Film tribute to the 'Pollok birdman'

By Stuart Nicolson
BBC Scotland news website

They were a rag-tag band of eco-warriors whose protests failed to stop a motorway but succeeded in inspiring a poverty stricken area of Glasgow.

Protestors built tree houses in the path of the motorway

Now remarkable behind-the-scenes footage of the Pollok Free State protest camp is to be shown more than 10 years after it closed.

Artist Simon Yuill has turned the footage, shot on camcorders by protestors involved in the campaign against the M77 in the early 1990s, into a short film which will form part of the Glasgow International art festival.

Mr Yuill said he was inspired by the similarities between the Pollok Free State protestors and modern-day campaigns in Glasgow against school closures and the Go Ape development, also in Pollok Park.

The anti-motorway protest started in 1992 when dreadlocked Gael Colin MacLeod became famous as the Birdman of Pollok after spending nine days in the branches of a beech tree in a bid to prevent it being cut down by Wimpey construction workers.

He was joined by a small group of locals angered that the £53m motorway was being built through seven miles of heavily wooded land in Pollok Park which had been bequeathed to the people of Glasgow by Sir John Stirling Maxwell.

Macleod proclaimed: "Pollok Estate was given to the people in 1939. Once given it cannae be ungiven, it can only be stolen."

Gaelic poetry

The road was to carry 53,000 cars every day directly past the Corkerhill and Pollok estates, two of the poorest in Britain. Corkerhill had the lowest percentage of car owners in Europe.

The campaign against the road grew rapidly, with protestors from across the UK and abroad rallying to MacLeod's standard.

The camp became an alcohol and drug free zone, with the charismatic and deeply spiritual MacLeod using discarded wood from the construction site to teach traditional carving techniques, while youngsters from local estates were introduced to Gaelic poetry, story-telling and music.

Forming the centre piece of the camp were several large Native American-style totems of ravens, owls and eagles.

The protestors declared independence from the UK, and even issued passports to those living within its ramshackle maze of tunnels, tents and tree houses.

With the campers surrounded by police and Wimpey security guards, they built a "Carhenge" by planting cars bonnet-first in the ground and setting them alight.

Construction workers found themselves harried at every turn

Regular scuffles broke out between the two sides, with one Scots pine being saved by a camper clinging to its bough for 14 hours despite several attempts by security to yank him from his perch.

Campaigners began sabotaging the construction work, damaging equipment and chaining themselves to trees, and Strathclyde Regional Council's buildings were occupied.

Scottish Trade and Industry minister Allan Stewart was forced to resign after brandishing a pickaxe handle at protestors while accompanied by two teenagers carrying air pistols.

And on Valentine's Day 1995 about 100 local school children declared a strike and walked out of their classrooms to join the protests after police cordoned off the area around the Free State to allow tree felling.

Ultimately, the campaign to halt the motorway and save the 5,000 tress cut down to make way for it failed.

Pollok Free State was dissolved and most of the 'professional protestors' who had arrived from outside moved on to their next battleground.

Local radio

But MacLeod and his original band of Glaswegian followers wanted to give something back to the local people who had supported their campaign.

He had trained as a forester in the US before working as a volunteer with Native Americans, where he was struck by efforts to wean youngsters off alcohol by re-introducing them to their cultural roots.

The experience inspired him to register a charity, and he appealed on local radio for any trees which had been blown down in a storm to be taken to a patch of waste ground in Govan.

There he set about having the long-term unemployed carve the first full-sized Hebridean war galley built in Scotland for 400 years at his GalGael boatyard in Govan.

Macleod died in November 2005, but remains a legendary figure for many in Glasgow.

Simon Yuill's film Given to the People, which features footage of MacLeod as well as interviews with several other protestors, will be shown for the first time at the GalGael on Friday night as part of the Glasgow International art festival.

Several cars were planted in the ground and burned in defiance

He said: "Even from the very beginning the protestors knew that they would probably not stop the motorway, but the camp cannot be called a failure because it brought a lot of issues to the foreground.

"It was always about more than just the motorway. It was about public land that had been gifted to the people of Glasgow, who had not been given a say in what was to be done with it.

"That is something that still resonates very strongly with Glaswegians, whether it is over Go Ape or schools. People feel they are not being consulted over some pretty major things that are going on."

Mr Yuill said he believed Pollok Free State was unique in the way it bonded together environmental protestors and teenagers from the local schemes.

He added: "They had a natural connection with people living nearby because they weren't outsiders like those in protest camps in other parts of Britain.

"They were against the motorway but it was a positive campaign and they offered positive alternatives instead of simply being anti-everything."