and heathlands
all the way to Scotland, without endangering their ecology by having mud fights
with hundreds of security guards and police in their midst."[22]

The first real flashpoint came at a chestnut tree on George Green, common
land in the heart of Wanstead. The 10ft hoardings which had been erected to
enclose the common were trashed by a jolly mob of kids, activists and local
people. On the Green a hunched woman in her eighties was crying. She had always
felt powerless, but when she pushed the fences down with hundreds of others,
she said she felt powerful for the first time in her life. Empowerment is direct
action's magic, and the spell was spreading.

"A treehouse was built in the branches of the chestnut tree... For the following
month the campfire became a focal point... People from different backgrounds
began to get to know one another, spending long evenings together, talking,
forming new friendships. Something new and beautiful had been created in the
community. Many local people talk of their lives having been completely changed
by the experience."[23]

The eviction came in December and was carried out by 400 police. With 150
people resisting it took nine hours to bring down one tree! Sabotage also played
a part - both of the contractor's hydraulic platforms had been wrenched the
night before.

"The eviction had forced the DoT to humiliate itself in a very public way.
The loss of the tree was a tragic day, and yet also a truly wonderful day.
It had hammered another huge nail in the coffin of the roads programme."[24]

The state hoped this was the end of No M11, but it was just the beginning.
Other areas had already been occupied, and regular action against the contractors
continued. It was a fitting end to the second year of concerted action against
roads.

On January 1st 1994 the Indigenous Zapatistas of Mexico launched themselves
on to the stage of world history. Liberating town after town, freeing prisoners,
re-distributing food, declaring themselves autonomous of the new economic order.
They didn't just redistribute food; they redistributed hope worldwide, and
were to have a significant impact on the movement here.

Meanwhile in Britain the year nearly started off with a big bang. In January
a very small amount of broadsheet coverage reported the police detonation of
an explosive device under the main bridge at Twyford Down. Coverage also reported
a bomb found at Tarmac's HQ.[25]

The Spring saw camps sprout up against the Wymondham Bypass near Norwich,
the Leadenham Bypass in Lincolnshire, the Batheastern-Swainswick Bypasses outside
Bath and the Blackburn Bypass in Lancashire. In inner-city Manchester, a threatened
local park got a dose of eco-action at Abbey Pond.

Back in the East End, Spring saw vast defensive and offensive road-resisting.
A row of large Edwardian houses were next en route - they were barricaded,
and Wanstonia was born: "it was declared an autonomous free zone. People made
joke passports and the like. We were digging this huge trench all the way around
the site. Doing that probably had zero tactical effectiveness but it really
made us feel that this was where the UK ended and our space started."[26]

The State does not take well to losing territory.

"In a scene reminiscent of a medieval siege, around 800 police and bailiffs
supported by cherry-pickers and diggers besieged the independent state of Wanstonia.
After cordoning off the area the invaders preceded to storm the five houses.
The police had to break through the barricades to enter only to find the staircases
removed thus forcing them to get in through roofs or upper floors. Some protestors
were on the roofs having chained themselves to the chimneys, the contractors
preceded to destroy the houses while many people were still occupying them...
It took ten hours to remove 300 people."[27]

This impressive and costly eviction was followed up by Operation Roadblock
- a month of rota-based daily direct action, where groups booked in which days
they would take action. It worked remarkably well, with sizeable disruption
every day through March. Elsewhere many of the resistance techniques developed
at the M11, both for the defence of houses and trees, were now being used against
other schemes.

Utter Contempt for the Court

During Jesmond Dene, people were still being picked up for having
broken the Twyford injunction. 'Quolobolox' knew the cops would nick
him sooner or later at the Dene and send him down to the High Court,
but he was prepared. When the inevitable arrest came he gave the High
Court quite a surprise. Stripping off to orange suspenders, worn all
summer under his trousers especially for this occasion, he goosestepped
up and down in front of the judge sieg-heiling. The judge closed the
court in horror. This was a not-so-subtle reference to the recent death
of Steven Milligan, the Tory MP for Eastleigh (near Twyford). Milligan,
(who had once memorably described the Dongas Tribe as "weirdoes") was
found dead hanging from the ceiling after an erotic auto-asphyxiation
disaster, wearing nothing but suspenders with an amyl nitrate-soaked
orange in his mouth. Unsurprisingly the judge added weeks to Quolobolox's
sentence for 'contempt of court'.

Progress, Yuck - Time to Go Back to the Trees

Tactics were evolving fast. At Jesmond, temporary
hammocks had graced the branches; at George Green a single treehouse had been
built; at Bath the first real network of treehouses hit the skyline; in Blackburn
there was a full-on Ewok-style Tree Village. Unable to defeat the bailiffs
on the ground, resistance had moved skyward.

"You'd be standing at the fire at night, and it would be the first time you'd
been down on the ground all day. You'd look up and there would be all these
little twinkles from candles up above you... How were they going to get us
out?... I don't think I can describe here how special it is to sleep and wake
in the branches of a tree. To see the stars and the moon. To feel the sunshine
and feel the rain."[28]

Hundreds were now living on-site across the country, with many, many more
'weekending' or visiting for days of action. Most campaigns were now setting
up multiple camps, each taking a slightly different form according to the lay
of the land. Previously, barricades had been built around houses and woodlands
- now they themselves were transformed into barricades - complex networks of
walkways, treehouses, lock-ons, concrete and determination.

Solsbury Hill's fourth site eviction at Whitecroft was the first full-on,
all-treetop eviction. Using cherry-pickers and standard chainsaw men, the Sheriff
failed to take down a single tree; the camp had defeated him... for now. The
cost was high; one protestor hospitalised with spinal injuries and a collapsed
lung. Ten days later the Sheriff returned, this time with madder baliffs -
Equity card-holding stunt men. These were more crazy, muscular and willing
to take risks with their own lives as well as of those in the trees. By the
end of the day Whitecroft was no more. This - the most spectacular at the time
- was only one of the many conflicts countrywide. These evictions were becoming
hugely costly - to the contractors, to the state, and to social stability.
Most sites at this time continued offensive action as well, using the by then
standard formula; digger diving, office occupations and crane-sits, alongside
overt and covert sabotage. The state was being challenged - it would soon escalate
its response.

With every campaign the movement seemed to be going from strength to strength,
with one exception, Leadenham. A camp had set up, and the DoT said it was putting
the scheme into review, but victory was not to be. The contractors launched
a surprise attack - during the 'reprieve' - while those still on site were
'dealt with' a few weeks later by local thugs. Vigilante attacks on sites had
always been an occasional occurrence, but they were usually minor in scale.
At Leadenham though there was a sizeable group of pro-road locals willing to
take direct action.

"The attack happened following a demo by local people in favour of the bypass.
Leadenham villagers decided in their infinite wisdom that a road was preferable
to a 'few trees'. Masked vigilantes arrived at the camp at 5am armed with chainsaws.
They proceeded to hack down trees protestors had been sitting in. Anyone getting
in their way was punched and violently assaulted."[29]

This basically put an end to site occupation at the scheme, though days of
action still followed. What Leadenham showed was the absolute necessity of
having significant community support IF a camp was set up. Without it, there
was a danger of being sitting/sleeping targets. Thankfully, through this period
no other sites were mass attacked by local vigilantes in this way.[30]

While in this article I'll give an overview of this period, from so high up
one can't hope to focus on the detail - and it's the detail that counts. The
incredible moments, the passion, the exhilaration, the waiting, the amazing
people, the occasional twat - the tribe. Not to mention the holy trinity: dogs,
mud and cider. On site and in the trees, this feeling of togetherness and otherness
grew. Leaving site to get food or giros, the harshness and speed of the industrial
world hit you; but by living a daily existence of resistance we were hitting
back.
Go to:
Part 2


Part 3 (Notes)