Who
are you? What do you do & why do you do it?
How did you first get involved?
Dee from Reclaim
the Streets
Dee->> How I got involved in Reclaim
the Streets is rather a long question because I'm 54 and I started
being involved in this kind of thing when I was 17, when I first
got involved in an offshoot of CND that was called Committee of 100. How did I get involved in that? I suppose I
was just a bit of a deviant at school and when somebody told
me about nuclear politics I was quite ready to see it as appalling
and . . . .
mk->> You could be a deviant with a purpose.
Dee->> I could be a deviant with a purpose, exactly!
[laughs] So, that's where I started, with anti-nuclear stuff.
And then as soon as I went to art school, my art school was in
Charing Cross Road in London and there are lots of second-hand
bookshops there, and I immediately latched onto a publication
called Anarchy [laughs]. I suppose for quite a while at that
stage I wasn't really being political at all. I was doing art
stuff and travelling and raving it up in all sorts of different
ways. I didn't really get back into political activism until
the late '70s, when things were hotting up again on the nuclear
front. I think the background to how I felt was that I was brought
up in the country, really in the country, not in a village or
on the edge of a town, but I was brought up in proper country.
I spent my childhood roaming around, climbing trees, building
camps in woods and cycling about. And when I was being brought
up I was already conscious that the country was disappearing
because the part of the country I lived in, which was rather
beautiful, it was the Chiltern Hills, rolling countryside, was
fairly rapidly during my childhood in the late '50s being covered
with horrible commuter bungalows. And all the places I played
in were disappearing quite fast.
Anyway, when I was at university I started becoming more and
more worried about what was happening on the ecological front,
environmental issues. That was a time I was just starting to
get really deeply concerned about what was happening, just before
Friends
of the Earth
(FoE) and Greenpeace existed. And so when all of sudden they
started up, which was in the late '60s, I was just ready to hop
on board. Which I did, hopped on board FoE and Greenpeace at
that stage, just as a supporter. Then became, after a while,
quite dissatisfied because although at the very beginning FoE
used to stage at least marches and protests of some kind, that
very rapidly faded out so that all you were asked for was financial
support. This was particularly unsatisfying. You didn't really
feel you were doing anything. So, in about the late '70s I was
working in a radical bookshop, and I was much into literature
and a bit into punk and stuff. At the end of that the Cold War
was really, really hotting up and it was a period when it was
starting to get very frightening, the nuclear issue. So, I remember
thinking to myself, "I'm just going to have to get involved
in anti-nuclear politics again, because this is getting essential."
I was getting involved in anti-nuclear politics really more from
an ecological point of view than from a pacifist point of view.
I've never been a hardcore pacifist, although I suppose I don't
see much point in war. But my main motivation was ecological
and talking about ecological waste and the destruction of the
world. So, right at the end of the '70s I started getting involved
in things that were going on with CND again, which is a bit of
a stuffy organization.
Then, of course, Greenham
cropped up at the beginning of the '80s. As soon as I heard about
that, which was in 1982, I thought, "Well, this is a very
obvious one for me as a woman and anti-nuclear." So, I didn't
ever actually go and live at Greenham, but I became involved
with a little gang of East End London women. We used to go down
there to Greenham quite often and stay there for a few days doing
this, that, and the other. We were also active here, in London,
blockading a military road, for instance, and trying to raise
awareness of anti-nuclear issues. Greenham was very radicalizing,
really, because as women we got much more used to doing everything
for ourselves and realizing that we could do everything for ourselves.
Women at that time weren't so used to feeling that we could manage
the whole caboose ourselves. We tended to rely a bit on men for
part of it. So, that was good. I was involved in that for quite
a long time. I still know the people, they're still great friends,
that little bunch of East End women. We're not so much Tower
Hamlets Women's Peace Group this time, we're Tower Hamlets Women's
Piss Up Group, really. We sort of meet and just have little piss
up together once a month [laughs].
After that, the missiles left Greenham, and I personally didn't
see any point at all in staying at Greenham after the missiles
had left. Wasn't, as far as I was concerned, a lovely place to
be. That would be, I suppose, after about five years. About 1987
or so? There was a period which was extremely depressing when
Thatcherism was beginning to bite. The most depressing thing
about it was that there was a sensation of young people at that
time, I mean, I was approaching middle-age, rather uncomfortably,
at that time, and I was conscious that young people were all
becoming incredibly straight! They were becoming work-orientated,
career-orientated, money-orientated. I found this very deeply
depressing. And then, when was it? '92 or '93? Suddenly I started
hearing about this bunch of wild young people who were diving
into bulldozers and diggers on Twyford Down. And I thought, "Yes! I've
got to go down there!" And lo and behold! There was an increasing
bunch of mostly young people who were thoroughly deviant, anarchic
and passionate about the ecological issues there. So, I got involved
with them. And then the No-M11 campaign kicked off. At first
I didn't quite latch onto it. I didn't realize quite how interesting
it was. It just happened I was away during the summer when it
was all building up, so I missed out on a lot of the initial
building up of Claremont Road. I went down there to East London,
to the M11, each time one of the big evictions happened I was
there, getting increasingly to know people a bit. But I did feel
quite shy there, because there were bunches of people who obviously
knew each other very well, and most of them were quite a lot
younger than me, and they were doing stuff all the time. And
unfortunately, I was too shy to actually just go there and hang
out. Until, on one of the actions, I climbed up a crane or something,
and a climber who's very much involved noticed this old creature
climbing up a crane and realized I could sort of scramble up
things. So, when they were building the tower in Claremont Road,
one day, this climber waved out to me and said "Well, do
you want to come up this thing?" I said "Yes!"
And from that moment I started getting into things more because
there was obviously something I could do, and people realized
that I could. Claremont Road was just inspirational because it
was so creative, it was so wild and creative. We actually managed
to have this street for such a long time as a magic place. It
wasn't just a protest. It was also politicizing in that it wasn't
an obvious environmental issue like Twyford Down. It wasn't an
obviously beautiful bit of countryside. It was a bit of East
London city. And so it was more to do with social justice issues
than it was to with preserving beautiful countryside. So, got
involved in there. At the same time, in fact before the M11,
I had been just slightly involved in what was then a very small
group calling itself Reclaim the Streets (RTS). Someone showed
me some pictures of subvertising they'd done, billboards, and
I thought, "This is very nice." So, I went along with
them to do a bit of subvertising on billboards, and to a motor
show where we did an action. And that was quite fun, putting
up a banner, doing a bit of climbing. So, I was slightly involved
with that very embryonic phase of RTS which had just started
to exist before the M11 campaign kicked off. I don't know if
anyone's talked to you about that phase of RTS?
mp->> No, we've mostly heard that it started after,
that it grew out of, the No-M11 campaign.
Dee->> Yes, well, it did actually start before.
I wasn't there at the first meeting. But, as far as I can make
out it was through a bunch of activists in the London Cycling
Campaign who felt that the London Cycling Campaign wasn't exciting
enough, was a bit staid and could be a lot more direct action
in its approach. So, they were doing things like painting cycle
lanes in the streets and that kind of thing, and they started
doing subvertising. It was existing as just a very small group
with an idea at that stage, an idea that the streets were ours.
But it got totally subsumed into the M11 campaign. Then after
the fall of Claremont Road, there was a campaign at the end of
the M11 about a new Criminal Justice Act, that you may have heard about, which managed
to make state enemies of a whole disparate bunch of deviants,
such as road protesters, ravers, and animal rights people. It
drew us all together most wonderfully. Very positive! [laughs]
It drew us together into one direct action movement, which we
hadn't been before. At the same time, after the fall of Claremont
Road, the people who'd originally been in RTS started thinking
"Well, shall we start it up again, now that we want really
to move off the M11?" So, there were meetings and leaflets
went out asking people what they thought about starting up RTS
again. And it seemed quite clear that we should start it up again,
there was enough enthusiasm. So then it got going again. And
I've been involved in that ever since.
The first tree camp I ever went to was Stanworth, in Lancashire. Just at the
end of the M11 campaign, I was aware that a friend of mine was
going off to this place, Stanworth, where they were building
houses in the trees, which sounded a very enchanting prospect.
So, I took myself off there, with some trepidation, in the middle
of winter, by myself, not quite knowing who was going to be there.
I didn't know if my friend would be there. I didn't know what
I was going to do or where I was going to stay. I was a bit nervous.
I got there, it was very cold. And it was a magical place, this
wood. It was a natural wood, not very big, but fairly large for
England, in a steep valley with a river running along the bottom.
And just a wonderfully magical feel about it. It was a very deep
wood, and there was lots of vegetation on the ground. But there
was also on the ground tons of mud, which tended to come up to
your knees. Everyone went around in Wellington boots there, because
it was just so muddy. And the other thing was that there were
no habitations on the ground, because it was just so muddy. So
the first night I was there, and I hadn't really done any tree
climbing since my childhood, really, it became obvious I had
to go up into a tree house. My friend, who happened to be there,
showed me how to prusik, and I prusiked up a rope. The next morning
he showed me how to abseil, and I abseiled down. So that was
the start of learning a bit of technical climbing skills, that
I found terrific fun! It was so nice to be doing something I
had spent my childhood doing for fun, for a purpose. I ended
up going up to Stanworth a lot, as often as I could. There was
a motorway going to plow through it. This beautiful, magic place
was directly in the path of a motorway, the M65. There'd already
been camps and squats in the path of the motorway that had been
plowed down. Stanworth Valley was the next place under threat.
So the idea was just to build up a tree-camp and defend it. It
was the first place where there was a real network of rope-ways,
high up in the trees. Which made it this wonderful sort of city
in the trees. There were an ever increasing number of these little
tree benders high up in the trees.
So, that was interesting, although very hard, because it was
winter, a hard winter, lots of snowing. There was a long eviction,
which was pretty devastating and tragic, then the trees came
down and we lost it, as usual. I was there for a while. Then
later on I was at Newbury,
at a camp called Rickety Bridge. And Newbury was much the same
thing. Defending places, very often woods, in the path of a motorway.
At Newbury, I actually ended up living there, although I kept
my flat in London to retreat to. Quite an interesting experience,
spending a winter at Rickety Bridge in Newbury in the trees,
where, well, I was just a tree-camp crusty, making rope-ways,
and tree houses, and just trying to live there. Which was quite
a hard way of life, it was a very hard winter. Then, came back
to preparations for the second RTS street party, which was the
Islington one, which was a big one. Got into climbing lampposts
for that, and tripoding. I've been involved in RTS ever since,
really.
- CND and Committee of 100
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was founded in January
1958 in response to the escalating nuclear arms race and the
British government's decision to test a nuclear warhead in 1952.
Its first president was philosopher and scientist Bertrand Russell.
CND organized marches against the atomic weapons research lab
at Aldermaston, and their circular peace symbol was taken up
by activists around the world. Russell was also involved in the
more radical Committee of 100. Influenced by the Direct Action
Group, which had attempted to disrupt British atomic tests in
the Pacific in 1958, the Committee of 100 held a series of high-profile
sit-ins in London in 1961. Internal disputes regarding direct
action and civil disobedience racked CND. It stagnated until
the 1980s, when CND became a significant force in the massive
anti-nuclear protests in the UK.
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- Friends of the Earth
Founded in 1969
by the former executive director of the Sierra Club, David Brower,
FoE employed direct action campaigns to force the media and public
policy-makers to attend to environmental issues (in the 1970s
largely whaling and nuclear power). In the U.S., FoE became primarily
a lobbying organization fairly early on. FoE UK maintained its
direct action and grassroots focus into the 1980s. It now combines
expert lobbying with local campaigns and is considered so respectable
that Prince Charles appears at its fundraisers (much to the dismay
of many).
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- Greenham Common
A pacifist anti-nuclear
encampment outside of the Air Force Base at Greenham Common,
near Newbury in Berkshire. The camp was set up in September 1981,
in response to the United States' 1979 decision to deploy 140
cruise missiles at the base. In February 1982, the camp became
women-only space. Many anti-nuclear camps were set up at other
military bases around the UK and elsewhere in the world, but
Greenham women attracted worldwide attention for their creative
and courageous direct actions against the missiles and their
sustained commitment to peace. In 1989 the U.S announced plans
to withdraw from Greenham, and the last missiles left in 1991.
The majority of protesters had left by this time, though a few
vowed to continue their vigil until the common returned to civilian
use.
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- Twyford Down
South-east of
Winchester in Hampshire, amidst the chalk hills of the South
Downs, Twyford Down marked the culmination of the anti-M3 campaign.
For many years, the M3 motorway from London to the southern port
town of Southampton had been opposed through conventional methods
by a wide coalition of locals (the Twyford Down Association)
and Friends of the Earth. The road-building project involved
a shady trade of public lands between Winchester College, an
exclusive school for privileged students, and the Department
of Transport. In addition to class issues, ecological and cultural
destruction were also central issues in the campaign. Construction
work began in February 1992, and was met by creative direct action
from the Dongas Tribe and others, who squatted the land and set
up camps along the route of the road. During a key battle on
December 9, 1992 (Yellow Wednesday), the private security forces
hired to remove the protesters used such extreme violence that
twenty-two security guards subsequently quit. Publicity following
this overt state-sanctioned violence fueled further protests.
Tactics shifted from squatting the land to actively disrupting
and delaying construction work. Massive trespass actions to break
through security forces and razor-wire fences were organized
by Road Alert!, the Dongas, and Earth First! The road was finally
completed in 1994, but the repercussions of Twyford Down were
positive, powerful and far-reaching. The size, creativity, and
intensity of protests led to national scrutiny of the road-building
program, and encouraged other anti-road protests around the country.
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- Criminal Justice Act (a.k.a. CJA,
CJB)
The Criminal
Justic Act was passed in 1994 after extensive protest on the
part of the diverse ravers, Travellers, festival-goers, squatters,
eco-activists, and other partiers and protesters it was designed
to repress. The activities of all these groups were criminalized:
gathering in public without a permit, camping outside of designated
(pricey) camping areas, dancing to music "characterized
by a series of repetitive beats," having a free party without
a license. Consequences range from fines to imprisonment. Under
the CJA, expanded law-enforcement powers have meant that persons
whom police merely suspect of being engaged in, or intending
to engage in, such illegal activities are now subject to surveillance
and prosecution. In fact, police have the right to search people
even if they have no grounds for suspecting a crime. Many legal
freedoms which had been taken for granted, such as the right
to be set free on bail while awaiting trial and the right to
remain silent after an arrest, were overturned. Many activists
and partiers agree that, ironically, the draconian threat of
the CJA has forced diverse groups of people to organize together,
and to acknowledge that they face a common enemy. This has led
to creative and novel strategies for protest and partying which
otherwise may not have emerged, and contributed to a vibrant
and organized oppositional culture in the UK.
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- Stanworth Valley tree camp
The main focus
of the anti-M65 campaign in Lancashire after police succeeded
in evicting protesters from squatted row-houses in Blackburn.
Deep in the rainy woods, hundreds of rope walkways linked trees
& treehouses 60 feet & more up in the air. Deep gucky
mud & the steep sides of the valley protected the trees &
protesters from police in cherry pickers until their eventual
eviction in 1995.
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- Newbury
A major anti-road
campaign which began in 1994. The government refused to conduct
a legally-mandated environmental impact study, and ignored objective
environmental reports advising against the scheme. Direct action
against the road was most intense in 1995-1996. Strategies included
breaking through security fences and occupying land, building
well-defended tree-camps, D-locking onto machinery, blocking
security and contractors' transport vehicles with tripods and
human chains, and damaging property. Each camp required an eviction
order to remove, making them a successful stalling strategy,
the focus of specific battles with security and police (e.g.,
Rickety Bridge), as well as a place to live. Over 700 people
were arrested during this phase, the Third Battle of Newbury.
At a rally in January 1997, which began placidly, protesters'
rage at the senseless destruction was expressed through torching
a dump truck, port-a-potty, and crane-cab (much to the distress
of the staid Friends of the Earth). January 1999 marked the beginning
of a new phase of the campaign, and protesters closed the road
for a day. Ongoing efforts focus on saving the countryside near
the by-pass from the threat of infill development, and highlighting
the ecological damage caused by the road.
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