The police came at five o’clock one Thursday morning, banging on doors to inform bleary-eyed homeowners that they needed to get out of bed and move their cars.
Residents who failed to comply were swiftly punished: within minutes, around ten vehicles were loaded on to lorries and towed away, past road blocks that now prevented access to either end of the street.
Inside this cordon, dissent was crushed. Three people who took umbrage at the pre-dawn raid were slapped in handcuffs, including a thirtysomething man and two grandmothers in their early 70s.
The elderly duo, a retired sociology professor called Jenny Hockey, and her neighbour Freda Brayshaw, a former teacher, were driven to the police station for questioning. It would be eight hours before they were released.
‘Our street was seething with people — lights, noise, chainsaws,’ was how Hockey recalled her arrest. ‘The whole thing was just horrific.’
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