The British motorway resistance

Highway resistance was successful in at least London as early as the 1970s; many highways were planned and abandoned after popular protests.

But in the late 1980s, the British government launched a road program that it proudly called ”the most extensive since the Romans” and the resistance gained momentum again.

This time, the opposition was a revolt against the policies of the entire Tory government – against the benefit to middle-class car commuters, against the benefit to real estate speculators and the construction mafia. It had tested its tactics in the campaign against Thatcher's ”poll tax”, i.e attempts to reimburse a municipal tax based on income with a tax the same amount for everyone. The tactic was to sabotage implementation in the first place and to influence politicians and legislation in the second place.

At the forefront of the campaign was the ”Do it yourself” culture – the English name for the punk-inspired oppositional youth culture. But it never found it difficult to bring in ordinary people who were threatened by motorway projects and also get them to take part in hazardous protest actions.

The first fortifications were built at the M3 project in Twyford Downs in the south of England in 1991. Because this was the tactic – to entrench oneself in treetops or in the underground and make it difficult for the construction enterprises to do their job. It took these many months to evict the activists. The program here was the rather traditional Save Nature.

The next project was the M11 in London’s northeast suburbs. The same tactic was used – as soon as a house condemned to demolition was emptied, it was occupied and fortified. But at the same time, a new discourse began to develop. What must be saved from motoring and project making was not only nature but the world of human life. The culture, the commons.

To this end, the action idea Reclaim the streets was born. The streets around the M11 project were occupied again and again and filled with party. Gradually, the street occupations spread – the culmination was when another city motorway in London, M41, was occupied by ten thousand dancing people in July 1996, who broke up the asphalt and planned trees.

M11 took a couple of years to prepare the way for. The last battle took place in October 1994. By then, the government had already withdrawn its roadmap and written off most road projects. Because the protests spread, in Glasgow the Free Republic of Pollok Free State was proclaimed which, among other things, succeeded in electing a representative to the Scottish Parliament.

Perhaps the most important legacy, however, was the broadening of motorway resistance. The meager future prospects of the underclass youth were set against the affluent car commuters, joint campaigns were made with striking dock workers and metro drivers, the street was reclaimed and polarized against the speculative economy. The commons were thematized for the first time and it became possible to see the commonality between motorway opponents and, for example, farmers who defend the freedom of knowledge against patent-pending food companies.

Reading
Patrick Field: The anti-roads movement, in Tim Jordan & Adam Lent: Storming the millennium; the new politics of change, Lawrence & Wishart 1999
George McKay (ed): DiY culture; party and protest in nineties’ Britain, Verso 1998.