Friends of the Earth Birmingham Action Briefing Aug-Sept 97

BNRR The Future's Bleak

Labour set to U-turn on BNRR decision

On June 19th Gavin Strang MP announced Labour's road review and that a White Paper will be produced next year. However, he also indicated that 12 roads would be fast-tracked through the decision making process. One of these is the BNRR.

At the time of writing the decision date is Tuesday 22nd July BUT the rumours coming out of the various departments are that the BNRR WILL be built. This will be a disaster for the West Midlands as a whole and the conurbation in particular. It will take four years to be built and Labour will be reminded of their betrayal of the people of the West Midlands in the next election.

We have been working hard to ensure that the front bench are aware of the full implications of the decision on the BNRR. Labour have pledged to be the greenest' government this country has ever seen and lectured the world on environmental issues at the Earth Summit in June. We managed to get the BNRR onto the front page of the Financial Times and in The Guardian on July 11th the same day that John Prescott visited the region to open the Hams Hall rail terminal and a gas-powered bus project in the Black Country. We managed to organise a demonstration in conjunction with members of the Alliance against the BNRR at Hams Hall and at a hotel in Walsall so that John got the message over the BNRR:

"LABOUR YOU PROMISED NO BNRR"

In addition to this three of us managed to have five minutes with the minister where we questioned him over the BNRR and Labour's betrayal of thousands of people along the line of the road. We are also in the process of organising a demonstration in London on Thursday 17th July with a coach-load of residents from along the route taking the message to the DoT and Labour's HQ.

A national demo highlighting Labour being conned by the civil servants of the old transport lobby is being arranged for the following Saturday. Hopefully this will have had an effect on the decision-making process. There is a massive letter-writing campaign taking place in the hope of changing the decision.

If the Labour party do go ahead with this scheme and a road-based transport policy then the hopes that Labour brought with them will have been destroyed forever.

Beverly

At time of going to press, the decision date we believe has been changed due to the massive amount of lobbying by ourselves and the anti-road movement nationally. The BNRR has become a political hot potato and we have secured the support of numerous prominent MPs with articles in the national press and television. Our campaigning will continue until the decision is made and then depending on the decision we will either be having one great party or assessing the prospects for a legal challenge to the decision and discussing how to move the campaign against the BNRR forward.