Letter: Twyford Down (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Since last year, 1 have been involved in the fight to save Twyford Down. This has been presented by the media as a "green" issue with particular appeal to New Age travellers, students, environmental activists (such as Earth First!) and conservationists. The destruction of many sites of archaeological and historical interest there has scarcely been mentioned. The political aspects of the Government's roads programme are ignored. The corrupt dealings between Conservative Party members and MPs with Winchester College, the construction industry and the Department of Transport have not been exposed at all.

The Government is interested in only one thing — power. This is true of all governments, but the present one is particularly nasty and corrupt. Their overriding concern is that they and their Establishment friends (the Establishment is not just a mental construct but consists of real people who live and interact with each other in a social milieu most of us cannot even imagine) should continue to hold their positions of wealth and power at our expense.

Roads are not built for (although they are built by!) working people, despite encouragement to buy cars and use them. Their main purpose is to boost profits by offering cheap transport (roads are paid for and subsidised from taxes) for the owning class. Tory support for the roads lobby also ensures the continued payment into Party funds of huge subventions by the British Road Federation and construction industry companies, and the continued appointment of worthies to lucrative directorships.

The people who run this country, like those who benefit from the capitalist system everywhere in the world, are not interested in the well-being of ordinary people, although they pretend to be when they want us to sanction their robbery with our votes. They will spare no destruction — of our communities or the natural environment — in pursuit of power and profit.

The roads programme is an important issue not because of any intrinsic values but because the government chose to make it so. The Twyford Down struggle eventually took on the proportions of Orgreave, with the use of Group 4 Securitas as a private army, hired and equipped by the DoT to show us who was boss. Nearly 200 security men. plus construction workers and police, were sent against 25 protestors (I was one) who were camped on the Down overnight on the 9th December — to set an example, not merely to enable Mott MacDonald's vandals to destroy an irreplaceable ecosystem and scheduled ancient monument.

Despite what has happened at Twyford Down and what we are threatened with at many places around the country, people are not going to shut up and go away — to do that would be to abandon any thought of standing up to the worst excesses of this evil Government and to abandon the future of the planet as a place fit for life. It is vital that our non violent protests continue and grow. It is no use waiting for the Tories to be voted out of office, let alone for "the revolution". If direct action is not taken now there may soon be precious little left for politicians to argue about.

Katy Andrews, 

London E11

Reply:

It's all very well saying it’s no use waiting for "the revolution" (we agree: we shouldn't "wait" for it we should work for it). But unless it takes place — and the basis of society is changed to common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use. instead of private ownership, stale control and production for profit, then capitalism will go on destroying the environment, and the most that can be done will be to occasionally slow this down a little. The record shows, however, that defeats (as a Twyford Down) are more frequent than any minor victories. This is not really surprising as nothing, not even government action let alone direct action, can stop the economic laws of the profit system ensuring that profits come first. — Editors.