During the 1990s, a civil and bloodless war was fought on English soil. The ‘battles” – Twyford Down (1992), “The third battle of” Newbury (1996), Fairmile (1996) and Bollin River Valley (1997), to name a few – were attritional environmental protests, ostensibly to save ancient woodlands threatened with destruction by construction projects. But these battles – all of which ultimately failed in their main stated aims – should be viewed as elements, parts of a strategy, in a long term attritional war against unbridled destruction for construction. By delaying the construction projects, by occupying the territory establishing camps in the trees and underground tunnels, this resistance increased the costs and timelines for developers and government, who were forced to rethink their budgets and, one hopes, their attitudes regarding the value of the natural environment.

The first battles of Newbury (1643 and 1644) were during the English Civil War, and whilst these battles and the other key battles of the English revolution -Edgehill (1642), Marston Moor (1644), and Naseby (1645) – stand out in English history, it is perhaps these end of the 20th Century battles for the environment that, in the long term, are of greater significance. These uprisings that were bellwethers of the most important of struggles: an English revolution (with its own international brigades) not to determine, like the first, which men would rule over other men, but the fate of that on which ultimately all men and other beings depend.

·

Underground and Overground – the struggle for the Bollin Valley

The sun sinks over North-West England and a golden green haze pervades the foliage high in the canopy of Arthur’s Wood. Amongst the branches, small birds skip, chatter and twitter; squirrels scuttle and wood pigeons sit and coo. I lay upon a few planks tied together into a small platform and fastened in the Y of the trunk of a tall ash tree. The odour of wild garlic and damp earth rises from the forest floor some twenty metres below. My soul drifts, carried on the sounds and scents of a summer’s eve. I am in paradise.

I gaze to the heavens and watch an airliner, a few kilometers above me, as it moves slowly, almost imperceptibly, scraping a straight, white line of vapour across the vast expanse of the clear blue sky. About me, hundreds of silken threads dangle from leaves. Each glints and sways in the breeze: from each, hangs a tiny caterpillar; each of which spins and twirls, dancing pirouettes as it spins the delicate chrysalis, where it will hide away for its magical metamorphosis, and then emerge in colourful splendour to take flight, flutter and dance the last waltz of its ephemeral existence.

Perhaps, I wonder, I will remain here just long enough to see those butterflies dance on the breeze. How long is that chrysalis retreat? Three, four, or perhaps five days? Longer still?

A rude rasp, like spittle from the mouth of some beast, breaks the woodland symphony and shakes me from transcendence and contemplation. Now, an incessant hum and whir of diesel motors fill the air, as white light from halogen lamps invades the tree tops and smothers the last flecks of golden evening light. The floodlights had appeared several days ago and, since yesterday morning, we had been under eviction. The respite of woodland tranquility had been too brief: since the early morning, the woods had echoed with a cacophony of the high-pitched whir of chainsaws and the clatter of percussion drills.

There were now large gaps in the canopy of the woods, where once branches had swayed in the breeze. What remained around me was what was defended by the presence of support ropes and walk ropes, tree houses (called benders), suspended nets and platforms. The defenders are a couple of dozen environmental activists who hold the woods by occupying the trees and tunnels dug beneath the threatened woodland. We are Sir Cliff Richard OBE Vegan Revolution encampment (Sir Cliff for short) – one of five encampments dotted around the woodlands of the Bollin Valley, which are scheduled for destruction, before being covered in thousands of tonnes of landfill that will support the proposed second runway of Manchester airport. Two camps have been evicted, but for some of the most resilient tunnellers in the dark damp enclosure of sensory deprivation they have scraped out of the earth.

•

The Beginning of the End

Days earlier, as the dawn light began to colour the day and a large, orange moon slipped beneath the horizon, I had been by shouts and whistles. In my socks, I went out onto the closest walkways and looked into the distance as bailiffs and police moved through the rising mist to start the eviction of Zion Tree and Jimi Hendrix camps. It was the beginning of the long awaited evictions of the five camps in the Cedar’s Wood and Arthur’s Wood.

In Sir Cliff, when it is clear that we are not the target of the current attempts at eviction, many of the camp’s activists gather around the fire pit. Someone listens to Tree FM, the protesters’ own treehouse based pirate radio station, on a small transistor radio. There is no news there: all we hear is thumping Techno music. Some updates come via CB radio, mobile phone or are shouted and relayed through the treetops.

“Babylon’s brought down four tree-people,” someone shouts from up in the trees. “They got a tunneller. They sprayed CS gas in his face.”

In the three camps not under attack – Flywood Babylon Council Estate, River Rats and our own Sir Cliff Richard OBE Vegan Revolution – the protesters are still on the ground, rather than over and under it. In Sir Cliff we brew cups of tea and an ever-dwindling supply of tobacco is passed around the fire.

For weeks now, the camps have been gradually surrounded by a four-mile long, eight-foot high security fence patrolled by hundreds of guards and police. This was completed and then sealed about ten days ago, since when we have been essentially cut off from the outside world. For the first couple of days, some supplies were passed-in or thrown over the fence but those supply lines were soon cut. Over the last few days, a few activists who had found themselves on the wrong side of the fence had managed to slip past the security cordon but now no-one gets in. The only way is out, either by ceding to the authorities’ call to leave the area or by force and under arrest.

The conversation around the fire-pit is about how people think the bailiffs will enter. The general opinion is that they will just walk in. There are barricades around the camp, which will ensure we cannot be rushed. It seems fair to assume that everyone will be able to reach their stations, whether that be directly to lock-ons, scaling the trees or going underground. The remainder of the food and water is being distributed to tunnels and squirreled away in the trees. Large water containers are hung from the walkways, by the side of lock-ons and at other strategic points, where it be required for someone to stay put.

Sir Cliff’s defences are pretty comprehensive. Nonetheless, all about the camp there is activity as these are strengthened. Someone is hammered barbed wire to a post while others pile more scrap wood and rigid metal netting pilfered from the security fence onto our own barricades. People come and go over the dry moat, across the drawbridge and through the narrow, constrained main entrance.

From the tunnel, named Wormhole, the tunnellers (who are called moles) are hauling up sacks of viscous mud. Heavy rains have flooded the lower chamber and they are hoping to reclaim it in time for the eviction. Wayne emerges carrying a sack of earth, covered from head to foot in red clay slime. I can hear his fellow moles, Martin and Disco Dave, who continue scooping below. Disco Dave previously worked as ground-staff at Schipol Airport in the Netherlands before taking on work under ground in the Bollin Valley.

The tree people also help slop-out the gunge onto the surface close to the fire pit and then return the sacks to the tunnel to be refilled. Nearby, the fourth mole, Liz, a former art student at St. Martin’s College in London, paints an apocalyptic mural of jumbo jets and earth diggers. A Boeing 737 aeroplane roars over our heads after taking-off from Manchester Airport. Through the leaves overhead, it is close enough to see the airline’s name ‘on its fuselage – Air UK’ – and next to that, in large, red cursive script, the word ‘Leisure’.

Liz tells me that her interest in the eco-protests was sparked by an article in the Independent on Sunday magazine the previous year, during the time of the Newbury bypass protests of 1996. ‘It was my mum who suggested I participate. She knew I was interested and said: ‘Why don’t you go?’ I’d seen the Newbury protests on TV and thought it was brilliant… Eventually I went.’ The Manchester Airport protest is Liz’s second campaign. It is the first time she has been a tunneller.

The moles are very carefully as to who can enter their tunnels. Any information that leaks out can help the authorities to accelerate the eviction. The tunnels are literally the secret weapon of the activists and maintaining that secrecy will ensure the each step made by the eviction tunnellers will be in the dark and have to be slow and meticulous.

After about ten days, Disco Dave allowed me to enter Wormhole, but only after consulting his fellow tunnellers. I could go beyond Liz’s station and into the main, long tunnel but not go as far as the first chamber. There were to be no photos of lock-ons nor bolts on the rear of the inner doors. I had enjoying free caving when I lived for a while in the Dordogne and had, voluntarily, got myself into some very tight spots, the earth tunnels in the Bollin Valley were another matter. They were a lot more scary, as they were tunnelled through earth, which was far riskier than the limestone of the Dordogne.

Wormhole, I was told, is fifty feet long and thirty feet deep. Thick defensive doors defend the warren, which will be held shut by several deadlock bolts on the inside of the six-inch thick main door. Below ground the air is stale and earthy. The tunnel is as wide as the broadest set of shoulders of the four moles. It leads to two chambers, in which you can barely lie and can hardly sit upright.

The moles habitually sleep in Wormhole at night to prepare themselves psychologically and practically to living underground. When the eviction cavers (who it is rumored these are from the SAS – the Special Air Service) move on the Sir Cliff tunnellers, the moles will stay as long as it takes to prise them out or as long as they can bear it. Imagine eating, drinking and having to defecate and urinate all whilst enclosed in the same space, where the best you can do is sit almost upright. Not to mention the boredom and sensory deprivation.

Liz’s eviction plans are admirable and somewhat eccentric. On a wooden board, by the entrance to Wormhole, she has drawn a diagram to inform the bailiffs a little about the set-up inside. It depicts a cartoon Liz, supine and chained by the arms into two lock-ons and with her neck in a noose, which is attached to a tunnel door. “The idea of the noose is so they can’t open the door without strangling me,” Liz explains. “There’s a warning, and that’s pretty clear, so there’s no chance they’ll do anything stupid. When you’re in a tunnel with two lock-ons, you can’t move. It’s like a crucifixion!” she says with a big smile.

There is a second tunnel in the encampment. This is half way down a 40 foot-high cliff on the edge of the camp, which takes it name from the feature – Sir Cliff Richard OBE Vegan Revolution. The cliff tunnel is inhabited by the calm and taciturn Nadine. She must abseil down to the tunnel entrance each night and haul herself back up in the morning. When the eviction begins, she will be the most isolated – locked-on and alone in her tunnel.

Lock-ons are tubes, into which you can insert your arm, fixed in blocks of concrete, which are either set in the earth, when attached to ground, or in metal barrels, when up in the trees. At the base of the armhole, is a metal bar, onto which one ‘locks-on’, usually with a climbers’ carabiner lashed to the wrist with a rope, a length of harness or a chain. The carabiner can be unclipped relatively easily by its wearer.

In the trees, ten tree-houses (benders) are linked by a network of walk-ways. Each of the benders is a construction of several branches, bent into an igloo-shaped frame, over which a tarpaulin is draped and tied. The walk-ways consist of two ropes, one above the other, and are usually colored blue, thus differentiating them from the uncoloured support lines of platforms and nets. The upper rope is for your hands and the lower for your feet. Most tree people have safety harnesses and clip-on the top rope using a carabiner. The regular click-click of the metal gate snapping shut is a common sound up in the trees.

As it hadn’t occurred to me beforehand that I might need safety equipment, I made do without. A safety harness is only of use if, somehow, you let go of the top rope, so I ensured that I would not let go of the top rope unless totally necessary. When taking photographs from the walkways, I would hold on either by passing an arm over the top rope, nestling it in my armpit, or by gripping it between my teeth, thus leaving my hands free to operate the camera. For me, by far the most difficult manoeuvre in the trees was raising oneself up onto the bender platforms where the walkway ropes passed beneath. The first pitch on the way to the bender to which I was assigned – and which I shared with Mia and James during the eviction – was the worst. Often I scraped my ribs on the edge of the overhanging planks.

The pièce-de-résistance of the tree people is the suspender-bender – a wooden platform suspended fifty-feet in the air, fixed by a dozen ropes lashed tightly to six encircling trees. Dee Smith is the architect of the suspender-bender, which he shares with his partner, Fern, a former nurse who is tells me that she is terrified of heights. She always clips-on to when on the walkways and also quite often when in the bender.

The intricate network of ropes, platforms and benders, nets and lock-ons is phenomenal. It took weeks to construct. The tunnels also took weeks to dig and seem to be under constant maintenance. A lot of knowledge and a lot of effort that has gone into constructing the camps, which will eventually be torn down in a matter of days.

The food for the encampments is donated by sympathizers. Much of it comes from the local community – a quite conservative rural community and a Conservative leaning town population in nearby Winslow – and from nearby Manchester. The cause of preserving ancient woodlands and the Bollin Valley crosses political and social divides. The environmental protests in the UK have garnered quite a bit of sympathy over the past few years. There is an element of theatre in the protests and the drama inherent in evictions has attracted a lot of press attention at previous protests.

One activist, Daniel Hooper, rose to national celebrity under the sobriquet Swampy at the Fairmile protest in Devon in 1996, when he remained underground for a week. The travails of the tunnellers are made-for-media drama, with daily or hourly running updates with all the necessary suspense to keep people watching and asking how events are developing. However, probably because of this media interest and the sympathy and debate this tends to generate, the Manchester Airport Runway protest is being locked down and isolated by the Government. When the moment comes, the intention is that no one but the activists resisting and the evicting forces will be present. Journalists who remain will be classed as protesters and treated as such.

•

It’s the little people

Asymmetrical warfare is where two sides of a conflict are unevenly matched in terms of their respective resources and capacities. A guerrilla force has little access to armaments and when these expand their ranks, resources are more thinly spread. Guerrilla armies more often than not capture or pilfer from regular armies sent to combat them.

By the same measure, the proximity of the authorities and their extending security fence and presence provide the protesters with access to resources. The practical resources are those such as metal fencing and wire, which is integrated into the barricades and other defenses and even supports for resistance constructions. Symbolically, trophies taken from the security forces are of great value and great moral boosters. “Having a laugh” and mischievous play are integral to the long hours, days, weeks and months of protest standoff.

Moral is boosted through nighttime raids to turn off generators or hack holes in the metal fencing. Whole sections of fencing are sometimes removed, finding their way into the barricades that surround the five woodland camps. These acts of mischief are called Pixies. Tales of sabotage are frequent morale boosting fireside anecdotes. Amongst the most daring I heard of during the eviction of Wild Garlic, was someone sneaking in to deliver a flask of hot tea to the besieged tree dwellers and also the opportune pilfering the eviction climbers’ equipment when their backs were turned.

Most commonly, daytime pixie missions consist of gathering a group of protesters to go sit and lock together in the route where the bailiffs are trying to construct the security fence. During the resulting encounters, security guards have been know to lose their helmets to protesters, who dash-off into the woods. The emphasis of these pixies is to keep them good natured – what the activists term fluffy.

Babylon comes to Cliff

By end of the second day of the evictions, much of Zion Tree has been evicted and the eviction is concentrated on Wild Garlic camp. Wild Garlic is our closest neighbour: downhill to a small wooden bridge that passes over a small brook and then a five minute walk. It is presumed that we will be next. For days we can hear the intermittent sound of chainsaws and drills. Occasionally, we hear the crackling of timber of felled trees. Some shout “Earth Rapists ! Scum!” as they hear the trees fall.

A week after the bailiffs had stormed into Zion Tree and Wild Garlic camps, the eviction comes to Sir Cliff. As predicted, the bailiffs come strolling-in. They do so at 8 am., during normal working hours, probably because they can no longer count on the advantage of surprise by swooping early. The first I am aware that the eviction is underway is when a warning cry of ‘Aruga’ is shouted across the encampment.

Most of the activists are at their stations, as we had noted the eviction forces encircling the camp several minutes earlier. I take the opportunity to accompany Nadine to the top of the cliff. As she abseils down to her tunnel, we see the climbers below who are readying to scale the cliff . They must pass a barbed wire and metal bar barricade before they can reach the tunnel entrance.

With Nadine safely in her tunnel, I run back to the firepit and climb onto the walkways and make for the bender I share with Mia, from Finland, and James, from Australia. Greeting the climbers, waves, smiles and cheers of ‘Come on in!’ rain down from the trees above.

I look down where I see the climbers breaching the barricades. Passing over the perimeter is quite awkward, so they do so slowly and sometimes stumbling. I take some pictures and head for the bender. Everyone has time to secure the tunnels and reach the treetops.

Then, a loud haler squeaks and grunts and a voice announces: “I am Randall Hibbert …Cheshire…Sherriff…”

“Bollocks!” comes the reply from the trees and the rest of the verbal eviction notice is drowned out by whistles and jeers. On the ground, the camp fills with uniforms: overalls, hard-hats and helmets. They begin to dismember the camp and fill puddles of water with rocks and metal gangplanks are dropped over holes and obstacles. It all seems quite medieval. From the bender, I take pictures and take notes.

The bailiffs are in black with ‘Sheriffs’ Office’ written on the backs of their jackets; the climbers are in white overalls and white helmets; the potholers are dressed in black overalls, black balaclavas and helmets; the CID are dressed in black, with peaked-caps and labelled ‘Police’ on their backs; the normal police are in yellow jackets, also labelled ‘Police’, and wear custodian helmets; the security guards wear yellow jackets, labelled ‘Security’, and white, red and blue hard-hats, in ascending order of rank.

The first potholer into the camp surveys us up in the trees before moving to the shuttered entrance of Wormhole. The climbers scale the trees and begin to cut the lowest of the walk-ways when they are sure the way is clear. Groups of eviction forces stand around the tunnel entrance, whilst other groups gather at the base of the trees. At first, the majority of the invaders are filming and photographing the camp structures and us in the trees. They photograph and film the tunnel entrance, the camp, the walk-ways, the protesters and even each other.

After watching the first bender be brought down and many walk-ways cut I retire to the bender with Mia and James. Mia shares some vegan chocolate with us and we speculate on the progress of the eviction and discuss where each will head for for a last stand. Mia will occupy the lock-on beneath bender and James will stay on walk-ways to prevent them being cut. I will remain until cornered, then will be allow them to take me down. My priority will be to get my pictures out, though there is little to no interest from the media who had already “done” environmental protests.

The news running around the treetops is that someone has decided that have now become “The Tribe of Dave”. There are about four Daves in Sir Cliff Camp, so we may as well all be called Dave. Mia, now called Moomin Dave, as she’s from Finland (The Moomins are cartoon hippo-like characters from a Finnish series, the Finn Family Moomintroll, popularised in a cartoon series on British TV and in children’s books in the 60s and 70s). She is sixteen-years-old, very committed and has been arrested numerous times for environmental activism. The Daily Mail newspaper labelled her ‘Swampy’s girl’ when Swampy rose to national fame during his six day record-breaking Fairmile tunnel holdout in Devon the previous year. In less than three weeks time, Matt in Flywood camp’s Cakehole Tunnel would shatter that record by remaining underground for 17 days. When he finally emerged, there was next to no national notoriety and little to no mention in the press. Such matters had now become passé.

James, or Australian Dave, confides that he fears he might do something foolhardy: “I’ve been on protests like this before and I usually keep a cool head. But when they start chainsawing the trees I feel I’m going to lose it,” he says.

·

Below the suspender-bender, a climber looks up at the intricate spiders-web of walk- ways and supporting ropes. “Tricky eh?” Fern calls out from the hovering platform. “What y’ gonna do?” 

“Oh, we’ll construct a T and lower you in a net,” replies the climber. “Have you got enough food for two or three days?” Then, recognising Dee, he asks: ‘Hey! Weren’t you at Newbury?”

“Yeah, I was at Rickety Bridge,’ replies Dee. ‘You remember me! And wasn’t I nice there too?” The two chat about tree campaigns of past and the tactics the climbers will use over the next three days. So far, the eviction has been ‘fluffy’.

At the end of the first day we take a tally of the day’s fallen. The climbers have plucked one protester from a lock-on in the trees and bailiffs and police have taken away three others from lock-ons at ground level. There is no news of Nadine that I know of, which we take as good news. Wormhole is still in one piece. It seems that much of the days activity has been dedicated to gathering intelligence. The climbers work slowly, seeming to go through the motions and little else.

There are more than a dozen of us left in the trees and the four tunnellers in Wormhole and, seemingly, Nadine in Cliff still remain in place. Below us, as last daylight fades, the ground is occupied by dozens of police who hang about in groups and look a little bored. Several of their colleagues laugh – proving that they are in human – and play volleyball nearby on the grass by the generators on what was our side of the security fence. Unlike the climbers, who have long since left, the police do not reply when we try to engage them in conversation. Relations with the police had been quite chatty and cordial until a few days previous, when these were withdrawn and replaced by uncommunicative, stern-faced individuals.

·

At the beginning of day two, the eviction is frenetic. The climbers ascend the trees with speed and take two tree houses within half an hour. They slash the tarpaulins with knives and cast them to the ground. Some protesters are lowered to the ground.

They use small chainsaws that can be held in one hand to slash branches. James is out on the walk-way on the perimeter to stop a climber cutting the lines. The two play cat-and-mouse – James moving between walkways to prevent them being cut and the climber makes to cut one and then another with a curved blade. James gets the upper hand and remains in place as the climber chainsaws the upper branches of an ash tree. Branches fall close to James, who moves to bat them away with one hand.

In the bender, Mia, Dave and I share a can of cold spaghetti letters. Mia spells out a message – “Scab Bastards” – only completing it after nicking a “b” off my fork. The climbers have now started to chainsaw below our bender and the suspender bender.

One fells a large section of a cedar tree, which falls onto a couple of the suspender-bender support ropes. The whole structure is pulled down a few feet and pings back violently, catapulting Fern into the air. She almost falls from the entrance to the bender and off the platform. Suddenly, everything stops and goes quiet, but for the shouts of indignation from Dee and Fern. “Sorry mate!” the offending climber apologises. And everything calms down to a slow steady pace, like the previous day.

For the next few hours, chainsaws cut away the trees below us and, in the distance, two climbers set to work on a concrete barrel where Kev – lock-on Dave – is locked-on. He wears large safety goggles and ear defenders the climbers have put on him. When the climbers turn their backs, he pulls his arm from the barrel to wave to us and flash a mischievous smile.

In the late afternoon, climbers reach the bender I share with Mia and James. Before they arrive, Mia descends a few metres and locks-on to the barrel below the platform. James and Dave (a genuine Dave) hold a couple of walkways leading from our tree and I stay put. When I go inside the bender to stash thirteen rolls of exposed film in my underpants – the unexposed and some decoys I leave in my bag – a curved blade cuts through the tarpaulin of the bender. I come face to face with the first climber to arrive in our tree. I smile and greet him. “Hello! What’s your name?” I ask.

He is called Ian Whittaker and, just like many of the protesters, he is a veteran of environmental protests, but works for the opposition. We chat for a about twenty minutes while we wait for his colleague to arrive with a harness and ropes to lower me to the ground. He explains that they had been instructed to speed up the eviction that day because of the modest progress yesterday. It is not in their interest to be too quick. “For us, there’s no hurry. We’re on a pound a minute,” he informs me.

It turns out that he was knighted at the third battle of Newbury by a Sir Arthur Pendragon. “He told me only a knight can take a king and knighted me then and there, saying ‘Arise Sir Ian‘ as he touched his sword on my shoulders.’ With other matters on my mind, it escapes me to ask him to knight me with his blade. I’m sure he would have done so.

As they help me into the climbing harness on what is now just a wooden platform, Dee cries out ” No, don’t take him! He’s our leader!” Other voices join in. “Leave him! He’s our leader. Paul’s our leader,” they shout and laugh as I am lowered down to ground, where I shake hands with Sir Ian before police officers read me my rights and arrest me. As I am led out of the encampment by two policemen who hold me by my arms, my friends in the trees wave goodbye and call out “Paul’s our leader.”

Life on Earth

I am searched, photographed, fingerprinted and videoed several times throughout my arrest: on my way down from the trees; on my way out of the camp; on my way to the police van; and when I arrive at the station. The processing officers at Wilmslow police station order me to remove my belt and remove the boots I have been wearing for three days without changing socks. They recoil and do not to search me, merely asking me to take the laces out of my shoes and directing me to a cell. The thick, iron door is slammed shut and, after four hours, I am charged and bailed to appear in the magistrate’s court.

On the grass verge outside the police station, I come across Kev sat on the grass. We chat and compare charge sheets and, to great relief, I remove the thirteen rolls of film from the front of my underpants. At the top of the sheet, Kev’s reads “Protester” and mine reads “Journalist”. At the bottom of both sheets in small type it says “This paper is made from wood pulp from sustainable trees.”

Previously, I had never really exchanged more than a two words with Kev. He tells me that he doesn’t like nor trust journalists. However, he tells me that I’m alright – “You stayed to the end and got nicked, just like us,” he says. As I left to get a bus down south, we bid farewell with a smile and a man hug.

·

My case was one of the first to come to trail, a month later in Wilmslow Magistrates Court. I was defended by a barrister contracted by the National Union of Journalists. In the case against me, police depositions argued that I was one of the leaders of the protests. Quite amused, I explained the dynamics of environmental protests and how they were generally good-natured, humorous and fluffy. My barrister and I also argued that I had not heard the verbal warning at the beginning of the eviction of Sir Cliff Richard OBE Vegan Revolution protest camp because of the noise and shouts of bollocks from the protesters. The magistrates, I thought, seemed bent on convicting me, all but dismissing this defence.

However, Sir Ian Whittaker proved to be an honorable man: his deposition stated explicitly that when we encountered up in the trees, we had chatted cordially and that I had not resisted detention, but rather had readily cooperated with everything they ask. I’d been charged with obstruction and, given the evidence, no amount of bias on the part of the magistrates could make that charge stick. Much to the chagrin of the magistrates, the case was dismissed and I was found not guilty. They refused to grant me the payment of my expenses though. Of the 146 (I think) arrests during the Manchester Airport runway protest, I was the only person acquitted. There was one another journalist arrested during the evictions, but the charges against him were altered after the case against me had been dismissed.

End