Wednesday 4th August 2010
Policing in Environmental Protests by Mervyn Edwards
Our speaker today we are delighted to say is Mervyn Edwards (shown left) He served for just over 30 years with Thames Valley Police retiring in 2002.
Over half of his service, 15 years, was spent on the Tactical Firearms Team as a Police Marksman. On retiring as Chief Superintendent was in charge of Special Operations as head of all the uniform specialist departments. That included two helicopters, Mounted Section, Dog Section that is General Purpose dogs, Drugs Search Dogs and Explosive Search dogs, Counter Terrorist Wing, River Patrol, Underwater Search Dive Team, Armed Protection of Royalty and VIP's, Tactical Firearms Team, Riot Training, Firearms Training and Traffic Department.
He was part of the National Working Group tasked with training and equipping the Police Service in the UK dealing with Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism.
On retiring worked for the Police Service on a number of projects including Terminal 5 Heathrow Airport and Oxford University laboratory build. Currently a self employed consultant in Specialist Security Service.
He started his presentation with cameo snapshots of the many varied aspects of his service career, which were of interest and put over in a humorous but informative manner, but his main thrust was the three years spent on the policing and security of the Newbury proposed bypass and the opposition from those against the scheme.
In the mid-90s environmental activists took to treetops and hid in tunnels to stop the Newbury bypass being built. Today motorists zooming along the A34 dual-carriageway from Oxford to the south barely see the once grid-locked Newbury as they swing around the Berkshire market town via its nine-mile bypass.
The bypass eventually opened in 1998 as the countryside flashes by (shown above); perhaps few remember the fierce battles fought by environmental protestors as they desperately tried to preserve this stretch of wooded landscape. Although too Mervyn this is etched in his soul and he remarks he frequently just travels both 9 mile stretched to ponder on the years spent upholding the peace.
Although the majority of local residents were in favour of building the bypass, a sizeable minority were against it. A protest group of local businesses opposed to the building of the road was formed; the split of opinion in and around Newbury concerning the building of the road was regularly demonstrated in the lively debate seen in the letters page of the local newspapers.
To see an area of such beauty ripped apart by machines and concreted over so that people can take a few minutes off a journey time is devastating, says one of the Newbury protestors, hundreds of protestors flocked to Newbury.
The bypass led to immense protests in an attempt to halt the felling of trees and the commencement of building work, Mervyn stated that the expected loss was 10,000 trees the replacement of nearly 200,000 hardly merited a line in the National press!.
A number of protesters were veterans from the Twyford Down protests over the building of the M3 motorway. Others were students, unemployed people, part time workers and people taking time off from work to protest. In 1994, a local comprehensive school teacher founded "The Third Battle of Newbury", an umbrella group of organisations against the bypass.
They camped in the woods and took to the trees believing the authorities would not cut the trees down with people in their branches.
The protesters in fact were brought down by a specialist army with chainsaws and tree-climbing skills. The Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police said, the protesters could not be allowed to win once the government had approved the building of the bypass the previous year.
Some took to the trees to halt work" The ones who were planning and tried to carry out seriously illegal acts are very subversive in a sense of subversive to democracy," and Mervyn gave some illustrations of these vile acts.
The bypass cut through woodland it was 10 feet deep, 90 feet long and becoming increasingly unstable because of the heavy winter rains.
But the protesters devised another way to thwart the contractors. They dug underground tunnels and lived in them in the belief that Lorries and heavy machinery would not drive over them in case the tunnels collapsed and lives were lost.
The tunnel had to be taken before it collapsed and young lives were lost. This resulted in the following poster being printed and circulated.
Thames Valley Police
and
Hampshire Constabulary
Death in a tunnel
It has come to the notice of the police that a number of tunnels have been built or attempted to be built in this area. It is extremely dangerous for anyone involved in working on these tunnels and we ask you not to take part in such events. We are aware that on a number of occasions the tunnel being prepared has collapsed and the persons in the tunnel were put in danger of serious injury or death. For your own safety and the safety of others please do not get involved in preparing tunnels in any form.
Thank you.
Mervyn Edwards
Superintendent, Thames Valley Police
Due to the speakers timescale and the dreaded Bourne Hall parking attendants Mervyn had to curtail the details of the fight against the tunnelers, but here is a brief résumé. In the dead of night Mervyn received a message, saying that the entrance to the main tunnel was only guarded by two protestors - a man and a woman - in a shelter covering the entrance and a third protestor asleep in the main shaft.
It was obvious there'd been a good deal of drinking and discarded cans of beer were all around the camp, said Mervyn Edwards. Many police and security staff were drafted in the early hours of the morning; the man guarding the entrance went off to relieve himself, whereupon he was promptly detained by officers hiding in the bushes. When her companion did not return, the woman went off in search of him. She too was then detained.
The police then approached the entrance to the tunnel and made noises. The person in the entrance shaft woke up and emerged to see what was happening. He too was detained and the tunnel was taken.
In the remaining time Mervyn gave some of the methods employed by the protester and how each had to be overcome the first being the Caltrop this was an iron device with four spikes (Shown left), thrown on the ground so that one spike always sticks up used to puncture The Police or contractors Landrover or equipment tyres
Iron caltrops were used as early as 331 BC they were known to the Romans as tribulus, the latter meaning 'jagged iron'. From your history lessons you will remember clearly this device was used with great success by the Scots against the English at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, to disable horsemen. The Drummond clan deployed welded nail caltrops, halting English cavalry in its tracks and saving vital Scots infantry!
Another method was demonstrated, this being the Dragon a piece of plastic tubing used for drainage about a metre long with at the lower end a steel bar inserted from side to side, this was buried in the propose line of the road in a dished hollow and filled with concrete, then hidden from sight, when the sound of advancing machinery was heard the protesters would uncover the hole thrust their arm down with the mountaineering cleat attached to their arm and clamped on the steel shaft.
This ingenious method meant contractor with pneumatic drill need to break the concrete which took about 3 hours, this delay was time consuming and extra costs to the tax payer. Needless to say Mervyn explain with Health and Safety rules they provided ear muff, eye protectors and drinks for the protestors and most being young females were ensured of all the home comforts, perhaps other actions would be more appropriate?
You may enquire how did they get sufficient concrete, well some well know celebrities (not named here) sent lorry loads of pre paid sacks by local supply merchants!
Another method of delay mentioned and indeed demonstrated by Mervyn was the D-Lock, where the loop of steel was passed over the neck of the demonstrator and also the highest branch of the tree, then locked and the key throw away, the contractors had to find the key as normal bolt cutters do not deal with the hardened steel loop, but the solution, but not implicitly mentioned by Mervyn was to say oh dear we must come back later and leave them to stay the night there or shout for help.
Needless to say Mervyn did not lock the device or indeed throw away the key
Clearance work on the bypass began in August 1995 when bulldozers demolished six empty buildings in the path of the bypass - three houses, a railway signal box, a lodge and a prefabricated church.
From July 1995 protesters began to occupy the land that was scheduled for clearance in an effort to stop the felling of trees. Many lived in tree houses, which were also known as 'twigloos', while others occupied home-made tents on the ground made from hazel branches covered with tarpaulin known as 'benders', at this stage Mervyn showed a beautiful selection of colour prints of the stages of the clearance, tree houses and tunnels but these were Police documents and are not available of the web.
The first camp was at Snelsmore Common. Around September 1995 a further encampment grew up alongside the Kennet and Avon Canal and the River Kennet. Around October 1995 protesters set up a third encampment at Reddings Copse. By December 1995 there were three further camps at The Chase, Elmore Plantation and Rack Marsh on the River Lambourn. Protesters in many of the camps claimed squatters rights through use of a Section 6 notice and some camps even had letters delivered to them by the Royal Mail.
Evictions of the protest camps, tree felling and undergrowth clearance work begin and conflicts between security guards and protesters were widely reported in the British media. By the following month the number of protesters had increased and there were over 35 (according to Mervyn) camps along the route of the bypass, some with very colourful names such as 'Skyward', 'Rickety Bridge', 'Granny Ash', 'Quercus Circus', 'Sea View', and 'Heartbreak Hotel'.
Needless to say the good nature of the Police prevailed and the by pass was duly opened, how much extra of tax payers money was wasted on the attempts to frustrate the law, we shall never know.
Newbury bypass today with mature tree much in evidenceIt was left to David Smart who was a Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police force following a question time to give a warm vote to Mervyn for his most interesting and high speed and informative presentation.
