In the late summer of 1992, as the days grew shorter and the nights grew colder, the little camp on the Dongas trackways at Twyford Down was becoming well established.  Yet the camp was isolated – being physically remote and increasingly cut off from support from the mainstream environmental groups, who had stepped away from the direct action of the spring and moved on to other causes they felt they were more likely to win.

A glitch in letting the main contract to build the road led to construction work being delayed, so work on gouging out the hillside of Twyford Down had not yet began.

Chris Gillham, a local campaigner who had supported the early direct action said:

“By late summer, the joyful life on the Dongas, spiced with frequent excursions against the activities of the preliminary Mowlem contract, was something akin to a phoney war. There was a sense of risk taken without any real sense of the consequence, a sense of shared excitement, hope and bravado that seemed to dare a response, but seemed not to contemplate what would come.”

Media attention was also slow and hard to grasp, so, one warm, lazy September afternoon, in an otherwise inconsequential campfire discussion, someone jokingly proposed a declaration of independence. The text of the declaration was drawn up as a skit on the American model, but with a ludicrous appeal to royal patronage, on the grounds that the Prince of Wales was rumoured to have appealed to John Major to save Twyford Down.

The Autonomous Territory of Twyford Down Dongas

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that natural beauty is the heritage of all people, but the property of none; it is for no person to mar or destroy and its stewardship rests with those who would protect it, succour it and pass it on entire and unsullied. In this Age, the pursuit of limitless material wealth has impoverished the spirit of this Nation, such that many have forgotten where true wealth lies. All the institutions of the State before the Crown, have been so far corrupted that they are no longer capable of protecting even the most precious places of this land. Indeed, what they have become is the very instrument of destruction of what is in their sacred trust. By this betrayal of their stewardship, they surrender the right, before any moral or spiritual tribunal, to govern the fate of such places as this.

These great turfed chalk trackways of Twyford Down, known as the Dongas, are unique in the landscape of Europe and yet they represent, quintessentially, the place of man and woman in Nature. This place once was marked too heavily by humankind, but Nature, through long ages, has wrought a great wonder of healing and redemption here. And now Her Majesty’s Government proposes a crucifixion here, deeming it expedient that this place should die for the wealth of the Nation. Knowing ourselves to be unworthy of the task, but seeing none other prepared to accept the burden, we present here in the Dongas this day, the 15^th of September 1992, do, therefore, take up the stewardship of this most precious place. We believe that it is our sacred duty to hold and defend this place until such time as one worthy of its stewardship relieved us of the burden. To this end, we hereby declare the area of Twyford Down, known as the Dongas, an autonomous territory, within the realm of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

 This autonomous territory shall be under the governance of a couple of its residents, to be known as the Council of Stewardship. Insofar as the natural well-being of the area is not imperilled by weight of numbers, free right of access will be granted to all those the Council deems to be of good intent. The Council of Stewardship does not recognise the authority of Her Majesty’s Government in Westminster within this territory. We speak no treason. It is our profound belief that, if Her Majesty were fully apprised of the nature and extent of the betrayal by Her Ministers of the sacred trust to protect the lands in Her realm from needless harm, she would not forswear the trust as they have done. We beseech Her Majesty to take upon her person the burden of stewardship Her Government has abandoned, or to place it upon His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. We hold it in readiness.

Local press were invited to the camp to hear the Declaration being read by Sam, one of those camped on the Dongas:

Sam read aloud the document on behalf of the Donga folk, in specially commissioned media-circus assembly on Camp. But because the statement didn’t threaten to use Semtex in its’ fight for sanity and because none of the protestors present suddenly smoked wacky-baccy…the event gained very minor coverage

From “Quollobollox Visits the Dongas”, Graeme Lewis

Despite the lack of support from the environmental establishment, despite the lack of press interest and despite the very few people actually involved in the campaign at this stage, direct action was continuing. Becca recalls:

Work had started literally at the foot of the Dongas – 3 to 4 minutes run away – at the old Victorian sewage works, known as “Bar End”. It seemed obvious to stop them; work has also just begun on establishing the Bushfield site, which became Tarmac’s nerve centre. This was on the hill opposite the Down, across the River Itchen.

One day, a group of us decided to go and stop them working at Bar End. We ran down with face paint and masks (James Weeks, Clerk of Works, had started to film and photograph everyone) drums, tambourines and cameras. It was so totally easy – no security guards in those days and a police policy of non-intervention. We might have to put up with the occasionally lairy worker, but compared to subsequent road protests, this was simple. Nonetheless, it didn’t stop my first experience of direct action being terrifying: dump trucks with wheels as high as me, bulldozers with huge tracks, Nicolai being lifted high in the air in a digger bucket, swigging dashingly from his hip flask. I hid behind a tambourine and shook it nervously.

Once we discovered we could stop them relatively easily, we tried to go down as often as we could.

35 years ago, the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common in Berkshire was a constant image in national media and a beacon for both women’s activism and peace campaigning around the world.  The slogan “Greenham Women are everywhere” was used to sum this up and peace camps grew up at American military bases and nuclear weapons sites across the country; some lasted only a day or weekend, others longer, but none were as long lived or well known as the Greenham camp.

The Greenham camp was small by the summer of 1992, as activists were moving onto Twyford Down and starting to take direct action against the early stages of motorway construction.  Perhaps inevitably, women who lived near Twyford Down and who had been part of anti-nuclear protests at Greenham and beyond, became involved from early on, bringing with them a wealth of knowledge on rights on arrest, non-violent direct action, building benders and living outside in all weathers, as well as that undefinable thing – the spirit of taking direct action, of walking into a place and feeling, deep within  you, that what is happening is so very wrong that you will stand up and try to stop it.

I think there was a precedent for what was going on at the Down and that was what happened at Greenham (Common). A lot of the inspiration for doing the camp on the Dongas was what happened at Greenham. Because that was a massive movement that changed people’s lives and that just had an incredible effect on the whole of society and send ripples all over the world.

Sam, from Dialogues with the Dongas

Greenham Common was not the only thread of protest history that was woven into the early days at Twyford Down; people involved in the huge and anarchic squatting movement of the 1960’s were there alongside New Age Travellers, who had their own experiences of living outdoors and in conflict with authority.   The then fledgling UK Earth First! was there too, in the form of local groups and individuals who were part of this growing network of people prepared to take direct action against environmental destruction and frustrated with mainstream environmental groups.

That’s what I like about direct action, ‘cos it was saying bollocks, you know, it was like looking at authority and saying bollocks to you, we are going to play it our way, ‘cos your way is crap and it hasn’t done any good.

Debs, from Dialogues with the Dongas

25 years ago, in the early summer of 1992, the protests at Twyford Down had undergone a fundamental shift; the long standing campaign of local residents, backed by Friends of the Earth was starting to draw in new people and direct action was happening almost daily.

A major focus of these early protests was the attempt to dam the Itchen Navigation – a canal that was still, legally, a navigable waterway.  Olive, a small rowing boat, was used to block the construction of the dam – frequently a dangerous task.

Stories from this time, collected for the Twyford Rising book, tell of optimism and the excitement of something new happening, for this was the first time such protests had taken place in Britain.  The stories tell of an eclectic mix of former Greenham Common peace women standing alongside students, New Age travellers, local residents and Earth First!, a network for radical ecological action then recently established in the UK. The sense of changing times is palpable throughout.

I remember two or three of us going down to the Itchen at night and opening up the weir to flood the construction site. We did that regularly.

Anon