The Elephant OUTSIDE the room: Nellie adds weight to the Stop the Arc campaign.

Readers of our campaign emails will be aware that Stop the Arc made every effort to make its views on Ox-Cam Arc development known at the developers’ meeting in Milton Keynes on 16/17th November 2021. This annual event, organised by Built Environment Networking and sponsored by Bidwells, is the place where developers and investors present their ideas for developing the five Ox-Cam Arc Counties without ever inviting, to air their views, any representatives from any of the communities of the 3.7 million people who live in the Arc.

This year we thought we would offer to this annual meeting Stop the Arc’s ‘alternative’ view of how the Ox-Cam Arc might develop in future - a future with far more social housing, more frequent public transport services, a greater commitment to preserving our natural environment, and far more consultation with local communities than the present, Whitehall-driven Arc plans involve. We accept that ours is only one of many different alternative views for the future; but then, so is the Government’s.

On 1st September, well in advance of the event, and when the meeting timetable still had several empty ‘speaker slots’, we wrote to the meeting organisers offering such a talk from the Stop the Arc team, and requesting exhibition space. We were turned down on both counts. The organisers told us “we do not require any further speakers and have no exhibition spaces left available”. One month later, exhibition spaces were still available.

Undeterred, on 5th October we booked online a ticket to attend the 2-day meeting in person, at a cost of £300. The automated system accepted our booking in the name of ‘Stop the Arc’, and debited our bank account. WITHIN THE HOUR we received a personal email from the Conference Marketing Director saying “Unfortunately for this business event we’re unable to process the below order – your ticket has been voided and a refund should be with you shortly.”

Unable to present a talk at the meeting, or a poster stand, and having been refused even attendance at the meeting, we decided to organise our own, ‘Alternatives to the Ox-Cam Arc’ Conference in the same venue - the MK DoubleTree Hilton Hotel. We booked a small, 2nd floor conference room, visited the Hotel, talked to the staff and arranged all the AV facilities, tea, coffee and sandwiches for our meeting on the 17th November, the second day of the Built Environment meeting. All seemed to be going well, and we lined up an excellent group of speakers for our event.

On the 8th November, just nine days before our own meeting in the MK DoubleTree Hotel, we sent out a letter to all the speakers of the Built Environment/Bidwells conference pointing out that their presence at the conference, and the use of their corporate logo in its publicity, implied support for Ox-Cam Arc plans. We asked them to confirm that their organisations/members/shareholders etc were all aware of this implicit support for the Arc. We mentioned the results of our own recent survey showing that nine out of ten people reject the Arc, and told them that we were holding in the same venue our own meeting on the 17th to which they were invited. In our letter we said “Stop the Arc is not against development. We simply want housing of the right sort, in the right places, and the right type and price that benefit the poorer members of our society, with development that respects nature rather than destroys it.”

Lupetto, Nellie and friends outside the Doubletree Hilton Hotel, venue of the Built Environment/Bidwells’ Conference, 16/11/21.

Within 24 hours of the above letter being sent out to the meeting speakers, Hilton Hotel cancelled the room booking for our ‘Alternatives to the Ox-Cam Arc’ Conference, claiming ‘staff shortages’ (shortages that had not been apparent a mere day earlier).

Are the Ox-Cam Arc plans so shaky that their supporters can’t bear to hear an alternative view of Arc development? What are they afraid of? It would have been so easy for them simply to have ignored us, to have accepted a talk from us, a few posters, a ticket booking, a few questions during the meeting (in the end, no questions from the floor were allowed). Where there is no debate, there can be no democracy. But there has been no debate - ever - about Ox-Cam Arc plans with those most affected by them; the people who live in the Arc at present. It is as if they simply do not exist, or are an inconvenience to be ignored.

With just eight days to go before our own meeting we searched around and managed to find an excellent alternative venue for our ‘Alternatives’ conference; Milton Keynes Conferencing, just 5kms away from the DoubleTree Hilton. Our meeting went ahead and the videos of most of the talks can be found in the next News item on this website.

But we couldn’t let the Built Environment/Bidwells conference get away scot free. So we organised a ‘happening’ outside the DoubleTree Hilton on the 16th November (the first of the 2-days’ of meetings) involving one huge Italian van (‘Lupetto’ to his friends) and one remarkable white elephant (‘Nellie’ to hers). The van drove up and down outside the Hilton, advertising our alternative conference, and Nellie paraded around reminding folk that 90% of people voted ’No’ to the Ox-Cam Arc. We also handed out to the arriving attendees copies of that week’s Oxford Times (above, right). For a short video of Lupetto and Nellie, click on the ‘Alternatives to the Ox-Cam Arc’ poster, above right.

So, in the end, a real White Elephant did meet the other one - the Ox-Cam Arc.