Strategies of resistance at the Pollok free state road protest camp

Abstract

The Pollok Free State temporary autonomous zone was established by a core group of resident protesters from June 1994 to the end of 1996 as a rearguard action in a long fought community campaign against the construction of the M77 through the Pollok Estate in Glasgow. This was the first Scottish example of a direct action roads protest movement which has flourished since 1992 in England. The ideological and symbolic challenges posed by the core group, along with their strategy of empowering the local community in extra‐institutional collective direct action, make their strategic orientation best described as embryonic counter‐hegemonic resistance. The single issue was regarded as an end in itself by the core group, but it was also strategically utilised as a battle in a wider struggle. The cutbacks in the ‘Roads to Prosperity’ programme partly instigated by the wider roads protest movement can be characterised as a residue of reform. To the core group such reforms are mere by‐products of their primary goals of facilitating learning about the hegemonic political economy, consumer culture and liberal polity in order to help build a radical green movement.