THE country’s foremost environmentalist is striding over a lumpy, unkempt former rubbish dump where countless thousands of tons of household waste and builders spoil has been buried or tipped.

With its rampant weeds, waist-high nettles, mucky tracks, dirty puddles and occasional clusters of saplings, this rumpled, less-than-alluring pocket of land on the edge of Swindon is no picture postcard.

Reaching the top of a muddy mound, Sir Jonathon Porritt takes a breather and has a good look around.

The Government’s “green guru” is then moved to proclaim: “It is a very special place. I don’t know how many people in Swindon realise that it exists.”

It is 2004 and I am among a few journalists trailing behind and scribbling notes as the ex-director of Friends of the Earth discharges several terse sound bites. Phrases like “entirely wrong,” “absolutely shouldn’t happen” and “must be stopped” are tossed our way.

He is referring to Swindon Town Football Club’s attempt to build a 22,000-seat stadium on this 100-acre bramble-infested, weed-choked wedge of wasteland that is the former Shaw Tip in West Swindon.

An exhausted rubbish dump seems a pretty good location for a football stadium-cum-all-purpose sports complex. Months earlier Swindon borough council suggest this very spot. The initiative will enable the football club to achieve its long-held goal of creating an ultra-modern stadium.

Swindon council, which owns both the tip and the out-dated County Ground, which is attractively located on prime development land, will then boost civic coffers by selling the latter. Everyone’s a winner.

The club gets cracking and links up with a company called St Mawden Properties which designs a spanking new “sports village” that will also cater for swimming, rugby and cricket as well as usher Swindon Town into the 21st Century. But there is a snag. The council appears to have forgotten that ten years earlier it promises the people of West Swindon that Shaw Tip will become a “forest on their doorstep.”

Embracing the concept, residents of Sparcells, Peatmoor, Shaw and Nine Elms pull on their wellies and plant almost 50,000 trees on the once unpromising but now rather precious scrap of land.

To say West Swindon families are outraged at plans to plant a football stadium on their would-be country park is an understatement. The council has scored a spectacular own goal. The Robins, declare residents, are not welcome in the forest.

In the spring of 2004 they embark upon an energetic community campaign on par with, and sandwiched in-between, similar local crusades to Save the Front Garden and Save Coate Water.

The Swindon Forest Protection Group musters 1,500 people who march around the forest/sports hub site with banners saying: “Honk to stop the stadium.”

They are wholeheartedly backed by Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and the council’s Great Western Community Forest. The arrival in Swindon on a sunny Friday afternoon in May of Sir Jonathon is a big boost.

He has been personally appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair as the Government’s environment advisor and has come here to declare that the stadium plan should be axed. The council must not renege on its promise, he says. Quite right.

But Swindon Town director Bob Holt is as miffed as most fans.

“This has all come as something of a shock,” he shrugs.

“The council suggested Shaw to us some time ago.”

At a crunch council meeting in July 2004, Swindon Town suffers its most emphatic defeat since it is trounced 7-0 by Bolton Wanderers in 1997. Even a compromise to split the site between stadium and forest is swiftly booted out.

Councillors from all parties queue-up to trample over the stadium scheme: that’s right, the very same elected members from the very same authority that suggests the Shaw site in the first place.

Funny how they don’t kick up a fuss until a local campaign, with its associated publicity, is launched.

Cynics among us may think their most pressing concern is to secure votes in West Swindon. Residents don’t care. They are jubilant. They have just won the FA Cup.

You may also think that Swindon Town Football Club, a sporting and social institution at the heart of our community, has been sold down the river by Swindon council: or in this case, the River Ray, which runs next to Shaw Forest Park.

Why does this decade-old debacle come to mind? Because a dedicated group of Town fans – Trust STFC – has just made a move to secure the future of the County Ground.

It has applied for the stadium to become an “Asset of Community Value.” If this happens the trust will get first refusal if the council has a mind to sell the County Ground.

Most fans now agree, the stadium should be redeveloped on its present SN1 site. Swindon council will decide whether or not to grant the application.

As with most things STFC, expect a bumpy ride…

  • THE chairman of Swindon Town Football Club is baffled and he is fuming and he is staggered.

It is fair to say that Ray Hardman – in time-honoured soccer parlance – is as sick as a parrot.

He is outside the civic chamber at the council HQ in Euclid Street on the evening of January 31, 1994 and can barely contain his exasperation or disbelief.

The club’s plan for an all-covered 20,000 seat stadium has suffered a severe mugging at the hands of a special committee.

Pencil poised, I ask him for his thoughts on the proceedings he has just witnessed. He shakes his head and says: “I am staggered and I am amazed at the ill-informed remarks made by some councillors.”

It is the end, he accurately and angrily predicts, of a one-off chance to transform the County Ground.

All the finances are in place – with Government cash secured – to build a 3,600-seat £1 million stand to replace the aging terraces of the Stratton Bank.

But two people living behind the Stratton Bank in Shrivenham Road exercise their democratic right to object. The proposed 58ft high stand, they say, will block out some of their light.

Councillors urge Swindon Town to either a) build a lower stand or b) build community a hall under the stand as some sort of compensation to local people. Neither are possible says the club. The scheme eventually crumbles. Committee chairman Harry McGhee insists: “There is no way this council is in any way hostile to Swindon Town Football Club.”

As the 1994/95 season begins the club installs 1,626 “temporary seats” in the uncovered Stratton Bank. Nearly 20 years later they are still there and supporters sitting in them still get wet.

  • SWINDON is in uproar. Fuming fans are on the march. Traffic is brought to a halt. A sit-down protest is staged in the County Ground. The civic flag will be flown at half-mast.

Ten days after the hysteria of gaining promotion to the top flight for the first time in its 110 year history Swindon Town is sensationally relegated two divisions.

The Football League is kicking Town from the First to the Third Division for making irregular payments to players… even though it happens five years earlier in 1985 under a different administration.

Chairman Gary Herbert leaves the hearing in tears. The chairman of Wiltshire County Council says: “It’s disgraceful.” Bigger clubs – much bigger ones – have been embroiled in financial shenanigans’ before but nothing ever happens to them.

The club appeals and eventually it is relegated one instead of two divisions. But the appeal costs a bomb and the club loses its popular manager Ossie Ardiles.

Swindon Town, you may think, has been shafted by the powers that be: not for the last time.