Do you remember this early 1996 scare? It was said that people who lived under or near pylons were more liable to contract certain diseases. I cannot get out of my mind the voice of one farmer on a Radio 4 phone-in saying that if we were going to have a BSE panic, we should have had it in 1990 when things were at their worst Things had been improving ever since. Salt, butter, rain forests, ozone layer, nuclear accidents, Aids, herpes, Rupert Murdoch, being run over by a police car...I did, as a matter of fact, write down "Mad Cow disease" on the list, but only as a scare that was now due to pass into history And I may well have been right. That sort of thing."He did not, as a matter of fact, mean the BSE scare That had not yet happened He just meant whatever the last scare was But he was right We do tend to use our knowledge to scare ourselves.

When I got down to write the piece, I listed all the scares I could think of off-hand It was an effortless list to write. Namely, on Gulliver's discovery, at one of his ports of call, that when a nation has learnt a great deal about the world it lives in, it does not necessarily make them happier about the world."I don't quite see..."Well, explained Barker patiently, we pride ourselves on being knowledgeable in this century, but has it made us more or less frightened of the future? Are we more or less susceptible to scares and panics?"Ah You mean...?""Yes. Earlier this year I was rung up by Paul Barker, distinguished ex-editor of New Society, who told me that a new version of Gulliver's Travels was being shown on Channel 4 over Easter. "That's good," I said. And furthermore, he had been asked to edit a booklet to go along with it, illustrating the way our modern world corresponded to Swift's vision of things."Nice one," I said.So he wanted me to write a short piece on one aspect of Gulliver's Travels. Right now it is in danger of becoming a marginalised minority pursuit.. Committed activists - and there remain hundreds of them in Newbury - have become increasingly specialised. At the same time, incidental campaigners have had the edge rubbed off their enthusiasm The new roads programme has been reduced.

Even the anger against the Newbury by-pass has been diffused by the widespread claim that the people of Newbury want it, to take the heavy lorries off their streets.The anti-road lobby was at its most powerful when it commanded support and commitment across society. Disconcerted by both the expertise and the eccentricities of the full-time protesters, the others may have given up.Support may grow again when the tarmac appears. Bulldozers under the summer sun are a more sexy protest proposition than hacksaws in the winter mud. But there is a serious possibility that the anti-road movement is fragmenting. Compared to such sophistication, the "amateur" activists, the day-trippers from Didcot, were bound to feel a little redundant. Against piecemeal destruction, the only effective obstacles were people who climbed trees, or who had the dedication to plan detailed defence strategies.