ABSTRACT
Local campaigns have played a key role in all the major road protests of the 1990s. Their impact and input varies but, in almost all cases, without them the challenge mounted against government and contractors would have been very much less successful in terms of level of involvement, delay in construction and long-term changes in public opinion and government programmes. ‘Direct action of itself has not stopped a road; and by themselves the direct action protesters…would have been marginalised by the government. But, in conjunction with the 250 or so local groups…a transport policy has been overturned’ (Alarm UK quoted in Jacobs 1996:107).
