So how did you first get involved?

Before I was involved in the Free State I was doing anti-motorway campaigning, before all the protesting and tree climbing and all that stuff. I was in a group called Glasgow For People and we were fighting quite a lot of the motorways in Glasgow and the M77 was one of them so we had lots of information on it, and Colin came in to see us and I linked up with Colin and we decided that direct action was one of the ways forward. It was happening down south, Twyford Down and other places as well. The M11 and all that was kicking off at the same time and there was groups like myself who had lots of information and all this statistics and everything on it, along with the Transport 2000 who were based in London, and we got involved with it that way at the beginning.

So how did the ... First actions, is that’s what’s on Jaz’s video or was it Colin up the tree? Can you remember the first stuff you did?

I think the first stuff we did was the road blockades where we would just sit and do a 15 minute road blockade and those were the first actions that we did.

And how many people were involved?

There was ... Well, enough to get across the road and blockade it, link arms. Obviously there was only the people who were comfortable doing direct action that were doing that and there was quite a few people on the sidelines watching it and when they saw that it wasn’t a great deal and you werenae going to get dragged away and beaten up by the polis and run over by trucks, they gradually started to come round to direct action themselves. That kind of snowballed a wee bit.

But you had a camp as well, cos there’s like a tent and fire. How much ... ? Was it more that you went down every day or did people stay there from the beginning?

Well, what happened then was Colin decided he would do a nine day tree protest and we’d use that and Glasgow For People and I helped do the press releases and stuff like that for it. And so Colin was up the tree for nine days and obviously he had support down below, people sending him up food and obviously the bucket and chuck it stuff and ... So that’s how the camp slowly started off. And then they started building benders and tree houses and it just grew and grew.

At what point did it actually become known as the Pollok Free State?

Umm ... I can’t really remember. I think we just put up a big banner and started calling it Pollok Free State. Obviously there was no barricades or anything in the place. We always had an open camp but, yeah, it evolved just by putting up banners and putting up stuff along the road and then it started being called Pollok Free State and it grew and grew and grew fae there, from having stamps to having a postcode to having passports and all that kind of thing, you know?

How much was it ... ? In Jaz’s video it seems to be as much about issues of land, that this is public land ... Was that as important as the motorway issue or was it a way of tackling the motorway issue?

Well, at that point, the pre-works had all been done and I don’t think ... In my mind anyway, I’m no too sure about how Colin actually felt. We hoped that they’d see the light but in your heart you knew they were gonna build it, so what you were doing was empowering the people and bringing these issues to the fore. And yeah, there was an Aboriginal land rights flag flying in the camp so that all got discussed round about the fire and broader issues all got discussed. It wasn’t just the motorway that was talked about.

So did people see a connection with lands right issues elsewhere, like Aboriginal and American Indian and ... ?

Yeah, yeah. And obviously ... I mean, Colin even at that young age had traveled all over Europe with young groups, planting trees with tree trusts and he’d been to America and he’d been to reservations and all that kind of thing and talked to the Native Americans about all these issues and there is similarities to what happened here in the Clearances and here which was still happening in Scotland with rich outside people getting tax breaks to buy swathes of land to plant trees on to get more tax breaks in a flow country and that’s where these issues were seen here within Scotland and still are, and that’s where the right to buy and all these kind of things flourish from.

And was that an issue that local people connected to as well? As well as the environmental issues? Cos in some ways that’s more immediate.

Yeah. I think a lot of the older ones did connect to it. With the discussions and it was discussions and debate and ... Healthy debate and discussion round the fire and people being given books to read and stuff like that. They come up ... With the young people it was mostly what was happening in their back garden that was more immediate to them, it was what they could see. The large great issues, I don’t think they took a lot of that on.

Then with ... What was it like when you were actually doing the barricades and doing stuff with the tree cutters and stuff like that? What was the relationship with the actual men who were the workers that had to deal with that, from their side?

Emm ... Obviously they were just there for the money. It was a big contract for them, they could just see money. When they started to talk to us, just guys the same as ourselves. We just started to talk to them, when they were getting cold and hungry and you were getting them cups of tea and pieces ... The argument wasn’t with them directly, targeting them personally in any way whatsoever ... It was the issues with what was happening to the woodlands. Pollok Estate ... The council always played this up: “Oh, we’re not going through Pollok Park.” And all our leaflets and every single bit we did in our leaflets, not once did we say it was going through Pollok Park. We always mentioned it was Pollok Estate that was gifted to the people of Glasgow. Then of course you had other woodlands throughout the motorway that were getting taken down. You got on fine with them after a while. You’d say good morning to each other and stuff like that, you know? Yeah, after the first actions, when they turned up and you locked yourself inside their Landrovers and all that because ... “Oh!” They started to learn that we were doing direct actions, we weren’t going to hurt anybody and there was no threats or anything like that about. There was training done, direct action training done, so that people who were gonna take part understood about the non-violence, that it was non-violent direct action. A lot of that came from the first stuff that was done in the States and the Earth First group throughout Europe. There was quite a big connection with the Earth First groups. The UK was quite a big connection. So yeah, it actually started hitting national news and stuff like that as well.

There was quite a number of the security guards that resigned.

Yeah. I think standing there looking at people having cups of tea and eating meals and sharing things, they thought: “What am I doing here? I’ll take off my jacket and get myself a cup of tea!” (laughs) And a few of them actually started to agree with you. They were people who had just taken straight off ... There was about four hundred of them or something at one point, all taken straight off to earn a few quid. They didn’t know the issues but once they started to know them they started to think about it themselves. There was one point when one of the lads went around with a big mirror and they were all standing there in a line and they just took the mirror and showed them theirselves in the mirror. I think they were all a wee bit shocked seeing themselves in these hard hats and hi-viz jackets and going: “Why am I ...? I’m not against these people. I don’t agree with the motorway. Why am I actually doing this job?” And it wasn’t a great number of them but there was a few of them that did.

And was it the case they’d been misled about what the work ... ?

I don’t think they’d been misled. It was kind of maybe offered ... I don’t know what the wages were so ... You’re on the brew, you’re offered so much money to put on a hi-viz jacket and that: “Oh aye, I’ll do it!” There was a few of them that a wee bit, once they put on the jackets and the hardhats on, they got a wee bit power crazy, you know?

Then with the ... What was the relationship like between people that had come from an activist background and were familiar with that way of doing protest and people that had come from the local community?

You see, the thing was that you wouldn’t ask people just to come and do a direct action. All the actions were usually planned. People knew what their role within that action was. It was always instilled that it was non-violent direct action. It was always instilled: “These are the consequence, you might get arrested, taken away. You might get a 60 quid fine. You’ll probably get charged for breach of the peace and that’s about it.” So, yeah, it wasn’t just: “Come along!” because if you had that, there’d be no control. The action wouldn’t happen as it should. There’d be no surprise, no some people leading the security away to one side and then the other ones just waiting to go through. So it was all quite well planned.

So moving on to the GalGael. The GalGael evolved out of the Pollok Free State. What did you think are they key strands that connect the Free State with the GalGael?

The main strands ... Obviously we saw the motorway being built. It wasn’t that ... Colin and Gehan didn’t abandon the camp.There was the bigger picture being looked at, talked about. A lot of the Earth First kind of people and crusties and all them ... Where were we? How the GalGael evolved. That’s what it did, it evolved out of it. A lot of the Earth First people, the crusties, were ones who went to Faslane Peace Camp or moved on to another camp. There was quite a lot of that tangent ... almost professional protestors, lifestyle. So they moved on to different places. Colin and Gehan stayed on. There was still quite a lot of activity. We had carving and all that stuff and we had Berryknowes’ Boys come down on a Tuesday and did a wee bit of gardening and planted stuff and sat around the fire and talked again, and they really enjoyed coming down so every Tuesday for a year and a half or something, they came down. It was great to see them and there was other activities and stuff happening. There was talks about what we’d be doing ourselves after this and obviously there was a wee silver Birlin found in the Free State. Gehan will probably tell you that story better than myself. And the GalGael evolved out of that and we knew that we didn’t want to just be going to signing on the brew and doing nothing. We’re all quite active people, all did lots of stuff within the communities so that’s where I see the GalGael evolving out and how it came about and there was actually a declaration and everything read down at the Free State and we called it a Wolf Night. Colin did a carving of a wolf, a big totem pole. The declaration was read out and there must’ve been 30 or 40 people there or something and it carried on from there and it was obviously Colin’s energy that took it forward! And Gehan’s, I must say.

Do you think ... ? Does the GalGael connect with people in a different way from the Free State?

I think ... Obviously, because of the kind of ... Cos in the Free State we had all sorts of ... We had architects and people doing law and students and professionals and ... They’d bring their children down for the day, you know? Cos we’d built lovely paths and everything, the place was ... It’s not like it is now. I look at that and that’s why I say: “That’s why people are good for woodlands, cos look what we had there.” It was beautiful. We had it all cleaned up there. We had saplings and quite a lot of wee trees that are still growing down there today and people came visiting. It was a day out, a free day out! There was always a cup of tea there, hopefully they brought some biscuits. It was part of our learning curve and our interaction between people. So I’m not too sure you can say it’s the same or different but we certainly learned an awful lot during that time. It was kind of like our apprentice of what we did, you know?

Do the broader issues of the Free State and what you’re doing have a significance in Glasgow now and what’s happening now?

I think they do because one of the biggest events we had was a march from Blythwood Square to the Free State and that was probably one of the biggest marches in Glasgow in recent times. It’s hard to get people out of their houses nowadays. It’s hard to get people marching for what they believe but we had certainly tens of thousands of people on that march and it was an awful long march. It wasn’t from George Square to Glasgow Green, this was miles of marching. Very colourful, very musical, and I think a lot of people got empowered through that. I think a lot of people through reading ... We got massive amounts of publicity through the media. We were ... Because of the style that we did things in, because we were colourful, we were very photogenic ... It’s pretty much the same here as well. I think we did have an impact on the city and people within the city and it wasn’t just people from Pollok. We had people from all over Glasgow join in and they learned... You’ll even see that the now. During the budget, the Tories dressing up with their masks and all that on, as the Chancellor, getting their photograph in the paper. They’ve learned their lesson from us in how to protest and how to do things and I think that lesson is quite high now. Well, quite well learnt and quite broadly learnt. If people are going to disagree with something happening within their communities, they think about what we had done in the past. They say: “Well, let’s have a protest or let’s do this or let’s have an action or ...” They’ll stand outside with their banners or they’ll do some publicity stunt to get people knowing about it and, even today, the developments within Pollok Park itself, of Go Ape, you’ve got over 400 people, 500 people, going to public meetings and I think a lot of that probably evolved out of the people realising what they’ve got there, their precious bit of woodlands that they’ve still got left, and that’s why they’ve got so many people up in arms and campaigning against that.