| To block the construction of a railway that could destroy ancient forests, climate activists in the U.K. have begun digging tunnels in its way, and living underground for weeks.  Photograph by Martin Pope / Getty The eviction of those living in the Wendover Active Resistance Camp—known as WAR Camp—has all the makings of a Disney animated film. There’s an activist known as Swampy, who, along with his compatriots Satchel and Log, is facing off against a government-backed company over the fate of a strip of forest that’s been hailed for its natural beauty. This land is in danger of becoming a part of a sprawling high-speed-train line cutting through England, connecting London to the North. As Anna Russell writes, in a Letter from the U.K., it’s a saga about conservation versus development, and the lengths that both camps will go to achieve their opposing goals. It’s also about power. “The Conservative Party has recently wrested political control of the country’s less prosperous North from the Labour Party,” Russell notes. And, under Boris Johnson’s leadership, “the rail line has become a clumsy metaphor for unification.” Follow along with this astonishing piece to discover how the protesters built a forty-foot wooden tower, in an effort to outwit evictors, and, later, how they retreated, for weeks, into a tunnel they had built—and where the story has just begun. Read the story. —Jessie Li, newsletter editor | 
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