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The Dongas Tribe was a collection of road protesters and travellers in England, noted for their occupation of Twyford Down outside Winchester, Hampshire. [1] [2] The name Dongas comes from the Matabele word for "gully", given by Winchester locals to the deep drovers' tracks on Twyford Down. [1]
John Vidal, writing in The Guardian in 2012, said of The Dongas that "the 15-20 urban youths who camped out to try to defend Twyford Down in 1992 are recognised to have fired up British environmental protest and kickstarted a major shift in green attitudes in both government and the public." [1]
The Twyford Down protest was a protest against the M3 motorway extension which destroyed some rich ecological sites, [1] one of the very few habitats of the Chalkhill Blue butterfly and six species of rare orchid, and ancient monuments there (SSSI and Scheduled Ancient Monument).[ citation needed ] The Conservative government was planning to construct a new roadway through the area.
Following "Yellow Wednesday", when hordes of police and security guards invaded the camp to bulldoze the area, the Dongas Tribe left Twyford Down for Bramdean Common. Earth First!, who had been heavily involved in the setting up and support of the camp and actions, continued the protests and restarted a camp in Plague Pits Valley.
They constituted about twenty people. Of them, seven were sent to prison in 1993 for breaking an injunction. [1] In one incident, around fifty protesters chained themselves to a bridge, leading to the arrest of some. At least one protester (Paul Kingsnorth) subsequently sued the police and received a $5000 settlement. [3]
Some of the 'original Dongas' (as they became called) of the mid-1990s were musicians who made a living by busking,[ citation needed ] sometimes using traditional music from Brittany.[ citation needed ]
The first child born in the Dongas tribe, to Rosie Lambert, was named May Brigit "Donga" Lambert and was born on 1 May 1994.[ citation needed ]
In late 2012, original members of the Dongas, as well as hundreds of others, returned to the hillside on the protest's 20th anniversary. They expressed warnings about the government's more than forty new road plans. [1]
The Dongas road protests inspired a major change in green attitudes among both the public and the government, [1] radicalizing a generation of British youth. Among them, Paul Kingsnorth of The Dark Mountain Project credits his arrest at Twyford Down as his impetus for engaging in further protests. [3]
The M3 is a motorway in England, from Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, to Eastleigh, Hampshire; a distance of approximately 59 miles (95 km). The route includes the Aldershot Urban Area, Basingstoke, Winchester, and Southampton.
Bramdean Common is situated in Bramdean, Hampshire, England. Bramdean Common is one of the many commons that served local parishioners and provided collectively owned lands which could be worked or used without the need to pay rent.
Twyford Down is an area of chalk downland lying directly to the southeast of Winchester, Hampshire, England next to St. Catherine's Hill and close to the South Downs National Park. It has been settled since pre-Roman times, and has housed a fort and a chapel, as well as being a 17th and 18th century coaching route.
The A34 is a major road in England. It runs from the A33 and M3 at Winchester in Hampshire, to the A6 and A6042 in Salford, close to Manchester City Centre. It forms a large part of the major trunk route from Southampton, via Oxford, to Birmingham, The Potteries and Manchester. For most of its length, it forms part of the former Winchester–Preston Trunk Road. Improvements to the section of road forming the Newbury Bypass around Newbury were the scene of significant direct action environmental protests in the 1990s. It is 151 miles (243 km) long.
The A33 is a major road in the counties of Berkshire and Hampshire in southern England. The road currently runs in three disjoint sections.
Twyford is a large village and civil parish in the Borough of Wokingham in Berkshire, England. It had a population of 6,618 in the 2011 Census. It is in the Thames Valley and on the A4 between Reading and Maidenhead, close to Henley-on-Thames and Wokingham.
The Newbury bypass, officially known as The Winchester-Preston Trunk Road (A34) , is a 9-mile (14 km) stretch of dual carriageway road which bypasses the town of Newbury in Berkshire, England. It is located to the west of the town and forms part of the A34 road. It opened in 1998.
Twyford is a village and civil parish in Hampshire, England, approximately three miles south of Winchester and near the M3 motorway and Twyford Down. In 2001, the population of the parish was 1,456. The village and parish are on the left bank of the Itchen, which passes through nearby watermeadows, and has been important economically for its residents.
Compton and Shawford is a civil parish in the City of Winchester district, immediately southwest of the city, in Hampshire, England. Its main settlements are the villages of Compton and Shawford.
The United Kingdom has a well developed and extensive network of roads totalling about 262,300 miles (422,100 km). Road distances are shown in miles or yards and UK speed limits are indicated in miles per hour (mph) or by the use of the national speed limit (NSL) symbol. Some vehicle categories have various lower maximum limits enforced by speed limiters. A unified numbering system is in place for Great Britain, whilst in Northern Ireland, there is no available explanation for the allocation of road numbers.
The modern environmental direct action movement in the United Kingdom started in 1991 with the formation of the first UK "Earth First!" group for a protest at Dungeness nuclear power station. Within two years, there were fifty Earth First groups and activists linked with other parties in the road protest movement. There were large camps at Twyford Down and the M11 link road protest. By 1997, the Government had decided to reduce its road-building plans by two thirds.
Paul Kingsnorth is an English writer who lives in the west of Ireland. He is a former deputy editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project.
The Transmission Gully Motorway is a 27-kilometre-long (17-mile), four-lane motorway north of Wellington, New Zealand; it is part of the State Highway 1 route. Construction began on 8 September 2014 and completion was originally scheduled for April 2020, but contractual negotiations as well as difficulties resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic caused delays. The motorway was officially opened on 30 March 2022 and opened to public traffic the following day.
The Itchen Navigation is a 10.4-mile (16.7 km) disused canal system in Hampshire, England, that provided an important trading route from Winchester to the sea at Southampton for about 150 years. Improvements to the River Itchen were authorised by act of parliament in 1665, but progress was slow, and the navigation was not declared complete until 1710. It was known as a navigation because it was essentially an improved river, with the main river channel being used for some sections, and cuts with locks used to bypass the difficult sections. Its waters are fed from the River Itchen. It provided an important method of moving goods, particularly agricultural produce and coal, between the two cities and the intervening villages.
Kingsnorth power station was a dual-fired coal and oil power station on the Hoo Peninsula at Medway in Kent, South East England. The four-unit station was operated by energy firm E.ON UK, and had a generating capacity of 2,000 megawatts. It was capable of operating on either coal or oil, though in practice oil was used only as a secondary fuel or for startup. It was also capable of co-firing biofuel, up to a maximum of 10% of the station's fuel mix. A replacement power station, also coal-fired, was considered by owners E.ON, but plans were abandoned. The proposed replacement attracted substantial public protests and criticism, including the 2008 Camp for Climate Action.
Roads for Prosperity was a controversial white paper published by the Conservative government in the United Kingdom in 1989; detailing the 'largest road building programme for the UK since the Romans' produced in response to rapid increases in car ownership and use over the previous decade. It embraced what Margaret Thatcher had described as 'the great car economy', although implementation led to widespread road protests, and many of the schemes contained within it were abandoned by 1996.
St. Catherine's Hill is a chalk downland hill and 43-hectare (110-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest on the outskirts of Winchester in Hampshire, England. It is owned by Winchester College but open to the public. It is managed by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, and topped by an Iron Age hillfort, a scheduled monument. In the Black Death, plague pits were dug in the dry valley on the south side of the hill. In the Early modern period, a mizmaze was cut on the hilltop. Winchester College football used to be played on the hill; in an old custom, members of the college assemble on the hill every year, early in the morning.
Road protests in the United Kingdom usually occur as a reaction to a stated intention by the relevant authorities to build a new road, or to modify an existing road. Reasons for opposition to opening new roads include a desire to reduce air pollution and thus not wishing to incentivise increased or sustained car usage, and/or a desire to reduce or maintain low noise pollution by not having or increasing the use of motor vehicles in the area of the planned/proposed road. Protests may also be made by those wishing to see new roads built, changes made to existing roads, or against restricting their use by motor traffic.
Rebecca Lush is a British environmental activist who helped organise a number of major anti-road initiatives, including the support organisation ‘Road Block’. She joined Transport 2000 as Roads and Climate Campaigner, exposing cost overruns, and now works for Transport Action Network in a similar role.
Aston Rowant National Nature Reserve is located on the north-west escarpment of the Chiltern Hills, in the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It has an area of 159.1 hectares, and most of it is a 128.5 hectares biological Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is listed as a Grade 1 site in A Nature Conservation Review. The reserve is in several sections, mostly in the parish of Lewknor in Oxfordshire, with smaller sections in the parish of Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire.
They called themselves Dongas ... the 15-20 urban youths who camped out to try to defend Twyford Down in 1992 are recognised to have fired up British environmental protest and kickstarted a major shift in green attitudes in both government and the public. ... some of the Donga "tribe" – named after the Matabele word for gully, which had been given by local people to hollows above Winchester
DISPATCHES (9pm C4) details the alleged dirty tricks resorted to by the Department of Transport in its determination to bulldoze the M3 motorway through Twyford Down. ... an unlikely alliance has grown up between conservationists, Nimbys and a New Age tribe called the Dongas.