escape like squirrels

It was incredible to witness the level of support for community energy generation at the launch this week of Ovesco’s share issue for Britain’s first community-owned solar power station (see photos here). The launch raised the amount pledged close to the £200,000 mark, with a total of
£306, 000 to be raised by the end of May. I feel so glad to be part of a community where big visions are held and then realised together – despite all the power struggles going on at government level. There’s still time to make a pledge at the Ovesco website.

For those who also like to agitate in a more physical way during these strange and disturbing times and the tipping points of climate chaos loom ever nearer while our leaders procrastinate, a week-long Climate Camp is coming to a place near Lewes this weekend. It’s shaping up to be a brilliant event for anyone who would like to become a little more radical. In true Climate Camp style, the venue will be a surprise: watch this  wonderful website closely for news and directions, and come along for a cup of tea and a spot of creative direct action.

DH Lawrence: ‘When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power. We shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down, we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper’.

revolution

Last week’s march in London was a blast. Nearly half a million protesting about growing inequalities caused by the cuts to public services, with the backdrop of bonuses for the bailed out bankers and unopposed tax evasion. Such a sense of power and determination.

I went up with a gang from UKUncut, who have their supporters here in Lewes. Our home-grown Lewes Four, who were arrested for peacefully protesting outside Boots a month ago, are themselves going to Eastbourne police station tonight to face charges. Though I truly doubt the police has a good reason to charge them. Myself, I am lodging an official complaint with Sussex Police and will also take legal action for my own small arrest and subsequent ‘dearrest’for not giving my name during the same protest.

Far from being the violent anarchists portrayed by some of the media, UK Uncut were peacefully making their cause known up and down Oxford Street by ‘baling in’ tax evaders and banks, ie conducting sit-ins. The finale was a mass occupation of Fortnum and Mason, who are, apparently, themselves tax evaders. You’d think they could afford to pay towards the country’s coffers. Though, sadly, the arrest of the Fortnum and Mason 138 may signal the end to peaceful protest, says solicitor Matt Foot.

If you are reading this and wondering why the lady doth protest too much? I can only say, isn’t it totally obvious that we need to stand up for what we believe in and if necessary make a scene, ideally as playfully and adventurously as possible?

Do please watch this very brilliant and funny video from Rap News Revolution for some context....

domestic extremists

I watched the rushes this week of a new film Just Do It, following the lives of some of the climate protesters who are mostly young but who include the awesome Lewes resident Marina Pepper. It’s a pretty moving story of people who literally put their bodies in the way and who have managed to help stop such climate polluters as Kingsnorth power station and Heathrow’s third runway. These activists call themselves domestic extremists, and their clear aim is to help preserve life on earth.

One of the interesting themes from the film is the realisation that we have to tackle climate change at its source, and that is our industrial growth society and the institutions that perpetuate it: corporations and banks and governments that do not regulate and tax them sufficiently. You don’t have to be an anarchist to be saying that now: mainstream institutions such as nef, the Bank of England and the recently CEO of pharmaceutical Glaxo Kline agree that the system isn’t working. Which is why I will be to march this Saturday with UK Uncut - taking the 8.07 to meet up at 8.30 in Brighton and 11 in Kennington tube. Uk Uncut is a very new movement playfully occupying high street corporate and banks to demand that corporations stop evading paying their taxes. We’ll probably all end up on Oxford Street.

I remember Joanna Macy’s story about there being three types of action necessary for humans who wish to support the Great Turning (away from the industrial growth society to the life sustaining society). Holding actions – such as those of UkUncut, Plane Stupid and Climate Camp, trying to prevent further damage to life. New realities - and the Transition Town movement is firmly in this camp by creating parallel public infrastructure. And change of consciousness.

The latter can be a problem as I notice it’s an easy excuse for some of my spiritual pals not to change their behaviour – ie trusting in God without tying up their camel.

But at any one time, it’s good to be wholeheartedly and realistically involved in any one of the above – after all, what are we here for if not to be co-creators of our world?

I protest

Of course I was embarrassed that a photo of me being arrested last week appeared on the front page of the Sussex Express. Not only was it unflattering, but the headline, ‘OAPs arrested in Boots picnic demo’ was equally humiliating (I am 50). However, once my ego got over the shock I realised that the whole fiasco, including the illegal arrest, was effective because it had got loads of people talking about the issues. Several schoolchildren who remembered me from Lewes New School were very concerned and gave their parents the chance to unpick the story.

I’ve been occasionally protesting over the years since I was a teenager, and I tend to do it when the feeling of outrage rises up and needs expression. It’s an intuitive thing. Revolution seems to be in the air, yet the underlying causes of the problems – a capitalist system designed to reward the wealthy – economic growth based on increasing use of finite resources and polluting fossil fuels – peak oil imminent – are so endemic, it’s hard to know where things will go.

The sane place for me to turn, when my heart literally hurts, is always towards nature. I’ve been escaping off to the allotment this week whenever I’ve had enough of the computer. Finishing preparations for the spring which is tangibly starting to happen. Harvesting green salads daily from my polytunnel, which feels at times like a little chapel. This week, inspired by my friend Tali, who has a stall at the Friday market, I’ve been picking the first tender shoots of chives, sorrel and parsley and chopping them up fine with goose grass from the hedgerows and mixing with lemon juice, salt and a little olive oil, for a spring zing on our supper.

I’ve been sowing the first seeds into a small propagator I bought over the winter, a little mantra: cucumber, tomato, celeriac, celery, chillies, aubergines, dreaming of sunshine and abundance. I wonder if we’re dreaming our way out of the dark times.

I protest

Most of us would agree that it is morally wrong for a company to avoid paying taxes in the country in which it is trading. Especially at a time when ordinary citizens are being asked to embrace austerity. And that is why I found myself, with my husband and a few other friends and allies, holding a peaceful protest on a picnic rug in front of Boots in Lewes this Sunday.

As I have written before, if injustices are not being addressed by our leaders, we need to use the power of protest to challenge those injustices. Over time, many changes have been brought about by such protests – such as the votes for women by the Suffragette movement or the end of slavery by the Abolitionists. At the time, the campaigns were denounced as marginal or wrong-headed. But at some point, the issue that was being campaigned about was overturned as a new reality came into play.

There are now some very dark injustices being revealed in our world, and I am particularly exercised by the barefaced bonus culture of baled-out banks and the tax-avoiding greed of corporations and some very wealthy individuals. Boots recently moved its headquarters to Switzerland from where it now pays £14 million in taxes annually compared with £100 million in 2007.

So we settled in on our picnic rugs and I poured a nice cup of green tea from my Baltica teapot and Susan supplied us all with biscuits. We read out Tom Paine quotes. Inevitably, the police arrived, two van loads full. We were politely asked to move, and given a five-minute deadline. I moved just 30 seconds before the time was up and was grabbed by three coppers who demanded I give my name and address. I refused, believing this was my right. They told me that they would arrest me if I didn’t give my details. I refused. They tried to handcuff me; I resisted. They twisted my arm behind my back and marched me, bent over – very undignified – to the police van where I was handcuffed and arrested. My shoulder and my pride were hurt. I was told I would be ‘de-arrested’ if I gave my details. After a while I did, to a police video camera, and was released. Presumably I will now be joining the rising numbers of people logged on a protesters database.  My information is this kind of intimidation is illegal and I will be taking legal advice.

Meanwhile, four of the protesters who refused to unblock the entrance were arrested and taken to Worthing police station and released by midnight, a full 12 hours after the protest.

It seemed appropriate to be celebrating Thomas Paine’s birthday (on 29 January) on the doorstep of Boots because he had some pretty sharp things to say about wealth and tax back in the late 1700s:
‘Separate an individual from society and give him an island or continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property, cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected to the end in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes, on every principle of justice,  gratitude, and of civilisation, part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.

‘This is putting the matter on a general principle, and perhaps it is best to do so; for if we examine the case minutely it will be found that the accumulation of personal property is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little from the labour that produced it; the consequence of which is that the working hand perishes in old age, and the employer abounds in affluence.’

put the kettle on

When I got home yesterday I discovered that all four of my children had taken part in the student protests, independent of each other. I'm proud of them for being active citizens, willing to participate in protest when democracy is not working. I'm actually amazed that more people haven't been protesting, given that the cuts coincide with the record £7 billion the bankers are about to award themselves in bonuses. 

Rose, who is 17, was one of a hundred students who got kettled on Brighton seafront late yesterday afternoon. That means that she was surrounded by armed and helmeted police and not allowed to leave the cordon to pee, to get warm or for any reason at all. They were kept like that, freezing, for two hours and only allowed to leave after that if they gave their names and addresses and were photographed. The kettling was much more severe in London.

This is apparently how police are being taught how to control peaceful demonstrations and although it is no doubt intended to intimidate citizens into being less likely to protest, I feel it is likely to radicalise a whole new generation of children and youth. 

We are probably entering a time of material hardship and therefore increasing unrest. I grew up with a feeling of national security. My kids will almost certainly not have that privilege. But maybe that's a more real perspective; looking back I can see that the price of our comfort was too high.

letter from the future

I'm planning a trip this summer to visit my brothers in America and Canada. I’m taking three months – one to cross the Atlantic and back by Clipper ship, one to spend with my brothers and other friends and one getting around. The electric train network, especially down the East Coast, runs really well now the electricity companies have sorted out the solar fields around cities and the major train junctions. I’ve been saving up for this trip for a couple of years and I’m really looking forward to travelling slowly.

Travelling wasn’t always like this for me; I was in the local paper in 1960, for being the youngest child in England to fly transatlantic – for my New York christening. When I was in my twenties Freddy Laker figured out how to run cheap transatlantic flights – I was at university in America then, studying science, and I remember getting standbys for £50 to come home for holidays. Later, I took cheap flights when I could, and when the children were young we had holidays in St Lucia, Sardinia, Morocco and all around Europe. Those holidays deepened my sense of awe and respect for all life and people on earth. That global mind was one of the good things to come out of the century of flying.



Which is why, in my 40s, when I discovered the effects of burning fossil-fuels, in gory scientific detail, I had to stop all that flying and buying that I’d been brought up to believe was my birthright. I was sad to leave it behind, but my conscience made me do it. Some friends got the message long before me, in the 70s; others continued flying for a few years, often because, like me, their family had scattered around the world in the age of cheap flights. But gradually flying, like smoking, became socially unacceptable; people started to discover that flying was not a resilient or – real – way to live, and that other ways, like conference calls, or just working closer to home and family were more relaxing and effective. That’s when other modes of transport also became more common and more affordable.

I think the turning point was around 2010. That was a bad year for the airlines. First the early stages of the economic contraction left many of them bust or consolidating. Then fuel prices started going up and that made it more difficult to run cheap flights; the whole scandal of the tar sands didn’t help either. The Icelandic volcano erupting grounded airlines for the first time since they were invented and made some people long for quiet skies, and that uncertainty started a trend towards trains for short-haul. Plus, everyone was saying how unpleasant flying had become, with the anti-terrorism checks and so on. And then I remember the new government - it was that brief Lib-Dem/Conservative coalition – announcing that there would be no more new runways built at Heathrow, Gatwick and Standsted, the main hubs.

I remember storming parliament to demand this, dressed as a suffragette, linking with the right for women to vote. Your mother also had a big sit-down picnic in the arrivals lounge at Heathrow, and your aunt Anna too; I think she still has the Flash-Mob T-shirt. To them, as teenagers, it was so clear that new runways were incompatible with the move away from fossil fuels and the age of earth repair that we could see coming by then. Yes, if there was a day to celebrate, when the age of air travel turned a corner, I think it was the day they stopped building new runways.

I hope that helps with your essay about ‘flying in the olden days’
With much love, your granny, May 2030

un-bee-lievable!

I was sitting on my terrace yesterday, sunning my bald head, when a solitary honeybee flew into the glass doors and fell to the ground. It was the first honeybee I’d seen this year in my garden, and I eased myself to the floor to make contact with it. It was dusting itself off and resting, its abdomen pulsing. Hey little one, how fare you? (I always talk to the bees.) Not so well, clearly, since bees tend not to collide with solid objects. After a pause, it flew off and I bid it well. I’ve spent some time this week setting up three ‘lure’ hives in different locations, calling in swarms to set up camp. It’s perfect swarming weather, warm and wet, though, given the dearth of bees in the air, I accept that they may remain empty.

In this week-long bee immersion I’ve been finding out some truly shocking information. The British Beekeepers Association has allegedly been accepting large sums of money from agro-giant Bayer, the manufacturer of the powerful modern insecticides, called nicotinamides, in exchange for allowing Bayer to market these pesticides to farmers as ‘bee friendly’. These pesticides, used extensively in Britain, were banned from France, Germany and Italy from 2001, when the beekeepers there protested after large swathes of the bee population were decimated by the agrochemicals. What is tamely called colony collapse disorder here, is very likely to be caused by Bayer’s toxins, which are systemic poisons, in that once in the plant they continue to work against insects throughout the plant’s life. More worryingly, they wash off the land into groundwater - their half life is two years – where they are taken up by the weeds and other wild foraging plants loved by bees. The effect of such chemicals, which, according to Bayer, work as low as two parts per billion, is that honeybees and other insects get disorientated and cannot find their way home, or dance the dance that shows the rest of the hive the source of nectar. The colony starves, collapses, even in the peak of the nectar flow.

Private Eye this week quoted environment secretary Hilary Been as insisting that "We haven't seen any evidence that [pesticides] have an adverse impact on bees". This love affair between our leaders and corporations is taking the honeybee, which has been around for 50 million years, and worshipped by wiser humans than us since the beginning of humanity, to the edge of existence. It bears repeating that 30% of British honeybee colonies have died out in the last two years and that we depend on the honeybee for pollinating 80% of our food.

How to deal with such outrageous information without tipping in to denial and powerlessness (which is the numb-down route taken by so many of us in the western world at the moment) or despair (the route of illness and loss of the essential life force needed in this time of change)? Philip Carr-Gomm, our resident chief druid, spoke of this in an evening hosted by the Transition Town Lewes Heart and Soul group last week. He called for the need to look at such information with ‘bifocal vision’ – to see things simultaneously as whole and also as sick. Dancing on this edge, we can stay sane in an insane world and be alert and effective change-makers.

And we are powerful, each one of us like a honeybee in a colony; we can manifest goodness and health if we work together. What can we do to help the honeybee? The answer is clear. Short-circuit the corporates through choice; eat local, organic food. Do it now, and do it as though your life depends on it. And watch this video to make you smile.

breaching the peace

I arrived home on Monday to find Dirk literally dancing a jig of unholy glee in the kitchen. He’d received a letter from Kent Police withdrawing the charges made against him at his arrest at the Climate Camp last August. He’d been arrested (see Meridian news video here) for obstruction because he refused to be stopped and searched, along with every other camper, on his way in and out of the camp, his point being that the police couldn’t possibly suspect him of being a terrorist, which was the law that police invoked to justify the searches. He was then arrested, held for eight hours on his own and then turfed out in a midnight thunderstorm to make his way home to Lewes, since he’d been banned from returning to the camp near the Kingsnorth power station.

Dirk had decided to represent himself at the court hearing in a fortnight since we couldn’t afford a solicitor yet felt it was important to hold out for justice. Our neighbour and friend Jonathon, who is a High Court barrister, helped Dirk prepare a case. Jonathon pointed out that not only had Dirk not breached the peace but that the police had breached his peace in going about his business, and had no right to search him, let alone arrest him.

As part of the preparation for the court case, Dirk had obtained several witness statements and character references, and had written to the police asking them to provide eight police officers as witnesses, along with their notebooks. Several other people arrested for contesting the stop and searches have been let off, we now hear.

Because it was a fiasco. Norman Baker, our MP, visited the Climate Camp and narrowly missed being pepper-sprayed by a very aggressive police presence. He wrote to the head of Kent Police complaining about their intimidation tactics and also researched a claim that 80 injuries had been sustained by the police during the week of the climate camp. What were the injuries, asked Norman? Bee stings and headaches.

Dave Morris (of McLibel fame) who, with Dirk, contested the police’s right to stop and search, has since called for a Judicial Review into the police presence at the peaceful Climate Camp. One of the things I love about the attitude of climate activists is that they use ingenuity and intelligence in creating magnificent, self-managed and playful events such as the Climate Camp, but that there is also a high level of knowledge of legal rights and support. I have been brought up to believe that one of the mainstays of a democracy is the right to question authorities peacefully, and not be harassed by a police force in doing so. That belief was vindicated this week.

honour the protesters

Although I’ve given up reading and watching the news for the time being I was tempted to read about the announcement of the third runway at Heathrow last week. Partly because my two oldest daughters have been protesting against it, dressing up as suffragettes, flashmobbing with T shirts, dancing the conga in Terminal 1 and so on, bless them. I’m especially fascinated by Geoff Hoon, transport minister. How can this intelligent man use such weak arguments that are clearly against the climate targets that Britain has fought so hard to pioneer? He does seem keen to engage in a discussion about the matter, however, and in an interview in the Guardian, made the point that since people want increasingly to take cheap flights, the government should provide more runway capacity. He is right, in a way, although such free market behaviour is also one of the problems. And though it’s great that the rich and famous such as Emma Thompson are adding their weight to the debate, as Geoff Hoon points out, if they continue to fly with abandon, as the wealthy do nowadays, this only adds to the sense of confusion, cynicism, despair and lack of empowerment from ordinary people.

It boils down to a kind of stalemate, where neither the leaders nor the people want to make a stand that says, we have to fly less, we have to consume less. We have to care enough about the rest of the life on the planet to each, willingly, change our lives.

It’s two years since I took a flight pledge and it continues to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Right now, I’d love to be in Cuba, just walking through the streets and absorbing all that is a foreign culture. The warmth, the sounds, the smells, the food, the music. The way people treat each other, the human and plant culture, every tiny, subtle detail. This is food for my being. I can afford it; nobody is stopping me, except a little voice that is just telling me to be one of those people that draws the line.

At his inauguration on Tuesday Barak Obama called on Americans to become less self indulgent. His position was celebrated as being hard won by the Civil Rights movement decades before, where people agitated (mainly peacefully) with passion for equal rights that only seemed obvious and right to them at the time. Although climate protesters these days are being arrested, belittled and ignored, I see a future where the many courageous people who decide to make a stand today for the future of the planet will be celebrated and honoured.

unlawful arrest

So Dirk and I went to the Climate Camp last week, to add our voice to the growing number of people who are actively seeking alternatives to fossil fuelled way of life, and who are protesting against the new planet-threatening coal powered station at Kingsnorth in Kent.

As we arrived we were greeted with a wave of police who had corralled everyone trying to go on site into a pen for searching. Dirk and Dave (who turned out to be Dave Morris of McLibel Trial fame) refused to be searched as the law being invoked – a terrorist law – required police to suspect individuals of intent to do harm. Which clearly most of us weren’t. Dirk and Dave successfully made their case, and then returned to invite the other detainees to break ranks. Two days later, when they tried again (by this time police were also searching people leaving camp, often forcibly and brutally) Dirk was arrested. That's him being bundled into the van.

He was let out on bail at midnight during the dramatic thunderstorm and since he wasn’t allowed back on camp made his way back to Lewes by dawn. He was charged, with a trial date of 3 September. He’s fine now. He lodged a complaint and lawyers will be contesting this and the many other illegal actions carried out by police (I won’t go into them here for risk of sickening you as much as I have been). Norman Baker, who was also nearly caught in pepper spray by riot police against peaceful people during his visit, has also lodged a complaint to the top brass.

The camp itself, in contrast, was stunningly organised, with its self-managed consensus decision making and very diverse culture. Compost loos, brilliant vegan food, passionate and intelligent speakers – amazing legal backup with legal observer training, and 1,500 people looking after each other, peacefully and playfully. A real celebration of human ingenuity, a little ray of hope for humanity.

From outrage to action

I think it was listening to Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister, on the radio yesterday morning that made me decide to cancel my plans for this week and head towards the Climate Camp at Kingsnorth.

He said that people going to this camp are deluded, that the new coal fired station on the drawing board was a minor move, and in order to keep the lights on we need to continue to build several new coal power stations. He said though the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology isn’t yet developed, we could retrofit it later.

So much of what he said and the way he said it outraged me. Intelligent commentators have been expecting this collision of paradigms for some time. The ‘Keep the show on the road at all costs’ v the ‘learn to live lightly’ camp. The two are almost definitely incompatible. Sure, I hope we can keep the lights on with renewables, but we’re not going to be able to live the high life we’ve come to expect. In order to make the transition, we have to accept that we will be consuming less and living more simply in order for others to simply live, so to speak. Anything less than that is suicide and thoroughly immoral – if I were religious I’d even say sinful.

My feeling of outrage at our leaders’ behaviour is moving from simmering to a slow bubble – and I find myself saying, it’s all very well making a positive change in my community but if our leaders continue to bugger us all up, I’m not going to take it lying down. So I’m heading east, tagging along with George Monbiot, Mark Lynas, Caroline Lucas and many others. What else could possibly be more important?