the glen -

“I’ve read the postmodernists with some interest, even admiration. But when I read them, I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more that you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he’s not talking about something abstract. He’s not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It’s something very concrete. It’s you and me talking. Making decisions. Doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It’s always our decision who we are.” Waking Life, Richard Linklater.


The Glen…

The day starts slowly, as languid figures begin to emerge from their tree houses late morning, their light silhouettes catching against the winter forest behind, all moving towards the fire pit. The fire pit is sheltered by a parachute tied to the tall trees above it. The fire pit itself is dug into the slight slope, with a heavy metal box at one side, which is used to keep food warm as well as to shelter the fire from the prevailing winds that come from that direction. Around the fire pit are rough wooden benches, an assortment of office type chairs all showing signs of having been in the woods through all weathers for some time already. Just outside the perimeter of the fire pit are stacked broken up pallets, which are used for fire wood.

The tree houses are scattered about a small valley with a river in its base. The river is ten feet wide with a bridge crossing it, made from scraps of wood reclaimed from the industrial site near by, with bright plastic tubes – stolen from a building site – arching along its edges, a space age mad max creation. The water in the river is undrinkable due to the disused sewerage plant several miles up river that has and continues to pollute the river with its filth…

The tree houses are wooden and to keep out the harsh weather in Scotland they must be strewn with tarpaulin and other plastics. On their insides the tree houses are insulated with pieces of cut up carpets and rugs. The carpets are nailed into the wooden walls, and serve well to keep out the wind – between the gaps in the rough wood work – as well as keep any warmth generated inside, mainly from candles, and the tarpaulin keeps all the rain out. The tarpaulins and plastics give the houses perched high in the trees a scrap yard image but a strange aerial one as many sit as high up as 50 or 60 feet trees. Inside the houses are the belongings left by previous inhabitants, long since gone, but they feel homely and well lived in. The belongings themselves leave a mystery behind and tell an odd history of the place.

I had moved out to the Glen to escape troubles in the Stone City and also I was homeless and pretty hard up. The community there took me in as one of their number, albeit with some suspicion at first, but as I helped with the daily work and ate, sang, smoked and drank with them around the fire pit each night till the late hours their unfounded anxiety soon faded…

In the morning as I came down towards the fire pit there were already a few folk there, brewing the morning tea, which was strong with lots of sugar and milk. The ground was heavy mud but there had been a foot path built through the centre of the encampment out of large rocks, without which the main walk ways would have been a swamp. Still it took getting used to in the dark to move effortlessly around this camp, especially while carrying wood or water back in the night down the steep slope of the camp’s entrance.



All food supplies were taken from the skips of the industrial site that was located about ten minutes walk from the camp, although to gather the food it was a good twenty minute walk. And the food was excellent, we dined on meat, pasta, near fresh vegetables, fruit, tinned nuts, olives and almost anything you could think of. This was taking advantage of the waste of the industrial shopping centre, and was known as skipping. In fact the skipping here at the Glen was so good that it was renowned and spoken of as far away as Finland - from where a passing traveller had recently returned and brought with him news of the Glen’s skipping fame, to which understandably a wave of great pride swept the fire pit that night…

The only things that were hard to come by in the skips was milk, sugar and often enough tea. However, there were many visitors to the site from the city – which was only a 45minute bus ride away – and they always brought with them fresh milk, tea bags, sugar and candles as well.

My limbs are stiff from the cold of the night but breathing the fresh air invigorates the soul, and I am very alive. I sit by the fire and rub my hands in front of the fire, closing my eyes and enjoying the feel of the warm smoke on my face. There is water near the boil and I make tea for myself and others round the fire.

This was a very quiet place with none of the trivial chattering of the Stone City where speaking is to fill in the gaps sound and, in part because of this, more often than not people do not listen but only wait for their turn to speak…but this was left behind with the city and it is closer to silence than anything else where the softer unmediated sounds of the forest were the focus.

No PR, no advertising, no manipulative subliminal messaging attempting to distort and affect mass behavioural patterns, no streets no street signs traffic lights no neon no shop windows no green flashing men commanding it safe to cross…

On the first morning I awoke in the tree house, I was sitting up icy cold, and shivering I put on my cloths underneath the cover of my blanket and poncho, breathing the fresh air, seeing the leaf covered forest floor out of the door way, smelling the damp scent of winter forests; then a robin landed in the doorway, and I froze, startled, brimming over with innocence; the robin looked up, around, then spun on its feet and was gone. In my mind I had had the blessing of the forest for the robin has always been a symbol of good luck for me, appearing at moments of great transition when luck would be needed.

The Glen always gave the impression of a ship at sea, with its careful communal rationing of supplies, its ethos of knowing where all the hands on deck were, its kitchen, the endless war with the rats (there was no cat…) and the sail like image of the tarpaulins and the constant creaks and groaning of the tree houses at night in the wind. People would announce and carefully plan their trips off-ship to the distant shores of the Stone City, then return with eagerly listened to stories of the goings on in the city and of course the wide eyes at the extra supplies from that distant shore.

Another thing that amazed was exactly what was deemed essential in this semi-cut-off life. Aside the kitchen, the store house/kitchen and fire pit, the only other communal structure was the library (and information centre). The was library housed in a large wooden structure raised of the ground by about 4 or 5 feet and next to the fire pit. Returning visitors or new guests alike would be proudly shown the latest additions to the collection of books and notice boards. These notice boards had information primarily regarding actions, maps and strategies but also there were some posters of wild life species and plant types – donated by someone from the Stone City, as were most of the books.

The maps, talk of strategy and the likely reactions of the constant enemy also gave the place the feel of a military camp or far flung outpost; a place in the midst of some large scale and on-going battle.

So far, which has perhaps gone unnoticed by the reader, no mention of the purpose or the function of the Glen has been make and yet this purpose was both very real and constantly under discussion around the fire pit.
The Glen was a protest site set up to block the building of a new road outside the Stone City. BIOTECH (famous for cloning sheep) had begun the 1st private road construction in the U.K., a bypass to the nearby A-road, 8 miles south of Edina, which would cut straight through the Glen. This represented a seemingly unnecessary destruction of woodland in order that a private company could further maximize its own profits while passing off the costs to the local area. At the time of writing this had so far been successful and had protestors had stopped the development of the road for over five years; and over those years the Glen had evolved from a make shift camp into a permanent residence. Further, due to its relative permanence it had become a central hub in the larger scale action of anarchists and protestors all over the UK but particularly in Scotland. There existed well developed plans of action in the event of a forced eviction. This was the original reason for the tree houses being built and inhabited due to the legal technicality that in the event of a forced eviction the event would be treated as a civil matter as opposed a criminal matter for the courts.

Many actions elsewhere in Scotland were co-ordinated from this site in the woods. Regularly people were sent to the Stone City to communicate via the Internet with other protest groups, to arrange meetings and future strategies. Over time as well the actions of the Glen became less focused on the by-pass and also encompassed the deforestation of the countryside by industry in general, action against companies such as Shell (there were crosses in the camp bearing the name of some of those murdered in Nigeria by mercenaries hired by Shell…), the illegal war in Iraq and the general project of world-wide imperialism under the name of globalisation.

One of the main operators of this community did not live on site but would drop round every evening. He worked in the trades and often he said slept in his car, for the cause of course. He would drop by to see how morale was, who was in camp, to decide what needed to be done and co-ordinate the various communications and over and above everything else try to maintain a solid thread in strategy. He had an all American type look, almost like an aged college football player, and was always with his dog, that tragicomically would burst into shrieking yapping barks almost every time that he tried to speak to the group around the fire…”so you need to get the information on that bit of land, find out who owns it and who is…” then right on queue the frenzy of barking and he would be thrashing out at the tiny dog scurrying around in the darkness shouting “quiet, shut it, quiet…” and then return to his mission statement out of place in his announcement, “uh, yea, so if you find out who owns that land, is it council, university or private or…” then another frenzy of barking and he waving his arms trying to beat down the noise – he was no Napoleon but honest and good hearted – and so it would continue with no mention of the absurdity of these routine pantomimes, its behind you, oh no it isn’t...

Once darkness had fallen the people set off to gather wood, water and food. The wood was collected from behind warehouses on the industrial estate and I will never forget the employees standing by their cars staring blankly filled with confusion as we trooped out of the night, half caked in mud to pick up the pallets, then walking calmly away with one perched on each shoulder, back into the thick surrounding woods and over grown grass that broke up the splintering concrete car parks; and looking back once I saw an employee still stood with his car keys hanging from his fingers unmoved…for water it was a longer walk to collect it in large jerry cans from behind a car show room where there was an unattended tap on the back wall. For food it was to the skips behind the huge out-of-town supermarkets. We’d leave with rucksacks and come back struggling under the weight. There was something indescribable about this side of life at the Glen, an elation of unspeakable success as we dined like kings around the fire.

Many of the actions and protest were brave in the face of the constant police brutality against a legally unrepresented class of citizen, for in politics it is usual that the under dog will hang quietly and unknown on the scaffold while his masters look on… however confrontation breeds confrontation and although none of the protests began with violence all expected it in some form or other at some point during the proceedings, and each in their own heart would be deciding how far they would go for the cause in the days leading up to the demonstration; and similar dialogues must be occurring the hearts of the police in the days leading up to the actions…but the simple fact is that mass protests put police in a situation where it becomes politically justifiable to use force to halt it; and one would do well to recall the recent introduction of laws in the UK which forbids demonstrations that have not had prior consent from the relevant authorities as well as outlawing demonstrations altogether outside of parliament and in certain areas of London – presumably for reasons of PR but surely in the field of public relations the population’s right to demonstrate its feelings is always legitimate no matter how spontaneous? Whatever can be said though it cannot be denied that in the context of the hyper-confrontation that demonstrations bring the violence is never justified in moral terms, and always rather in political terms which lead in the end to a politically driven police force and not one lead by justice, it leads to political prisoners (and already in the UK their ranks are silently swelling..) the sure sign of a blossoming autocratic system of governance.

There has been an interesting shift in terminology in recent years where the citizen has been re-branded the consumer and about this shift all political and social issues must be seen; where democracy should be read for laissez faire free market system and freedom should be read for freedom from the act of making individual moral and political decisions…and it goes on.

This is the world we live in and this is the world we have allowed to come about; but this is not a world we have voted for.

And so long live the Glen and all places like it, small pockets of political resistance, let us have freedom of speech, thought and association and most of all let us have freedom from those who would curtail it in the lives of others for the sake of their own ends, for without these things we are lost and will remain simply a rash of humiliating and self-mutilating pain on this planet.

Hesq.