How it all started r Last Thursday (7 September) farmer
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Brynlie Williams called a meeting in a market in St Asaph, North Wales. Around 200 farmers and hauliers showed up to discuss ways in which they could show the government that both industries were suffering as a result of punitive fuel duty.
Within hours the core members of the group had set up a picket at the Shell oil refinery in Stanlow, Cheshire unaware that they were kicking off a dramatic series of protests the like which hadn't been seen since the miners' strikes in the early 1980s.
"The decision to picket was partly to do with what had happened in France," says John Jones of JH Jones & Sons. "But it had to come to this at some point. All we wanted to do was light the blue touch paper and see if things escalated—and they have."
The escalation was mainly through word of mouth but protest groups also got involved.
Tim Smith of the Hauliers and Farmers Alliance, now based abroad, provided contacts of people likely to be sympathetic, while Frank Stears from Trans-Action, which has remained quiet for months, also got members involved.
Finally the Road Haulage Association, partly prompted by the government's response to the demos, actively took part by organising a slow drive in
Edinburgh.