into their brick and timber cottage,
set next to the church at the bottom
of Bridge Hill on a barely perceptible
bend. They went there because they
loved the cottage with its long garden
overspilling with -hollyhocks, del-
phiniums and London Pride. But
they reckoned without the trucks. In
11 years the Roses’ cottage has been
hit 10  ‘They’ve been hit by
trucks, cars; caravans-Bill Rose
once chased a lorry all the way to
Canterbury to retrieve his guttering
from its load. Now they have a red
and yellow striped signboard to mark
the most vulnerable corner of the un-
prepossessing grey cottage (well,
it looks grey, but the last time it was
painted it was cream). .
Outside the cottage the pavement
narrows to 15 inches wide.
Accidents were becoming com-
monplace in Bridge and, ironically,
the more there were, the more the
campaign’s impetus flagged. “At one
time a couple of accident-damaged
oars would provoke press comment
and pizxures,” says Lewis. “Gradu-
ally the shock value diminished and
people just accepted it as one of those
things.” The six years from 1966 to
1972 would have deterred less dogged
campaigners than Lewis, Purchese
and their supporters. After the early
rabble-rousing, there was an almost
total lack of oflicial action to show
for it. A hundred people sat down in
the road in 1969—four were even
arrested for the cause. But despite
the goading and the posturing,
nothing positive resulted.
Lewis admits that even the vil-
lagers were prepared to give up on
him at this time. “Many people
thought we were crying for the moon
when they saw nothing was happen-
ing.” It was this limbo period which
the protesters feel they could, with
hindsight, have reduced; they were
learning about diplomacy and finding
their way around the corridors of
power in the Kent County Council
oflices and -at Westminster. Most
important, they had won their new
M.P. round to their demands. But
they needed a fresh stimulus to drum
up support and enthusiasm. In May
 got it. On the night ofMay
left of the bedroom spilling down
into the gutted rubble of the shop.
. This was the emotive trigger that
the A2 Group needed. On the same
day villagers received printed leaflets
with photographs of the crash. Two
days later, 300 Bridge residents sat
down to -block the A2. In the same
month, an emergency meeting was
held between the new IVLP. David
Crouch and the Kent planners. As
they met demonstrators protested.
Another demo took place at the
Ministry of Transport. And yet
another in Dover, backed by letters
to the transport ministers of all EEC
countries warning them of the danger
to foreign nationals using the Bridge
route.
By now M.P. Crouch was heavily
backing the by-pass campaign, though
not condoning the civil disobedience.
As a result the Transport Ministry
sent an envoy down in September to
report on the A2. Lewis and Pur-
chese sustained the pressure on
Crouch by demonstrating the weight
of support for their cause amongst
his constituents. Crouch may not
have liked their methods-but he
couldn’t ignore the villagers’ message.
In the same month Lewis and
Purchase placed advertisements in
the local paper calling on support for
another demonstration — another sit-
down to block the traflic. The demo
was peaceful but purposeful. “We
told the police we were going to
block the road,” Lewis says. “We’ve
had very good support from our
police, even when we’ve been break-
ing the law. Many of them are local
lads-and it’s they who’ve had to
come and clear up the mess when
there was an accident.”
To ram their point home, the A2
Group called another sit-down in
October 1972. This time over 1000
villagers sat down and blocked the
A2 for an hour. Village old timers
like Harry Hawkins joined in: “I was
fighting for my home, my life, my
everything,” he says. Five-year-old
Nicholas Millyard sat down holding
a placard. Nice, middle-class parents,
whose protesting voice normally ex-
tended no further than a pained bleat
about increased school fees, sat down
too; Bridge had made its point.
“The demos and the sit-downs were
” Lewis claims; “they
to apply the pressure.
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