Emma Must

This audio clip is from a series of 100 life history interviews with environmental campaigners in the UK, 1970-2020. A quotation from this recording features in the book Voices for Change, published by UCL Press in November 2026 (available in print as well as a free PDF download). The full interview, along with the summaries, transcripts and recordings for this and the rest of the interview collection, is available at the British Library (Sound and Moving Image Collection, under the shelf-mark C2037). For more information, including educational materials and other resources, visit the Oral History of the Environmental Movement project website at www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ohemQuotation:Saskia Papadakis: Right so this is our third recording on 7th March. And you were going to tell me something you had forgotten about Twyford.Emma Must: Thank you. Yes. I was, I wanted, there was one action that I just wanted to make sure that I mentioned because it was really important. And it was, so I was talking about the whole, that frenetic activity between Yellow Wednesday and when everyone was sent to prison, so during that first six months of 1993. And there was this one night which was on Saturday, 22nd May in 1993 and I, I wanted to talk about it because it was just an extraordinary thing. It was, yes, I don’t think I will say who did all the legwork on it just in case they don’t want that said because of the injunction and everything and blah blah blah. So I probably won’t, no. But there was, it was organised by Twyford Down Alert. And it was the brainstorm of one of us and he did most of the organising, the legwork on it, which was extraordinary, but it was this wonderful, extraordinary night. So the Department of Transport they were trying to build a Bailey bridge across the river Itchen at the foot of Twyford Down to bring the very, very heavy earth moving machinery onto the hill. So these things are called CAT 245s, these absolutely enormous earth moving bulldozers. And so they were trying to build this temporary bridge in something they called Operation Market Garden, unbelievable, you could not make it up. And we organised a counter action against them called Operation Greenfly. And we basically flattened the razor wire, pulled the razor wire away, flattened the fencing and we were, we managed by this extremely brilliant bit of organising particularly by this one person, 200 of us, to get onto the bridge before they were able to put it in place. So these, on these girders of the Bailey bridge, I’m going to show you a photo of what it looked like. And that’s us sat-Saskia Papadakis: Oh wow. So it’s this kind of like, I don’t know, like this geometric structure and you can just the see the silhouettes of like twenty people in this photo all looking very triumphant and sitting on [laughing] sitting on these poles and like, yes, it’s an amazing picture.Emma Must: On the girders. And I mean I have got a really tiny poem about it. Would it be okay if I just read, tells you what happened.Saskia Papadakis: Yes, yes, yes please do. Yes.Emma Must: Do you mind?Saskia Papadakis: Yes, no go.Emma Must: It’ll be quicker than me talking about it. And it will say it better. Is that okay?Saskia Papadakis: Please do, yes.Emma Must: So it’s, it’s a poem called Toll, and it’s from The Ballad of Yellow Wednesday. And so it’s Saturday, 22nd May, 1993.We pulled away the razor wire, pushed the fencingflat and we were in, then up, then on, alltwo hundred of us, swarming above the valleyon the girders of their Bailey bridge.All night we banged out rhythms with whatever toolswe had to hand. We made the metal sing,brought forth a chime, a knell, a toll,a resounding reverberation, a peal;with measured strokes we struck the bracingframes as if they’d been cast from bell metal.From beneath our huddled silhouettes, allacross the landscape you could hear the bridgefinding the colour of its voice, rejoicing.The toll rings out across the valley still.--So that was that night. And I wanted to just make sure we mentioned it.British Library catalogue number: C2037/28 Project clip number: 67