know now we could have done it in
half the time,”‘ claims Lewis. “We
just started out as angry residents -
we’d no idea which channels to
take.” They quickly leamt that their
initial polite written requests for in-
formation were easily brushed ofl":
“When you’re dealing with bloody-
minded county or ministry oflicials
you’ve got to be equally bloody-
minded. You’ve got to demand, not
ask.”
As the two prime movers in the
campaign, Lewis and Purchese also
attracted the mistrust and disappro-
val that often accompanies anyone
who stands up and makes demands
or expresses an opinion. Much of the
village was openly hostile to their
early eiforts. A petition in 1962,
expressing alarm to the Minister of
,"‘ Qnsport, produced only 564 people
vi. were willing to be counted. It
had negligible effect. However, the
campaign organisers were learning
that they needed impact to back their
iirument and to apply pressure. In
1963 the demonstrations started,
beginning with a protest march by 50
youth club members to drive home
the accident statistics of the previous
four years. By this time, it was eight
killed and 49 injured in the village.
part of a 1912 demo to keep death ofi the

Street
The following Easter, 150 marching
villagers blocked holiday traflic.
Among them were symbolic horses
and coflins, and Mrs Rose Wonfor,
now 75 and a Bridge resident for 50
years: “I pushed my young grandson
in a pushchair to stop the traflic,”
she says, “and I’ve carried banners
and sat down in the road. Must have
had some effect, mustn’t it? When
I moved here you could here a pin
drop in the High Street. All difierent
now, my dear. It’s like being in
another world with these big trucks.
A wonder we haven’t all been killed,”
Mrs Wonfor says.
However emotive demonstrations
may be, however poignant the ges-
tures (there was an effigy of the
Transport Minister in bed ‘asleep to
the needs of Bridge’), direct action
is only effective if it can be used to
apply pressure where it can gain
most support. In Bridge’s case it was
clear that any decision affecting the
village would be part of a much
wider assessment of road needs along
the whole non—motorway section of
I the A2. So the Bridge By-pass Cam-
paign became the A2 Group with
the declared aim of making the road
‘fit to take the type of traflic it is
going to have to take in the future’.
With 1600 houses facing directly
on to the A2 the new group could
call on wider support. It also attrac-
ted stronger opponents: the local
M.P., the late Sir Leslie Thomas,
publicly denounced the group as
undemocratic - no—one had bothered
to formally elect a committee or
oflicers and it was easy to imply that
Purchese and Lewis were a couple of
unlawful nuts.
The group persevered, grafting
away to produce every little scrap of
publicity from every accident or
oflicial statement. And there were
plenty of accidents. In August 1965
a truck’s brakes failed on Bridge Hill
carrying 10 vehicles with it and in-
iuring six people. That was the year
Bill and Joyce Rose moved %—>