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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

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.

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