Tina Rothery

This clip is from a series of 100 life history interviews with environmental campaigners in the UK, 1970-2020. It will feature in a book published by UCL Press in 2026. The full interview, along with the rest of the collection will be searchable on the British Library’s Sound and Moving Image catalogue and the interviews will be accessible onsite at the British Library in St Pancras from February 2026. For more information visit www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ohemQuotation:Tina Rothery: Then the next stage was Barton Moss, Salford, winter camp, dark, terrifying. If we thought the police down there were bad, we hadn’t met GMP, Greater Manchester Police. We had a chart which was GMP, IGas private army. IGas was the fracker. GMP was like their private army. This was away from the media. Balcombe had been close enough in the south that we had media attention and it was beautiful weather and lovely people. Barton Moss was hell on earth. We would go up two days of every week but that was all. I would never stay the night. It was too terrifying and too brutal and the police were just so bad. The misinformation started again there. It was like 'activists shoot fireworks at helicopter'. Having said that, they then turfed out on a rainy, cold night, turfed everyone out of their tents, dropped all their stuff in the wet, looking for these fireworks but it was bullshit. They later apologised it was misinformation. But in the meantime, all of these people had been through hell and put out in the cold and the wet.Saskia Papadakis: What was your attitude to the police before you started?Tina Rothery: I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the police. I thought they were perfectly lovely and would have recommended going to see them under any other circumstances. No issues at all with authority or policing. I assumed we need it in society.British Library catalogue number: C2037/16 Project clip number: 220