CENTRE POINT
Perhaps I should join the Mooneys on the field of cloth of denim
SIMON JENKINS
Bel Mooney — Mrs Jonathan Dimble- by — jets down from Granadaland to fast for Mother Earth. Women in designer jeans drape over JCBs. Travellers weave daisy-chains and hold pagan weddings. Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell rise with the smoke from the yurt camp. Rednecks shout, 'Get an effing job!' The Swainswick bypass is the D-Day festival of the Sixties generation. Ms Mooney is their laptop Vera Lynn, warbling each day in the Mail, the Times and the Guardian.
Nimby direct action lends itself to satire. Here are the beautiful Dimblebys ensconced in their home from home. They have found a lovely valley near lovely Bath, where the locals are no less lovely and `do for you' in Somerset accents. The faxes, modems and portables all work. Every field has a crop circle. And, joy of joys, the M4's fashionable exit 17 is just over the hill. 'We're really amazingly close to London.' It was for havens such as this that England was made.
But somebody else wants their own high- way to Heaven and it passes slap through Ms Mooney's nirvana. Where she com- munes with Jane Austen, sips cider with Rosie and romances with the shades of ancient Britain, she now confronts £75 mil- lion of earth-moving equipment. Essex man could be forgiven a smile. The Dimblebys did not fast for four days when the M4 smashed through Osterley. They did not summon Fleet Street when it raped the water meadows of Windsor, careered through the Berkshire Downs and gouged the White Horse Hills, on its royal route to their Cotswold doorstep.
Now the transport department is no longer a boon and a blessing to them. It has grown horns. Innocent III has summoned a crusade. The cross of St George is raised over the feature pages of the land. No self- denial, no humiliation, no publicity is too much. 'A fever set my adrenalin going,' reported Be! from the field of cloth of denim. As the digger approached, 'I removed my pretty straw hat and lay down too.' Cue the fashion pages, the starvation experts, the aerobic advice on how to be dragged through the mud. (Lie parallel to a ley line.) So far, so much fun. But what is it that makes reasonable people — for such is Ms Mooney — take leave of her respect for democracy, break the law and encourage her daughter to do the same? Would I, or you? I sense that until somebody has driven a motorway through our back gar- den we had better not answer. I would go berserk if government action threatened my child or my health. I might take the same view of my garden. When the local council refused me a side-wall alteration, but approved a restaurant with late-night music directly opposite, I certainly pon- dered a contract killing. (Camden Council wisely denied me details of the relevant committee.) Roads are no less sensitive. Many years ago, the then Greater London Council decided to push something called the West Cross Route behind my house. I was incredulous, as if numb with bereavement. I joined some campaign and eventually the road was abandoned. The poor citizens of North Kensington were less lucky. At the same time the transport ministry wanted an elevated motorway linking Marylebone to Shepherd's Bush. This fitted no plan, being inside the GLC's ringway. It was simply some official's extravagant idea. 'Yes Min- ister' later claimed the road was for offi- cials to get to Oxford dinners more quickly. That road was indeed built, largely because the houses destroyed were poor and cheap to demolish. It is called Westway.
Such sagas destroy any faith I might have in British road planning. It is a crudely authoritarian corner of public administra- tion. The Swainswick road is not a bypass. It is part of a trunk road being driven by stealth across the landscape, proceeding as the Victorian railways did by local skirmish- es and skulduggery. Every now and then a hapless minister is pushed forward to 'deny any plans' for a trunk route. These are mere words. There is no 'plan' for the Trans-Europe Route Network from East Anglia to Wales. It is merely being thread- ed across middle England, to the rage of such grandees as Lord Bullock, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and the planning lawyer Sir Frank Layfield. Its younger sister, the Southampton-to-Bristol link, has fallen foul of the Dimbleby clan. There is a mighty battle ahead.
I have a little sympathy for officials in Whitehall's roads directorate. They are not their own masters. At least the railways had to say where they were going. The trunk roads are not revealed for fear of prejudic- ing some local inquiry or other. The result- ing secrecy makes arms-for-Iraq look like a paragon of open government. Road plan- ning is reduced to a series of crude deals, the planners trapped between the Treasury and the construction lobby. Road inquiries are designed to enrich planning lawyers. They never advise against a road or ask strategic questions. As for senior officials, they know their jobs depend on keeping in with the Treasury. Ministers come and go and are of no account.
Nothing can cut this Gordian knot. Most traffic jams can be relieved by junction widening or by mini-flyovers, such as the efficient and economical one at Chiswick's Hogarth roundabout. These structures are hated by the roads lobby as cheap. It prefers huge, land-hungry interchanges. Yet this same lobby cannot be mobilised for tunnels, such as might long ago have relieved the pressure on Bath. So transport officials ask the Treasury for the cheapest project that satisfies the roads lobby, gets permission and then goes on a war footing to defend it at inquiry. At the 1990 Bath inquiry, the department dared not admit its Southampton-Bristol highway. Instead it pretended it was building a £75 million bypass for the village of Batheaston, a bypass worthy of an egomaniacal African dictator.
Ever since Chesterton's rolling English drunkard finished work, our roads have been a disgrace. The absence of tolls means that ministers and officials feel no obliga- tion to the convenience of drivers, for instance by doing nocturnal maintenance. Roads are built that are expensive in land but cheap in landscaping. Services are stan- dardised, sparse and ugly. Information is non-existent. Only recently did Whitehall even think of apologising for delays.
Dump one of these roads in my back yard and I sense that I would do a Mooney. Those who sneer should visit the last road that the hippies and harpies tried to stop, the M3 through Twyford Down above Winchester. This great chalk gash above the Itchen Valley is an outrage. The M3 should have been in a tunnel and in any other European country it would have been. Roads there must be. But let them be fair in their planning and discreet in their execution. As long as Whitehall is staffed by secretive philistines, I am for direct action. The English landscape is the sum of a million back yards. Thank God for their defenders.
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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