Ten years ago Mike Woodin, Green Party Principal Speaker and Oxford City Councillor, who died tragically of cancer in 2004, was arrested trying to protect trees being wrongfully felled to make way for the Said Business School. Last issue, Green World reported on the arrest of Mike’s partner, Green County Councillor Deborah Glass-Woodin, who was trying to prevent the felling of seven mature plane trees in Oxford City Centre. Here Deborah tells of how she ended up in a police cell for carrying on what has now become a proud family tradition.
Over time, however, all these features were dropped. The final plan comprises little more than a bog standard shopping centre, similar to what you can find in any British town. In its present form, it does not even meet the minimum standards of the Council’s own Natural Resources Impact Assessment. We have been told that traffic increases on the radial routes into the city will mean that ‘every day will be like just before Christmas’. It puts two storeys of car park underground, adjacent to the two areas of Oxford recently hit by severe winter and summer flooding. It includes just 64 affordable houses and no pedestrianised city centre street. But hey, we’ll get a John Lewis, so what’s the big deal?
The planning process has been highly flawed. Council officers have been misrepresenting traffic figures and car parking needs and Council tenants were served transfer forms months before planning permission was sought. The developers and Council planning officers decided that the land they planned to build on was not quite big enough, so they would need to demolish a row of 14 specially adapted private and council houses, which are occupied by extremely disabled and vulnerable people. All of this was left out of the Master Plan and minimised in the planning application.
Luckily, thanks to the support and hard work of Green City Councillor Sushila Dhall, in whose ward this proposed development sits and who has been fighting it in its current form every step of the way, the demolition proposal went to Public Inquiry at the end of last year and we are awaiting the outcome. The developers have said that if they do not get permission to demolish these houses, they will abandon the whole scheme.
Just after the New Year break, while innocently cycling into the city centre on my way to County Hall, I saw some work being done on some trees alongside the multi-storey car park. On investigation, I learned that they were all to be felled. These trees were planted to mitigate the impact of city centre development by reducing pollution and softening the harsh concrete surroundings. The contractors very kindly agreed to take an extended coffee break whilst I raced off to find out what was going on. The City Council could throw no light on the matter, but a planning enforcement officer agreed to investigate and come down to see. I contacted the local press and some eco-warrior mates just in case and returned to the site.
Two hours later the police arrived and within minutes the tree felling began again. I had explained to everyone why I believed the work should not go ahead, but to no avail. At that point, with the sound of the chainsaw in the background, I ‘lost it’. I tried to get through the barriers surrounding three of the trees where the felling was being continued, but was prevented from doing so by the four security guards on the other side. Almost immediately I was arrested for ‘aggravated trespass’.
I am at present on bail, having refused to accept a caution. I agree I was aggravated but don’t believe I was trespassing, as the whole sorry affair occurred on the public highway. And, whilst the tree felling was, arguably, within the letter of the law - they have planning permission, they are their trees - it is blatantly anti-democratic to pre-empt the outcome of the Public Inquiry into the compulsory purchase of the adapted housing. If the development does not go ahead, those trees could stay.
So I was simply trying to fulfil my duty as a democratically elected representative. I am not personally a tree-hugger, but I am a democracy-lover. The Council were forced to suspend the work again due to a brief ‘tree occupation’ immediately after my arrest and the work remained suspended for some weeks, pending an internal inquiry. Unfortunately, the trees have now gone, but the fight against this insane, commercially-driven development goes on. In fact, the whole incident has resulted in a renewed wave of public interest in, and action against, the development.
