SIX. 1st May 2019
Well, I didn’t expect that.
Like almost all of my several thousand comrades who turned up in London on April 15th rather sheepishly carrying flags and banners and sporting strange patches pinned onto our clothing, I imagined that we would probably be home in a day or two having got the climate emergency onto page 7 of the Guardian and a very quick mention for our activities on ITV news. What i didn’t anticipate is to find myself and my colleagues all over the media and social media for days on end, including brief personal appearances on prime time television news and several wide circulation YouTube videos and a brief cameo of myself doing yoga on Waterloo Bridge on Newsnight (plus, apparently a photo of same in the New York Times).
More importantly, I did not expect that the audacious plan for a relatively small group of activists to bring most of central London to a prolonged standstill would be anything like as successful as it was, nor, on the back of that success, the surge of sympathy and support from the general public, the press and TV and even, heaven help us, actual policy makers. Several days on from the pausing ceremony which was the denouement of the adventure I still find it incredible. I am almost as stunned by it as I was by the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump that activated me in the first place. Did that really happen? Articles in todays national newspapers about very serious attempts in the UK parliament to declare a climate emergency backed up by proper proposals for real change, and by the actual passing already of such motions in Scotland and Wales tell me that it did. Plus, for good measure, there is the local newspaper on the kitchen table with a photograph of my wife being arrested emblazoned on the front page.
We appear to have changed the world in a significant way, a fact so astonishing and delightful to me that i am a long way from having integrated it yet. What does this mean? Does it mean after all that activism works, that a small group of determined people really can change the course of history? Does it mean I can return to my original plan of retirement – travel, tennis, writing, guitar, gardening and just generally being a lazy old git, all that?
Yes and no seem to be the answers. Yes activism works. It does, There is no denying it. There has been a seismic shift of consciousness and this came about because several thousand people (with the support of several thousand others who stayed at home) took it into their heads to act upon their convictions and implement, together, an improbable, even ridiculous plan to blockade central London, stage a series of logistically difficult stunts like parking a boat its the middle of Oxford Circus, turning Waterloo Bridge into a garden and staging rock concerts at Marble Arch on a stage powered by solar panels, remain steadfastly peaceful and goodwilled notwithstanding prolonged discomfort, arrests, and sleep deprivation, and in doing so win over the hearts and minds of others. Everything is changed.
And no. No first, of course, because winning over hearts and minds is only the first step. I’ve been around the block enough times in my earlier life, especial as a therapist, to know that the intention to change (even when it’s completely sincere, and let’s not kid ourselves where people like Michael Gove are concerned) is just the start of a long journey in an act of will which must be supported and consistently reinforced and recharged with the energy of activism. The road to hell really is paved with good intentions. Even if they agreed to all our demands there would still be a very challenging process ahead, in which the ways of achieving these ambitious goals are deliberated upon, choices made and held to in the shit-storm of deluded denial and multitudinous self-interested counter-attacks which will follow, not to mention the implementation of a sustained programme of complicated and difficult, painful action requiring loss and sacrifice and which even then is by means certain to succeed.
This all implies that continued determined activism will be necessary – to reinforce, to remind and to resist the reactive oppositional forces which will most certainly be activated in due course. We will need activism most of all to insist, in the phrase of the Yippees of the late 1960’s that “We want everything now”; otherwise our dreams will be torn to so many shreds by a process of compromise, minimisation, manipulation and attrition that we will scarcely remember them. That part, I suspect, is not going to be pretty, and possibly not as much fun either.
No also because, since activism evidently does work, the moral imperative is to continue. Anyway, as a colleague remarked to me recently, in this particular movement there’s no stopping once you’ve started. The energetic forces you have stimulated in yourself and others start to act upon you, generating new ideas and actions which carry you forward whether you like it or not. Mostly, you do like it. It’s completely exhilarating and exciting. The self-organising culture within a strong framework of clear purpose and simple boundaries is productive in a way that I have never experienced in any other field of work. Things not only get done, they get done well and quickly. It’s worth remembering hear that no-one is getting paid. The motivating reward seems to be pleasure. It is no exaggeration to say that the period 15th – 25th April was one of the happiest times I can remember in my life. I was generally uncomfortable, constantly tired and frequently stressed – in the sense of having things to do which were too difficult and too many given my resources. But I have never felt more at ease with myself nor more sure of what I was doing and why. I met many ordinary and extraordinary people, received more kindnesses than I can remember, saw beauty, sadness, joy and pain, witnessed and took part in many creative, collaborative endeavours, laughed, cried, shouted and sang my heart out and generally loved and was loved by it all.
I suppose this feeling won’t last. Basically I and others are coming down off of an extended peak experience and a bit of anti-climax is only to be expected. As they say. “After the enlightenment, the laundry”, and there is plenty of that. Aside from the pile of domestic things to do that I had neglected and indeed completely forgotten even existed, there is the matter of being physically exhausted and emotionally burned out. A bit of a downer is probably round the corner . But I don’t care much at the moment. I know the fight is far from over, but I’m not afraid anymore.and I am convinced, from my experience in London that we will be able together to manage whatever difficulties arise in this post-rebellion period, to recuperate and regenerate and come back at least twice as strong for the next challenge.
Time will tell. Unexpected things can go wrong as well as right. An illustration of this occurred on my last day in London, just as an action outside a government building, a fairly light-hearted media-targeted stunt involving an amusing cloak and dagger preamble in St James Park, was coming to a peaceful and successful conclusion. As we congratulated ourselves on the impact we had made and celebrated the fact that the police had even declined to arrest anyone on this occasion, it emerged that no one had thought to bring any solvent to help unstick the people who had glued themselves together like a line of paper cut-out dolls across the entrance to the building. The police had been pretty kind and courteous to us all week, but they understandably drew the line at calling out their specialist solvent-carrying team given that that were choosing not to arrest anyone. They remained polite to the last but I imagine that a few of them had a quiet chuckle to themselves as they went off for tea and left us to it.
We did eventually manage to source some solvent and get the good people unstuck without undue distress but I suppose the incident shows the importance of not taking anything for granted. Perhaps fortunately, the TV cameras had left by this time, leaving the rather slick image which I think we had established intact. It wasn’t the first time in that fortnight that the timing of things – such as the appearance in the city of an iconic teenage climate hero and on television of an iconic presenter of nature programmes – had gone our way. The weather, ironically enough, was pretty favourable as well. Maybe the times really are changing.
A Reluctant Activist 