Hear first-hand tales of land and resistance from Helen Beynon, as she discusses the protests against the building of the M3 motorway extension through Twyford Down.

2022 is the thirtieth anniversary of the start of direct action against the building of the M3 motorway through Twyford Down, near Winchester. Helen’s talk will examine how the protests began and how they were fuelled by underlying frustrations with the failure of successive governments to protect treasured landscapes and ecology. She will tell not just the story of the protests, but how people learnt the skills needed to camp on the Down. First hand accounts of arrests, blockading bulldozers and the brutal clearance of the last fragment of downland will demonstrate how people forged a deep connection with the land and laid the foundations of the modern environmental movement.

Helen Beynon is the pen name of Helen Baczkowska, a writer, ecologist and environmental activist who lives and works in rural Norfolk. Helen has collaborated on an Arts Council funded project recording places and communities impacted by fracking in the UK and is currently working on a book about common land in Britain today. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and in 2021 was short-listed for the Nan Shepherd nature writing prize.

Twyford Down was the location of Britain’s first direct action road protest, and is widely seen as part of the foundations of the current environmental movement – the influence of the resistance there is still felt in many campaigns today. Combining humour with heroics and adventure, in this talk Helen will explore the special relationship between people and place at this chalk hill in Hampshire.

45-minute talk, followed by opportunity for audience questions

This event is a donation point for The Homeless Period 

Free entry – booking essential (if you can no longer attend, please return your tickets so someone else can)