HS2 Rebellion Camps

Head to the project’s website and you'll see HS2 touted as a rail line that will transform the North of England and accelerate the UK on it’s net-zero transition by providing a low carbon rival to flights and driving.

It’s development is split into three sections. Phase 1 will take passengers from London to Birmingham, phase 2a from Birmingham to Crewe and 2b from Crewe to Manchester and another line from Birmingham to Leeds. There’s also potential for extensions up to Edinburgh and Glasgow further down the line.

In theory it’s the much-needed boost for the North and the country’s climate change goals.

But what the site doesn’t mention is the vast financial and ecological costs. Now development of phase one is underway, these problems have come into the spotlight.

According to the Wildlife Trusts and Woodland Trust, development would ‘damage or disturb’ 700 wildlife sites and more than 100 ancient woodlands – destroying some of the UK’s oldest flora and the fauna that depends on it.

Construction has gone up and up in price, the FT reported, and failed to complete appropriate ecological surveys, according to the Telegraph. Due to the rise in electric cars, the environmental benefits have been called into question and development passed Crewe has been deemed ‘unachievable’ by the government authority on major projects .

Rather than levelling up the North, the project as it stands is more likely to improve connections to London and boost commuting.

To most of us protesting a development by living between the axe and its intended tree seems terrifying.

But much of the time is spent waiting, and for a lot of the camps (including Denham), that means living in an idyllic spot in the middle of the woods.

“Compared to normal life, it's a lot more collaborative,” said Peach.

The groups have to build their shelters, cook on a fire and collect water among many other tasks that need doing.

“We lived in treehouses and structures that we’d built. And while you live there your physical presence is blocking deforestation.

“Once you set up a camp, they have to evict you before they can take down the trees.”

While on camp, essential supplies come from sympathetic donors. “You can't protest in a river all day if you don't have a fresh pair of socks to put on afterwards.” Peach said on the importance of these donations.

“In Summer it was buzzing, it was really fun – the camp was full and we had great big community events like the party on the Summer Solstice.

“But in Winter it’s a tough thing to do. There are far fewer people. When you wake up and realise to just make a cup of tea you have to unfreeze all the water first, it’s tough.”

In the months between setting up the camps and the eventual eviction, activists also run protests or ‘actions’ to protect specific patches of ancient woodland trees or draw attention to particular impacts of the line.

For the group at Denham this also involved working with the local community who had been working to fix a water pollution problem as well as participating in wider campaigns involving many camps such as the ‘Bat Action’ campaign to draw attention to the adverse affects of HS2 would have on the UK’s wild bats.

While many of these ended in deforestation regardless, some had more positive outcomes.

At Denham, protests managed to reroute the line through a nearby golf course rather than destroying centuries-old trees.

Peach said: “We know our chances of actually stopping phase one of HS2 from going ahead are not that good.

“But giving them hell over a single tree or the whole plans means they have to reconsider the cost of their other plans.”

Due to the nature of the camps, eviction is inevitable and eventually teams from National Eviction Team (a private for-profit company) are sent in to remove activists safely.

But it’s not that easy for the bailiffs. Activists use tactics such as building treehouses, sitting in trees on harnesses and ‘locking on’ to make sure they stay put for as long as possible. After all, the only thing standing in the way of habitat loss and deforestation is the activists' camp.

Lock-on: Two people put their arms into either end of a metal tube and attach themselves to it by a chain around their wrist. This makes it very difficult to be moved.

When evictions happen, the black-suited bailiffs move anyone on the ground out of the area quite quickly. Before they arrive, the camps often have a short warning period (at Denham this was 30 minutes) to make sure as many people as want to be are up trees or in towers.

After that, it’s a matter of staying put with ‘squirrel bags’ of food to last them as long as possible - whether that’s a day or a couple of weeks.

“It’s weird because you get the massive adrenaline rush, like oh my goodness it’s happening! But then it’s quite boring after that. I was just sat in a tower, eating beans, listening to some music.

“It’s often a lot more work for people outside the camp than those locked-on in it.”

The teams that run the evictions work to make sure activists are removed safely and appropriately but there are reports from activists of use of unsafe levels of force and trying to remove people from land in which they have no jurisdiction to do so.

It’s difficult to tell the future of the project. There are wildly different answers depending on who you ask. Recent reports have been extremely damning, particularly one from the government’s own internal major projects authority which labelled the route from London to Birmingham “successful delivery in doubt” and lines north of Crewe “unachievable”.

According to a recent Newsnight report, even people at the top of the government that has pushed so hard for the project “have lost faith” in HS2 Ltd, the tax-payer owned company delivering the project.

But the project still presses on.

It’s not certain how far the line will get, but activists are adamant that only knocking 20 minutes off the London-Birmingham train journey was not worth the irreversible impacts of construction.

 Peach said: “The 'eastern leg' of the line is being shelved and it really calls into question the whole point - it was sold as a way to improve transport for the North and that's clearly not happening.”

On the future of the camps, Peach added: “The Southern camps have really served their purpose now - Denham camp managed to get the access road diverted away from a number of large oaks through a golf course. So people have headed up North to resist there.”

All photos from HS2 Rebellion