About the speech
As part of the 2025 Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Epping Forest Heritage Trust, there is a panel discussion on Campaigning to protect Epping Forest over the years, with following panels:
- Mark Gorman, EFHT Member, Author, Saving the People’s Forest
- Sue McKinley, EFHT Member, campaigner against roadbuilding in the 1970s – M16/M25
- Ishmael Tickly, EFHT Policy and Campaigns Manager
- Noreen Niazi, EFHT Community Engagement Lead
Below is Sue’s full speech on fight against motorway planning in the 1970s.
The full speech by Sue McKinley, October 2025.
I’ve been coming to the Forest all my life and in 1968 was lucky enough to move from Edmonton to Upshire and to spend my teaching career with Ken Hoy at Suntrap Field Study Centre at High Beach.
In 1971, we learned that the Orbital Motorway, then called M16, was to be built through Upshire Village and across Bell Common. Upshire Village Preservation Society had cut its teeth on a scheme to turn the countryside which is now Buffer-land into a golf course and then a plan to drown the whole Cobbins Brook Valley to create a reservoir.
The committee of UVPS was an amazing band of people. I can say that because I was the baby of the group sitting at the feet of these dynamic individuals, who included a consultant geriatrician; the farmer who delivered our milk every morning; two musicians, one of whom was an ex commando and the other wrote local history books; a descendant of the first Epping Forest Verderer; a magistrate who had studied chemistry with Margaret Thatcher and went on to work for a Labour MP and the architect who, with her husband, designed the Skylon for the Festival of Britain. All of these people were connected by their fierce love of the countryside and Epping Forest.
The road to be crossed by M16 connects the Epping Road with Waltham Abbey. It is bounded on either side by Forest or now Buffer-land.
From the start, UVPS decided this was not about Upshire, but the whole Forest. M16 was already under construction heading for the Forest in a pincer like fashion. Realistically, we could not hope to stop it but neither did we want to deal in nit-picking minutiae. We wanted to say this road is the product of a flawed Transport Policy, reliant on oil and the motor car, which would not be able to cope with its own growth and is not integrated with a wider National Transport Policy. By separating the Forest from the countryside around its northern border and by pollution of air, sound and light its biodiversity would be damaged and the junction at the bottom of Woodredon Hill would cause rat-running of traffic through the Forest.
We hoped we had a reasonable chance of removing the Honey Lane Interchange from the plan. Simultaneously, the City of London was trying to remove a planned intersection which would draw traffic southwards from Epping.
We knew we needed to do two things: to demonstrate how important Epping Forest is and how accessible to Londoners and to raise money to employ experts in the field of construction, traffic flow, noise and pollution.
UVPS and Friends of Epping Forest, together with the Epping and Theydon Bois Societies, formed the Alliance Against M16 and there followed two years of frenzied awareness and fund raising activities, culminating in February 1973, in a cavalcade of farm vehicles and 3 coach loads of people making their way, under police motor cycle escort, from Boudica’s Monument in Upshire to her statue on the Embankment and thence to the Houses of Parliament where Vanessa, the village goat, presented our MP Norman Tebbitt, with a bound petition of 21,000 names, while tethered to a railing bearing the sign “Members’ Parking Only”.
We made the TV News that evening and the next day’s press and also, apparently, the Russian newspaper Pravda.
The Public Inquiry began in 1974 and at well over 90 days, was the longest road inquiry in history at the time.
Everyone, from our elderly village postmistress to a 15 year old schoolgirl, was cross-examined by Queen’s Counsel. We all felt that every effort was made to show that we were driven by feelings and not facts. Even the questioning of our expert witnesses, who were as well qualified as the Department’s own, was based on the assumption that the Department’s figures were the correct ones.
By the beginning of the Inquiry, the City of London Corporation had negotiated a 200 metre cover over the proposed cutting across Bell Common. At the end in his 922 page decision, the Inspector doubled the length of cut-and-cover, moved the intersection and recommended the implementation of improvement to wildlife crossing places. But, the Honey Lane Interchange remained.
A previous departure from the Epping Forest Act, the North Circular Realignment at Waterworks Corner, was described by Alfred Quist, the Superintendent of Epping Forest, as “a wide rift in the Forest scene, something which shocks as I feel it will never mellow aesthetically as other roads have done. Even after the familiarity of several years, I never come across it without a sense of shock imparted by the violation of the Forest scene … I consider it was the right decision at the time but nothing like it must be permitted again!”
UVPS felt that the City of London Corporation had tried its best to defend the Forest but settling for a compromise land-take didn’t address the effects of the motorway being so near the Forest. At this time, there were interesting theories about the worrying effects on cities of the ring and radial pattern of roads. A study by Barry Fineberg had recently been published which if applied to M16, would avoid the Forest altogether. Further investigation of this was supported by Friends of the Earth, the London Amenity Transport Association and Transport 2000.
In order to release land from the Epping Forest Act, the City of London Corporation had to promote a Private Bill called The City of London (Various Powers) Bill. UVPS decided to petition against the Bill.
In 1978, six of us, including Ken Hoy, Chair of FOEF, spent six days with a House of Commons Committee, hearing evidence put forward by the City, giving our own evidence and being questioned by Queen’s Counsel. Once again, our evidence was reported back to The Epping Forest and Open Spaces Committee as “more emotive than factual”. Mr. Newland, Traffic Consultant for the DOE said the consequence of the Honey Lane Interchange would be a reduction in the volume of traffic on Forest roads.
After congratulating us on our conduct, the Bill was passed on the understanding that “no further road development in the Forest shall take place and that recommendations made by the Nature Conservancy Council be implemented as far as possible”. We assumed that meant for all time but it was reported back to the Epping Forest Open Spaces Committee as for the purposes of this motorway only.
The Bill was returned to the full House of Commons for the Report Stage and Third Reading and would have gone through on the nod without any discussion. However, a Blocking Motion was tabled by Stan Newens MP for Harlow and Miss Jo Richardson MP for Barking meaning there had to be a full debate. Many people here will remember the wise questions and comments of Stan Newens at these meetings. He was a very loyal member. He and Jo Richardson both spoke eloquently in the debate about the value of Epping Forest prompting agreement from the members for Epping Forest, Leyton and Chingford, all of whom, while not able to vote against the Bill, regretted the consequences for the Forest and were united in their admiration for the way in which the City had taken care of the Forest over the years. Bryan Magee for Leyton said he had walked the route of the motorway and “it cost me a beat of the heart when I saw what had to go”.
Three months later, we took our case to a Select Committee of the House of Lords. They had rejected the House of Commons recommendation that no further road construction should take place on Forest land and admitted that the Bill contained no guarantee that the Bell Common Tunnel would be covered. We later learned that the Chairman of the House of Lords Committee, Lord Derwent, had previously spent eight years as Chairman of the British Road Federation.
The last paragraph of a press release by UVPS reads: “We in this society have fought against the taking of Epping Forest land for motorway building since 1971. For eight years we have faced inquiries and committees. There now seems little more that we can do except to tell the story of these events as a reminder that the Forest is under serious and constant threat as a warning to those who will come after us to be on their guard”.
As Stan Newens said in the House of Commons, “those who resisted enclosures and speculators a hundred years ago were not always seen as progressives. When we resist the proposal this evening, we may equally be seen as obstructionist but if there are not people who are prepared to resist encroachment on that part of our heritage, it will ultimately disappear. It is our duty to question pertinently and carefully … and history can judge whether we are obstructionist”.
Sue McKinley. October 2025.
Note:
The fight to save Epping Forest from M16 was featured in BBC4’s Secret Life Of The Motorway (Part 3) End Of The Affair (2007).
All images above are from BBC4’s Secret Life Of The Motorway (Part 3) End Of The Affair (2007).