The length of Ringway 2 between Falconwood and Chiswick does not correspond to a single section of route as described in the main Roads.org.uk articles – it covers all of what we regard as the Southern Section and part of the Western Section. However, to the GLC, this part was sometimes considered a single project, divided into several stages. For the purposes of looking at the administrative background of Ringway 2, it therefore makes sense to look at this whole length.

Detailed documentation reflecting the back-office work on this project is available in the sort of exhaustive detail that is rare on most unbuilt road schemes of this era. London Metropolitan Archives hold several files which are the correspondence and admin paperwork about the above length of motorway, from file reference GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/048 to GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/064.

Petitions and protests

Possibly uniquely among London’s unbuilt road schemes, the full correspondence file for this section of Ringway 2 has been retained. The volume of correspondence was positively enormous – the total count in the file is not recorded, but there is a note to record that, in the two months after the full sweep of Ringway 2’s southern section was announced in July 1969, some 2,650 enquiries were made by the public, including 300 in person¹. So in that two month period alone, 2,300 letters were received about the scheme.

Letters from residents

Many of the letters were addressed directly to Robert Vigars, chairman of the GLC’s Highways and Transportation Committee, and figurehead for Ringway 2. Some of those on file are literally green ink letters, in a very real manifestation of something we tend to see, today, as simply a figure of speech.

The GLC’s staff tended to write very similar replies to most of the letters, since most of them had the same theme: the author lived on, or very close to, the route of the new motorway, and they either wanted to protest in general terms, or to complain that their house was unsellable as a result. Those whose houses could be bought outright by the GLC, under the rules described below, were told so; sympathy was expressed to those whose houses could not be bought. The GLC was at pains to explain that they had no legal power to purchase property that was not literally in the path of the motorway, and that they were actively lobbying the Government for legislation that would let them purchase houses that were otherwise affected by the project.

One notable letter came from fellow members of Vigars’ own political party.

This meeting of the executive council of the Streatham Conservative Association, having been made aware of the GLC’s plans to construct an intersection of the M.23 and the “C” Ring Road in the Streatham Vale area, is deeply concerned at the substantial loss (by demolition) of good modern houses and the destruction of a good residential community coupled with loss of amenity, and is convinced that this is not the best way to “get London moving” or in the best interests of Greater London, and is therefore determined to oppose by all means the present proposals.

Letter from Streatham Conservative Association to Robert Vigars, 25 March 1968²

Another notable letter came from a member of the Labour party – Richard Marsh, who was then Minister of Transport. The nature of his communication would have verged on scandalous had it been made public at the time, since he officially had to remain neutral about the plan but plainly was against it.

For obvious reasons I am about the only person in London not permitted to have a view on Ringway 2.

It is difficult to hold this position in Eltham and I would find it impossible to maintain it, with or without compensation, if the road encroached upon any more of the delightful countryside between my home and the railway line!

Letter from Richard Marsh MP to Robert Vigars, 30 September 1969³

One correspondent writes repeatedly, on sheets of tiny notepaper, from 253 Whitefoot Lane, a property on the south side of the street close to its eastern end that would with certainty have been demolished. This is one typical example, verbatim.

HANDS OFF MY HOME AND HOUSE TAKE YOUR ROTTEN MOTOR WAY SOME WHERE ELSE, WE DONT WANT ROUND HERE.

Letter sent to GLC, 30 July 1969⁴

It would be easy to smile at the uncouth capital letters and the grammatical errors in a letter like that, but these are perhaps also, out of all the hundreds on file, the letters that convey more vividly than any other the fear and the raw emotion that must have been running through the minds of thousands of people in South London. This is a letter written by someone who is utterly terrified that they will lose their home and their neighbourhood, and who can do very little to stop it.

Another from Ronald Cuddon A.R.I.B.A. questions why Ringway 2 will run just south of Southend Lane and not along it, blighting far more homes and making a useless strip of land between the two.

He adds, damningly:

I have visited County Hall and seen the report and maps. Those passages in the report concerning environment, the bands and diamonds on the map indicating the brutal path of the motorway are to a professional eye neither convincing nor entirely honest. Moreover I was shocked to find that on a matter of such great concern both to the general public and the private individual the spokesmen available were so ill-informed, lacking the calibre or knowledge to understand the enormous human and technical problems involved. Can this be a device to stone-wall and if so this attitude by the authority and it’s (sic) servants suggests a monumental cynicism, the fore-runner of an arrogant autocracy boding ill for democratic processes.

Letter from Ronald Cuddon to GLC⁵

Other letters sometimes hint at the level of unrest and disruption that seems to have been typical at public liaison events for the motorway project. One letter starts:

I attended the meeting, at the Stuart Fleming School, Anerly (sic), at which you answered questions from the floor. Unfortunately with the interruptions from the audience, and the noise of having the meeting outside, I was unable to hear any of the answers you gave.

Letter from A. G. Killick to Robert Vigars, 28 July 1969⁶

The only letter of support in the entire correspondence file – that has been found, at least – was from a gentleman who wished to state that the Copers Cope Opposition Group were “a backwards lot”, and wrote to say he supported the idea of Ringway 2. He then went on to object to everything about its design⁷.

Petitions and protest groups

Several petitions from groups of residents along the line of the motorway are held on the GLC file, though it’s clear from the paperwork here and elsewhere that others must have been made and submitted. This can only be a sample.

Notable examples include:

• On 18 July 1967, a petition signed by 5613 residents of Chiswick opposed to further new roads there was handed to the GLC by Lt-Col Jardine⁸.
• In September 1969 a petition was delivered from the Southend district of Lewisham, which is the area surrounding the proposed R2/A21 interchange. The number of signatures was not listed but it ran to approximately 50 pages⁹.

The many protest groups on the route of Ringway 2 are evidenced in the letters sent to the GLC, and proliferated from 1969 onwards when plans were unveiled. However, it’s easy to imagine that public discontent snowballed and the movement against the motorway only grew in strength until the overwhelming pressure derailed the project. In truth things are rarely so simple. In May 1968, one of the earliest groups to form – at a time when the name Ringway 2 had yet to be coined and the line of the road had yet to be revealed – considered their case unwinnable. Regrettably, the newspaper that published the following article is not recorded in the files, but the following text survives.

Members of Mitcham’s “C” Ring Road Association have decided that they will not attempt to stop the proposed construction of the road, which is causing many of them to sell their homes and properties.

Extract from unknown newspaper, some time during May 1968¹⁰

The primary aim of the Association was deleted at a meeting when it became clear that the road was unstoppable – instead they confined themselves to advising people on how to deal with sale of property if they were affected¹¹.

Public meetings

The GLC held numerous public meetings about Ringway 2’s Southern Section, partly as public liaison events where they hoped to provide clear information about what they proposed to build, and partly as a means of allowing residents a place to vent their anger and to feel their voices had been heard, since the groundswell of opinion against the road did not go unnoticed at County Hall.

In general, reports of these events suggest they were often oversubscribed, with far more people attending than could be accommodated in whatever meeting space had been booked, and decidedly unruly, with the GLC’s representatives, usually led by Robert Vigars himself, heckled and booed throughout any speech they attempted to make. On some occasions the GLC appears to have sent a deputation to public meetings about the motorway that had been set up by residents’ groups, where other public speakers opposed to the project were appearing.

There are some newspaper reports on file that give a flavour of what these meetings must have been like, and which also convey a little of the bluntness and confidence with which Vigars seems to have approached them.

In late 1968, at a time when only parts of the route had been published, this newspaper report (the title of the publication is sadly not held on file) was published under the headline “People wanting to be re-housed should move into the path of one of the new London motorways, says Greater London Council member Mr. Robert Vigars.”

Mr. Vigars, chairman of the GLC’s Planning and Transportation Committee, gave his advice last night at a stormy meeting of 1500 South London householders who fear their property will be affected by the new “C-Ring” road scheme – a part of the planned London motorway system.

He told them: “There is nothing better anyone could do if they want a shiny new council house or flat than to move into the path of a planned motorway.

“As soon as the route is announced move in – and you will either be rehoused or if you wish will be fully compensated,” said Mr. Vigars.

And he told the meeting of the Norbury and District Society – formed to fight the “C-Ring” plan – at the Streatham assembly hall: “You may think I’m joking. But I’m serious.”

Fighting
Mr. Vigars said that about 30,000 houses in the London area would have to be demolished to make way for the new motorways.

But he assured the audience, who constantly interrupted his speech with booing and catcalls, that everyone affected in the scheme, which would be completed during the next 15 years, will be adequately “taken care of”.

Also speaking at the meeting was MP Mr. Douglas Jay, chairman of the London Motorways Action Group, which is fighting the proposed plans.

He said that the first priority at the moment should not be how much traffic there was in London but how to house those in need.

Extract from unknown newspaper, 2 November 1968¹²

There is even a memo on file from elsewhere in the GLC asking Vigars whether these remarks could be attributed to him. His own handwriting appears in the file where he answers, in pencil, on the memo itself: “broadly correct”.

Purchase of affected properties

GLC seemingly had a standing approval to purchase any property that stood on a safeguarded motorway line, if the cost was £20k or less, where the owner was attempting to sell but buyers were put off. The process was surprisingly ad hoc – if a homeowner wished to sell and their solicitor discovered that it was on the line of the road, they would inform the GLC and the GLC would buy it without further questions.

This was long before the route of the road had been made public in any meaningful detail, and was not Compulsory Purchase: the GLC was simply obtaining properties wherever it could so that, when the road came to be built, they’d own as much of the required land as possible and the process would be made much easier. It also hoped to avoid planning blight by simply enabling people to sell up if they wanted to.

Paperwork exists for many of the purchases that went ahead, but it’s not known whether the document record includes every single sale. In working through the files at the LMA it is possible that not every example was captured, so the list below is not exhaustive, but it is at least an illustration of the scale to which the GLC did spend money on Ringway 2’s Southern Section and the number of properties they came to own because of it.

List of houses known to have been purchased for this scheme

At Cressy House on Queen’s Ride, the GLC came to own so many of the flats that it joined the residents’ cooperative building management company¹³.

References

1. GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/057 includes a count of communication received between July and September 1969. ↩︎
2. GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/049 ↩︎
3. GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/057 ↩︎
4. GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/055 ↩︎
5. ibid. ↩︎
6. ibid. ↩︎
7. GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/056 ↩︎
8. GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/048 ↩︎
9. See 3. ↩︎
10. GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/050 ↩︎
11. ibid. ↩︎
12. GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/051 ↩︎
13. See 2. ↩︎