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Tuesday March 03 2009 studentnewspaper.org features@studentnewspaper.org

12 Magazine: Features

Bilston Glen is tucked away in the woods seven miles south of

Edinburgh, a straight shot if you hop on the number 37 bus from Nicholson Street and get off across the street from a Volk-swagen car dealership. Past a small metal gate on the side of A701, a meandering dirt road leads to a graffi ti-covered bridge and a steep set of mud stairs.

Up ahead, wooden boxes and green tarp tents rest high up in the trees of the Bilston Glen, one of the last surviving greenbelt areas in the UK.

Four men sit on a set of dirty couches crowded around a fi repit, shielded from the elements by a leaky tarp.

“� e war machine spins round and round,” one man sings as he strums his guitar. Next to him, another man roasts a croissant on the fi re – a croissant that according to the Glen’s residents, he most likely uncovered in a skip in the back of a supermaket.

The residents of the woods look like stereotypical hippies – they smoke pot, they climb trees, they’re freegan-ists – people who salvage leftover food from the dumpsters behind restaurants

� e Weighty IssueJust o� the A701, down a legal B-Road and up a tree, Marielle Segarra discovers a community of pot-smoking, rubbish-eating, head-banging moral crusaders. Just don't call them hippies.

and markets in order to prevent waste and help the environment. � ey’re even willing to chain themselves to cement to protest corporate and governmental intiatives.

But make no mistake about it, the activists living in Bilston Glen are not hippies. � ey’ll be the fi rst to tell you that they’re anarchists, not communists. Death metal enthusiasts, not psychadelic-rock-singing idealists. Products of the British Punk-Rock Era.

But the residents of Bilston Glen do have one great big cause. � ey’re blocking a road. In typical punk rock fashion, these activists are sticking it to the man – one greenbelt at a time.

For almost seven years, people have come and gone through these woods in an eff ort to protest a Midlothian Council intiative to build a new road, A720, parallel to the existing A701 and directly through the woods of Bilston Glen.

The Land

Bilston Glen is owned by the Univer-sity of Edinburgh and is a greenbelt area

and a “Site of Special Scientifi c Interest.” � e area is set aside as wild, natural forest land. Along with the Bilston activists, deer, squirrels, badgers, birds, and other creatures

call the ancient woodland area home. Kara, a Bilston site resident, says

building a road through the greenbelt area will not only generate more traffi c, but will also needlessly destroy animal habitats and forestland. Animals that live in the woods “can’t just take the bus to get from one territory to another,” she says.

Though Bilston Glen is protected by its greenbelt status, Jim Gilfi llan, a strategic services consultant for the Midlothian Council, says the Council has “safeguarded” the area, setting it aside for the road’s construction.

The Plan

Representatives from the Midlothian Council say the new road would help allevi-ate traffi c by creating more room on the old road for improved public transportation and for people who want to walk or cycle.

Gilfi llan says the bus lanes on A701 are delayed by existing cars, and the Council hopes the new road will help to create a fast, effi cient transportation system between Edinburgh and Penny Cook.

“We can’t build our way out of conges-tion”

But some say the new road is – at best – a short-term solution with negative long-term eff ects. Richard George is the roads and climate campaigner for the Campaign for Better Transport, a charity that seeks to make public transporta-tion cheaper and more available and to encourage residents to walk and cycle. He heads what used to be called “Roadblock,” a support group for local residents fi ght-ing road building.

Though George has not worked specifi cally with Bilston Glen, he says he sympathizes with its residents.

George cites a “fairly hefty research document” by the Department for Transport’s Standing Advisory Com-mittee on Trunk Road assessment. � e Committee found that almost every time the government built a new road, traffi c volume eventually increased and fi lled the road to capacity.

It comes down to people’s driving psychology, George says. If traffi c is heavy, people might stay home rather than go to the store, wait for neighbor to go shopping, or order on the Internet. When traffi c gets better, people travel farther and more often. And the bigger the road, the less traffi c there is and the more room there is for traveling.

One example comes from London. � e government added a third lane to the M25 London Orbital Motorway, increas-ing its capacity by one-third. Within a year, there was a third more traffi c, George says.

“If something’s easy, people do it more and if it’s diffi cult people will do it less,” he says.

Perhaps George and the activists have more in common with the Council than

“Form tribes. Take land. Destroy capitalism."

� e Weighty Issue

If you go down to the woods today...

Got a story to tell? Tuesday March 03 2009features@studentnewspaper.org studentnewspaper.org

Arts & Features 13

doesn’t solve the problem of traffic,” he says.

The Law

Kara, Jack, and many of the other residents say they have not been asked to leave by the University yet, and they will stay on the land until they are evicted or given a court order to leave.

According to University of Ed-inburgh Professor Colin Munro, the legality of the protest site is unclear. In theory, Munro says, people have a right to walk over land in Scotland as long as they are respecting owners’ privacy. Certain areas, such as military and royal land, are restricted. But residents living on land owned by another person or organization, are “more likely to run into legal difficulties,” he says.

“The remedies are largely civil,” he adds, “which leaves it up to the land-owner to enforce them if they want to.”

Although University spokesman Norval Scott said it was difficult for the University to comment further on the protest site, he sent the Student the following statement: “The University attaches great importance to freedom of speech as long as points of view are put across in a safe and lawful way. But as a major business and employer, we are also working with Midlothian council and the Scottish Executive to ensure transportation links are built to support local development.”

“These activists are sticking it to the man: one greenbelt at a time"

they think. Gilfi llan says the government must

make public transportation “more

attractive, quicker, and easier to use” to lessen the number of cars on the road. But building the new road is the best way to accomplish this goal, he says.

At the moment, the corridor is “not very attrctive” for cycling, and the traffic often makes buses 10 to 20 minutes late, Gilfillan says. These kinks in public transport could be forcing people to use cars.

George agrees that, “people are often locked into car-dependent travel because of an absence of public transport.”

But the solution, he says, is for the government to spend the money it would have spent building roads on directly improving public transportation to persuade people off the roads in the long term.

“Tearing through greenbelt is a fairly permanent and a fairly disruptive solution in the long run, especially if it

“No money, no stress, no police”

If you go down to the woods today...

The Bilston Glen Protest Site is covered in seven years worth of graffiti.

“Form tribes, take land, destroy capitalism,” one wall under the bridge says. “No money, no stress, no police,” another reads.

But the activists may have to face police force sooner or later. And for most of them, who have living outdoors at protest sites for 10 to 20 years, eviction comes as sort of a climax.

They’ve been building up their defenses recently, Jack says, because they “have a feeling they will get evicted by the end of the year.”

Eviction is expensive, he says, and may

be a disincentive to road building. So even if the government evicts them, the cost could be prohibitive the next time around.

And although he has been doing this for 15 years, Jack has always managed to be out of town when protesters have gotten evicted from his sites. He hopes to be around this time.

Besides, he says. � e activists “kind of enjoy it.”