Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
Twyford Rising: Land and Resistance
Inspiring account of pioneering protest which lit the torch of the anti-roads movement
RESISTANCE: Direct action against road-building [JMS]

IN 1989, the Thatcher government announced the “biggest road-building programme since the Romans” and one of the new schemes was the M3 extension past Winchester across Twyford Down.

With local groups having fought the planned road for decades with little success, in the early 1990s there was a shift to direct action.

Concerned about the proposed road’s impact on the land, the so-called Dongas Tribe, named after the ancient trackways in the area, set up camp on the Down.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
IS 2
Album reviews / 9 September 2025
9 September 2025

Reviews of new releases by Jens Lekman, Big Thief, and Christian McBride Big Band

covers
Culture / 25 August 2025
25 August 2025

IAN SINCLAIR reviews new releases from The Beaches, CMAT and Kathleen Edwards

Palestinians pray over the bodies of people who were killed in an Israeli military strike, during their funeral outside Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City, August 22, 2025
Features / 23 August 2025
23 August 2025

From training Israeli colonels during the slaughter to protecting Israel at the UN, senior British figures should fear Article 3 of the Genocide Convention that criminalises complicity in mass killing, writes IAN SINCLAIR

IS
Album reviews / 11 August 2025
11 August 2025

New releases from Cassandra Jenkins, Ryan Davis & the Roundhouse Band, and Case Oats

Similar stories
he famous trek up the Kinder Scout in Derbyshire in 1932
Features / 26 April 2025
26 April 2025

This year’s march and swim in a reservoir in the Peak District will continue the fight for 'access for all' in a nation where 92 per cent of land remains inaccessible to the public, writes SHAILA SHOBNAM

LETTING THE RIGHT IN: Men chip away at the defunct Berlin wa
Features / 24 February 2025
24 February 2025
The fall of the Berlin Wall enabled neofascist activity to spill over into East Germany, laying the groundwork for the strengthening of right-wing forces today, writes JACOB YASKO
Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Ottawa
Features / 18 October 2024
18 October 2024
CJ ATKINS exposes how over half the names on Ottawa’s disgraceful so-called Memorial to the Victims of Communism are Nazis, collaborators or linked fascist groups, the latest in a series of Nazi scandals for Trudeau
From left to right: Leslie Barson (Peace News Ltd director a
Features / 28 September 2024
28 September 2024
IAN SINCLAIR mourns the end of the longstanding activist newspaper that proudly stood ‘For Revolutionary Nonviolence’