page_title: Environmental direct action in the United Kingdom
section_title: Road protest camps
hierarchical_section_title: Environmental direct action in the United Kingdom / Road protest camps
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph taken by Nick Woolley at Tot Hill, Newbury.
context_page_description: The modern environmental direct action movement in the United Kingdom started in 1991 with the formation of the first UK Earth First! group for a protest at Dungeness nuclear power station. Within two years, there were fifty Earth First! groups and activists linked with other parties in the road protest movement. There were large camps at Twyford Down and the M11 link road protest. By 1997, the Government had decided to reduce its road-building plans by two thirds.
  After this success, the environmental movement then took on local struggles such as fighting a quarry at Stanton Moor and opposing a new runway at Manchester Airport. It grew to include different groups such as Camps for Climate Action, Plane Stupid, Reclaim the Streets, Rising Tide and The Land is Ours. In the 2010s, new groups emerged such as Extinction Rebellion, Grow Heathrow and camps protesting against HS2.
context_section_description: Earth First! groups, together with many other groups, then became involved in the road protest movement, as an attempt to reverse the Government's road-building programme. The first major road protest happened at Twyford Down where a permanent protest camp was set up in late 1992 to oppose the construction of a new section of the M3 motorway. The Dongas tribe arose from this camp.
  The first tree-sits (occupations of trees) happened at Jesmond Dene in Newcastle in 1993, organised by the Flowerpot Tribe.
  Other early protests included Pollok Country Park in Glasgow,  River Roddlesworth and Stanworth Valley near Preston, and at Solsbury Hill near Bath and the M11 link road protest in London, where an entire street was [[Squatting in England and Wales
  |squatted]]. After the eviction of Claremont Road in 1994, protesters from the Flowerpot and Dongas tribes joined the protest at Stanworth valley to build an "Ewok village" of the tree houses.
  There were many subsequent road protests including Newbury bypass, the A30, Swampy became well known during the eviction at the A30 camp, although there were many other smaller road protest camps.  Some camps did actually result in roads being cancelled, the first such cancellation occurring in London.  The government slashed the roads programme 3 times, each by a third, in response to direct action techniques and associated public opinion.
  By 1997, the Government had shrunk the road-building programme to a third of its original size. Alongside the need to save money and several reports criticising the original plans, the environmental direct action movement could claim a large role in this reduction. Another sign of its effectiveness had already been seen in 1994, when  the Government had passed the Criminal Justice Act. Among other things it created a series of new offences which criminalised many forms of protest.
caption: Eviction of a treehouse at a camp resisting the Newbury Bypass.
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