from Sunday Herald, 27 March 2005
For months, without anyone suspecting it, the report has been lying around inside the Scottish Executive like an unexploded bomb. No-one, apart from ministers and their closest advisers, has been allowed to see it.
It was not released in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, and no hint of its contents percolated to the outside world. Asked when it was due, spin doctors happily replied that they "hadn't a scooby".
Then, late on the last working day before the Easter holiday, the 188-page report of the public inquiry into the M74 extension suddenly lurched into public view. And all the private political angst that it must have been causing became plain.
Ministers had been expecting that their plan to drive another six-lane motorway on stilts into the heart of Glasgow would be rubber-stamped. But instead the report ended up comprehensively rubbishing the idea, and much of the transport policy that lay behind it.
What hurt all the more was that the report wasn't written by a radical outsider, but by one of the Executive's own most senior and respected planners, the former chief reporter, Richard Hickman CBE. The motorway, he concluded, would have "potentially devastating effects on the local and wider economy".
But ministers did not let that put them off. After lengthy internal debate, Jack McConnell's cabinet decided to totally reject Hickman's report, and build the five-mile, £500 million motorway from Fullarton Road in Cambuslang to the Kingston Bridge anyway.
The announcement of their decision on Thursday, along with the publication of the Hickman report, has unleashed a whirlwind of protest. Legal advice is being urgently sought to see if there are grounds for a challenge in the Court of Session, and activists are gearing up for a prolonged campaign of non-violent direct action.
One of the first to the barricades will be Rosie Kane, the Glasgow socialist MSP who cut her political teeth protesting against the M77 extension in the 1990s. "If the bulldozers arrive, I will be standing there side by side with the community," she declared.
"That's my promise and I will keep it. If the Scottish Executive is determined to trample over our communities, then we have got to start shouting louder."
She accused ministers of taking "violent direct action" by allowing the motorway to destroy impoverished neighbourhoods. "They have blocked our right to social and environmental justice. If anyone's being violent and brutal, it is them," she said.
This weekend thousands of pledge cards are being circulated by JAM74, an umbrella organisation for anti-motorway groups, encouraging people to sign up to "beat the bulldozers". This is the first step in what organisers promise will be "a highly orchestrated campaign which will bring maximum disruption to construction of the motorway."
Comparisons are already been drawn with the M77 campaign, which involved thousands of protesters marching, setting up camps and clinging to trees in Pollok Park in 1994 and 1995. The opposition was only ended with the help of scores of arrests, hundreds of police and many millions of pounds of public money.
This time some of the tactics will have to be different, as there are no trees or country parks in the way of the M74, just homes and offices. But buildings could become a target for occupation, even including a Territorial Army barracks in Polmadie.
"Hopefully, they will lend us a jeep," suggested the chair of JAM74, Glasgow teacher Will Jess. He has already had offers of support from German and American groups travelling to Scotland for the G8 summit of world leaders in Gleneagles in July. "People might be looking for some some fun on their way to Gleneagles," he said.
"This is the most destructive motorway in Europe, so hopefully other Europeans will help us too. We would expect the campaign to be kicking off pretty soon, though I don't want to say too much about it yet."
For the protesters, this kind of talk has been legitimised by the contempt which they say ministers have shown for the democratic process. Overturning the Hickman report is seen as a betrayal of the principal of environmental justice, which Jack McConnell, as First Minister, promised to put at the heart of policy.
There is much to support that view in Hickman's forensically damning analysis. "The policy in support of environmental justice would be breached by the proposed road," he concluded. The impact on communities that live along the route will be "very severe" because they would be divided, polluted and assaulted by noise.
The M74 extension was also "in fundamental conflict" with the Executive's aim of reducing road traffic, increasing public transport and cutting the pollution that causes climate change, Hickman argued. It would cause emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, to increase by 135,000 tonnes a year by 2020.
"This would be a significant setback to the achievement of the government's commitment to reduce greenhouse gases," he said. And the few benefits that the motorway might be expected to bring were illusory.
The 20,000 promised jobs for areas around the road would mostly be stolen from elsewhere. "The overall economic impact in terms of employment appears to be largely a redistribution of jobs from other parts of central Scotland," Hickman pointed out.
Even the suggestion that joining the M74 to the M8 in the middle of Glasgow might shave a few minutes off the time it took commuters to cross the city in rush hours was misleading. "A reduction in journey times of 5-10 minutes may be scarcely discernible to drivers involved in delays lasting much longer," he observed.
"Looking at all the policy, transport, environmental, business, and community disadvantages of the proposal as a whole, it must be concluded that the proposal would be very likely to have very serious undesirable results."
Hickman predicted that his recommendation to cancel the M74 extension would be attacked by supporters of the motorway. Sure enough, last week the City of Glasgow Council, motoring organisations and the business lobby were queuing up to dismiss his findings.
"We have not looked closely at the reporter’s reasoning, but we find it almost impossible to believe that the reporter could have reached such a judgement," retorted Iain McMillan, the director of the Confederation of British Industry in Scotland.
Hickman may have hoped that the Scottish Executive would pay more attention to his considered verdict on the three-month public inquiry in 2003 and 2004. But instead ministers, led by the LibDem transport minister Nicol Stephen, criticised him for not giving enough weight to the "positive aspects" of the scheme.
They claimed that the motorway would bring "significant economic benefits" to the west of Scotland. "It will improve the quality of life for local communities," Stephen said. "It will reduce congestion on the M8 and local roads."
Ministers and advisers were reluctant last week to add to Stephen's remarks on the grounds that the motorway was likely to face a legal challenge. However, the environment minister, Ross Finnie, did release a letter he had sent to the Scottish Parliament's Environment Committee.
Ministers had concluded that extending the M74 would have "a positive impact on air quality", Finnie said. He admitted it would lead to a "slight increase" in carbon dioxide emissions, but stressed that this had to be seen in the context of national emissions.
"We acknowledge that a scheme of this nature will inevitably generate a complex set of both positive and negative impacts on the economy, the environment and on society," Finnie wrote. "However, my ministerial colleagues and I are satisfied that the balance of evidence supports the positive aspects of the proposal."
Finnie's personal endorsement of the M74 project will not endear him to environmentalists, who are genuinely furious at being "stabbed in the back" by the Executive. "Like us, local communities must be feeling utterly let down by the 'democratic' planning process," said Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland.
"It seems as though ministers simply went through a public inquiry in a failed effort to justify a bad decision they had already made. We sympathise deeply with those betrayed by the environmental injustice of this decision."
Friends of the Earth was already taking legal advice on challenging the decision, but McLaren warned that this might cost thousands of pounds. "For most of those affected, this isn't conceivably affordable. They will be left with no other way to resist this destructive scheme than to take non-violent direct action."
He urged the Scottish Parliament's Environment Committee to bring Nicol Stephen back before them to explain his backing for the M74 extension. "How can the Executive claim a moral high ground on climate change policy when the G8 comes to Scotland, having taken a decision that dramatically undermines the limited progress they are making?" he asked.
The committee, chaired by Labour's former environment minister, Sarah Boyack, is in the final stages of drawing up a report on climate change. This will feed into the Executive's long-awaited review of its climate change strategy.
According to Green MSPs, the Executive's review has now been fatally undermined by the go-ahead for the M74 extension. "The review was a clear opportunity to step back from projects such as the M74 and look at the impact on pollution levels before making the final decision," said Mark Ruskell, deputy convenor of the environment committee.
"That commitment to tackling climate change now lies in tatters. The M74 is an embarrassment to Scotland, especially given the focus on climate change at the G8 summit this year."
Ruskell, another veteran of the M77 protests, accused ministers of being "clueless" on how to cut the pollution from road traffic. In evidence to the committee's inquiry, the government's sustainable development advisors had described the road building programme as inconsistent with tackling climate change, he pointed out.
But for the greens, socialists, and community activists opposing the M74, there may be a silver lining. Behind all the expressions of betrayal and anger over the last three days, it has been possible to detect another emotion.
In the bars, on the phones and amidst the frenetic exchanges of email, there has been just a trace of dawning delight. Could it be, campaigners are wondering, that the Scottish Executive has unwittingly presented them with a surprise Easter gift?
In their heart of hearts many of them expected ministers to give the go-ahead to Britain's biggest motorway project. It has, after all, been government policy for years, and was enshrined in the partnership agreement between the Labour and LibDem governing coalition.
But anti-motorway activists never dreamed that ministers would do so in such flagrant disregard of the well-argued conclusions of a public inquiry. As a result, a protest campaign against a motorway could be turning into a movement to restore democracy.
Ministers' hypocrisy has been laid bare for all to see, campaigners claim, and the protests will go from strength to strength as a result. And if enough people commit themselves to taking direct action, there are even hopes that construction could be delayed enough to stop the motorway.
More immediately, the choices that voters will have to make in the forthcoming general election have also become much clearer, according to JAM74's Will Jess. "If you care about environmental and social justice, you can't vote for Labour or the LibDems because their credentials have been shot to ribbons," he said.
WHAT THE PUBLIC INQUIRY REPORT CONCLUDED"The evidence has shown that the proposal would be likely to:
- seriously hinder the achievement of important Scottish Executive commitments and objectives for traffic reduction, public transport improvements, and carbon dioxide emissions;
- have very serious adverse impacts on the environment of communities along the route, both during construction and in operation;
- be at variance with policies to promote social inclusion and environmental justice;
- temporarily ease traffic congestion, to the benefit of car commuters and road freight transport, but that these benefits would be progressively lost due to continuing traffic increases, in the absence of measures to restrain and reduce traffic; and
- make a positive contribution to the local economy in Glasgow, South and North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, and East Renfrewshire, at the expense of the Forth valley, the Stirling area, Ayrshire, Inverclyde, and West Dunbartonshire.
Drawing these various strands together, and looking at all the policy, transport, environmental, business, and community disadvantages of the proposal as a whole, it must be concluded that the proposal would be very likely to have very serious undesirable results; and that the economic and traffic benefits of the project would be much more limited, more uncertain, and (in the case of the congestion benefits) probably ephemeral."
Source: Report of Public Inquiry into M74 by Richard Hickman.
