As well as HS2, also under construction and close to HS2 is the East West Rail (EWR) link project to connect Oxford with Cambridge. This, too, is a scheme with controversial elements over choice of route. In this view, the first rails on the EWR are being laid east of Bicester on April 12 this year.
ALL PICTURES: PHIL MARSH
IT was a brief encounter near the former GCR Calvert station between the author and an anti-HS2 protester that resulted in the unlikely invitation to visit to the nearby Poors Piece camp. Making the offer was a very articulate 21-year-old who gave his name as Goldi, and who had been living there since February.
Goldi had been furloughed from the brewing industry, enabling him to join the anti-HS2 protest camp in Buckinghamshire. When the tree he was occupying was surrounded by men with chainsaws, he made the instant decision to stay to protect the tree, forfeiting his job when his furlough ended.
The three-hour interview took place within the protest camp adjacent to the East West Railway line – just east of Claydon Loop on one side, and fenced off from HS2 territory on another. The original Poors Piece was in a field by the woodland but protesters were evicted by HS2 when work commenced. The current camp is on land outside the HS2 boundary.
Discussion
Goldi admitted he had never discussed his anti-HS2 campaign with anyone from the rail industry, thus setting the scene for the opening question: Why are you anti-HS2, when surely the far greater threat is climate change? “They were both deeply linked and symptomatic of the really bad British patriarchal (political) system that is hurting a lot of the people, the land and animals,” Goldi replied.
This led to talking about the planned HS2 ‘rewilding’ scheme at the Chiltern Tunnel south portal.
“The HS2 ecologists were not very knowledgeable,” Goldi alleged. “They were trained in the HS2 academy, and potential nesting areas were checked by even less knowledgeable ecologists, who then signed off tree-felling and land clearance.”