![M11 link road protest map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/M11_link_road_protest_map.png)
The M11 link road protest was a campaign against the construction of the M11 link road in east London in the early to mid-1990s. "A12 Hackney to M11 link road", as it was officially called, was part of a significant local road scheme to connect traffic from the
East Cross Route (
A12) in
Hackney Wick
Hackney Wick is a neighbourhood in east London, England. The area forms the south-eastern part of the district of Hackney, and also of the wider London Borough of Hackney. Adjacent areas of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets are sometimes a ...
to the
M11 via
Leyton
Leyton () is a town in east London, England, within the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It borders Walthamstow to the north, Leytonstone to the east, and Stratford to the south, with Clapton, Hackney Wick and Homerton, across the River L ...
,
Leytonstone
Leytonstone () is an area in east London, England, north-east of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest, a local authority district of Greater London. It adjoins Wanstead to the north-east, Forest Gate to the south-east, ...
,
Wanstead and the
Redbridge Roundabout, avoiding urban streets.
The road had been proposed since the 1960s, as part of the
London Ringways
The London Ringways were a series of four ring roads planned in the 1960s to circle London at various distances from the city centre. They were part of a comprehensive scheme developed by the Greater London Council (GLC) to alleviate traffic con ...
, and was an important link between central London and the
Docklands to
East Anglia. However, road protests elsewhere had become increasingly visible, and urban road building had fallen out of favour with the public. A local
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...
Harry Cohen
Harry Michael Cohen (born 10 December 1949) is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leyton from 1983 to 1997 and Leyton and Wanstead from 1997 to 2010.
Early life
Cohen left the George Gascoigne Seco ...
, representing Leyton, had been a vocal opponent of this scheme.
The protests reached a new level of visibility during 1993 as part of a
grassroots campaign where protesters came from outside the area to support local opposition to the road. The initial focus was on the removal of a tree on George Green, east of Wanstead, that attracted the attention of local, then national media. The activity peaked in 1994 with several high-profile protesters setting up
micronation
A micronation is a political entity whose members claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state, but which lacks legal recognition by world governments or major international organizations. Micronations are classified ...
s on property scheduled for demolition, most notably on Claremont Road in Leyton. The final stage of the protest was a single building on Fillebrook Road in Leytonstone, which, due to a security blunder, became occupied by squatters.
The road was eventually built as planned, and opened to traffic in 1999, but the increased costs involved in management and policing of protesters raised the profile of such campaigns in the United Kingdom, and contributed to several road schemes being cancelled or reviewed later on in the decade. Those involved in the protest moved on to oppose other schemes in the country. By 2014, the road had become the ninth most congested in the entire country.
Background
The origin of the link road stems from what were two major arterial roads out of London (the
A11 to
Newmarket and
Norwich
Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...
, and the
A12 to
Colchester
Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian.
Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colch ...
,
Ipswich
Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line ...
and
Great Yarmouth) and subsequent improvements. The first of these was the Eastern Avenue improvement, that opened on 9 June 1924, which provided a bypass of the old road through
Ilford and
Romford
Romford is a large town in east London and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Havering. It is located northeast of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. Historically, Romfo ...
.
Proposals for the route first arose in the 1960s as part of the
London Ringways
The London Ringways were a series of four ring roads planned in the 1960s to circle London at various distances from the city centre. They were part of a comprehensive scheme developed by the Greater London Council (GLC) to alleviate traffic con ...
plan, which would have seen four concentric circular motorways built in the city, together with radial routes, with the
M11 motorway ending on
Ringway 1, the innermost Ringway, at
Hackney Marsh
Hackney Marshes is an area of open space in London's Lower Lea Valley, lying on the western bank of the River Lea. It takes its name from its position on the eastern boundary of Hackney, the principal part of the London Borough of Hackney, and ...
.
![London Ringways Plan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/London_Ringways_Plan.png)
A section of Ringway 1 known as the
East Cross Route was built to motorway standards in the late 1960s and early 1970s and designated as the A102(M). A section of the M11 connecting
Ringway 2 (now part of the
North Circular Road
The North Circular Road (officially the A406 and sometimes known as simply the North Circular) is a ring road around Central London in England. It runs from Chiswick in the west to Woolwich in the east via suburban North London, connecting ...
) and Eastern Avenue to
Harlow was completed in the late 1970s, opening to traffic in 1977.
The Ringways scheme met considerable opposition; there were protests when the
Westway, an urban motorway elevated over the streets of
Paddington
Paddington is an area within the City of Westminster, in Central London. First a medieval parish then a metropolitan borough, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Three important landmarks of the district are Padd ...
, was opened in 1970, with local MP
John Wheeler later describing the road's presence within 15 metres of properties as "completely unacceptable environmentally," and the
Archway Road public inquiry was repeatedly abandoned during the 1970s as a result of protests. By 1974, the
Greater London Council announced it would not be completing Ringway 1. The first Link Road Action Group to resist the M11 link road was formed in 1976, and for the next fifteen years activists fought government plans through a series of
public inquiries
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
. Their alternative was to build a road tunnel, leaving the houses untouched, but this was rejected on grounds of cost. Drivers travelling in the areas where the new roads would have been built had to continue using long stretches of urban single-carriageway roads. In particular, the suburbs of Leyton, Leytonstone and Wanstead suffered serious
traffic congestion.
The
Roads for Prosperity
''Roads for Prosperity'' (often incorrectly called Road to Prosperity) was a controversial white paper published by the Conservative government in the United Kingdom in 1989; detailing the 'largest road building programme for the UK since the Roma ...
white paper published in 1989 detailed a major expansion of the road building programme and included plans for the
M12 Motorway
The M12 is a length of spur motorway in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. It was opened in 1970.
It leads off the main M1 motorway, to Portadown, part of the conurbation of Portadown- Craigavon-Lurgan, and forms most of the route between jun ...
between London and Chelmsford, as well as many other road schemes. Although the
Leyton
Leyton () is a town in east London, England, within the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It borders Walthamstow to the north, Leytonstone to the east, and Stratford to the south, with Clapton, Hackney Wick and Homerton, across the River L ...
MP
Harry Cohen
Harry Michael Cohen (born 10 December 1949) is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leyton from 1983 to 1997 and Leyton and Wanstead from 1997 to 2010.
Early life
Cohen left the George Gascoigne Seco ...
suggested in May 1989 that the government should scrap the scheme, a public enquiry was held for the scheme in November.
The protest campaign in East London
By the 1980s,
planning blight had affected the area and many of the houses had become home to a community of artists and
squatters
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there ...
. Eventually, contractors were appointed to carry out the work and a
compulsory purchase
Compulsion may refer to:
* Compulsive behavior, a psychological condition in which a person does a behavior compulsively, having an overwhelming feeling that they must do so.
* Obsessive–compulsive disorder, a mental disorder characterized by ...
of property along the proposed route was undertaken. In March 1993, in preparation for the construction of the road, the
Earl of Caithness
Earl of Caithness is a title that has been created several times in the Peerage of Scotland, and it has a very complex history. Its first grant, in the modern sense as to have been counted in strict lists of peerages, is now generally held to have ...
, then the Minister of State for Transport, estimated that there would be 263 properties scheduled for demolition, displacing 550 people, of which he estimated 172 were seeking rehousing. Several original residents, who had in some cases lived in their homes all their lives, refused to sell or move out of their properties.
Protesters from the local area against the link road scheme were joined by large numbers of anti-road campaigners from around the UK and beyond, attracted by the availability of free housing along the route. These experienced protesters, who had participated in earlier events such as the
Anti-Nazi League
The Anti-Nazi League (ANL) was an organisation set up in 1977 on the initiative of the Socialist Workers Party with sponsorship from some trade unions and the endorsement of a list of prominent people to oppose the rise of far-right groups i ...
riots in Welling, gave impetus to the campaign. The new arrivals used the skills they had developed during prior protests to construct "defences", blocking the original entrances to the houses and creating new routes directly between them.
Sophisticated techniques were used to delay the construction of the road.
Sit-ins and site invasions were combined with
sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...
to stop construction work temporarily. This led to large numbers of police and constant security patrols being employed to protect the construction sites, at great expense. By December 1994, the total cost of construction had been estimated at
£6 million and rising by £500,000 every month.
The protesters were successful in publicising the campaign, with most UK newspapers and TV news programmes covering the protests on a regular basis.
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online ...
, then in its infancy, was used to produce publicity materials for the campaign and send out
faxes to the media. When the government began evicting residents along the route and demolishing the empty houses, the protesters set up so-called "
autonomous republics
An autonomous republic is a type of administrative division similar to a province or state. A significant number of autonomous republics can be found within the successor states of the Soviet Union, but the majority are located within Russia. Man ...
" such as "Wanstonia" in some groups of the houses. Extreme methods were used to force the engineers to halt demolition, including tunnels with protesters secured within by concrete.
The chestnut tree on George Green
Until late 1993, local opposition to the M11 extension had been relatively limited. While opposition had been going for nearly ten years, institutional avenues of protest had been exhausted, and local residents were largely resigned to the road being built. When outside protesters arrived in September 1993, few residents saw their mission as "their campaign".
One section of the M11 extension was due to tunnel under George Green in Wanstead. Residents had believed that this would save their green, and a 250-year-old
sweet chestnut
''Castanea sativa'', the sweet chestnut, Spanish chestnut or just chestnut, is a species of tree in the family Fagaceae, native to Southern Europe and Asia Minor, and widely cultivated throughout the temperate world. A substantial, long-lived ...
tree that grew upon it, but because this was a
cut and cover
A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...
tunnel, this required the tree to be cut down.
Support for the protests started to extend to the local community when Jean Gosling, a
lollipop lady in Wanstead, upon learning of the tree's impending destruction, rallied the support of local children (and was later fired from her job for doing so while wearing her uniform), who in turn recruited their parents into the protests. It was then that the non-resident radicals realised that they had significant local support. When local residents gathered for a tree dressing ceremony on 6 November, they found their way barred by security fencing. With support from the protesters, they pulled it down.
Protesters continued to delay the destruction of the tree. Solicitors for the campaign had even argued in court that receipt of a letter addressed to the tree itself gave it the status of a legal dwelling, causing a further delay. In the early morning of 7 December 1993, several hundred police arrived to evict the protesters, which took ten hours to carry out. Protesters made numerous complaints against the police; police, in turn, denied these allegations, attributing any misbehaviour to the protesters. Media attention started to increase regarding the protest, with several daily newspapers putting pictures of the tree on their front pages.
Harry Cohen, MP for Leyton, started to become critical of the scheme and its progress. In March 1994, he said "the Department of Transport's pig-headed approach to the M11 link road has been a shambles, and a costly one at that," and described the ongoing police presence as "a miniature equivalent of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait." According to him, local resident Hugh Jones had been threatened by demolition men wielding sledgehammers and pickaxes, adding "the project has cost £500,000 in police time alone, to take over and demolish a 250-year-old chestnut tree and half a dozen houses".
Claremont Road
By 1994, properties scheduled for demolition had been compulsory purchased, and most were made uninhabitable by removing kitchens, bathrooms and staircases. The notable exception was in one small street, Claremont Road, which ran immediately next to the
Central line and consequently required every property on it to be demolished. The street was almost completely occupied by protesters except for one original resident who had not taken up the
Department for Transport's offer to move, 92-year-old Dolly Watson, who was born in number 32 and had lived there nearly all her life. She became friends with the anti-road protesters, saying "they're not dirty hippy squatters, they're the grandchildren I never had." The protesters named a watchtower, built from scaffold poles, after her.
A vibrant and harmonious community sprung up on the road, which even won the begrudging respect of the authorities. The houses were painted with extravagant designs, both internally and externally, and sculptures erected in the road; the road became an artistic spectacle that one said "had to be seen to be believed".
In November 1994, the eviction of Claremont Road took place, bringing an end to the M11 link road resistance as a major physical protest.
Bailiffs, accompanied by the police in full riot gear, carried out the eviction over several days, and the Central line, running adjacent to the road, was suspended. As soon as eviction was completed, the remaining properties were demolished. In the end, the cost to the taxpayer was over a million pounds in police costs alone. Quoting
David Maclean
David John Maclean, Baron Blencathra, (born 16 May 1953) is a Conservative Party life peer. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Penrith and The Border from 1983 to 2010.
Early and later life
Born in Scotland, Maclean was educated at F ...
, "I understand from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that the cost of policing the protest in order to allow bailiffs to take possession of the premises in Claremont road was £1,014,060." Cohen complained in Parliament about police brutality, stating "were not many of my constituents bullied—including vulnerable people, and others whose only crime was living on the line of route?" The then
Secretary of State for Transport,
Brian Mawhinney, pointed out that there had already been three
public inquiries
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...
at which protesters could have lodged their objections against the line of the route.
Towards the end
![Munstonia 1995](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Munstonia_1995.jpg)
Following the Claremont Road eviction, non-resident protesters moved on to other sites such as
Newbury. Meanwhile, Fillebrook Road near
Leytonstone Underground station had already had several houses demolished on it due to problems with vandalism. By 1995, the only house left standing was number 135. The house was originally scheduled for demolition at the same time as the others, but had been left standing in order to give the tenant additional time to relocate. After they had done so, on 11 April 1995, the
Department for Transport removed the water supply and part of the roof, and left two security guards on duty. When the guards decided to sleep overnight in their cars that evening, leaving the house unoccupied, the protesters moved in. The house was renamed ''Munstonia'' (after ''
The Munsters
''The Munsters'' is an American sitcom depicting the home life of a family of benign monsters. The series starred Fred Gwynne as Frankenstein's monsterEpisodes referring to the fact that Herman is Frankenstein's monster include #55, "Just Anoth ...
'', thanks to its spooky appearance). Like "Wanstonia", they proclaimed themselves a micro-nation and designed their own national anthem and flag, though author Joe Moran mentions their legitimacy was complicated by the protesters continuing to claim
unemployment benefits
Unemployment benefits, also called unemployment insurance, unemployment payment, unemployment compensation, or simply unemployment, are payments made by authorized bodies to unemployed people. In the United States, benefits are funded by a comp ...
from the "mother country."
![Eviction of Munstonia 1995](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Eviction_of_Munstonia_1995.jpg)
A tower was built out of the remains of the roof, similar to one that had existed at Claremont Road, and a system of defences and blockades were built. A core of around 30 protesters ensured that there were always people staying there (a legal requirement for a squatted home, as well as a defence against eviction). They were finally evicted on 21 June 1995, whereupon, as at Claremont Road, the building was immediately demolished. The total cost of removing the protesters from ''Munstonia'' was given to be £239,349.52, not including additional costs of security guards.
Construction of the road, already underway by this stage, was then free to continue largely unhindered, although systematic sabotage of building sites by local people continued. It was completed in 1999 and given the designation
A12; its continuation, the former A102(M), was also given this number as far as the
Blackwall Tunnel
The Blackwall Tunnel is a pair of road tunnels underneath the River Thames in east London, England, linking the London Borough of Tower Hamlets with the Royal Borough of Greenwich, and part of the A102 road. The northern portal lies just south ...
.
The official opening of the road in October 1999 took place without fanfare, being opened by the
Highways Agency
National Highways, formerly the Highways Agency and later Highways England, is a State-owned enterprise, government-owned company charged with operating, maintaining and improving Roads in England, motorways and major A roads in England. It al ...
Chief Executive rather than a politician, with only journalists with passes being admitted to the ceremony.
Consequences of the protest campaign
The M11 link road protest was ultimately unsuccessful in its aim to stop the building of the link road. The total cost of compensation for the project was estimated to be around £15 million.
Proposals for the M12 motorway were cancelled in 1994 during the first review of the trunk road programme. The most significant response from the government occurred when
Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
came into office following the
1997 general election, with the announcement of the
New Deal for Trunk Roads in England. This proposal cancelled many previous road schemes, including the construction of the
M65 over the
Pennines, increased fuel prices, and ensured that road projects would only be undertaken when genuinely necessary, stating "there will be no presumption in favour of new road building as an answer."
Some protesters went on to join the direct action campaign
Reclaim the Streets
Reclaim the Streets also known as RTS, are a collective with a shared ideal of community ownership of public spaces. Participants characterise the collective as a resistance movement opposed to the dominance of corporate forces in globalisa ...
. A protester arrested and detained on the grounds of
breach of the peace
Breach of the peace, or disturbing the peace, is a legal term used in constitutional law in English-speaking countries and in a public order sense in the several jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It is a form of disorderly conduct.
Public ord ...
unsuccessfully challenged the UK Government's legislation at the
European Court of Human Rights
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or ECtHR), also known as the Strasbourg Court, is an international court of the Council of Europe which interprets the European Convention on Human Rights. The court hears applications alleging that ...
.
In 2002, in response to a major new road building programme and expansion of aviation, a delegation of road protest veterans visited the Department for Transport to warn of renewed direct action in response, delivering a
D-lock as a symbol of the past protests. One such protestor,
Rebecca Lush
Rebecca Lush is a British environmental activist who helped organise a number of major anti-road initiatives, including the support organisation ‘Road Block’. She joined Transport 2000 (now Campaign for Better Transport) as Roads and Cli ...
went on to found
Road Block
A roadblock is a temporary installation set up to control or block traffic along a road.
Roadblock may also refer to:
* Traffic obstruction
** Raasta roko ("obstruct the road" in Hindi), a commonly practiced form of protest in India
Media and ent ...
to support road protesters and challenge the government. In 2007, Road Block became a project within the
Campaign for Better Transport. The M11 Link road protests inspired the launch of the video activism organisation ''Undercurrents''. Training activists to film the protests, they released ''You've got to be choking'' in 1994, a 40-minute documentary about the M11 link road campaign.
In 2007, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
reported that the cost of the M11 link road had doubled due to the intervention of protesters.
– a squatted social centre in Leytonstone in a building that escaped demolition
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* Andy Letcher, ''The Scouring of the Shire: Fairies, Trolls and Pixies in Eco-Protest Culture'' (2001
, ''The Politics of Anti-Road Struggle and the Struggles of Anti-Road Politics: The Case of the No M11 Link Road Campaign.'' In DIY Culture, ed. George McKay. 100–28. London: Verso, 1998.
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- A set of photographs of the area covered by the link road, before it was built, including houses before occupation by protesters.
a radio art project by Graeme Miller on the site of the link road about the demolished houses and streets
- Feature-length documentary about the campaign.
- A short documentary collaboration by two original residents of a demolished neighborhood
{{SquatE&W