Environment battle is picture perfect (From The Oxford Times)

Environment battle is picture perfect

10:40am Thursday 3rd February 2011 in News

PHOTOGRAPHS capturing the battles between environmental protesters and private bailiffs in the 1990s have gone on display at Oxford’s Pegasus Theatre.

Jericho photographer Adrian Arbib, 47, has put on display images captured during his three months with eco-activists opposing the construction of the £45m Batheaston and Swainswick bypass at Solsbury Hill, Somerset, in 1994.

Anti-road protesters scaled trees at the Iron Age hill fort, which inspired Peter Gabriel’s hit song Solsbury Hill, in one of the major confrontations with John Major’s Conservative Government.

Mr Arbib, a former press photographer, said: “I had been working in Africa, and when I came back I did not really have anywhere to live at the time. I heard about what was going on and went down to Solsbury Hill.

“They were pretty interesting times. I remember climbing 85 feet up on ropes, not really knowing who had tied it in place. Another guy was buried in a filing cabinet.

“Although that particular road was built, it stopped the Government’s road building programme, and it’s safe to say there will never be the same sort of road building again.”

A book of Mr Arbib’s photographs, Solsbury Hill: Chronicle of a Road Protest, accompanies the show.