Twyford Down

Twyford Down Barbara Bryant was a Conservative Councillor representing the rural villages of Owslebury and Colden Common on Winchester City Council, when she initiated the formal opposition to the Government’s choice of route for the M3 motorway around Winchester. She is married to Dudley, a chartered surveyor and has three sons. She has a deep love of the countryside which stems from her childhood, spent in the heart of Sussex. A politician with conviction, she had already fought elections on behalf of the Conservative party for nearly twenty years and was described by The Times as ‘an unlikely challenger’. She did however remain at the forefront of the campaign, being one of the three private individuals to challenge the Government’s decision in the courts and was a founder member of the Twyford Down Association. Despite the disappointment at having lost the struggle for Twyford Down she remains convinced that responsible opposition means finding practical solutions. Graham Anderson is editor of the weekly newspaper Construction News. He joined the publication in 1984 and has many close friends and contacts in the construction industry. He strongly believes that successive Government ministers have allowed construction firms to take the blame for environmentally poor decisions based on bad planning and cut-price designs. He supported the completion of the M3, but believes that with more investment and vision the road could have been built in a tunnel. With better planning, the route could have avoided Twyford Down altogether. Peter Kunzlik graduated with a first from Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1981 and was called to the Bar in 1983. He was a Fellow and Lecturer in Law at St John’s College, Cambridge from 1985 to 1988 when he joined Hammond Suddards, as head of European Law, setting up their Brussels office in 1990. In the summer of 1990 he advised the Twyford Down Association on EC law and the European challenge to the UK Government’s decision to proceed with the Twyford Down route. Peter Kunzlik now holds a research chair at Nottingham Law School as Browne Jacobson Professor of European Business Law. Jonathon Porritt has been one of the most influential advocates on behalf of the environment for the last twenty years. His involvement with the campaign to save Twyford Down began during his time as Director of Friends of the Earth, but it came to prominence when he spearheaded the tactical voting campaign during the 1992 General Election. The emphasis in much of his current work is on the solutions rather than the problems, encouraging and multiplying examples of good environmental practice wherever possible. His criticism of contemporary politicians and other decision makers remains as trenchant as ever. He regards Twyford Down as a watershed in environmental campaigning. Twyford Down roads, campaigning and environmental law Barbara Bryant The Campaigner with contributions from Graham Anderson Editor, Construction News Peter Kunzlik Browne Jacobson Professor of European Business Law, The Nottingham Law School Jonathon Porritt Environmental Campaigner E & FN SPON An Imprint of Chapman & Hall London · Glasgow · Weinheim · New York · Tokyo · Melbourne · Madras Published by E & FN Spon, an imprint of Chapman & Hall, 2–6 Boundary Row, London SE1 8HN, UK Chapman & Hall, 2–6 Boundary Row, London SE1 8HN, UK Blackie Academic & Professional, Wester Cleddens Road, Bishopbriggs, Glasgow G64 2NZ, UK Chapman & Hall GmbH, Pappelallee 3, 69469 Weinheim, Germany Chapman & Hall USA, 115 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003, USA Chapman & Hall Japan, ITP-Japan, Kyowa Building, 3F, 2–2–1 Hirakawacho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102, Japan Chapman & Hall Australia, 102 Dodds Street, South Melbourne, Victoria 3205, Australia Chapman & Hall India, R.Seshadri, 32 Second Main Road, CIT East, Madras 600 035, India This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. First edition 1996 © 1996 Barbara Bryant © 1996 Peter Kunzlik Part 3 ISBN 0-203-47571-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-78395-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0 419 20270 6 (Print Edition) Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the UK Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may not be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction only in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency in the UK, or in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the appropriate Reproduction Rights Organization outside the UK. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the terms stated here should be sent to the publishers at the London address printed on this page. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 95-71098 Contents Colour plates appear between pages 18 and 19. Preface vii Acknowledgements xi Annotated aerial photograph of Twyford Down xiv Part One Introduction 1 Introduction to Twyford Down 5 Part Two The Campaigner’s Story 2 The campaign to save Twyford Down begins 15 3 The 1985 Public Inquiry 36 4 September 1985 to April 1987—The Road to Damascus 56 5 June 1986 to April 1987—National organizations 69 reappraise the damage and impact of the Cutting route 6 April 1987 to August 1987—Prelude to the reopening 80 of the Public Inquiry 7 Reopened Public Inquiry in 1987 97 8 March 1988 to 1989—The transition from 121 local campaign to national environmental issue 9 1990 Challenging the Government’s decision 134 10 1991 A viable alternative: the tolled tunnel 161 11 The 1992 General Election—Tactical voting and the 185 end of the campaign 12 Postscript 217 Part Three The Lawyer’s Assessment 13 The legal battle: ‘an astonishing intervention’ 225 Part Four The Environmentalist’s Conclusions 14 Twyford Down: the aftermath 297 Glossary 311 Appendix 315 Index 317 Preface This is the story of the campaign that failed to stop a new motorway destroying one of England’s most precious landscapes at Twyford Down (Figure A and 1) outside Winchester. Throughout, one sentiment dominated our activities. In the words of Professor Martin Biddle, President of the Twyford Down Association ‘the cutting through Twyford Down is a great act of damage, possibly the greatest single act of visible destruction ever worked on the scenery of southern England. It is worth spending a great deal to avoid such an outcome because it is irreversible. Its effects will last for ever. That is the issue. All other matters are sideline.’ The campaign to save Twyford Down was of local, national and finally international significance. Locally, Twyford Down was the last undeveloped chalk downland ridge abutting Winchester, providing the magnificent landscape backcloth around England’s ancient capital. St Catherine’s Hill and its encircling downland ridge setting supported human habitation and civilization from earliest times (Figure 2). In the words of Biddle again, ‘the proximity of downland, Water Meadow and city produced an intimate and rare backyard, perhaps unique in providing a thriving modern city with a visual perspective reaching deep into its remote past. Here, perhaps alone in modern urban England, it was possible in the course of an hour or so to walk from the twentieth century to the prehistoric past, or even to glance from one to another in the course of a moment at work or in school.’ Nationally, the UK Government disregarded its own legislation, enacted specifically to prevent loss of heritage-rich sites, and rendered impotent our conservation laws and planning regulations. The Government’s obstinate and unintelligent insistence on pressing ahead with its outdated plan for the M3 motorway at Winchester has ensured it a place in environmental history for cynical landscape abuse and muddled thinking. viii Preface Internationally, the destruction of Twyford Down highlights the impotence of European legislation to protect ecologically and historically rich heritage sites in a member state when the environment becomes a defenceless pawn in grander political games. There is an African proverb, ‘when the elephants fight the grass gets trampled upon.’ Twyford Down was indeed trampled in the power game played between British Prime Minister John Major and the then European Commission President Jacques Delors. After the ten-year campaign, involving hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling, forests of waste paper, hopes and heartaches, which was, sadly, to lead to such widespread disaffection with constitutional campaigning, is it possible to say who failed Twyford Down? Reluctantly, the only honest answer I can give is that the people and institutions who failed Twyford Down were the very same who had the power or responsibility for its protection and who aspire to care for the environment. But that is not to absolve the Major Government from responsibility. The crucifixion was carried out by the UK Government in 1992. The cock crowed thrice many years earlier with the silence of organizations, commonly understood to be custodians of our natural heritage, at the time of discussion and route selection in the early 1980s. The time to alter decisions is before they are made and the whole disastrous fiasco could, and should, have been avoided at that juncture. It is a sad reflection that the more hopeless the fate of Twyford Down became so the greater the involvement of certain environmental pressure groups. It is too easy to explain this away by saying that no one knew about the threat to Twyford Down until the profile reached its pinnacle in 1991.

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