M11 Link Road Protest - Background

Background

Proposals for the route first arose in the 1960s as part of the London Ringways plan, which would have seen four concentric circular motorways built in the city, together with radial routes. This would also have included an extension to the current M11 motorway from Ringway 1, the innermost Ringway, to Ringway 2.

A section of Ringway 1 known as the East Cross Route was built to motorway standards in the late 1960s and early 1970s and designated as the A102(M). A section of the M11 connecting the North Circular – which had been scheduled to be upgraded to full motorway and form the northern part of Ringway 2 – to the position of the current M25 motorway – was completed in the late 1970s. The "A12 Hackney to M11 link road" was planned to link the bottom of the M11 to Ringway 1.

The Ringways scheme met considerable opposition; there were protests when the Westway was opened in 1970 and the Archway Road public inquiry was repeatedly abandoned during the 1970s as a result of protests. The first Link Road Action Group to resist the M11 link road was formed in 1976, and for the next fifteen years activists fought government plans through a series of public inquiries. Their alternative was to build a road tunnel, leaving the houses untouched, but this was rejected on grounds of cost. The Ringway plan was later abandoned.

By the 1980s, planning blight had affected the area and many of the houses had become home to a community of artists and squatters. Eventually, contractors were appointed to carry out the work and a compulsory purchase of property along the proposed route was undertaken. Drivers traveling between central and southern areas of London and East Anglia continued to face long stretches of single-carriageway roads through the suburbs of Leyton, Leytonstone and Wanstead and serious traffic congestion had become frequent in these areas.

The Roads for Prosperity white paper published in 1989 detailed a major expansion of the road building program and included plans for the M12 motorway between Chelmsford and the M25 as well as many other road schemes. At this time environmentalist groups were resisting many road schemes with many road protests including at Twyford Down in Hampshire.