LONDON: Underground in a tunnel dug near one of central London’s busiest roads, Blue Sandford says she is ready for anything.
The 18-year-old has become the most prominent face of a protest against the construction of a high-speed rail link that has earned her comparisons to Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
As bailiffs tried to get her and fellow protesters out from under Euston Square Gardens, she vowed to make their eviction as difficult as possible.
“They’ll have to follow us,” she said by mobile phone from inside the tunnel, speaking above the sound of bailiffs sawing nearby.
Sandford said she and her colleagues have supplies to last a few more weeks in the 100-feet long tunnel secretly dug three feet underground.
“I feel very tired. I’m ready to leave but I’m in here for the long haul,” she added.
Police attempts to bring out the protesters from the HS2 Rebellion group have lasted for days, in a high-profile stand-off recalling similar direct action in the past over other infrastructure projects.
Among those defying the construction is Daniel Hooper, also known as “Swampy”, who spent a week in a tunnel trying to stop a road development in southwest England in 1996. This time, he has brought with him his teenage son.
HS2 is a flagship government rail project set to cost some £100 billion that aims to link London to cities in central and northern England.
It will be Britain’s second high-speed line after HS1, which is used by the cross-Channel Eurostar service linking London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, as well as providing Kent commuter services in and out of London.
But the much-delayed HS2 project, work on which started last September, has caused outrage among green groups who say it will destroy ancient woodland and do little to help Britain meet its climate targets.
In October, activists climbed trees in woodland in Buckinghamshire, north of London, which are said to have inspired the fantasy world of Roald Dahl’s children’s books.
Cherry-pickers had to be brought in to remove them.
At Euston Square Gardens, outside the Euston mainline rail terminus, bailiffs removed protesters from trees and dug a parallel tunnel to try to extract nine activists sheltering inside. They broke through into the tunnel shaft late on Thursday. Video posted by activists showed bailiffs drilling to remove activist Sandford’s brother, Lazer.
He spent the night with his arm in a “lock-on” — attaching himself to the walls of entrance shaft to the tunnel to make it as difficult as possible for police to remove him.
“The tunnel entrance has just been breached, the lock-on is still intact, they’ve come in through the side there,” one protester says in the video, which was livestreamed on Facebook.
Blue Sandford, real name Isla Sandford-Hall, earned comparisons to Thunberg when she went on a “school strike” to focus on the Extinction Rebellion movement more than a year ago.
She called HS2 “a vanity project that’s going to destroy countless forests and murder people through the climate”. — AFP
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