A TOTAL of 5,400 letters of objection to the proposed route of the M42 Nottingham to Birmingham link road has already been sent to the Midland Road Construction Unit. And with fund-raising efforts just underway, already £209 has been banked by the Stanton-by-Dale and Risley Action Group, the body set up five months ago to fight the motorway.

Group chairman, Mr. M. E. M. Summers told a public meeting in Stanton-by-Dale Village Hall on Monday that this money would go towards the cost of a barrister to represent them at the forthcoming public inquiry into the road.

“Tentative inquires” already been made and Mr. Summers reported that the group would need £2,500 to £3,000 to pay its legal costs.

And this would be only half the cost. The rest would be made up by the Sandiacre and District Environmental Protection Association. The two organisations have now formed a working link and plan to co-ordinate opposition throughout the area.

Questions in the House of Commons had revealed that the Midland Road Construction Unit had already spent £300,000 on examining the proposed route of the road.

“Conflict”

“And they are to spend another £300,000 on just planning. This reveals the true David and Goliath nature of the conflict we are engaged in,” stated the chairman.

With the exception of their own Derbyshire County Council, local authorities had rushed to object to the proposals. These included South-East Derbyshire and Basford Rural Councils and Beeston and Stapleford Council—“the ones relevant to our area,” said Mr. Summers.

“Together with parish councils and action groups, we have a solid block of opposition from the Trent to Nottingham,” he commented.

The chairman went on to say the purpose of this opposition was not only to fight the proposals but bring the public into the fight.

“We have got to make it clear this is a serious thing for them. Many do not seem to realise how serious their involvement is—and this motorway will result in the destruction of many homes and the loss of amenities for many more,” he remarked.

Asking people to support the fund-raising events and perhaps help to organise them, Mr. Summers said all supporters should be join in and not be happy doing so.

“Do not leave it to the efforts of a few,” he asked.

It now looked as if the inquiry into the proposals, for which a date has still not been given, would be held in the second half of this year.

And Mr. Summers was still convinced that their major argument against the road would be the “fog wall” which so many organisations and individuals were taking up now.

The danger of the fog wall was tragically illustrated on January 18 this year when a lorry driver was killed in yet another pile-up on the motorway at Sandiacre.

Mr. Summers had got hold of the police reports of this and another pile-up, both putting the blame on walls of fog which hit suddenly at speed. He had made copies and sent them to the Road Construction Unit.

Difficult

“I sent them with the message that if they still wanted to build this road in a fog wall area like the Erewash, then there is nothing we or anybody can do to stop them,” explained Mr. Summers.

He added: “It is difficult to understand why they should want to build a motorway with complicated junctions in a fog wall area.

“If they go ahead with this then they will be culpable of homicide on a massive scale.”

He described, as a result of their conflict, and others like them, the Land Compensation Bill, brought in by the Government to compensate more for the building of new roads.

So public opinion is making its strength felt to the Ministries, he claimed.

Other groups like the Transport Reform Group and the Conservation Society, being listened to more and more, would be fighting at the inquiry.

These groups were against motorways in principle, saying that they were costly, unnecessary and dangerous.

“Spending public money making race-tracks for these giants to come along and destroy us all,” was how Mr. Summers put it.

Alternative

When a member wanted to know how much of the campaign was objection and how much alternative, Mr. Summers replied that they had suggested an alternative route. It had been turned down, but they had always claimed that it had not been investigated fully.

This alternative route would be a major part of their case in the inquiry. “You cannot just say I do not want it outside my home. Someone has to have it,” he said.

Mr. Summers asked that people who had not yet joined either of the two groups should do so now and swell funds.

On a question of publicising the campaign it was agreed that people with roadside frontages should make their own posters - and should make sure everyone knows about the “menace of the motorway”.

The treasurer of the Stanton-by-Dale group, Mr G. B. Skelston, reported that a prize draw - with a donated sunshine holiday for two as first prize - had been organised and he needed volunteers to sell tickets.

He also informed the meeting that the Trowell Studio Players had offered to do performances free of charge. Arrangements were going ahead.

📚 Sources

• Type: newspaper
  Title: Long Eaton Advertiser
  Date: 1973-03-02