Amelia’s Magazine | Nine Miles

Between January and April 1996 approximately 360 acres of land including 120 acres of woodland were cleared to make way for the building of a new road, the Newbury bypass. The demolition was met by one of the largest anti-road protests in history with over 7000 people directly demonstrating on the site. From July 1995 protesters began to occupy the land, living in tree houses and tents. It was a long hard fight and a momentous period of social history that is all the more relevant today with the increasing disparity between environmental legislation and climate deterioration, and the growth of environmental activism. Jim Hindle was in the thick of things and has written a book about his experience, Nine Miles.

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What are your intentions for the book and what do you think it’s
relevance is in our present state of climactic urgency?

On the most basic level I wanted to tell the story of what happened; for history’s sake but also due to the relevance that story has now, in terms of the amount of roads being built today and also for the wider
climatic situation. Road transport in the UK accounts for more than 21% of our total CO2 emmision and is set to rise pretty fiercely without efforts to reign it in. But also, I wanted to convey something of the feeling of those times, of the sense of inspiration that was so strong in the campaigns I’ve described;
there’s a sense that that spirit can inform us now however we choose to act or the environment, or changing the world in general, or even simply how we live our lives.

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How does your life now relate to your life in the 90′s? Are you still involved in activism?

I’ve had to knock activism on the head these days, for reasons that are clearer when you read the book. I did go to the first climate camp and while it was amazingly inspiring it was also pretty stressful, the kind of situation that I’m meant to be avoiding. So I limit myself to talking and writing as a way to influence the world now. I don’t live outdoors but camp and walk as much as I can in the summer. Right now I live on the edge of a small town in a converted outhouse with a firepit outdoors but can see myself back in a house or a flat before too long. Living outdoors isn’t made easy in this country but I am at least gravitating away from the middle of cities as places to be in full time.

I‘m quite interested to find out what everyone is doing now-are you still in touch?

Sarah is in the mountains in Wales with a young child. Badger is living in the West Country working as a carpenter with his wife and three kids. Tami studied maths, got a scholarship to Oxford and is now working as a website designer. Many folks are still activists in one way or another but I think everyone holds precious the memory of what happened. There’s kind of an unspoken bond.

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What are your thoughts on the current wave of climate action?

I think it’s really inspiring. I’ve always felt that to be most effective direct action needs to be as intelligent and discriminating as possible and all the signs are that those involved with Plane Stupid, for instance, share this approach. It carries a big responsibility too. Certainly to see direct action as some kind of cure-all or the way to go about things in the first instance doesn’t seem like the way forward. Martin Luther King said it should only be undertaken as a last resort and it takes it’s place within a bigger picture. There’s many ways to campaign for things but I do think direct action has a vital place.

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All photographs by Jonathan Olley

I think the climate camps have maybe been a bit gung-ho in declaring intentions to shut down power stations and the like; it kind of guarantees a full on police response but I think to be fair there are many folks involved who would agree. And they’re amazing testimonies to how far everything has come, the organization that goes into the camps is truly something else. And it carries the torch of DIY culture, to be involved; people realizing that it’s not enough to wait for someone else to do something, that we all carry responsibilty for our actions and the actions of our culture.

I do sometimes feel too that it shouldn’t be neccessary, that people shouldn’t have to put themselves through it but it raises the stakes and shakes people out of their apathy and there’s as much need for that as ever; steering society to something more sustainable is like steering some massive tanker and when
change is not apparent there’s the danger of inertia creeping in. So it’s important, if nothing else, to raise our voices on the issue, to remind the politicians that there’s everything to fight for, to help give them license perhaps to act for the climate and certainly to hold them to their responsibilities. And there’s a new generation now getting involved, which is amazing, the whole thing has evolved and there’s a freshness and an urgency, which is what we need in copious amounts…

Jim will be reading extracts from his book on 17th March at 7.30pm at The Hornbeam Centre in London and on 28th March for the Climate Camp benefit at Westhill Music Club in Brighton.

Categories ,activism, ,Jim Hindle, ,Jonathan Olley, ,Newbury Bypass

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