Last minute reprieve for Gloucester unit

A spirited campaign supported by local press and celebrities and involving petitions and demonstrations has saved the Gloucester unit from closure.

Gloucester City Council had been threatening to close the regional unit as part of a series of cuts. The council hoped to save £100,000 by throwing up to six of the unit's seven staff on the dole.

However, a local campaign to save the unit involving Time Team's Tony Robinson and Mick Aston stopped the council in its tracks. Professor Aston said, 'Gloucester is one of the most historically important cities in the country and for it not to have its own unit will make it more difficult to protect what it has. Every year [this] happens somewhere and every year I get really angry, we have to fight another battle.' Tony Robinson urged protesters to 'go home and get agitating. Let them balance the books but not at the expense of the Gloucester Archaeology Unit.'

The campaign made the front page of the local newspaper The Citizen and when
councillors turned up at their North Warehouse headquarters to decide the unit's future, they were stunned to be besieged by 100 banner-waving protesters,some dressed as Saxons, Plantagenets and Tudors. A petition signed by more than 5,000 people was also handed in.

Then at the eleventh hour, the council backed down and said the unit was safe for
the time being. Phil Jones from Unison, said, 'This is a tremendous shift in policy
by the cabinet. We had no idea it was going to happen until a sheet of revised
proposals was handed round at the meeting. We must now keep the pressure up to make sure the unit is kept. We have been astounded by the depth of feeling this
issue has created.'

Earlier, the cabinet member for culture Bill Crowther denied being a hypocrite in threatening to close the unit even though his party, the Liberal Democrats, has recently adopted a policy of promoting archaeology.

Bill Crowther