A green and pleasant land? Anti-road protesters gain a solid footing in England.

Legend has it that under the hills around Winchester, England's ancient capital lies a sleeping dragon. Only when the tribes of Britain gather once again upon its head at Twyford Down would the dragon awake to protect the land and banish tyranny from the shores.

Now the dragon seems to be awake, and serving as a new focus of green consciousness. When Britain's Department of Transport (DOT) decided to extend the M3 motorway through Twyford Down and the town of Newbury in 1993, the "Donga" tribe - environmentalists who took their name from the ancient system of trackways that crisscrossed the downs - pledged to fight the new threat to Southern England's most cherished landscape.

The region's traffic problem betray a global dilemma. Like countless other towns and villages in England, Newbury's narrow streets have reached saturation point, choked by a continual flow of thunderous fume-belching traffic. Beleaguered citizens scurry along the pavements, nervously negotiating hazardous junctions.

Newbury's first bypass, built in the 1960s, encouraged the town to sprawl out, which in turn generated more traffic. Later, a major drugstore chain built a superstore on one of its many roundabouts, canceling out what little remained of the relief road's effectiveness in easing congestion. And now, planning permission is being sought for the building of 5,000 new homes along the route.

"This road is about financial and political gain for politicians, developers and landowners," says Andrew Wood of Newbury Friends of the Earth. "Arguments for the road simply cloak those vested interests." Wood says that the government needs to use laws and financial incentives to make England more user-friendly for cyclists and pedestrians, not more cars. "If the people don't feel safe riding bikes, then we need to make the environment more friendly toward that mode of transportation," he says.

Since the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution published a landmark report calling for "a fundamental change of culture" in 1994, politicians have been saying little about the issue. Senior government sources say that the British Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, regards the report's recommendations that gasoline prices should be doubled and freight transferred to the rail network as a "nightmare," and has successfully blocked a point-by-point response.

England's environmentalists aren't waiting for the government to change its mind, and so the DOT has to contend with 14 highly-organized and well-defended "sky villages" run by the demonstrators along the proposed route. Underground, lengthy tunnels have been dug "Viet Cong"-style by the activists. Above, some tree houses, like the "Mother Ship" at Kennet Camp, are large enough to sleep as many as 15 people.

The latest and most significant confrontation in this "eco-war" began early last January, as site clearance work for the bypass was to begin. Campaigners showed up with 25-foot, three-legged barriers to block the security access road, a tactic originally developed for anti-logging protests in Australia. Hordes of press flocked to the area, complete with satellite dishes and radio cars. "It just wasn't the police's day," said the voice-over on the national news.

The next day, protesters locked themselves onto vehicles and buildings outside a nearby bus station. Faced with the prospect of hundreds of children not being able to get to school that morning, the company backed down. Site clearance work did take place, though, in fits and starts, over the next few days.

In Newbury passions are running high. With three Sites of Special Scientific Interest, rare healthland, ancient bogs, wildflower meadows and the River Kennet (one of England's most beautiful and unpolluted rivers) due to be bulldozed, even the DOT's own Landscape Advisory Committee has admitted that the bypass would be "massively destructive of a largely intimate landscape unable to absorb the impact of a major highway."

Much of the landscape and hedgerows have remained unchanged since 1643, when opposing armies, 15,000 on each side, fought a desperate battle in what was to be a turning point in English history.

Twelve archaeological sites would also be destroyed by the bypass, including an historic Roman villa.

The protests are being heard. Last year, as anti-roads campaigner Emma Must was winning the Goldman Environmental Prize in Washington, road spending in England was slashed by four billion pounds, and 77 planned roads were withdrawn completely, with many others de-prioritized.

In this, the 100th year of the automobile, anti-road campaigning has arguably become one of Britain's most successful exports. Similar direct-action confrontations are taking place in Austria, Germany, Denmark and France, with activists coming from as far away as Georgia and Estonia to take part.

The determined campaigners say that if the battle is lost, the blood spilt will be that of the land.

CONTACT: Greenpeace UK, Canonbury Villas, London N1 2PN, England/(011)441-71-833-0600.