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by Bethany Rielly
News Reporter
HS2 bailiffs battled for more than 14 hours today to remove an activist from a steel and concrete “lock-on” in a London protest tunnel, where opponents of the rail project have come face to face with the eviction team.
A group of at least eight protesters have spent more than a week in the tunnel network under Euston Square Gardens, resisting the construction of the line’s London leg.
Bailiffs of the private-sector National Eviction Team dug a parallel down shaft and on Thursday connected it to the activists’ tunnel, which is said to be 100 feet long.
But the team have struggled to remove the protesters after a 20-year-old, known as Lazer, locked onto the bottom of the 50-foot down shaft on Thursday night using a steel and concrete contraption around his arm.
HS2 Rebellion, a coalition of environmental groups, estimated at 10am today, 14 hours into the lock-on, that it would take another six hours for bailiffs to remove him.
In a statement issued via HS2 Rebellion, Lazer said that he was undertaking the action “because I don’t have a choice.”
He added: “I shouldn’t have to, but we are now in a total emergency. The lives of people in my generation are being risked by carbon-guzzling vanity projects like HS2.”
HS2 Rebellion has called on the government to scrap the “expensive, unpopular and destructive” scheme “before it is too late.”
The group is trying to protect Euston Square Gardens, which they claim is going to be destroyed to create a temporary taxi rank before being sold to developers as part of the multibillion-pound rail project.
HS2 workers have already felled a number of trees in the small park near Euston station despite campaigners continuing to live underground.
Earlier this week, a High Court judge rejected a legal bid to halt efforts to evict them but urged the National Eviction Team to rethink its strategy for the removal of the protesters amid safety concerns.
HS2 Ltd maintains that the safety of the protesters and those involved in the eviction “is of paramount importance.”
“As has been reported this morning, the illegal trespassers have attached themselves underground, which increases the danger to themselves but also to our team and the emergency services,” a spokesperson said today.
