For me, the journey started with me being involved in setting up local Greenpeace groups over the previous couple of years and with Pollok it was kind of funny. I was going away to travel around South East Asia for a year. I used to run my own wee catering business. When I was 27 I had sold it. I was going off travelling for a year. As I was going, actually, I remember seeing the Evening Times, I think it was, and there was a story about what they were calling the Bird Man of Pollok or the Tree Man or Bird Man of Pollok and there was a picture of who I subsequently found out was Colin in a hammock up a tree just off the Barrhead Road, so it was kind of those nice kind of funny coincidences that was literally the last newspaper I saw before I went away and then traveled for a year.

During that year I bumped into Greenpeace, the Rainbow Warrior which, for me, was interesting compared to being in just a wee local group and raising money for them and doing things as part of the local groups network. By the time I came back at the end of that year, I was a little pissed off with what I’d seen from Greenpeace. Didn’t strike me that they were raising ... that they were using effectively enough the ten pence pieces that I was raising in the pubs and on the streets of Glasgow for them and, at the same time, my knowledge of the environmental crisis that we face had increased so when I came back I came back with a mood to change our local Greenpeace group into being a group that did things for itself in Scotland ... In Glasgow and in Scotland or at least that was what I was now going to do so I wasn’t going to spend my time raising money for Greenpeace. I was going to participate in environmental campaigns on my own doorstep. And within a short period of being home, maybe a month or so, somebody had called a meeting for this thing that they called ‘Earth First!’ ... During the year that I’d been away, the roads protests in England had started and I’d seen them in the media, when I’d been travelling in Australia for example. So, Twyford Downs in particular, and those roads protests down south, were on people’s lips when I came back and then, as I say, a meeting was organised. I think ... I can’t remember ... Charles Kennedy, I think was the name of the guy maybe involved with the Green Party or Friends Of The Earth or different environment groups like that in Glasgow, called a meeting up at Glasgow University, at some halls up by Glasgow University, and invited people from the local Greenpeace group, Friends Of The Earth, Glasgow For People, The Green Party and a bunch of other likely suspects, and had a meeting that he called Earth First!. So that was the first time I had heard about it and went along.

And when did you first go to Pollok itself? Or when did Earth First! and Pollok, or M77, get together?

Well, somehow they were together. I think Colin was at that initial meeting of what became Glasgow Earth First!. If he wasn’t at the first one he was certainly at one of the early ones, possibly even Gehan was there as well or was at least connected through other people in Edinburgh with it. So when that 20 to 40 people met and then again another couple of times to talk about what Earth First! might be or might do ... so right there Pollok was being discussed, the M77 was being discussed. I think, basically, because Colin was there and was one of the people putting it on the agenda, I think also people from Glasgow For People were at those initial meetings and were putting it on the agenda. And it was kind of decided that Glasgow Earth First! ... Initially it was decided that it wouldn’t focus on any one thing. It would just take direct action on environmental issues, whatever ones the group felt enough concern about to do something about next. It wasn’t more sophisticated than that. Subsequently, quite quickly after a period of a month or two, that focus became much more the M77. Partly that was just the reality. The first two activities ... The very first activity that we made as Glasgow Earth First! was to go and disrupt and occupy a meeting of building companies who were interested in quarrying what they called the Harris Superquarry and it was Gehan and other people in Edinburgh who effectively organised us to go and make that protest. And so right away we were in an anti-roads protest and yeah ... So yeah, the link with Pollok was kind of there from the start. Really the only other things that Glasgow Earth First! ever did outside of the M77 in Pollok campaign was to strongly support the Faslane Peace Camp and the activities at Faslane and, occasionally, to go and support other anti-roads protests in other parts of the country. A few individuals went to participate in that and, at one stage, a group of us went to Berlin to get involved in the climate change conference, COP2 ... COP2 or COP3 in Berlin at some point but that was more as a busman’s holiday. So the link with Pollok was there from day one and it’s interesting to me cos since those times I hear people talking about it as if the two things were separate. There was the Pollok Free State and the camp and there was Earth First!, as if they were two separate bodies in some way but that’s not my memory or recollection of the thing. They kind of started together. As I say, the first activity was against the Harris Superquarry. The very next activity was that the decision was taken to make a protest at the Roads and Transport Department in Glasgow. I was one of the ... We all organised the things. I organised some of the basic logistics for it where we occupied the Roads and Transport Department and the focus of that was the M77 and the rest of the motorway-building programme. So the two things were there together from the start. About three or four months into these things starting to happen and those sorts of actions starting to happen, Colin said again that he wanted to start the camp in Pollok again and to make a camp at the site of the road bed and that’s what he was going to do, so it was more of an announcement than a question, but it was an announcement that was generally welcomed by everybody and it was kind of taken as a joint decision to do.

And you had a presence at the camp? Cos there’s Earth First! banners and ...

Well, this is the thing. I mean, that’s what I find it funny to hear subsequently, that in some people’s minds they were two completely separate beasts. The personnel were interchangeable and ... Yeah, it was much more fluid than I’ve heard it painted by some people. There wasn’t ... More of a separation came in time because over time there started to be a vibe that the camp is different, the camp is separate, if you’re not living in the camp then you’re not really part of the protest. If you’re not here full time, twenty four seven, you’re not committed enough. You’re not part of the gang. And that, frankly, started to create divisions that previously hadn’t existed in the campaign and that were entirely negative and I think caused problems for us, both for individuals and for any degree of ... Well, there was never much structure but yeah, putting those sorts of divisions in wasn’t helpful, basically.

And we were chatting earlier about the Pollok residents’ groups and tenants’ groups. At what point were they involved in that early process? At what point did they start to be ... ?

Well, see, my understanding was a lot of those groups had pre-dated the direct action protests so you had Glasgow For People coming out of Friends Of The Earth, forming a kind of anti-roads, anti-motorway, campaigning group in Glasgow, supported by residents associations, community councils, all across Glasgow and they had worked at that kind of policy level for a couple of years, petitions, public enquiries and so on. So in relation to Pollok, my understanding of the history is that you had the likes of Walter Morrison, community councilor at Corkerhill, who had been objecting to the motorway for five years, ten years, before I ever heard about it or got involved and I think the same was true of other community councils around the area. Where we started to interact with them was kind of funny because you had Glasgow For People then, were effectively the main ... I don’t go for these definitions but the main middle-class policy-orientated campaign lobby group that were working on the issue. They then had the links with the community councils. They had links with other environmental organisations. I can’t remember everybody that was in that STARR Alliance just now but there was wildlife trusts and other preservation bodies, if you like, more mainstream environmental and community organisations. Glasgow For People was mainly the link with them and I know Colin had contact with and possibly involvement with Glasgow for People before the initial direct action protests. So they had done all of the normal campaign things, petitions, signatures, representation letters, before Colin took his first actions and before Glasgow Earth First! was ever talked about.

They then ... Well, no, at some point ... I think the STARR Alliance, the Stop The Ayr Road Route Alliance, was formed but, like many things in this campaign, it’s formation was never part of some structured plan. Literally what happened was that Ian Bogle, who was the campaign officer for Glasgow For People, turned up at the demonstration on the day that we occupied the Roads and Transport Department offices and on that day he was distributing a leaflet, a wee A5 leaflet, under the name of the STARR Alliance and it had a paragraph about what the STARR Alliance was, an alliance of people campaigning. That was the first time I’d heard about it. I think it was the first time anybody had heard about it. I think it was a creation of Ian and Alice at Glasgow For People in the couple of days before it and my understanding of the rationale behind that leaflet was, effectively, that Glasgow For People recognised the legitimacy of groups like Earth First! taking direct action, recognised that they would want to be on the same side but wanted a little bit of arms length separation in terms of being involved with that sort of direct action. So somewhere in those rationales there came a Stop The Ayr Road Route Alliance, which would then allow all manner of bodies to sign up to it, Glasgow For People in theory being one of them. But it was a Glasgow For People creation. What then happened with it was that indeed Glasgow For People used effectively their existing mailing list to get their existing NGOs and wildlife groups and community councils to sign on to the campaign as well as Earth First! and other direct action groups. At some point I became the ... I can’t remember exactly what my role was. I was one of the signatories to the bank account for it but, again, how that came around was very simple. Glasgow For People had it’s own funding mechanisms, generally donations and whatever, but it had it’s own funding mechanisms for a number of years. When we occupied the Roads and Transport Department and made a couple of other actions and media events, it gained a lot of media attention and public attention to the issue and people started sending donations in to the STARR Alliance. And at some stage, of course, I asked Ian Bogle from Glasgow For People: “What happens with the money that’s coming in? The money seems to be coming in because we’re taking direct action and creating a lot of publicity but I’m just curious where the money actually goes and what it gets used for,” and at that stage the money was indeed coming in and it was just being used to maintain the ongoing functions of Glasgow For People, where I thought that it should be perhaps used to fund the campaign, be that the camp at Pollok or the costs of direct action. When we first occupied, for example, the Roads and Transport Department, we had zero money. The money was raised by Glasgow Earth First! by doing pub collections which me and others did. Or, in the first place, by me using my savings to buy chains and padlocks! (laughs) Long story.

At what point did you get hold of the video camera? How did that come about?

I think it was quite some time into the campaign. The campaign’s main period was from about April of whichever year it was to about April the following year, so I think it was six months ... three, four, five months into the campaign. We had made a number of events, actions, and had been successful in getting various TV coverage, TV debate shows and other things. So we had deveoped a relatively high profile for the campaign and we were using a guy called Robert’s front room as the campaign office for Earth First! and we got a phone call, one day. We were putting out his phone number and we got a phonecall from BBC Video Nation: “Hi, how you doing? We want to give camcorders to interesting members of the public.” So we had reservations about it but basically we had zero money and zero equipment and it was clear that a camcorder could be useful for us. Primarily we took it in order to have something to defend ourselves with because you can be accused of all manner of things if you don’t have any evidence. So having a video camera was primarily a defensive tool for us, defence against police activity, defence against security or company activity and, at the same time of course, the opportunity to shoot footage that we would have access to that maybe the TV companies wouldn’t have access to and then make it available.

There was an interesting group working in England at the time, Small World Media, who were making video productions called Undercurrents, which we had all seen and thought was fantastic. So this was the news that the mainstream news isn’t telling you about. This is people with their own video cameras videoing their own protests and sharing it with other people. So, for that combination of reasons, when we got the phonecall from Video Nation, it was interesting and we said: “Okay, yeah. Come and talk to us.” So what they did was they had heard my name, I did some of the higher profile media things including some of the debate shows, and they had initially asked if I would be the person. We decided to have a wee process, so there were three or four people they came and interviewed, and at the end they decided that they wanted the one with the big mouth, which was me. So yeah, that was it. They gave us the video camera and we did some stuff for Video Nation. Four, five, six minutes or whatever used on national TV and some of that &'squo;a little bit staged’ and not exactly getting our core messages out. Some of it did, some of it didn’t. For the rest of it, frankly, we got a lot of free video tape that we were able to use for our own purposes. I’m sure the BBC will hear that and it won’t come as any surprise to them but most often really for use in defending ourself in court cases or for evidence.

And this was quite an early time for video to be getting used?

I think so. This was Hi8 video which was not quite TV quality, they say, but kind of usable. So I think it was quite early and obviously the TV and those Undercurrents things and getting those images out, catching different images and getting them out, was a very interesting thing. For me it was very interesting. TV and film are so much part of our society nowadays and even then were so much a part of how people were getting their information. So it was obviously important to interact with them in a more controllable way. Not that we ever had much control over it, but it was certainly something interesting for us to access. Yeah, I don’t know how much more I would say on the Video Nation stuff. We needed the camera, they offered it for free and free film to go with it and the training how to use it and at least a few minutes on prime time TV to get our message across. For us it was a good combination! (laughs) In fact, I think it was ... I think the essence of that programme was a good one. I think it got slightly corrupted because what started as a film of your normal day, albeit you can choose who your normal people are to film their normal day, and of course we weren’t normal! (laughs) Of course we were, just in an abnormal situation. But it became that they would want you to film something about: “There was something on the TV recently, what’s your comment about it?” Which is trash basically, so we tried to avoid that stuff and more or less just abuse the facilities that the BBC were making available for us so’s that we could use them for our ends, to win the protest.

And more broadly with the media ... ? You were saying you were in some of the media coverage so you were quite heavily involved in getting the press to cover ... ?

My analysis ... I don’t know about anybody else’s analysis. My analysis going into these things, when I decided to get more involved in direct action things, was that I’d watched over my youth and early 20s, my political development if you like. I had watched movement after movement, good cause after good cause, lose the battle in the media and therefore lose the battle. And I had no experience but the conviction that it could be done better and that it was something that we should take seriously and that we should do better. If we didn’t put our point of view across well, then it would be put across badly for us and would cost us the campaign. Regardless of what we did right or wrong, the perception of what we were doing in the media ... as today with so many things, right or wrong ... Media headlines, and what those headlines are, so often become reality. So I was determined that we would be better at that so it was one of the things that I did in the campaign. I wrote the press releases, I kept press lists, I pro-actively contacted media and, amongst other things, ensured that we got on to TV debate shows and did also a memorable piece on national TV with Channel 4. But for me it was a very difficult thing. Not only I didn’t have the experience nor the equipment ... As I said before but I’ll repeat it on the tape. When we first started out, to do press releases for us was a case of ... We had an old type writer that somebody had given us where you click-clack-clicked letter by letter and you tippexed out on the page, so it was no word processing or anything else. And then we photocopied it for ten pence a time at the local library and, literally, somebody cycled with a copy of it to the Daily Record’s front desk and handed it in for the press desk. This and a telephone was the level of sophistication. We eventually stepped up to a fax machine after a long time. But the press work was ... For me, it was a crucial part of the campaign. I would like to think that it was. By doing it we got a volume of media attention and in doing that we reached an awful lot of people, both support for the campaign and political weight to the campaign. But for me it was very much a double edged sword. Yeah. I faced a lot of opposition and strangeness within the campaign: “We don’t want to be media whores! You just want to get your face on the telly! Who do you think you are?” Which very quickly, as soon as we were getting the coverage, really became: “I want to be the spokesperson, why am I not getting a chance to have my face on the TV?” So from a direct action side, you always have to be careful of creating personalities in any campaign but frankly I would say I got my fingers burnt with it. Frankly, I would say I got my fingers burnt in a number of ways with the campaign. Frankly, I would say I took more stabs in the back than frontal assaults from the forces that I expected and the media was one example of that, internally. And indeed I think we started to lose it in the second half as, frankly, I lost control of the work that we were doing in the media. The message became whatever anybody thought of that day and became completely diffuse, didn’t serve us and, indeed, towards the end was back in the position I didn’t want it to be in in the first place, which was that we were losing the battle in the media. We had become hippies, druggies, so altenative that we were so far out of the debate that we were very easy to sideline, whereas what I’d been trying to do was put us at least in control of our media messaging and, frankly I think, I did a good job of that in the initial stages when I had more control over it. We were very basic with what we did on it.

I think the early stuff, like the Bird Man ... That’s the really only stuff, like the Bird Man. And that’s kind of like: “Well, there’s this guy up a tree!” It’s just presented like a sort of weird thing and the story was not that the M77 was coming in, but it was more the fact that the guy was up the tree. And it’s kind of sympathetic. The attitude seems to be: “That’s odd but we understand why he’s doing it,” and then at some point the coverage seems to become quite petty journalism. It’s very much fixated on the lifestyle approach and the personality of people in the camp or just the fact they look different.

This, to me, was the problem. Then when we started doing the actions, you’ll see in the press cuttings file we’ve got, the very first press cutting that I put in there is the first major activity that I was involved in and the Earth First! group was involved in which was the occupation of the Roads and Transport Department. Now that’s interesting because as soon as you start doing any direct action, you always risk that your media coverage focuses on the action rather than on the message and it’s a dilemma always for direct action because you need to do the action because you’re not getting enough attention, and you need to put attention on the issue, but the media has a tendency to want to sensationalise the action. Indeed you’re doing a sensational action in order to get their attention but the trick is not to end up sensationalised and to create a platform to deliver your message; not to become sensationalised in that way and that’s certainly what I tried to do with the press releases we put out, referencing official governement reports, talking about the pollution, some of the other aspects of it. But yeah, as I say, importantly I think we did a number of TV debate shows and it’s probably worth ... The TV debate shows, the Words With Wark show that we did down in Ayrshire and the later Channel 4 piece are specifically interesting because in terms of jumbo media, or bigger media, they were probably the two bigger ones. The rest was ... aside from the Alan Stewart case. The rest was a lot of newspaper and local radio and national Scottish media, which was great.

As I say, at some stage, yes. Personally it became: “Lindsay, we don’t want you to be the media person because who the hell do you think you are? Nobody should be so famous or anything else but I want to be!” And indeed if you look through the coverage, you’ll find that the people that within the camp were saying we should have no media personalities, look at the photographs and the coverage that you’ll see of the second half of the campaign and frankly, some people became the media personalities that they said nobody should be and they allowed themselves to get sucked into personality profiles when, again, they had said that should never happen and it was clear that that would be a mistake to happen. But they went for it as soon as the cameras were shining in their direction and it was a mistake. Yeah, for me that was a problem. But such is the nature of the beast and there was no ... We were all just making it up as we were going along. So I just did what I could. I worked on some TV things.

I approached TV producers so at the time, one of the biggest debate programmes in Scotland was Words With Wark. Kirsty Wark, who is still a well known TV presenter, had a weekly or monthly or whatever it was debate show and I managed to persuade them to include the M77 in it so, at short notice, they said yes and invited me down. They were having a program at the Pavilion in Ayr and included the M77 in there. I think I was the only person invited down to speak against the motorway. But it was Phil Galley MP and a bunch of other people. So it was interesting but it got us a chunk of media and got the message out across the country and also it meant we could air some of the debate and actually be talking about some of the facts about motorway construction, pollution, asthma, community exclusion, cutting people off from Pollok Park ... And then the other big piece, which was very controversial, was the Channel 4 piece that we got done.

This was at the time when across the UK the media were talking about, oh, your ’Swampy’ and anti-roads protestors and the debate was turning to be: “violent anti-roads protestors,” “spiked man traps.” You’ll see on some of the media coverage Charlie Gordon, the Glasgow City councillor mainly responsible for pushing through this motorway, giving interviews to the media in Glasgow and phoning the police in Glasgow and getting people out to investigate man traps, spiked man traps, being laid to kill council workers by these crazy violent protestors. As much nonsense, lies and bullshit as you could ever imagine but this was becoming the perception and while I had been talking with production companies about national coverage and about general coverage, one of the answers that came back to me was: “No actually, the only thing I could get on TV about your roads protest just now would be if you would give me an undercover footage of violent protests, of protestors destroying machinery.” And my answer to that TV executive at the time was: “But we don’t do that, this is not the reality of our protest. We have a peaceful protest, we don’t do those things.” “Well that’s the only stuff I could get on TV. If you couldn’t get me footage like that then I can’t even get Channel 4 interested.” So what I did was, in that second, I decided to take a chance and I looked him in the eye and said: “You phone Channel 4 and I’ll make sure they get the footage that’ll be interesting.” And that’s what happened. Channel 4 became interested, expecting, I think, that they would get footage of violent destruction of equipment. I hadn’t promised that. I couldn’t promise that, it wasn’t the reality. It wasn’t happening so ... but I wanted the TV coverage. What they wanted was scenes of violence and property destruction, but I think I was smart enough to know that once you book your production dates and your production team and you schedule a thing, you’ll shoot the damn footage that I make available for you and then you’ll use it. And that is what subsequently happened.

I had the tricky job. Often on the campaign I found myself to be in the middle of different groupings and different peoples, between Earth First! and the camp, between Earth First! and Glasgow For People, between the environmentalists and the socialists, between the camp and the local community people, between Earth First! and the camp, and Glasgow For People and the media. Frankly, I don’t mind the role of being in the middle, except you get stabbed in the back from all sides, if that’s the job that needs to get done. But with that particular one you can imagine ... I just had this discussion with the TV guys and I know what I now have to deal with from there. Yeah, we have different expectations of what the reality’s going to be. Now I have to go back and talk to the Earth Firsters and Colin and the people at the camp and say: “Well, I have Channel 4 interested in doing a national coverage which will be useful for the anti-roads protest movement across the UK. My intention is to use it to turn around the perception. They’re coming thinking that they’re gonna film violence. My intention is to play a game with them and indeed to give them the opposite view and to force them into having a national TV piece which shows us as non-violent, peaceful and fluffy. In order to do that I require also your cooperation.” Now the first answer I got from the people at the camp and from my fellow Earth Firsters was: “Who the fuck do you think you are, you media whore?” So I had a number of dramas to work out there but indeed, when you look back on the piece, what you will find is that they’re interviewing Charlie Gordon who’s saying: “Violent protestors, blah, blah, blah,” and the guy at Channel 4 cuts to a nice wee scene on the camp with Jimmy cycling about on his bike with a wee trailer on the back of it and a tree with the word ‘spiked’ written on it, where we had hammered some nails into the trees to stop them being chopped down, and he comes away with a beautiful sound byte: “Well, some people say they’re violent protestors but they don’t look like violent protestors to us. What we found was ... ” and then showed the reality that we had. So, yeah. Long story but there was a number of ... Yeah, there was a couple of media things that we did that were quite deliberate, if you like, but were tricky balances to pull up, both in the media and within the campaigning organisations.

Do you think the fact that it was in Glasgow and the kind of popular media stereotype of Glasgow fed that at all?

I don’t know. I think there were two things that worked there. One was a genereal reaction against the success of the anti-motorway protests across the UK. It was an establishment kickback against the success of those campaigns so they’d feed stories into the media about protestors being violent which then allows you to have a violent police response and to beat up the protestors. Fairly standard, as far as I can see. As soon as social movements start to become viable or to get close to making any change, somebody starts feeding the media with: “Oh, but they might be violent and we expect the next protest to be violent and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” and then the next thing that you know is there’s a bunch of riot cops hitting peaceful protestors over the head with big sticks and then no more protest. So I think that’s what was generally happening. Of course ... I mean, the camp was in the middle of some of the most deprived housing areas in Glasgow and violence in and around the camp was a reality that we also had to deal with.

I guess there was one violent incident though which kind of switched that relationship around which was Alan Stewart, where you had the Tory councillor attacking protestors.

Yes. The violence that we had had at the camp previous to that was effectively your fairly ...unfortunately, fairly typical Friday night, Saturday night poverty violence, you know? People would be drunk or these sorts of things. That had to be dealt with at the camp as it would be in any social gathering, unfortunately, in most towns and cities in the UK on a Friday and Saturday night. But yes, it certainly did get turned around when Alan Stewart and a group of people came and attacked the camp. Basically, Alan Stewart attacked the camp.

What had happened was that it was four or five days into the tree felling starting and they didn’t start chopping the trees down at Pollok, where we had the camp. They started chopping them down about four miles up the road. Is it Eastwood you call that area at the woods? Patterton woods up on ... I think it’s Eastwood the area’s called. We hadn’t prepared anything up there at all during the previous year. We didn’t have a camp set up there, we didn’t have the trees protected there, we had barely even looked up there. We could only do what we could do. But when we knew the tree cutters were coming we started surveying the whole route of the roads every day and we found them cutting up at Patterton. So we made a couple of initial activities to stop them doing that on the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and on the Saturday and Sunday we had found an old pre-fab building that we occupied. So we were cleaning it out, tidying it up, to have people sleeping there ready for protecting the trees on the Monday and on the Sunday afternoon a bunch of guys arrived, about ten guys arrived, and we heard shouting and screaming from outside and one of the girls, one of the young women from the campaign, was outside and I heard her shouting and I went out and found this group of eight to ten guys standing looking like a team of some kind. And this big guy at the front, screaming. He was in the girl’s face. He was practically spitting on her face, shouting and screaming: “Dirty sluts!” and “You people should all go home,” and he was ripping down banners and just: “You people are all scum!” and “Get off our land!” and so on. But really a kind of violent attitude and violent shouting and it was like: “Woah! What’s going on here? Who is this guy?” Didn’t know who he was at that time, he wasn’t dressed as an MP. He was dressed in a parka and kind of normal clothes if you like.

We had quite a few people in the building at the time, so they all came out and it looked like we were under attack. It looked like these ten guys were here to fight with us in some way. And this guy was right in people’s faces, shouting at everybody that came out the door, but something about it seemed strange and wrong to me. It looked as if this guy was trying to provoke us into a reaction. And, of course, instantly people were angry and upset: “Who’s this?” and with a mood to defend themselves a little. But I had some standing in the group and I was literally one of the first out the door and I knew there was something wrong with this scene. I don’t know what it was but I knew something wasn’t right about it. And thankfully I recognised in the group of people behind this guy a guy from Wimpy Construction, a guy called Dan Pollard who I had engaged with at Wimpy Construction. Amongst other things, we had gone down to London to occupy Wimpy’s offices and I’d met Dan Pollard that day and I recognised him in the group. So I knew it wasn’t just this violent group of individuals if a senior manager from Wimpy Construction was there, but I couldn’t work out what this nutter at the front was doing or trying to provoke. So I kind of said to all of our people: “Woah, wait! Hold it! Step back, let’s stay calm. Let’s us be the calm ones here and we’ll try and work out what’s happening. Let me talk to this guy, I’ll see if I can work it out.” And the people around me said: “Yeah, okay. Do that.” And I went to speak to this guy who started just shouting and screaming in my face that we were scum, we were everything, we were dirty, smelly ... You name it. And really nose to nose with the guy screaming in my face, practically spitting in my face. And at some stage ... I had done various non-violence training in the past so I literally put my hands in my pocket, lowered my tone of voice and tried to breathe and just speak calmly to the guy and say: “Hold on a second, I don’t know who you are or why you’re threatening people or acting violent.” And the guy’s reaction to that was to grab me by the lapels, shake me a few times and then throw me to the ground. So I got up and, as I was getting up, I said to two of the people who were there, two of our people: “Okay, everybody please remember what you’re seeing, we will be acting as witness later and could you two please run to the nearest house and phone the police?” “I don’t know where the house is!” Cos we didn’t have mobile phones in those days or anything: “Please, just go, nearest house. Phone the police. There’s something wrong here. I don’t know what it is but these guys are being violent and I’ll be making a charge of assault against this guy for sure. Please go and phone the police.” So they went to go and phone the police and I also turned to another guy who was there with us, a guy George who was a photographer, and said: “George, you’re a photographer but I don’t see a camera in your hand. Why don’t you put a camera in your hand and start getting their faces. There’s something wrong here, let’s start pointing a camera at these people. Make sure we have some evidence of what’s going on here. I don’t know what’s going on but I want pictures of these people, please go and get the camera.”

So George went to get the camera and, at that, the guy backed off a little, started talking to the group, and then he took a few paces and spotted a pickaxe lying. We had been using pickaxes to clear some of the undergrowth for putting in tents and stuff. Then the guy picked up the pickaxe, came back around to me and the rest of the group and basically threatened us with the pickaxe, you know? “Woah, I’ve got the pickaxe now eh? How does it feel now? I’ll threaten you guys ...” and blah, blah, blah and then as George came out from the building with his camera and lifted his camera to take the picture, you saw the lightbulbs go on in the guys eyes and as George’s camera came up, the pickaxe went down. But the guy didn’t know if we had a photograph of him carrying the pickaxe or not. As it turns out we didn’t have but he didn’t know it. So that was kind of it and at this stage we still didn’t know who this guy was. All I knew was this guy Dan Pollard was there. The rest of the group we didn’t recognise at all.

Most of the rest of the group didn’t participate. They just stood back while he did all the shouting and balling and throwing me to the ground and threatening people with the pickaxe. And then they kept walking a wee bit towards to go in to Patterton woods and, again, at that stage I said to a different two people: “Okay, can you two now go in that direction and find a house and phone the police.” “I thought you just sent the other two?” “That’s right, I did just send the other two. Now I’m asking you two to go and do it as well because I want this recorded at least twice. So please.” “Yeah, okay. No problem Lindsay.” So they went off to make phonecalls to the police as well. The group stopped and had a wee chat. This guy, Alan Stewart, his group stopped and had a wee chat and you could see lightbulbs going on. This wasn’t working out the way they wanted it to work out. They might now be photographed being violent and I had George taking everybody’s photograph to make sure that we knew they were there. We hadn’t reacted violently and it was obvious to them that I had sent people to go and phone the police so at that stage they decided to cancel their tour and they decided to walk back to their vehicles and they were then going to get in their cars that were parked at the side of the road at Patterton wood and were going to drive off, end of scene.

So I still didn’t know who the guy was or what was going on but I knew something was going on and I knew we were in the right so what I then asked my colleagues to do was ... Well, we always had chains and padlocks and handcuffs with us at the time. This was our standard business, chaining ourselves to trees at the time. So what we did was we chained people underneath the cars and what I told them was: “Well, you can leave but your vehicle and your vehicle registration will be staying here so that we have definite evidence that you were here. I don’t who you are or what’s going on ...” and as I was having that conversation with them and as we were waiting for police to arrive, it was big Tam ... I never ever knew Tam’s second name. I think he’s died since. A brilliant, brilliant character, Big Tam, and Big Tam’s come over to me and said: “Eh, Lindsay. I think I recognise that guy there. I think he’s Alan Stewart, the Conservative MP!” And as I looked, of course that’s who it was. The big sideburns were his trademark but up to that point we hadn’t known who it was. So, yes indeed, it was Alan Stewart the Tory MP. And the other thing that Tam said to me there and then, which was interesting and which kicked my own memory instantly, was: “And I think he’s had a drink. Can you no smell it off his breath?” Now Big Tam liked a drink himself so he would tend to know about these things! And he’d been the other person close enough for the guy to know. And as Tam said it to me it instantly played back in my brain: “Well, yeah, that’s what’s the smell was as he was practically spitting into my face.” A drink had obviously been taken so that became a significant factor as well. Partly explains the guys actions, frankly.

So that was it. It was a Sunday afternoon and the police arrived, started taking some statements, were very incredulous about the situation when they arrived. They were more instantly interested, perhaps, to arrest us than the MP but quickly realised that in fact it was the other way around, that there was something different here. And Gehan had been there the whole time. She’d seen the stuff. Colin arrived ... Cos phonecalls or communication had also been made to the camp so Colin arrived just as or before the police were arriving and Alan Stewart attempted to interact with Colin and say: “Let’s forget all this and we’ll just have a debate later!” Colin nearly got sucked in to agreeing to it but Gehan had seen there was a different game and said: “No, no, no, we’ll keep this an official police matter and we won’t be making any agreements between ourselves or talking about ‘Oh it’s all okay, we can debate it later’! No. You’ll answer to the police first.” So we kept it as a police matter.

Police took him away and what subsequently transpired was that when they got to the police station, one of the police officers noticed that his son was one of the people who was in the group with him and the police, one of the police officers, noticed a bulge in the pocket of his son’s jacket and asked him what was the bulge in his pocket and when he made him unzip the jacket and looked, he had a big air pistol in a shoulder holster, him and his friend. The son and the son’s friend who were under eighteen at the time and this was not long after one of these murder things where somebody shot kids in a school in Scotland, so it was all gun control was the talk of the time. So the son then got charged. But we didn’t know this at the time. This was just on the Sunday afternoon. I know it’s a long story but let me go just a wee bit longer cos there was some other funny detail to it that I thought was quite interesting.

Eh, so that was the Sunday afternoon so the police took statements from us. They took Alan Stewart and his team down to the police station and then we were kind of like: “What was that all about? What happened there?” But I’d realised by this point that it was Alan Stewart so, again, cos I had my media head on, there was a story here for sure. So I went back down to a house where a few of the Earth Firsters were staying in the West End of Glasgow and typed up a press release and started sending that press release out to every media in the country. I must’ve spent between eight o’clock and two o’clock in the morning and I faxed every media in the country. And, I’m not ashamed to say it because it was a politically savvy and media savvy thing to do, I think the first newspaper thing I faxed it to was the Sun, the second one was the Star and by two o’clock in the morning I must’ve faxed that story to every newspaper, TV and radio station in the country. And when I phoned a few of them to ask as well, all of them including a few like the Press Association in Glasgow and people I’d dealt with a few times said: “Lindsay, what a story! Amazing, interesting, of course I’m interested. However, I cannot print a word of this because my feet won’t touch the ground if I have no evidence and I just have your word against his. Yes, I’ll phone the police station and try and get a statement but in the meantime I have to say that the chances of this story going anywhere, your word against his ... Maybe if it ever came to court it might be a story but right now I don’t see how this ... I mean, I love it. I’d love to run with it but I don’t know how I can.”

And what changed that was that Alan Stewart, when he got out of the police station, made another of his mistakes that day which was that he went home and got his Conservative Party headed note paper from his constituency office and sent out a press release to the UK media list which basically said: “I lifted the pickaxe in self defence.” See, he didn’t know if we had a photograph of him with the pickaxe in his hand. If we had it’d for sure have been a frontline news story and as I was contacting the media we had George developing the film but George told me quite quickly: “I’ve got photographs of the guy shaking his fist and being there but I don’t have any photographs with the pickaxe.” I chose not to communicate that at that point but just to let people know that we had some photographs of them there. But anyway, he made the mistake, sent out the press release saying: “I lifted the pickaxe in self defence.” That was enough for the media to say, “Oh ho ho! MP ...” especially one with his right-wing reputation and high profile “ ... lifts a pickaxe!” Bang, I’ve got a story right away.

And again, the funnier thing ... A rather funny thing for me about that story was that we had planned an action for the Monday morning so actually what my day on the Sunday was lined up to be was stay the Saturday night, help clear out the pre-fab up at Patterton, do a wee bit of that on the Sunday afternoon and then on the Sunday evening a bunch of us had made a big banner, or were in the process of making a big banner, that we were gonnae hang from the Finnieston crane which you can see from the Clydeside and as you go over the motorway bridge in the morning, the Kingston Bridge. So the idea was that six o’clock in the morning we were going to break in to the Finnieston crane, climb up and hang a banner that you would see from the rush hour traffic and that would start the next week’s publicity on the protest. So actually ... so there I was, typing out the press release in one corner and faxing it while everybody else was making this huge big banner with an old sewing machine and we had never made banners before and we had never made big ones, so we really got it all wrong. It was incredible and it was midnight before anybody asked questions like: “How will we weight it down?” and we were there filling condoms with bathwater to try and tie them to the bottom of the thing. So at six in the morning, we went and opened the padlocks at the Finnieston crane and humped a load of banners and condoms filled with water up to Finnieston crane and we got the people up there that were gonna drop the banner and we put them in place by six-thirty or whatever and that was good. And through this, of course, I’d had like three hours sleep or two hours sleep through the middle of the night. And then left them there and decided to go down to Pollok where I had a bender that I’d built where I’d stayed occasionally. Most of the time I stayed in a flat in the West End of Glasgow. Sometimes I stayed at Pollok. Decided to go down to Pollok to get a cup of coffee around the fire in the morning and to get a few hours sleep at my bender at the road and wait for the media to take the photograph of the banner getting hung and of course I stepped out the car that one of the boys was driving down in Pollok to find about 40 or 50 newspaper and TV reporters lined up asking for me and asking what had been the story with Alan Stewart. So that was it and then two days later he was forced to resign when the story about his son came out in the media.

Had he had ... ? Was it the case that he was selling land to the motorway or something?

I don’t know. I never knew any background to that stuff. I think ... I mean, I couldn’t comment on that. To me, it was just as simple as he was one of these big right-wing people. I mean, he’d made all these statements in the media about single mothers being the cause of economic decline in the country and practically you should bring back the birch and whip these sorts of people. So I think he just saw it as: “Who are these scum hippy protestors?” and a “Get off my land!” kind of attitude, and he was just along to teach scum like us a lesson in manners, would have been his general take on it I think. The guy was a nutter. Where it affected the campaign as well as the massive volume of publicity that we got, it also had a negative outcome for the campaign because before Alan Stewart was charged and convicted about three or four months later, he was still an MP. He had to step down as a government minister. So he resigned as a government minister but not as an MP and the man used parliamentary privilege to call for heavy police action, including the use of the Criminal Justice Act, against the protestors at Pollok. So the guy was standing in the House of Parliament down in London using parliamentary privilege to demand heavy police action against the peaceful protestors in the community of Pollok and he got it, both the use of the Criminal Justice Act and some of the heaviest policing that Glasgow had seen for years. Mothers, children, members of the community were more or less automatically arrested for the smallest or even for many imagined infringements and it wasn’t just that you were arrested, had your name checked and then were given a date to appear in court. No, you were automatically kept in jail from the minute they put their hand on you overnight until you were put in front of a court the next day. So 60, 70 people spent the night in jail. Many were strip searched, for example, and some of that you can lay back to the trail of Alan Stewart and the fact that when a senior politican calls for that sort of police action, no surprised that some people at the top of the police force bowed to it and give them the sort of action he’s looking for. I have to say, a lot of the individual policemen that policed the protest were absoultely decent, absolutely decent, but yeah ... So I think Alan Stewart’s ... it gives a lot of good publicity, kind of had a feel good factor if you like because, frankly, I certainly felt good about helping that guy out the door of politics because his politics were horrendous in terms of anybody that cares for community or social or environmental issues. So I was quite happy to help him out the door. But definitely the campaign suffered in terms of the policing that was used against us after that.

Would you say Pollock had any kind of legacy ... ?

Yeah, legacy. Legacy for me is interesting. I know there was the, and great to see, the GalGael legacy. Amazing to see what they achieved and are still achieving. I can only applaud it, fanastic. In fact ... well, there’s a couple of things here. One, I was never a huge supporter of a camp at Pollok. Neither a supporter nor against it. I wanted to see more of a discussion around how does it contribute to a campaign against motorways and, within campaigns against motorways, camps can have positives and negatives. They can be a lot of work. They can be a centre for all manner of things, good and bad, for a campaign. They can suck resources, they can suck time and energy. They can also be a good focal point in terms of letting people be involved, creating good images and good alternatives. So there was a number of things there but one of the amazing things that I saw at the camp and which then was part of the legacy moving towards GalGael was what Colin and Nicky Bennett from Scottish Militant and a bunch of other people did down there, of really teaching people things - woodwork, stonecarving ... These sorts of things. Some days you were down at the camp, it was like the apprenticeships that people never had. Older guys, older women, from the community with young guys and young women from the community. And the older guys were saying: “No, do it like this. No, you want to cut a 45 degree mitre? No, do it like this!” And it was amazing. It was the real community social interaction. It was across age groups, people sharing skills and learning stuff. Amazing. And so brilliant to see that Colin and Gehan continued that and the amazing work that they’ve done in GalGael.

For me, in terms of legacies, well ... Unfortunately we didn’t have a continuation of Earth First! or direct action for environmental issues. Earth First! pretty much dissolved very quickly. Everything dissolved pretty quickly after the end of April when the initial wave of arrests happened. The only focus after that was the camp, so there was no focus on anti-motorway protesting. So we kind of lost the anti-motorway protest very quickly and the focus became the camp and then what happened after that, which is quite a difference compared to if you look at the anti-roads protests in England or Wales or other parts of the UK where indeed it was only once the construction started that the motorway protests really kicked in and the real costs, adding financial costs to the motorway construction, really happened. Here, it died instantly as soon as ... Basically a month after they started work, we had no more anti-motorway protest in Pollok or in Glasgow and no more Earth First! really. So I think we missed something there. I can think of quite a few reasons why that happened but ... Anyway, we kind of missed that and for me that was a big gap because certainly part of my involvement was with the view to introducing and legitimising direct action as a protest tool in Scotland. I think we did that to some extent but then we lost it as a legacy. Although others seemed to continue it in other things more recently but certainly a big gap. And we lost anti-motorway protesting.

You see, I’m kind of pedantic that way or whatever. We were always going to lose the battle for the M77. The battle was lost before we started doing direct action and indeed it was only the fact that the battle was already lost ... Shouldn’t have been lost, should’ve been won, legimitately with all the peaceful, normal petition letter protests that had been done by Glasgow For People, the community councils, the Wildlife Trust and everybody else. That should’ve been enough to stop it but by the time that it wasn’t, direct action was never going to be enough to save it. During that year, there were wee tantalizing glimpses that we might actually have opened up enough space to stop it! But it was never really a reality. It was only ever a chance to make the cost of it high, yeah? And why would you want to make the cost of it high? You’d want to make the cost of it high to stop more motorways getting built and we already knew at that stage that the M74 was tabled. Seventy five million, something like that, it cost for the seven miles of motorway at Pollok? And for the M74, for the seven millions? Seven hundred and fifty million! It will be a billion before the damn thing’s built. So me, I was trying to stop the M74 getting built by giving them a high cost on the M77 and a very strong case and was trying, at the same time, to bring direct action as a tool, not just on anti-motorway protests but on social and environment protests across a range. I think we were somewhat successful in bringing direct action as a tool to people’s attention and inspiring other ... Or helping and being part of a movement that inspired other people to use it as a legitimate tool. I think we were completely unsuccessful in trying to do more about the motorways as the M74 shows. That’s a bit of a pity.

Me, personally, I moved on from it after a series of outstanding court cases. I think my six months after Pollok, after about April in Pollok, were spent dealing with various six or seven different outstanding charges, some of which I was guilty of, a number of which I wasn’t guilty of. And then I returned to what I had originally been planning to do which was to go to New Zealand to meet up again with a nice woman I had met ... by that stage, two years ago when I had been travelling around in the first place. So, yeah. Unfortunately I had spent all the money that I’d saved on the campaign but, for not paying fines, they put me in Barlinnie for a long weekend with a fella who’d done credit card fraud and five days after I came out I had booked myself a flight to New Zealand on a credit card. I ran up a huge bill with a view that I would pay it one day if ever I had the money, which is actually what happened. They froze it and I paid it ten years later but that’s how I managed to go to New Zealand. And then for myself, I came back a year later a little refreshed and decided ... and still interested in working on environment issues generally. Didn’t see any scope to work on the M74. Did some work with Rosie Kane on the M74 but, frankly, was a little bit pissed off with some of the rest of the movement here. Things get ... People, personalities, conflicts, as I’ve said, arise around things. I felt I’d been burned a little. Put a lot of energy, literally got smacked in the mouth by some of my colleagues for my trouble in a very undue fashion so I wasn’t particularly keen to go down that road again.

Came back, took up my old job at Green City Whole Foods workers co-op in the East End of Glasgow, driving a forklift truck and shifting organic fruits around and three months into that job they, the co-op committee, and said: “Have you heard about genetic engineering? We’re starting to get letters ... blah, blah, blah. This company called Monsanto is growing genetically modified soya.” This was 1996 and Greenpeace were, I think it would be fair to say, the main catalyst in the UK, or one of the main catalysts in the UK, for starting a campaign against genetic engineering. The worker’s co-op at Green City ... Green City sold a lot of vegetarian produce, soya burgers, a lot of soya used in it. Andy came in and said: “You’re always one to fight about environmental issues Lindsay! You’d be the logical person. We’ve decided to make a thousand pounds available out of the workers’ Christmas bonus fund. Can you run us a massive campaign against genetic engineering?” “For a thousand pounds?” I say, “Well, it’s not an awful lot of money but it’s a lot more money than we started with in Pollok!” And that’s what I then did. I set it up through Green City Whole Foods. I eventually, or within a year and a half, set up the UK Health Food Trade Network Against GMOs. We became the first in the world ... Only about three hundred companies, most of the workers co-ops in the healthfood industry in the UK and many mainstream companies ... About three hundred and fifty companies, shops, wholesalers, importers, manufacturers joined the campaign. We became the first group of companies in the UK, ’97, ’98, who were able to guarantee that our produce was GM free and we set up the first GM free supply lines for soya and maize into Brazil, the US and Canada using the collective bulk-buying opportunity and I ran a relatively high profile campaign for labelling of GM foods and for the rejection of GM foods.

In my spare time, when I wasn’t representing the healthfood industry, I still ran around with a bunch of people who had the strong conviction that direct action was required on most issues and it certainly was on the genetic engineering issue so, in my spare time when I wasn’t representing the healthfood trade, I ripped up field trials of GM crops. I think the field trials in Scotland that were ripped up were the third field trials anywhere in the world. One in Germany, one in England and then one in Scotland. So we participated in that early and indeed I ended up working on genetic engineering for the last ten years, up to 2006. In 1999, the healthfood industry throughout the UK was GM free, were labelling their products GM free and, yeah, we’re doing well with that. At that stage, Greenpeace contacted me. They were the leading campaign group on it and still are I think, even globally. Lots of other groups involved as well, Women’s Environment Network, Friends Of The Earth and loads of people, loads of individuals and loads of groups invovlved. But one of the significant problems that they all had was that they didn’t understand how the food industry works or how the food trade-flows work. So, while they were trying to persuade the Nestles, the Unilevers, the Tescos, the Asdas, not to use GM ingredients at the same time as running the political campaigns to try and stop it, they didn’t know how to persuade Tesco for example. When Greenpeace UK had created a lot of pressure on Tesco to go GM free, Tesco’s answer was: “We would if we could but it’s not physically possible so go away.” And Greenpeace basically phoned me and said: “Is it physically possible? Is it physically possible for somebody of their size with twenty thousand supply lines and using massive volume to go GM free? You’ve done it for the healthfood trade, could you do it for Tesco?” And my answer, of course, was: “Yes!” because these things are possible. A lot of things are about will power. So they employed me for one year to run a task force with Tesco and by the end of that year Tesco was GM free for all of it’s food ingredients. We setup certification systems. We got them working on their animal feed. And that then removed the last barrier to any major-sized mainstream food company saying that it wasn’t possible. It was one thing for us on the healthfood industry, shifting tens of ... hundreds of tonnes, to say that it was possible. It’s another thing when the biggest companies in the country were saying it was possible. So that’s what I did. I joined Greenpeace ’99 and then basically they asked me to join their coordinating team for their GM campaign internationally and I spent the next six years setting up GM campaigns and coordinating market work for Greenpeace on the GM issue across the globe - Brazil, Canada, US, Mexico, China, Australia, Russia, many European countries ...

So yeah, it’s what I did for most of the rest of the time. And then for the last few years I’ve been wanting to come home cos I never really settled anywhere and always want ... what do they say? “Think global, act local!” And local for me is Scotland and Glasgow so for the last couple of years I’ve been coming home a bit more often and doing a lot more work on different issues with Greenpeace, working up in the Nordic countries, setting up oceans campaign teams, training younger campaigners ... So still doing a lot of direct action. Still doing a lot of media work. Still doing a bit of political work but now I want to spend more time in Glasgow. So, actually in the last month, I’ve just finished the contract with Greenpeace and said that in the meantime I won’t be looking for more work with them. Hopefully in the future I’ll work with them again. I could give some critique of some stuff that goes brilliant, some stuff not. In general, they’re very good and I like the people I’ve been working with and the stuff we’ve been getting done but I would like to see more getting done here which is partly why you find me today sitting in the big, empty ... well, half empty, half dereclict, half very nice Kinning Park community centre. I was involved here ten years ago. Just after they had occupied it, I was running five-aside, five-aside or three-aside football for the young team who used to hang around in the park and be a bit of a problem for other people using the bulding and so, yeah, recently ... A year or so ago, people still connected with the building asked me to come in and help them set up a committee so I’m here to do that and I will also try to get back to what I was trying to do ten years ago, of setting up a environmental campaign groups in Scotland. Or a combination.

One of the interesting things about Pollok and the M77 campaign was that, if you like, the Red-Green alliance, the people from the housing schemes working with the people from the West End, all coming together and all taking action. I think that is all ... it was great that it happened at Pollok, it was a big strength of what happened at Pollok and I think it needs to happen more and that’s the sort of thing I would like to be involved in more. Quite what it will be ... I’m back to the usual starting with nothing and see where we go from it. But hopefully ... There’s certainly no shortage of things that need doing so let’s see.