THREE. February 22nd 2019

Strange times. A dozen weary politicians rouse themselves from the torpor of anguished impotence and decide to go and sit somewhere else to see if that will make a difference. One difference it definitely makes is that quite lot of people will start abusing and insulting them rather than those who, through a mixture of arrogance, complacency, and selfishness, got us into this mess. Whether it will make any other difference is hard to predict, and maybe it was not exactly the right thing to do or exactly the right time to do it, but at least they have done something. Even if you don’t share their political viewpoint, you might at least applaud their willingness to take some action which might shift things toward a better place. The opprobrium they are attracting from many quarters – some of which I’ve found quite shocking – reminds me a bit of the condemnation levelled at environmental activists for blocking roads or spray-painting the Department of the Environment: ‘Where’s the sense in annoying motorists and raising the level of carbon-monoxide fumes with traffic jams, or with upsetting civil servants who are just doing their job? How is that going to change anything?’  To which one may reasonably retort: ‘Well, what’s your plan?’

As far as I’m concerned, almost anything which seems to have a chance of loosening the awful, anxiety-provoking, energy-sapping deadlock in which we are drifting towards potential oblivion seems worth doing. I’m aware this might not be a correct intuition. Patience is not my strong point and activism is in some ways just a nervous response to the sense of trouble around the corner. Perhaps it really would be best to do nothing and to trust those in positions of authority – mostly put there through legitimate, even though flawed, democratic processes – to do the right thing.

This was basically the argument of an annoying but impressive person I came up against recently when trying to persuade the  members of a pensions committee to divest from fossil fuels. He is the Chair of said committee and his basic strategy is to speak soothingly but firmly (and eventually crossly) to a succession of citizens like me who turn up to his committee meetings and make a nuisance of themselves by repeatedly suggesting that a pension fund investing in an oil company is like somebody with lung cancer using their savings to buy cigarettes (and variations upon that theme), The truth of this seems  so self-evident to me that I find it a challenge to listen to an alternative point of view; but listen I must if I am to ‘engage’ with the democratic process such as it is and not just get thrown out of the committee room for refusing to shut up when the Chairman tells me to.

The terrifying thing about this is that you can find yourself actually entertaining some of the nonsensical double-think with which you are presented. While I had quite expected to be told that there was a financial imperative for investing in fossil fuels – which the patronising Chair didn’t expect me to understand or offer to explain but invited me to go away and read about on the labrinthine official website – I was unprepared for a moral / philosophic argument in its favour. The basic premise of this was that if you lend money to oil companies then you can  influence what they do; the implication being presumably that you could eventually stop them from  taking oil out of the ground or, at least, have them do it in a ‘nice’ way. This is called, apparently, ‘engagement’.  This seems to me pretty much the same as a vegetarian putting their money into a butcher’s shop with the ultimate aim of turning it into a florists; or, of course, a government department financing a drugs cartel in order to make its business practices more ethical (which quite possibly has happened)

I will need to wait for the next meeting to say any of this because, in the moment, being asked by the Chair and his cohorts to consider the merits of their sophisticated approach to the problem in contrast to my own unrealistic and childish tantrums, I found it impossible to do more than scratch my head and laugh. I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland must have done when told by the Mad Hatter that there no room for her at the tea table. As I recall, Alice allowed this to pass for the sake of good manners, although she eventually found herself in court shouting ‘Nonsense!’ at the Red Queen, and that was what did the trick in the end. 

I think I am much more likely to go down the ‘Nonsense!’ route next time; which may well get me thrown out but will maybe have more impact and at least is likely to be more fun. The trouble with the ‘engagement’ idea is that, grown-up as it sounds, it can easily lead you into a place where you are compromising things which you really shouldn’t compromise and where, in the end, you can be persuaded to see a non-existent cloak on a naked Emperor. What is called ‘engagement’ often ends as (or was always, really) appeasement. I seem to remember our current glorious leader talking a couple of years ago about the merits of ‘engagement’ with the Trump administration as a means of moderation. Again, you can only scratch your head and laugh.

I’m aware, nevertheless, that engagement and compromise are probably key concepts for the newly ‘Independent’ group in parliament whose actions I was affirming earlier on. Here is the ‘rub’, I suppose, the point of tension between insisting upon the absolute truth as you see it and acknowledging the need to co-operate with other people who have a different perspective. I was gladdened to see, early on, that the group had sought to resolve this conundrum by recourse to the idea of reference to core values – arriving at policies and making decisions through a process of rational consideration of the evidence, employing tolerance and respect for different opinions. I was disappointed not to see ‘honesty’ highlighted as one of these core values – although you live in hope – and it may of course be just a ruse to get around the fact that they haven’t got any sort of manifesto yet. But actually, if they kept their policy as simply to arrive at rational conclusions based upon the evidence, and implemented it faithfully, that would be good enough for me. I think it would pretty much cover, for instance, not investing money in an industry which is destroying the planet.

An interesting but probably little-known fact is that there is a whole town council made up of ‘Independents’ in Somerset which operates on these sorts of principles, where what they call ‘Ways of Working’  – Integrity, Respect and so forth – are held as more important than set policy objectives. They took 10 of 17 seats in the 2011 local elections. At the next election in 2015 the major parties put extra effort into winning back seats and this time the Independents took all 17. It appears to be a  trend spreading to some other local  councils. I’ve met a couple of these people and been struck by their evident positivity, goodwill and lack of attachment to tribal agendas. 

There is a very ‘grown-up’ and hopeful part of me that longs for this to happen at a national level and for it to to be true that there can be a real difference between such principled, co-operative leadership and dull consensus / compromise. This part of me is ready to put time and effort into supporting such apparently civilised initiatives even though I might not agree with all the policy outcomes. Another part of me, however, expects to find out soon enough that the new boss is just like the old boss and that ‘engagement’ just means pretending to believe some bullshit for the sake of expediency. Let’s see.

TWO. February 8th 2019

Saturdays used to be for digging the garden, country walks or watching football. These days they are frequently taken up with politics or, as my wife prefers to call it, agitating. On half a dozen Saturdays over the past eighteen months or so I’ve been out on one commuter-belt High Street or another trying to get people to accept leaflets and perhaps to sign a petition / wear a sticker. Leafletting may be seen as the bread and butter ingredient of activism; it is an inevitable accompaniment to almost any campaign, requires no special qualifications, and fills up space. It might also be regarded as a ‘gateway’ activity, seducing the novice – persuaded to come and help out for an hour – into more serious and consuming things which have the potential to take over their life.

I’m rather good at it. This is a surprise as I’m not a natural extrovert and the idea of trying to sell anything to anybody has typically filled me with dread, which is partly why I went into social work after I left university while most of my peers were signing up on graduate schemes for software companies. Dread is what I feel as the time approaches to put on the campaign t-shirt and assemble at the designated meeting point with a disparate group of enthusiasts to be briefed by an earnest, jolly man with a clipboard and a flag.

The dread is usually enough to make me a few minutes late so that I miss some of the introductions and instructions. Although it feels like simple shyness and fear of exposure I’ve come to recognise that it’s probably a bit more complicated than that, encompassing a general resistance to activism / inclination  to passivity. I would really much rather somebody else worried about this stuff and let me dig the garden / watch the football. This same resistance has led me on more that one occasion to turn up for a rally or meeting not only late but at entirely the wrong place. I saw a t-shirt for sale recently which bore the slogan “I’m sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come”. I might buy one to wear for leafletting as it would save me the trouble of needing a different t-shirt for each campaign.

On this occasion, my slightly late arrival requires a re-calculation of small groups and a re-distribution of stickers, numbers of which are considered inadequate to meet likely demand. I am allocated to a group of four people, the other three of whom all know each other through a party affiliation which I don’t have. We stroll off down the High Street chatting  until we eventually shuffle to a halt realising that none of us is exactly clear on our designated distribution point. The usual discussions ensue about footfall, demographics and avoiding intruding on the patch of another group or attracting charges of obstructing the pavement. All of this, in my view, is more resistance. On this day I have worked out that I could actually complete my leafletting duties and get home in time to watch the football, so I am assertive in independently declaring my area of operation and I stride off to get on with it.

I’ve discovered through experience that it is much more enjoyable and effective when leafletting to approach people confidently and openly, as if you are quite sure that what you are offering is of value and importance. At the same time, you want to show that you recognise that the person you are approaching has other important priorities for their time. I usually say something like “Good morning, Madam (or Sir), can I offer you one of these?” or perhaps “Good morning Sir (or Madam), can I interest you in this?”. For some reason I particularly like the”Good Morning Sir / Madam” bit. I guess it provides some sort of shield of performance right from the off. I’ve found it usually at least engages the other person and it enables me to be confident, friendly and possibly even charming in addressing them further, if that seems called for – for example answering questions on what the leaflet is about, responding to challenges or building on a positive reaction – “That’s good to hear. Can I give you a sticker as well? You can even have a poster to put in your window if you like”. I try to be relational, recognising the individuality of the other – “You look very busy, madam, but can I just give you one of these as you pass?” or “I can see you haven’t really got a free hand for this leaflet but maybe I could just poke it in the pocket of the buggy? Hello!” (to baby). That sort of thing.

This is simple sales patter, of course, but it works and I feel oddly real and connected when I’m doing it even even though I know I’m acting a part. I really wish I’d understood some of this when I was a teenager and had no clue as to how to approach girls, suffering a deal of loneliness and anxiety as a result. One of my social group  during late adolescence claimed that his strategy for getting young women to dance with him in clubs was simply to approach as many as possible; by the law of averages he was bound to have some success. Judging by his account, regardless of whether these encounters led eventually to him having a happy and stable long-term relationship, I’m certain that he had a much more enjoyable time at clubs and parties than me; I spent almost all my time in such places feeling stupid and miserable, ashamed of my abject failure to even attempt to meet someone new.

In those days, if I wasn’t sitting on my own in a  corner drinking a bit too much I  would probably seek refuge in a group of like-minded sufferers and stand around with them chatting with forced cheerfulness and pretending I wasn’t wasting my time. I’ve noticed that this is often the eventual recourse of those who struggle with the leafletting game; they end up hanging around in clumps talking to each other rather than the public and limply holding out the occasional leaflet to a passer-by with the obvious expectation that it’s going to be rejected. They end up looking like a bunch of sad losers and, believe me, this is not a good look if you’re trying to persuade people of your cause.

They also end up looking like they have nothing else more important to do and, while this might sound like it conveys worthiness, it is definitely unattractive and therefore counter-productive. I prefer, instead, to seem as if I have numerous other options for spending my time (which Indeed I have) and so I need to give out all my leaflets as soon as possible so that I can go off and get on with them. In this spirit, I  handed out my leaflets in less that half the time allocated and then got shot of another pile which one of my colleagues, observing my success, had pleaded with me to take off his hands.

Quite how we measure success, of course, is debatable. The leaflet has a long journey to make before it has been read, understood and appreciated, absorbed and acted upon. And who knows even then whether that action (in this case the recipient of the leaflet was urged to write to their MP, who I am sure will be unsympathetic) will have any influence. I gave out lots of leaflets, mostly to people who smiled at me and looked interested, but for all I know they threw them in the bin unread as soon as they got round the corner.

But this is only one of many uncertainties for the activist. I would never have started on this if I required convincing that my activism would actually make a difference in terms of political outcomes. I have no idea if it will. What I do know is that it’s making me feel better – not at all in the sense of feeling more comfortable, but in the sense of feeling inspired, aware, connected to values.. I wouldn’t say I feel hopeful but I certainly feel alive. And the better I feel, the more I feel like doing. I left my fellow leafleteers still burdened with their piles, gave them a cheery wave and shot off . As I went away I heard someone describe me as a “wizard” at handing out leaflets, which really made the whole event worthwhile.

ONE    December 22nd 2018

A few days before Christmas on a bleak, damp, London afternoon and I find myself sat on wooden box with a hole in the front of it beating out a harsh incessant rhythm with my bare hands and shouting hoarsely every now and again and in unison with a dozen other drummers and dancers, the words “Rise Up!”. Our invocations are responded to cheerfully by those of our companions – literally partners in crime – who have positioned themselves so as to block the points of entry to and exit from the BBC head office. Although some of them are merely standing placidly holding up cloth banners. the BBC security staff, on grounds of health and safety, have forbidden people wishing to get in or out to attempt to negotiate these flimsy obstacles. A number of other people have used superglue and an ingenious arrangement of drainpipe sections to secure themselves to the metal barriers (which the BBC security staff had erected to prevent us gaining access to the building itself) and to each other. On either side of the barriers crowds of Broadcasting House staff members contemplate with glum bewilderment their inability to get in for a meeting or production deadline, or out for lunch.

Along a wall adjacent to the barrier a queue of a hundred or so punters wait to see if they will be allowed in, presumably as studio audience members. Some of them chuckle at everyone’s dilemma and many respond approvingly at being told by our ‘de-escalators’ going along the queue with leaflets that we are here to save civilisation from imminent collapse on account of the climate crisis that the BBC has been under-reporting. Some others stamp their feet (not in time with the drums), look at their watches and glare at us with open hostility. My immediate comrades, none of whom I met before today, include a man about my own age who has sensibly brought sticks with which to beat his loud snare drum, a slight shy girl aged about 17 who has travelled up, like me, from the home counties and found herself playing a pair of tom-toms which someone else had left on the ground (she is anxious about finding the owner to return them later), a stout bespectacled man who arrived late but was welcomed with enthusiasm because he brought the biggest fuck-off bass drum you have ever seen, and a very enthusiastic young guy with a tall well-made bongo who, on account of his obvious drumming talent, has become our leader for the afternoon.   I am floating between being too cold and too hot and also floating in an out of a sort of trance in which I keep recalling strange dreams which I am not certain I ever had. I am definitely too hungry and thirsty having forgotten to eat the sandwich I brought or to drink any water. The pads on my fingers are swollen and red and there is a kind of white residue building up on the inside of the joints. I am exhausted but I grin happily at our young leader when he pauses for a moment to show me his own bruised hands. I’m having the best time in ages.

So how did I get here? There I was just around 2 years ago preparing to retire quietly from my professional life and to spend my days engaged in a list of things I enjoyed but never had enough time for: gardening, playing tennis, learning Spanish, finishing a book started five years before which remains without a clear structure or a working title, visiting other countries, playing the guitar, doing bugger-all when I felt like it. Although always politically-minded (as the book, if it ever gets finished and read, will attest) I did not put political activism on the list.  I’ve dipped in to various things over the years – a fair bit of political literature, some petition-signing and donating, the occasional local meeting or interesting-looking conference – but had until late 2016 remained more or less, and like most of my ilk (grumpy old git Guardian-readers who know quite a lot and are happy to share it with you but don’t actually do much about it) an essentially  passive consumer. And even though I was genuinely interested in what I read and heard, and sometimes even inspired, nothing shook me from my inertia.

So what changed? What took me from  ‘A’  – consisting essentially of a regular cup of coffee with  the Guardian ‘comment and analysis’ section and the odd cynical email exchange with a like-minded friend – to   “B’ – sitting in the middle of the road annoying a load of people and shouting my head off?

I suppose it was three things, none of them very mysterious: Brexit, Trump and the ‘luxury’ of time. Together they seem to have taken me over the tipping point; between feeling frustrated and that I possibly ought to be doing something more substantial about the public issues which concern, upset or irritate me, and actually doing something. Having gone over that tipping point it feels like momentum is gathering on the other side. I’m not sure I can stop. Sometimes I tell myself that the explanation for my activism is that, being an affluent retiree with no job to hang onto or reputation to  maintain,  I have nothing left to lose. I doubt this is strictly true. More likely, my experiences of activism – although not all of them are positive or exciting by any means – have combined and collided together to create, through a sort of alchemical process, an actual new sense of purpose. Whatever it is that makes you feel that you just have to do something  – whether it’s the washing up, asking someone to marry you, jumping off a high-diving board, or shouting “tell the truth BBC” in the direction of a bemused sports commentator as he tries to get to his lunchtime meeting – I now have that motivation. And it seems that the more this muscle is exercised the stronger it grows, A phrase I have picked up along the way is written on a scrap of paper on the notice board in my study. It says: “If not you, who? If not now, when?”. I have no answers.  I could be in this for the long run.

I’m speaking about this as if it’s an internal process, but of course nearly all of it has been outside my control. It has felt like something happening to me more than something I was doing. My activism may ultimately be re-activism. In that sense there is clearly at least something in the ‘nothing left to lose’ bit. There is a balance, or not, between the things one doesn’t like, on one hand (what Hamlet called the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune) and our attachment to a comfortable life on the the other. The Brexit referendum and the whole process leading up to and following it enraged and appalled me but it still wasn’t enough to get me out of my armchair. Trump’s election distressed me so much that I simply couldn’t settle. After I saw the Brexit result on a morning TV news channel I had actually turned the TV off and then back on again in case I had made some sort of error of consciousness. With the Trump result I did that again and I checked on alternative channels too. I seriously considered going back to bed and getting up again later to see if it had been a dream. For weeks afterwards I often caught myself forgetting it had happened or half-believing that it was a dream. A nightmare of course. I felt like the hyperactive Hamlet, pacing back and forward, caught between an urgent compulsion to act and a desperate search for some evidence that what I knew to be true had never happened. 

Later on the morning of November 9th 2016, I wept. I can’t remember doing anything like that before. Not after Thatcher’s hypocritical election victory speech (“where there is discord, may we bring harmony” – that one) in 1979. Not after they started bombing Baghdad 12 years later (when I felt an urge to be on the streets but knew nowhere to go) or when the lying bastards did it again 12 years after that (when an important Saturday work commitment ‘prevented’ me marching with the million others). After Trump’s victory, I could not be at peace.  It occurs to me now that the mixture of horror and outrage I experienced and was incapable of integrating psychologically or even physically offers a fair explanation for what  Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder sometimes is. I simply felt that this could not stand. I could not be at peace with it and it would be immoral, unthinkable, fatal even, to try.

The advantage I and most adults have over kids with ADHD is that we have enough ego function to transform a sense of emergency into a plan of response; maybe even to turn a crisis into an opportunity. I was in Parliament Square as soon as I saw a chance of gathering with some like-minded people. That was in the early spring of 2017. There were a few thousand of us that evening, and a smattering of speakers. It gave me a sense of relief. I’m not sure I could not have done it; as if for years I had been the proverbial frog heating up slowly in a pan of water and not noticing how high the temperature had got, now I was the frog put into a  pan of already boiling water who leaps straight out again. I had to do it.

I still didn’t do much: waved a placard, chanted politely according to guidance, clapped, booed and cheered. But it was a watershed. It wasn’t obvious at first but I think my course changed then. A short while afterwards I was surprised to find myself re-organising domestic commitments so that I could spend a Saturday morning canvassing shoppers in Richmond to reject their arrogant sitting MP Zak Goldsmith at a bye-election he had pointlessly triggered (which, rather wonderfully, they did). When the first big anti-Brexit march was called for summer 2018, I was there despite having other places I would really much rather be , and when Trump soiled our country with his presence a month later I was there again. I had even designed and made my own banner, an act which felt at once secretly shameful and preciously self-affirming. And in October 2018 I was  there again for the Brexit ‘People’s Vote’ march, this time quite joyfully astonished to be taking part in something so unexpectedly huge and potentially transformative. In between times, my dilettante toying with petitions and public meetings and whatnot was changing into a time-consuming habit, something which felt like a job of work.

More significant than any of the big rally day-trips to the city was finding myself, shortly after Theresa May’s ridiculous announcement of a snap general election, sitting in the back room of a pub listening to plans for a very unlikely cross-party campaign to oust the incumbent MP from one of the safest Conservative seats in the country and then, just a month or so into my retirement when I was supposed to be sitting in the sunshine and admiring the azaleas, trailing for hours around the local streets delivering leaflets and knocking on doors to explain to local voters why they should support a ‘Progressive Alliance’, ignore party loyalties and vote for someone who still had more or less no chance of winning. (Quite a few of them did, and she came a creditable second). 

It was a  laborious experience which ended in very predictable defeat; but underneath the sense of drudgery I felt a growing sense of connection – to other people alongside whom I campaigned, certainly, but more importantly to something in myself which I think I had forgotten about. It felt regenerative and wholesome and of value. Despite chronically stiff limbs, missed tennis matches, boredom, a neglected vegetable patch and a conviction of eventual defeat, and the humiliation of being told frankly more than once to fuck off and stop wasting people’s time, I was feeling a bit more real. To be honest I’m still not sure if this ‘sense of self’ is any more than a bloody-mindedness, a mild defiance disorder carried over from my adolescence or some sort of attachment to fighting lost causes. I’m trying to keep a watching brief and see what develops. But so far it feels pretty good and this is more or less regardless of the relative success or abject failure of any of the various enterprises with which I have become involved.

A central issue which I think I need to monitor in relation to this is whether this good feeling which seems to derive simply from doing something is actually a good thing. It certainly does make me feel better for a while, but then again so does spending an hour in the garden on a sun lounger, drinking a couple of pints in the local on a Friday night, playing tennis, or watching Narcos, and I don’t count any of them as essentially useful activities, except that they give me pleasure. I don’t discount the value of pleasure but I l know that when I am on  a sun lounger or in the pub or on the tennis court that I am usually not doing anything more than gaining pleasure. And if I did these things too much, and instead of rather than as well as useful things beneficial to other people and the world in general, then, I recognise, they would constitute avoidant or even addictive behaviour – an escape from reality into a mood-changing experience. The point is, could it be that this is what is happening when I march through London with several hundred thousand other people, or when I sit in someone’s living room estimating the probability of our candidate winning this or that local council ward, or when I send off a sternly-worded letter to my MP?

More particularly is this what was really going on when, a couple of months ago, I participated in blocking half a dozen road bridges in central London for most of the day as part of an ongoing ‘climate change rebellion’. There is no doubt that, despite the cold and discomfort and apprehension about arrest, it felt good. But was the feeling of powerfulness that came with the experience of truly affecting things merely a compensation, a denial of the reality of true powerlessness? When we stood at the end of the day on Lambeth Bridge, after the police had literally given up and gone home,  chanting “Whose bridge? Our bridge?” it felt genuinely joyful. But was it just a mood-altering delusion? So far as I know the world is still warming up ready to destroy civilisation and nobody with real authority is doing much to change it. Who am I kidding?

I’m really not sure about this. I think there is a danger that the emotional charge of activism could morph into what some psychotherapists call ‘spiritual flight’ – an escape from the problem through an absurdly idealistic belief that we are solving it. On the other hand we clearly need to maintain morale and self-belief to achieve anything. My hunch is that the key is determination and purpose; not letting yourself get carried away with apparent successes, and indulging neither triumph nor despair. Just keep on one step at a time and you may get somewhere good. I don’t know if this is right but I guess at least I might find out this way. 

The thing I have found most appealing (alongside the screamingly obvious point that the issue here is basically the end of the world) about the climate protest group that is my latest and currently most consuming area of activism, is this attitude of determination. A phrase I see often in social media comments or text messages  is “We won’t stop”. I find that peculiarly compelling. It seems to be a potential trump card to the usual expectations of the mainstream drift consensus which has helped get us into his awful mess – don’t worry, eventually they will get tired / dispirited / fobbed off / arrested and just go away. No we won’t. It’s like, I think, the ‘Yippees’ in the USA circa 1969 who said “We want everything, now”, which was ridiculous at the same time as being completely valid 

Another idea sometimes quoted in these circles is that the world will probably only be changed by a small group of people acting with determination. Again, at one level this is so absurd as to be insane, But have a look at history. Check out, for instance, how many guerillas were in the boat with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara before they landed back on their home island of Cuba and began the armed revolution which overthrew the Batista government and set up a communist administration able to defy the might of the USA for over fifty years and achieve astonishing transformations in infrastructure, health and education services. Check out how many conquistadors were with Charles Pizarro in 1531 when he sailed around the coast of South America to subdue and eventually destroy an empire (the Incas ) which had dominated a continent for several centuries. The numbers are tiny. Indeed, they are scarcely believable.

This matter of setting out to achieve the apparently impossible  is really important. If we allow the odds to discourage us we’re lost before we even start. Fortunately, a silver lining to the cloud of a couple of the disasters which have recently befallen us – the vote to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump – is that they provide indisputable evidence that the unfeasible is perfectly possible.  The problem of climate change might be placed in the same category; if we weren’t at this point would we really consider it credible – indeed, did we, say 35 years ago when the threat was already apparent – that our incredibly clever and sophisticated species might bring itself to the brink of extinction through greed and inertia?

So activism should not be dismissed on the grounds that success is unlikely. One of the early criticisms. even in the progressive media, of our climate rebellion group was that that its aims were ‘unrealistic’. Sometimes (when I am managing my anger ok) this actually makes me laugh. It is supposed, by our critics and opponents, to be unreasonable to ask for carbon emissions to be brought to zero by 2025 or for a citizen’s assembly to be created to address the problem of climate change which politicians evidently find so intractable; it is apparently reasonable, on the other hand, to allow civilisation to come to an end whilst we talk interminably about more ‘realistic’ solutions which we never implement. 

In 1961, John F Kennedy, not really a radical but at least a symbol, for a while, of progressive liberalism, said that “In ten years time we will put a man on the moon”. At the time this was an idea improbable to say the least, and yet science, technology, thought, and practical  endeavour swung behind him to create an unstoppable collective purpose which made it a reality. Kennedy, however it happened, was a catalyst. The things which bring ideas into reality are belief and activism but we generally need a spark to get us started. 

Leaders of much quality seem hard to come by at the moment. There are doubtless a lot of complex reasons for this. In the meantime we will need to make do with what ever wakes us up and presents us with a sense of the right direction. For me it was the offence against civil morality and decency that is Trump. No doubt I was ready to be woken even though it was an unpleasant start. And now it turns out that there are any number of things to which I should be turning my attention, not all of them very directly related to him. How I’m going to negotiate the conflicts which this brings up, including between the compulsion to do something and the continuing desire for a quiet and pleasurable life, I’m not at all sure. But I’ve made a start and, for the moment at least, it feels good.