23. 16th October 2025

Numerous times during the 7 years since I committed to being “an activist” I’ve felt confused, conflicted, paralysed by the difficulty of trying to decide what was best to do; where best, surrounded by an ever-proliferating array of “bash-a-rat” challenges, to put my energy; and indeed, where best to encourage others to put theirs. I’ve always been aware of the complications presented to a broad progressive movement which has generated so many creative and energetic groups and organisations, each with differing priorities. How do we ensure that we don’t compete or waste limited resources? How do we guard against self-centredness? How can we be enabled to join forces in the right projects and at the right times? I’m convinced of the value of diversity and self-organisation and its record of  productivity at the same time as being aware of the consequent obstacles  to genuine effectiveness.

There have also been times over the years when it seemed perfectly clear to me what needed to be done. With many people and groups trying to achieve basically the same thing in different ways, it’s helpful sometimes to be able to stand back and identify exactly the right place to be pushing (or pulling), as hard as possible, all together, to make a wall come tumbling down. The climate protest campaign in London at Easter 2019 was one of those moments. So, I think, was the general election in 2024.(In the first example it felt like a wall came down, although it’s been slowly rebuilt since; in the second, it turned out that behind the first wall was a second wall a bit higher and thicker, painted a different colour. Progress of sorts, I suppose).

To me, the last couple of months has felt like a similar time. For all that there are always too many demands on the energies of a progressive activist, calling out like a crowd of enthusiastic children each with a hand raised, it’s seemed easy to spot the one with its hand raised highest: the call to support / defend Palestine and very specifically to join the protests against the proscription of the Palestine Action group. It’s not that this hand was the most ‘deserving’ of attention; it’s that the cause of a Free Palestine and the objection to our government deciding to call a a group of people holding up cardboard placards “terrorists” at the same time as supplying the Israeli armed forces with weapons to help them keep terrorising and slaughtering Palestinians en masse presented the right opportunity to push together; a place where we might get enough force and leverage to bring a wall down.

As a ‘moment’ in public / political consciousness – which continues notwithstanding the theatrics of world “leaders” now declaring that they have brought an end to what they like to call a ‘conflict’ (although it’s really a prolonged period of deliberate oppression, destruction and abuse) despite having variously encouraged, enabled and even promoted it for the last 2 years and much longer before –  the campaign against proscribing Palestine Action has seemed to represent the very obvious key pressure point at which activists might most usefully push against the wall of ignorance, lies, injustice, oppression and downright evil being reinforced daily almost everywhere you look.

Some while ago a friend of mine in the climate protest movement described to me the dilemma she felt about whether to put her energies into protesting about the failure to address the climate crisis or against the atrocities in Gaza.Thinking about it at the time helped me realise how the two ‘issues’ and several other major ‘issues’ of the time – like immigration, the wealth-poverty gap and of course war – were linked fundamentally not by practical or mechanical considerations (as in refugees from war / climate breakdown / poverty / oppression flee to richer / safer countries where they become a strain on existing resources and where ‘native’ people feel threatened by them) but by a cluster of very destructive tendencies and dynamics which is driving all of these ‘issues’ or crises – namely the aforementioned ignorance, lies, injustice, oppression and downright evil.

Looking back now over the last seven years I find it increasingly hard to understand why people in the climate protest movement claimed so loudly that our demands were nothing to do with politics. Of course I understand what this was meant to achieve but I think the strategy failed because it ignored the basic truth that you obviously can’t fix the climate crisis without adopting left of centre political positions on numerous other social, geopolitical and economic ‘issues’. The strategy made us  seem incoherent and dishonest (just like the Labour government does right now) and made it easier for people who didn’t want to listen to the uncomfortable realities we were presenting to bury their heads in a toxic mound of denial, prejudice, selfishness and rationalisation so that they could ignore the crisis and carry on with their ‘normal’ lives.

Interestingly, I doubt whether my friend would feel the same inner conflict now; and I’m also pretty sure that most people in the climate protest movement have, like me, moved way past claiming  that we are somehow ‘beyond politics’. Although this denotes that we have reached a more difficult and indeed critical point, I think the clarity is helpful. It offers all of us on the progressive side of things the opportunity to recognise that we are all indeed on the same “side” because all of the  ‘issues’ which we prioritise differently are intrinsically linked and that we had best work together to combat the well-resourced, well-organised forces of evil (within whose ranks division, diversion and in-fighting are notably less apparent) that we are up against. If we needed any wake-up call to this then I should have thought that Tommy Robinson’s recent march of right wing racist flag-waving “patriots’” or the sickening displays of international toadying to Trump at forums like the UN and at the announcement of the Israeli/Palestine ‘peace deal’ where he cheerfully claimed the decimation of Gaza as a lucrative  business opportunity for his son-in-law would have done the trick. But if not, never mind, there will be more; the alarm is on an endless snooze setting. You can’t turn if off although eventually you may stop hearing it.

Anyway, back to protesting the proscription of Palestine Action. This seems as brazen an assault upon notions of  justice, freedom of speech and the simple truth as to put it up there with the antics of Trump, Farage and Robinson or Hans Christian Anderson’s Emperor with a new cloak, and as such it seems to me the right place to push; because frankly if it doesn’t piss you off that the  government is committing huge resources to arresting thousands of people for holding up cardboard signs at the same time as being thoroughly complicit in the genocide to which those people are trying to draw attention through their protests AND then seeking to blame them for diverting police attention from real terrorist threats, then I don’t know what will piss you off. For me, choosing to hold one of the signs and sit down with it to wait to be arrested was as obviously the right thing to do as was sitting on Lambeth Bridge to await my first arrest 7 years ago.

But the thing is that this time I didn’t do it. I went through a similar tortuous process to the one I had gone through then – an extended exhausting  wrestle between conscience and reason on one side, fear and short-term self-interest on the other side, but the result was different. I didn’t do the right thing. I let the straightforward fear of the implications of having the word “terrorist” associated with my criminal record, and its theoretical and (I think) unlikely impact upon my ability to get out of this Godforsaken country into Europe whenever I feel like it (and I often do feel like it) win over, and instead of sitting quietly with a sign declaring my truth I chose, on the same day, to accompany thousands of other people on a loud Free Palestine march which got less than a tenth of the media attention that the placard protest got. Then I went to Parliament Square to sit with some of my friends who had chosen to do the right thing and witnessed them being carried or in some cases dragged away by police. I also took a bit of time off from that occasionally to join in with the large crowd of people (mostly much younger than me and therefore with more excuse to exclude themselves from the arrestable action) in verbally haranguing the police. (This may or may not have been a good thing to do, I’m not sure, but it made me feel a bit better).

Around the time of this small personal internal drama I found myself thinking that the experience might have a detrimental effect upon my motivation to feel activated to do anything much. I felt ashamed and I feared a literal demoralisation. In fact that doesn’t seem to have been the case and if anything I’ve felt a bit more motivated since to put energy into things that I feel are ‘right’ things to do and that I AM willing to do.  The guilt and shame hasn’t gone away but they are accompanied by a sense of doing what feels feasible in order to make amends; and that feels helpful, to me if not to anyone else. I don’t think the spiritual uplift comes just from the ‘making amends’ actually: I also have an inner experience that I am responding – at least in some ways that I feel willing to even if not in every way that I could and should – to the harm and abuse  that I feel is being done quite deliberately and mindfully to me and to my environment; and that too feels psychologically helpful and even necessary.

Who knows where exactly that leaves me (or you, if you’ve managed to follow the ramble above). I suppose anyway that it leaves me as an activist. Not because I’m good or noble in any way, but because it seems necessary for my own inner well-being. I think that doing less than this would feel intolerable. I’m aware in saying this that I sometimes (often) believe that just doing what feels like ‘my bit’ rather than everything I could and should do could result in more harm than good; in other words that we may avoid confronting the truth about how bad things are by making token gestures – a bit like thinking that you are effectively combatting the climate crisis by re-cycling your yoghurt pots. But for now at least, that’s how it is.

It does occur to me to think that if everyone did something like their ‘bit’ then perhaps we could get what we wanted and needed without anybody having to end up going through the repeated humiliation of being arrested for doing the right thing and ending up with a criminal record which hampers their ability to get a job / insurance / the right to travel / do something more entertaining with their free time etc. If we were all ‘activists’ to the extent that  we were actively doing the things that we could – consistent with maintaining a reasonably balanced life, employment, leisure, a decent social and family life etc –  to promote what we think is right and desirable and to challenge what we think is wrong and deplorable, then we wouldn’t have to hang a few martyrs out to dry and we’d all be happier and better off. I’m aware that might just be me trying to assuage my feelings of guilt by implicating others, but nevertheless it feels a bit true: if there had been 100,000 rather than 1,000 people in Parliament Square on the day on question, then I’d have been sitting down with my sign and we would all have been safe.

Activists don’t have to be protestors either. They can be people who are just actively seeking to build the kind of world they want by doing good stuff in their communities, with their neighbours, or in nature, or in political parties, or in the places where they work or take their leisure. I might not be correct about where and how is the right place to push right now – it’s a matter of opinion – but I’m pretty sure I’m correct in believing that we need all of us who think of themselves as “on our side”, or at least most of us (or maybe even just a lot more of us) to be active and to be prepared to collaborate in working out when and how to all push together. Talking of walls, as I was earlier, I recall the TV pictures from about 35 years ago which showed a few people chipping away at the top of the Berlin Wall. We all know that it didn’t come down in the end just because of the few of them that attracted the TV cameras. It came down through the collective endeavour of a great number of people with different individual characters and priorities who all wanted the same very important thing.

It’s also worth mentioning that not all the activists are on our side. Whilst we wait and hope, as we tend to do, for the governments we elect to do the things we hoped that they would do, the people on the other side like Robinson and his bands of thugs or Farage and his or Trump and his get busy taking seats on councils and school boards  or posting on social media or phoning radio stations or handing out leaflets to influenceable people or standing outside refugee hotels threatening to burn them down. They are activists too, remember, and they seem to be winning right now. They have leaders of whom people are taking notice. They may seem repulsive to you and me but maybe something about their willingness (in contrast to our Prime Minister, for instance) to stand up for what they want and believe in, and to say it whether or not it’s considered “ok” or  “safe” or politically wise or appropriate in the circumstances, is quite compelling to their followers. 

Another thing I did to assuage my guilt about the Parliament Square event was to enjoy, a week later, a ‘Free Palestine’ concert in Shepherds Bush put on by Billy Bragg and friends. Although my ticket money was going to a Gaza relief fund (maybe ultimately to Jarred Kushner now, who knows?) and I felt I was being supportive of the cause, I was essentially doing this for myself (although I suppose it’s undeniable that all of us there will have felt lifted and re-moralised / re-activated  by the palpable feeling of collective solidarity and determination). Although we all know that nobody is coming to save us, the longing for hero saviours seems unavoidable and it was great to see a couple of startlingly talented and energetic youngsters performing alongside everlasting stalwart Billy and the hugely enjoyable Reverend and the Makers, so watch out for Antony Szmierek ( a kind of Streets update) and Jamie Webster, who did a version of Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’ that would make your hair stand on end. Anyway, last words for now from Billy’s title song, a simple call to activism: “Wearing badges is not enough in days like these”. 

TWENTY-TWO 3rd June 2025

A few months ago, while still on the way out of winter dreaminess  and trying to  find ways of coming to terms with the horrible reality which was dawning – which is ever-changing but pretty much all in the same direction – I enjoyed an afternoon at my local Everyman watching Timothée Calamet’s great performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. There are a lot of contradictory things one could think and say about Dylan but I think it’s incontrovertible that he stood for congruence and defiance of conformity and I liked how that came across in the film. It set me wondering, given the impact made by Dylan and the social movements with which he was associated, how on earth, well over fifty years on, we have come to this. If I had an answer, it would be very long so I’ll leave it for now, but it also set me thinking  about the pitfalls of idealism. (I don’t think Dylan was an idealist but he inspired plenty who were). I remembered a song by a guy called Little Stevie Forbert who was briefly touted as a ‘new Dylan’ around the time when the man himself was laid up after a bad motorcycle accident. The song goes like this:

You’ve traveled so far, the wind in your face

You think that you’ve found the one special place

Where all of your dreams will walk out in line

And follow the course you’ve made in your mind.

Well, it isn’t gonna be that way….

I think that’s pretty good, and the last line is a real kicker. However it is that we have come to this, it now seems pretty clear to me that the ideas that many of us entertained about how we were going to arrive at a new dawn through a process of mass peaceful civil disobedience were too optimistic. It would have been nice, and maybe if enough people had been ready to get off their arses, risk some discomfort and inconvenience and stand up (or sit down) to be counted, it could have happened; but it seems like we’re now beyond that possibility.

So in all the recent and current chaos and confusion and sense of profound disturbance, how does one decipher a way forward, a “direction home” as our Bob referred to? There might not be one, of course. It could be that we’re headed not ‘home’ at all, but just deeper and deeper into an abyss of brutality. It mostly seems that way. As we witness all around us the collapse of civility, the casual breaking of rules and protocols by the ‘leaders’, the ones who are most socially obliged by their position to uphold them, the apparent descent into something which looks and feels more and more savage, it remains tempting to conclude that the only hope of salvation is by following a manifestly opposite path – characterised by order, respect, peacefulness. That sort of positive vision is appealing and I find it engages my imagination even now just to think of it. It goes something like this: OK, there are many more of ‘us’ than there are of ‘them’, so we’ll all work together with kindness and humanity and we’ll make sacrifices and sit quietly in the road, peacefully and with love, and wait for justice. Well, as old Steve told us, it isn’t gonna be that way. We tried it and it didn’t work.

In chaotic times it can be difficult to discern any path forward, although it seems to be a human compulsion. Everyone looks to interpret or make meaning of what may just be simply crazy behaviour. We want to understand what just happened and to predict what’s going to happen. We try to distinguish between what is just “noise” and what is “signal”. I found myself thinking about that around about the same time as the Everyman excursion to see A Complete Unknown, when I spent an evening at a West Ham football match. I kind of knew to start with that it was a bad idea, inspired more by my personal history and an over-optimistic idealistic longing for something which was never likely to exist (“Forever Blowing Bubbles”) than by any realistic expectation of a satisfactory experience. In the event, the predictable debacle of watching a dismal defeat from a distant position in a vast new stadium, which will never be able to replicate the genuine sense of community that I used to experience, as a much younger person, in the old one, was made more dispiriting by having to endure a long trudge after the match as one of a huge crowd of spectators / consumers who were being marshalled slowly towards the tube station. It struck me how easily led we all were really, how the order and apparent safety of the dull procession rested entirely upon our willingness to go along with the commands of a few underpaid people in high-vis jackets. 

You can make different things of that, of course, for good or bad. But anyway the impression of order and safety was suddenly altered when a scuffle broke out between two men a short distance away from me. Whatever they were arguing about was soon lost in a shocking display of escalating violence, with one of the protagonists clearly much stronger and/or much less inhibited by any social protocols or regard for others. His behaviour and his speech can only be described as beastly and his vicious attack must have left the other man badly hurt. Nobody (including me) did anything. We kept quiet and stayed safe. It was clear that the man who did the violence would not face any consequence.

Inevitably, once I’d started to get over the shock and the shame, and because of that compulsion to look for meaning, I thought about Trump and his mobs of lawless thugs and gangsters and his edicts and deportations and tariffs and Putin and his bombs and Netanyahu and his and the people in Gaza whom we are doing nothing to help and from whose plight we turn away our gaze. I thought about how violence works.

it appears to me that the direction of activist movements (if there really is any direction to be discovered within the current ever-changing-ness) is bound to be influenced by this realisation. Given that – through a combination of mass inertia and hoping for the best on the part of people who are worried about the state of things but apparently not worried enough to do anything about it themselves, plus a determined campaign to repress the right to protest on the part of the government – we have arrived at a place where peaceful resistance cannot work, it seems to me that something else is going to happen. The ‘signals’ (if they are not just ‘noise’) might be detected in things like the TESLA Takedown campaign – which, as well as allowing itself to overtly target and blame an individual (about time) has also spiralled sometimes into the destruction of property AND has worked. Nobody seems to have reported much yet on the activities of the Citizens Arrest Network but this campaign, too (while no violence nor threat of violence is involved) rests on the proposition that it’s effective and ok to expose the individuals who are making the climate crisis worse (by profiting personally as the head of a climate-wrecking company, for instance) and to deliberately make those people feel uncomfortable, The media has given some attention to the supposed demise or demoralisation of previously high-profile environmental activist groups, although the evident conclusion drawn, that people have somehow given up or just gone away, seems fanciful to me; my assumption is that determined people who are stopped from campaigning in one one way will campaign in another.

The organisations I’m connected with have been demoralised and disrupted enough by the turbulence of the past six moths or so to make it difficult for them to find a collective sense of direction. In trauma, purposeful action becomes more difficult. People get confused and dispirited and it’s hard for them to work together. But what I do notice is that people haven’t given up, which is heartening. We hear ‘noise’ and we are confused and conflicted by that, but inevitably we listen within the noise for  ’signals”  and I’m feeling like the signals point in a direction which is somewhat less  peaceful and apparently ‘civilised’ than the direction being followed before. This could just be my feeling, and not shared by others, but currently I’m trusting my hunch because it’s evident that ‘playing nice’ against people and organisations who are unscrupulous, ruthless and reckless – and, importantly, who are backed up, protected and defended by politicians, law courts and most of the media, their abuses rationalised and their outrageously immoral behaviour normalised – is not going to cut it.

I think this issue was illuminated by the massive leap in popularity achieved by Mark Carney – in the past appearing as an ordinary and unexciting enough mainstream bureaucrat – when he evoked the image of a brawl on an ice-hockey pitch by saying, in response to Trump’s threats, that is was time to ‘throw the gloves down’. Suddenly everyone I know wanted to be a Canadian. It struck me that the surge in his appeal was because people know, intuitively, that this is the only proper response to a violent bully; and that the alternative sort of approach being modelled by the likes of Starmer and Mandelson, in which they suck up and appease in the hope of avoiding harm, is at best a delay of the inevitable and at worst a show of weakness which will be exploited mercilessly in due course.

I don’t yet see any Mark Carneys actually putting their heads above the parapet in the field of activism. That’s not surprising because nobody (except senior elected politicians, military officers and the heads of certain industries like oil, logging and mining) can openly propose the use of force  – violent destruction of property and the ensuing  harm to people – without facing legal consequences: but I assume that this is the inevitable direction of travel the clearer it becomes that the dream of successful mass peaceful civil disobedience is not going to be realised. Indeed it was probably ever thus. Whether we like to know it or not, a look at history shows us that explosions of rage and actual physical defiance  have generally played at least some part in any successful opposition to ruthless authoritarian power.

An activist friend of mine once remarked to me that “sooner of later we’re going to have to fight them at the barricades”. Around about that time, as it happens, I was at  a big disruptive protest event, lasting several days, on Whitehall in London. The police, who had managed the protest throughout in a confrontational way, had pushed the protest down the road away from the entrance to Downing Street and erected a barricade of metal fences. There was a point at which a group of protestors initiated a surge to forcibly break through the barricades. Along with a couple of others, I talked them down and we swung the large crowd behind a renewed resolve to remain peaceful. If we hadn’t acted then I’m pretty sure enough momentum would have built behind the small group of people ready to use force and that the barricades would have been breached. At that time I was completely convinced that I was doing the right thing. I’ve often wondered since about what might have happened had I acted differently.

TWENTY-ONE 27th February 2025

About a month ago I found myself musing out loud at a meeting with some activist friends that, notwithstanding the evident beginning of the end of the world, I felt that my mental health was pretty good. I put it down to having acquired (apparently) a habit of self-care. I seemed to be living moderately and mindfully, making sure to do plenty of things which make me feel good (which includes being in a relaxed setting with activist friends with whom I share feelings, perspectives and history) and avoiding things which make me feel bad (in particular, too much exposure to news media). I’m aware that it could be argued that anyone who claims to feel well in the current situation is plainly mad, but I stand by my statement: there is really not much point in pulling your hair out in anguish, provided that you are not denying reality and are doing what you reasonably can to try to make things better.

There’s the rub, I suppose, because almost as soon as I began to emerge from the cocoon-y space of mid-winter, bringing to a close a period of rest and recreation interspersed with talking about things which might be done, and actually engaging with doing some of them, I started feeling worse. Which is not good and not really what I expected. It’s not like I’ve been doing things which are very risky or very demanding: banging a drum outside the gates of a private airport while some of my friends turned away a succession of limousines carrying rich selfish wasters; sitting in a church hall for an afternoon networking with a large and diverse group of climate campaigners  from across the county; discussing productively with local politicians what might be done to counter the spread of hate and bile on local social media platforms; sitting in the road outside the Royal Courts of Justice with a thousand other people protesting the ludicrously severe prison sentences being served by some climate activists and facing down the absurd repeated threats of young police constables (I suspect they literally drew the short straw at the station briefing) that if we didn’t move they might apply for a Section 14 order and that if they got that then they might arrest us; banging a drum again last week while some of my friends occupied the inside lobby of offices belonging to some nasty corporate criminals and others decorated the outside with fake oil (rest assured they will be charged with criminal damage even though it washes off and that of course you can’t wash off the damage being  done so recklessly to people and the planet by their clients in the fossil fuel industry).

All of these things felt proportionate and worthwhile to me, likely to have at least some positive effects and no negative ones. Doing them didn’t cost me much and I was sure in each case that I was doing ‘the right thing’. And yet in every instance I felt I had to expend a great psychological (or moral?) effort in getting myself engaged. Basically, I experienced a strong desire not to do the things and I more or less had to force myself to do them. I remember similar experiences when I first got going with this stuff, but then it seemed to be to do with reticence about  breaking certain social taboos and/or fear of consequences. The taboos barely register these days, I know enough about legal ramifications to avoid those consequences if I want to, and the actual experience of being out on the street (or even in the church hall) is positive – as in it feels good – once I’m there. So what’s the extreme reluctance to get out there all about?

I find this difficult to think about, painful and challenging enough to prompt me to seek refuge in some distraction or mood-changing event – start planning a trip to someplace where it will be easier not to think about it, perhaps, wander out into the garden to top up the bird-feeder,  lose myself (literally, it sometimes feels) in a fruitless quest for good news in the pages of the online Guardian. It’s difficult to concentrate on the problem. Maybe it’s a bit related to why some people – well, most people, apparently – don’t think much at all about the state of the world – the climate crisis in particular – because it makes them feel impotent or useless or because it confronts them with choices which feel too difficult. Best to have a drink , book a holiday, watch TV. I don’t know. I really don’t know.

As far as I’ve got with it so far is realising that I feel considerably more anguish and rage about what our government is doing (or mostly not doing) than I do about what’s going on in the USA. Given the relative significance of actions taken (or not taken) in the massively influential USA with its 340 million avid consumers and the little old UK with its 68 million citizens of whom the international community takes increasingly less notice, this doesn’t make much sense, but it definitely feels true. At least the arrival into the White House of the ignorant barbarian and his evil philistine side-kicks has helped to square us all up to reality: it’s very bad, worse that you thought it might be, and it defies, surely, any proposition that we can just acquiesce and hope for the best. The need for urgent collective action by good people right now is inarguable. I suppose back in the distant days of a few weeks ago when I was telling my friends that I felt unexpectedly well, that conviction – the sense that now something on our side would have to shift – was supporting me.

But apparently a lot of the people that i had assumed to be on ‘our side’ don’t feel the same, in particular those of them whom we helped elect to be our government a bit more than six months ago and who – however bizarrely on account of our stupid electoral system – now have a massive parliamentary majority and can basically do what they like for the next four years. The fact that these people have real power to resist and to oppose what the lunatics across the pond are doing, and are choosing not to exercise it but, instead, to minimise, normalise, collude with and in some aspects actually mimic the posture and language of the nasty bastards over there (and their friends over here), I have found deeply disappointing and demoralising. To say it feels like like a massive betrayal really doesn’t cover it.

To be clear, I know of course that our government can’t stop much of what ‘they’ are doing, but they can speak out against it, they can take moral leadership and insist on following a very different path, they can try to shake us and our friends in other countries into a mood of creative opposition  and determined resistance. If wartime sprit was ever needed, it’s now, but there are no really powerful political voices challenging the forces of evil; there is just the drone of Starmer and Reeves wittering on about the potential for growth on a dead planet and the pathetic spectacle of Lammy and Mandelson saying that when they said before that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes, they were mistaken or didn’t really mean it. All of them ready to scapegoat a few desperate people who have sought refuge and shelter in our once decent country by risking their lives in a small boat across the channel and to appease the wealthy, corrupt and criminally selfish people whose attitudes and behaviour are, ultimately, at the roots of the so-called refugee crisis (which of course is far from really being a crisis for us, although it is one for them).

“I can’t stand it!” is what I most frequently find my self thinking. When enough people think and say this is when we have the right conditions for rebellion, for proper uprising, because if easily transforms into “WE won’t stand FOR it”. But my most bitter experience of the past six years has been discovering that nowhere near enough people are aware enough or willing to take that position and that there seems to be nothing  that I or others like me can do about it. The times when that realisation strikes home are the times when my mood can spiral badly – more distressing than depressing, it feels like the only helpful things are calm self-care, the pursuit of some sort of harmless pleasure and, inevitably, the company of people who feel like I do, The fact that having their company often involves doing things (as above) which, because of their predictable failure to produce any significant results, leads to more anguish and despair, is what I think might fairly be called a paradox.

In my much younger days I was quite a big fan of Percy Byssche Shelley (at least when he was in one of his feisty and less sentimental moods ). In one of his poems he repeats the same mantra over and over” “Ye are many, they are few.” It’s about uprising, of course, and is meant as a call to action. Perhaps his words and those of others like him were helpful (although that’s complicated because the poem wasn’t published until 13 years after the event – the Peterloo Massacre – which inspired it) in encouraging a movement which did, ultimately bring about significant political change. I sometimes think of Paul Weller’s song, Ever Changing Moods as a modern (and less sentimental) equivalent. Six years ago I turned to it sometimes for inspiration, finding the idea that we might, as the song says “wake up one day and everyone feel moved.” Honestly I’ve more or less given up on that now, I have to for my own sanity. But the song is still helpfully resonant because it reminds me that there are many many people who feel like I do – ready to act but painfully aware that there aren’t enough of us – and that being in their company and connected by a sense of common purpose is healing and supportive in itself.

Wrestling with the paradoxes inherent in all of this is a bit wearing and sometimes it feels like it might be a relief to throw in the towel completely and opt for some sort of hedonistic retreat from reality while there’s still time. In fact I probably think that about twenty times a day. And then I think (and feel) something different. In this situation, it seems to me wise to conclude (at last until I’ve concluded something different) that the ever-changing-ness is a  symptom of the underlying problem and that the task, therefore, is to manage the moods – stay well, stay present, stay in active contact with people who mostly feel like you do (and avoid contact with the ones who don’t) and do the right things. 

I suppose it’s possible that once we’ve truly given up looking for the longed-for support of a mass of people, we’ll turn around to find that they are there. (Another song, Thank You by Alanis Morisettee; “The moment I let go of it was the moment I got more than I could handle”). But I’m not holding my breath.

TWENTY. 8th December 2024

A shock although not really a surprise. I’m aware from conversations with various people that this is how many of us experienced the news which arrived from the USA around breakfast time about a month ago, like a letter dropping onto your doormat containing the worst news you could imagine. Quite how we make sense of the idea that something is shocking while not surprising, I’m not sure – it’s certainly interesting, pointing to how frail and dysfunctional we really are, psychologically and mentally; notwithstanding all the clever stuff you’ve read since then about how and why the right won (again) and the left got screwed over. We know it’s probably coming – even if this nasty bastard hadn’t won this time, you can bank on there being another one along soon – but the degree to which we are prepared for it is woeful. Our state of traumatised bewilderment in the face of defeat, our basic disarray, adds further to their power, allowing them to ride roughshod through the holes in our defences and cement their gains while we’re still staggering about in a state of stunned distress. It’s surely a lesson to learn, although we might well not learn it, because learning from experience seems to be something we’re not very good at. Mostly we’re like Peter Pan, endlessly running around after one Captain Hook or another and hoping for a magical solution. There’s more drama than purposeful action. But as it says at the start of the Peter Pan story (at least the version of it that I used to read to my kids) “This has all happened before and it will all happen again”. So, maybe time to grow up and get organised.

For all that it’s devastating, at least it has the advantage of making us feel we’ve hit rock-bottom (which can bring a certain freedom along with the despair) and dispelling some illusions. You know now that it really is true that no-one is coming to save you, and you can probably see clearly enough that even if they had sort of saved you this time by flipping the small percentage majority the other way, it would probably be just a postponement. Part of why the Democrats lost, surely, is that they refused to confront the true nature of what we are up against and invested instead in some supposedly skilful strategies to help the good guys crawl over the line and hang onto control for a while longer. This, it seems to me, is not going to cut it in the long term, neither in the USA nor anywhere else.

A story I mentioned in the last post, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is relevant here. The character in the story who is the lead vampire-hunter, Professor Van Helsing, has to go to great pains to convince his team that they are dealing with an extraordinary kind of enemy – one which has mysterious and seemingly supernatural powers, a ruthless dedication to evil, and the capacity to keep coming back from the dead. To win, Van Helsing’s team needs to be very disciplined and determined and equally as ruthless as their enemy. Dracula has many vampire acolytes, remember, and his mission is to turn everyone into a vampire. Opposing him effectively requires a radical vision, a programme of determined action and a faith in Goodness which is nevertheless uncluttered by false hopes and vain fantasies. It means being very much a team player, letting go of some ideals and preferences in favour of necessities, setting aside secondary differences and working together in a disciplined way with the other people, groups and parties ‘on your side’ so as to be effective. No in-fighting or self-indulgence, rigorous attention to duty and detail. You might think this an over-dramatic depiction of where we are, and perhaps you needn’t rush out to look for a hammer and stake and some garlic just yet, but as a metaphor I think it’s pretty accurate.

A great deal has been written in the last weeks, and you’ve doubtless read some of it, about how this happened, about what long-term cultural forces and socio-economic issues combined together to make people more likely to vote for this vile creature (or less likely to vote for his opponent), about what mistakes of tone or detail were made in the campaign, about the failure in the last four years (and for decades before that) to design and implement policies which would address fundamental and long-neglected concerns (especially the wealth gap) which would get people onside. I’m sure a lot of the theories and arguments presented are valid. But I think they are beside the most important point, which is that the most powerful and wealthy nation in the world just elected as its leader and figurehead a person who preaches and epitomises selfishness; a malignant narcissist who openly craves and demands absolute power and clearly desires to nurture and spread a culture which reflects his own character. The values inherent in this culture are evidently pretty much opposite to those that your parents and teachers told you were the ones to which you should adhere. Lies in place of Truth, Cruelty in place of Kindness, Ignorance in place of Comprehension, Recklessness in place of Care, Hatred in place of Love, and so on. This seems to me to be a pretty serious state of affairs, especially because the evidence suggests that the pattern is developing across the world. Whether or not the rise to power of  Modi, Bolsonaro and others like them are such bad news as Trump’s ascendancy, it’s clear that the rise of the right is a powerful global phenomenon and it’s been knocking loudly on our own national door and on those of some of our close neighbours for quite a while. 

Much has been and is being written, again, about whether we can most accurately refer to the thing which is rising as fascism, or racism, or nationalism, or authoritarianism, or patriarchy, or just as ‘the far right’. And again much of this is interesting and valid. But I wonder if it might be most helpful, if we can bring ourselves to do it, to refer to it as the rise of Evil, or, if you prefer, Badness, because that is what it really is. Trump is a very bad man and he wants to promote a way of thinking and behaving which is just like his (with the proviso that only he can be in charge). There is no philosophy beyond that. In this respect I would say he is more like Dracula than Hitler. Basically we are dealing with an evil cult which has become dedicated to protecting and defending itself and its crazed leader. You know from everything you have read and heard about cults that trying to persuade the members of the cult that they have made a mistake by investing in this enterprise and its leader, to explain to them that they are being manipulated, to show them the irrationality of their loyalty, is going to have very limited success. You also know that telling them that they themselves are bad people who should reform their ways will have even worse outcomes.   I think that something important to understand here is that a key factor in the success of such ‘populists’ – especially the ‘strong-man-chauvinist’ type which most of them are – is that their ascendancy validates and gives permission for the traits in their followers (especially ignorance, intolerance and the the brutal will to power) which ‘progressives’ abhor. Repeatedly pointing to these fundamental character flaws doesn’t help a bit. Eventually, a lot of the people most actively and prominently supporting Trump will realise their error and come to their senses of their own accord; you could fill Trump Tower with supposedly clever people who deluded themselves and got burned last time around and are now ready to repent and to warn others off. But such processes of enlightenment are very torturous and uncertain, hampered and opposed by the vampires’ dedication to purpose and by the basic impulse of humans towards gaining short-term personal advantage and by their seemingly bottomless capacity for denial, dishonesty, prejudice, and magical thinking. So, what to do…?

I’ve heard from quite a lot of people that in fact, however upset they are about what’s happened, they don’t feel much inclined  to do anything at all about it. There are various ways of seeing this – we’re in shock, afraid, feeling overwhelmed by forces we don’t understand and by insurmountable odds. It feels like Hell, on the gates of which, according to Dante’s Inferno, it says “Abandon all hope, ye who who enter here”. It might be quite easy, tempting even, to buy into that idea: at least you don’t have to waste any more energy trying to improve the conditions, you can just get on with enduring as best you can, using distraction and mood altering experiences to feel a little bit better, maybe even convincing yourself that all this is somehow ‘normal’ or acceptable. According to the ’shock and awe’ theory of The Shock Doctrine, surely as critical a read now as it was when published 17 years ago, this is exactly how you are supposed to feel. Our disorientation, our dazed bewilderment and despair, is what enables those currently ‘in charge’ radically to increase their power and lessen ours, to make things even worse for us and better for them.

So if hitting rock-bottom like this means feeling despair and just giving up then it’s clearly bad news. But there is another way of looking at it. A (presumably) apocryphal tale I heard a few times from people in the 12-step movement is of two old drunks lying in the gutter. “We’re lucky” says one. “How’s that?” says the other. “Well, most people don’t make it down this far.” The implication, clearly, is that getting down this far is potentially transformative, enabling us to break the hold of the addictive mechanisms which got us here – bad faith, co-dependency, dishonesty, delusion, self-centredness, hubris, doing the same thing over and over in the belief that next time it will work. When you’re in the gutter, the only way is up and it’s apparent that the only way you’re getting out is if you change your ways. It’s the opportunity in the crisis. There is some evidence, in fact, that alongside the experience of defeat and demoralisation, the gutter is a place where more people than you would think find a sense of agency and make a decision to act differently. Judging from the significantly increased number of emails I received in the aftermath of the US election result from campaign groups asking me to get on board with them or give them money, it’s evident that some of them are aware of this phenomenon. Another story (this one definitely true): a young woman who happens to be confined to a wheelchair is on a weekend workshop about The Will. Along with other course participants, she goes outside the building to undertake a reflective exercise, which she finds frustrating and confusing. She gets preoccupied with staring hopelessly at the high outer wall of the premises and she runs slightly over time. When she goes to re-enter the building, the outer door, which at the top of some steps, is shut and there is no-one else around to push her up the wheelchair ramp. The bell is at the top of the ramp. After some time alone in the cold, feeling hopeless, abandoned and angry, she surprises herself by finding the energy, strength and determination to manoeuvre the chair up the ramp on her own and to force her way through the door.

It seems to me the whole philosophy of the 12-step approach has enormous value in a situation like the one we’re in now, starting with the serenity prayer: “[God] grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”. What appeals to me about that straight away is that it reminds me of my limitations and the insanity of burning myself out by trying to do everything all at once against impossible odds. Basically, if I’m going to do anything useful at all, I need to get my ego out of the way (which is kind of interesting given that it’s people with very big egos that we’re dealing with here). It also reminds me that just because I can’t do everything doesn’t mean I can’t do anything. The surrender which they bang on about in 12-step addiction treatments is not, I think, just to being weak or flawed or limited but also to having some resources and strengths and qualities – there are things I can do but I need to find the courage to set aside my petty insecurities, my victimhood, my anxiety about discomfort and fear of failure and get on and do them.

I suppose what I’m talking about is a sort of moral imperative. I’ve spoken to a few activist friends recently, before and after November 5th, who have acknowledged that they’ve found themselves being active in a different way; not with the expectation that it’s going to make a great impact but because if feels like the “right” thing to do. I suspect quite a few of us have felt motivated by the desire to be a hero/ine. Then, when it’s become clear that we’re not going to be saviours after all, should we still keep going?  I find it easier to write about what I think I ought to do or how I think it would be helpful to feel than I do to act and feel in the ‘right’ way. I experience despair and the inclination to give up completely at least several times every day and sometimes for most of the day. Two things seem to pull me back. One is the ‘moral imperative’ thing: the question we all ask ourselves in the moments of despair – “What’s the Point?” – always seems to get answered, for me, more or less the same; the Point is to contribute to building something – a world / a community / a sense inside myself – which is characterised by those things referred to earlier above – truth, kindness, comprehension, care, love, all that – because that will be good for me and the other people to whom I feel connected.  

The other thing that pulls me back is more basic, amounting to not much more than a sense of extreme agitation; the same fearful, anxious, angry, reactive bundle of impulse that really set me off on this road six years ago. If you’ve ever pondered much about the thing referred to as ADHD (‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder”), which I did quite a bit in my professional life, you might have concluded, as I have, that this is really what it’s about: the person with the diagnosis of ADHD (usually a young person) feels that something is very wrong or frightening so that they can’t settle, they can’t feel safe enough to concentrate on the things to which other people (usually adults) want to draw their attention. Beside themselves with agitation, they run around in circles causing trouble (trying to get your attention, in fact). Another story (last one, I promise). A boy (me) had a headteacher who terrorised the children, beating them indiscriminately when he felt like it, and flagrantly embezzling money from the school. He literally took money out of a pot marked “School Fund” and sent children to the shop with it to buy his cigarettes. (In those days they allowed you to buy cigarettes when you were only 9). He was an all-round nasty bastard who should never have been allowed anywhere near young people.  The boy and at least some of his friends told their parents what he was like. It should have been clear enough anyway; like his fictional equivalent Miss Trunchbull in the Matilda stories he was committing outrageous abuse in plain view. Of course, nobody, not parents, nor teacher colleagues, nor school governors, nor education officials, did anything about it. The usual vicious cocktail of inhibitions prevailed: fear of being the one to speak up, disbelief, denial, dependency, complicity. In fact he was imprisoned 12 years later, but it was a bit late for us by then.

Through whatever fortunate mixture of a stable enough family situation, innate personal resources and instincts for self-preservation, I avoided the beatings and any serious psychological disorder. But it was seriously disturbing, as it is now, to realise that a  clearly unsuitable and plain bad person can be elevated to a position of great power and then tolerated and even supported there by the rest of the ‘grown-up’ world. Although I was a troubled and troubling enough young person, I wouldn’t then have attracted a diagnosis of ADHD even if it had existed; but I sometimes think that these days, in my worst moments, the cap could fit, and I suspect that at least as a metaphor it could fit for many of my colleagues in the climate protest movement; beside ourselves with agitation, we run around in circles causing trouble (trying to get your attention).

Somebody, you may think, has to. The good thing about people with ADHD, or people with Oppositional Defiance Disorder or whatever other fancy name you might want to give to someone who presents basically as the ‘problem child’ screaming at you to notice the dysfunction in the ‘family’ – is that they tend to continue being a nuisance until somebody finally pays proper attention to them and/or to the underlying problems to which their behaviour is pointing. They are very very driven, neither moderating their behaviour in line with social expectations nor reforming it in response to the punitive reactions of the ‘adult’ world. They are persistent, tenacious, resilient and self-sacrificing, often heedless of how their behaviour and the reactions to it of others has harmful consequences for them. And there’s the rub; because the other side of the coin is a failure of self-care. The behaviour is exhausting for all concerned and may end up spiralling down into repetitive gestures which start to lose force and apparent meaning. Meanwhile, the person doing this starts to lose a hold on the things which keep them together and drifts, perhaps, into depression, mood-changing addictive behaviours or other sorts of self-harm. Burnout.

It seems to me that we need the ‘moral imperative’ thing here. Because it tells us that if we are to keep going with our defiant opposition then we need to stay well enough ourselves. Yes we have a duty to do ‘the right thing’ but it can’t be ‘at all costs’ . If we are going to sustain some effective resistance to the evil being perpetuated around us, then we need to resist any temptation to blow up – whatever form that might take – and to check out from the struggle in a blaze of glory. Again, I would say, a question of ego.

Finding any sort of reliable balance here can be extraordinarily difficult, but we need to look for it. How does anybody keep their eyes and ears and hearts open to the daily atrocities of life and keep themselves well? Do you give everything you have to feed suffering, starving children? Do you approach all the homeless people you see and offer to take them home with you? Do you put down your shopping bags and go to sit in the middle of the road and wait to be arrested in protest at the insanity that everyone around you is busy preparing for another Christmas of over-consumption while the delicate natural structure that keeps your habitat sound and liveable crumbles and a psychopath assumes control of the most powerful nation in the world?

I think it’s partly because these dilemmas are so difficult that many voters take refuge in the certainties offered by the right-wing populists, however absurdly false they are. Without also lying or making up stuff like they do, we can’t offer competing certainties, an alternative ‘cult’,  and that’s another difficulty. (I do think we could offer a bit more of a positive ‘vision’ of the possibilities, but maybe that’s for another time). So we have to lay out our stall, with all its gaps and conditions and unknowns and variables and mysteries, as best we can, and stand with it. I’ve stood on the street beside quite a number of actual stalls in recent years, seeking to persuade punters that they should join up to something – the climate protest movement, campaigns for proportional representation or tactical voting or, in what now seems like a distant past, against  Brexit. Responses in all cases have been more positive generally than you might imagine, but unfortunately these outreach attempts don’t result in enough people becoming active, and that is, in the end, what’s required. What constitutes being ‘active’ or ‘an activist’ has to vary according to context and personal circumstances, and with reference to what I’ve been banging on about above: what can you do that is in some way effective and consistent with maintaining your own wellbeing?

In the current situation (especially as it’s changed since November 5th although let’s face it, things weren’t looking that great before) things look very bad, critical in fact, but this does have the potential advantage of focusing minds. Which side are you on? Because it’s clearly time to pick one and then to do what you can, consistent with your wellbeing, to help that side prevail before the tides of madness and evil overwhelm us. A film I like and would recommend (possibly the best film you never saw, because most people I talk to about it don’t seem to have seen it) is Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”. If the ponderous early pace and the sepia colours put you off, I’d suggest persevering anyway, for the film’s depth, humour and intelligence but most of all for its magnificent denouement. It’s a portrayal, among other things, of precisely the dilemma posed above, the problem of finding the right balance between your own immediate personal interests and doing what you think is right for the collective good; and about the need, ultimately, to make a clear and visible choice about which side you’re on. It’s also a demonstration that, sometimes, it can be the good guy who gains the advantage by doing something which is shocking; even if, in all the circumstances, it shouldn’t be that surprising.

EIGHTEEN. September 19th 2022

So runs the final line of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” Pete Townshend’s classic rock rant about the hazards of expecting meaningful systemic change in the way we are governed even when change at the top has been brought about through civil unrest and rebellion. His words have stood the test of time not only because they bring to a resounding climax a cracking tune and lyric, but because they contain an obvious truth, proven time and time again through the history of public events and private experience. We know they are true. And yet we act as if they aren’t. Either we’re very slow learners or we’re determined to delude ourselves. Ignorance and stupidity, anyway, are the words that spring to mind

If we’d done anything, even a tiny thing like putting a pencil cross in a box, to bring this about, it might be reasonable to have some hope for change (although, as The Who’s song is keen to point out, even that would be naive – as the saying goes, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”). But why anybody would expect any profound or significantly progressive shift to result through the transfer of a symbolic title from a dead monarch to their heir is completely beyond me. Whatever differences in tone or nuance of opinion, they are pillars of an Establishment which has pursued, over centuries, policies based upon injustice, exploitation and oppression. Their high public profile and celebrity status has served to entrench and reinforce a habit of deference to assumed authority and compliance with the prevailing culture of innate privilege, corruption and inequality. That’s the whole point of them.

It should be quite breath-taking, then, to return to the country from a two-month absence free from newsfeeds, to find media and social media dominated by people basically pretending to be very sad and posing questions about ‘what will change’ as a result of this inevitable event, no aspect of which the people of the country have influenced in any way. It should be, but it isn’t. I’m long enough in the tooth to have experienced a number of these supposedly transformational events and their actual outcomes so as to know what to expect, how the process goes. 1. People are unhappy / dissatisfied  / worried. 2. An event occurs which basically blows them away for a while – they find it very interesting or emotionally affecting, perhaps in a surprising way, or at the least it distracts them from their unhappiness / dissatisfaction / worries. 3. This event somehow serves, for a while, to re-connect them with ‘good’ feelings or maybe what can be described as a clearer ‘sense of self’. They suppose / imagine / hope that the event will be the catalyst for significant change in society so that they will become much less unhappy / dissatisfied / worried. 4. They wait for the desired changes, which don’t come. Crucially, they do nothing themselves to bring about these changes. They get a bit more unhappy / dissatisfied / worried. They hope for another event or person to change things for them. When it eventually comes the process starts all over again.

Various psychological and sociological theorists have written about this phenomenon, about how a sense of crisis (whether experienced as challenging or as inspiring) is an opportunity for change and growth; which opportunity can turn out to be wasted or can be taken to improve things or, most often, sadly, taken advantage of – I would say – to make things worse for most people (and better for a very few powerful people). When I was a therapist I thought and talked about this stuff a lot, particularly because an Italian bloke called Assagioli had developed a relevant model – which he called “Stages of Spiritual Awakening” – central to my training. These “stages” are basically the 4 stages I’ve described above.

The really important thing about Assagioli, and his (neglected) gift to psychology is that he emphasised – in fact, banged on and on about  – the Will. I mention this now because, to me, it seems fundamentally and crucially important. Assagioli knew that people, ordinary individual people, had to do stuff if things were to change for the better. He knew that being ‘more aware’ or ‘enlightened’ or even having ‘better’ thoughts or feelings or values wouldn’t be enough. People had to make choices and Act. Everybody knows this really; whether the change you want is to break the habit of watching a never-ending newsfeed, or to give up heroin, or to get fitter, or to be nicer to your mum, or to have a better society, or to stop climate change BEFORE IT’S TOO FUCKING LATE. You have to Act. We have to Act. As some people in the 12-step movement are fond of saying, ‘If nothing changes, nothing changes’.

This is why, for me, these kinds of public events, experienced collectively as absolutely monumental because they are so amplified by a news media system which is way beyond public accountability or any concept of real public ‘service’, are so depressing and alarming. There are a few stand-out examples in relatively recent UK history which illustrate well how the 4 stages model gets acted out. The easiest to recall in this context is Princess Diana’s death in 1997. Those old enough will remember how this was presumed to be a collective moment of coming together, of the “nation” becoming more in touch with and honest about emotions; which, it was predicted, would make us happier and healthier. 25 years on, we have a growing mental health epidemic of truly frightening proportions and a government, mirrored by most of the media, in which false representation of motives and intentions has become routine. Fast forward to 2012 and the London Olympics, another supposedly transformational national experience the outcomes of which were confidently predicted to include a reduction in levels of obesity and an increase in our capacity for friendship and respect. As is standard with these events, the media talked incessantly about how it had ‘brought us all together’. Ha bloody ha.

The most recent example, of course, is the early stages of the covid pandemic; still recent enough for anyone, I reckon, to have in mind how it was presumed by very many people that the shocking temporary forced changes to our lifestyles in this period would have lasting beneficial effects. Communities would become stronger. The world would be equalised. We would value and reward the contributions which people make to society proportionately and fairly. We would be kinder to ourselves, to each other and to nature, for which we had learned a new respect. Much of this was encompassed in the socially-compulsory gesture of the Thursday night “clap for carers”; which, once again, was “bringing us all together.”. Enough said, I think.

Of course, there are plenty of other examples of this kind of thing in the history of our country and others, and we’ve all experienced individual versions of it too, in our private lives. And it’s not that these ‘big moments’ aren’t potentially transformative. The point is that they are only transformative if YOU do something, if YOU do some thoughtful work to clarify the qualities you believe you’ve identified in the experience and then to bring your new awareness into reality, to embody and enact it. I am personally repulsed by the idea of someone queueing for hours on end to see a box with a dead Queen in it. I really find it difficult to imagine myself into the inner world of someone who wants to do that. But honestly if someone says that because of and through this experience they personally expect and are determined to develop and express through their own lives some of the qualities which they think the Queen demonstrated, then I’d say “Good, fair enough”. If they say, and prove, that shuffling along in an endless line with a mass of fellow-feelers is going to make them more like whatever they think the Queen was like, then this would be a good thing, as we would presumably have a load more people who are patient, selfless, fair and honourable and who put their sense of duty to nation and society before their own personal needs and interests. There has perhaps never been a time when we needed more people like that. If it’s true that  about a million people queued up and that even half of them are successful in developing an overriding sense of self-denial and public duty (and , by the by, a taste for large outdoor gatherings), then I guess we can confidently expect that there will soon be large enough numbers of people protesting on the streets to demand the radical changes needed for just governance and the preservation of a habitable planet.

Unfortunately, we know from our observation as well as  from the banal remarks of most of these people that no such process is in place (this remark from one “mourner” being not untypical: “I have no sensation in my knees at all, or my legs, but it’s been fine, most of the people in the queue have been lovely and we’ve had quite a nice time”). This is really, in fact, more or less the opposite of activism. It’s the passive indulgence of feelings to make you feel better for a while – like getting into a warm bath, listening to your favourite record, smoking a joint, going on holiday. It’s an escape from reality. It’s not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with doing that, but we shouldn’t pretend that we’re doing anything more that that, like achieving enlightenment or making progress toward meaningful social change. To do so, as the theorists about this stuff point out, is to engage in what is called “spiritual flight” and actually to deter and stifle the possibility of real change. Things get worse rather than better. This is most especially so if you try to insist that others invest in your fantasy, that everyone buys into your surreally distorted version of reality. This is how you end up with endemic addictions, political parties run by dangerous fanatics, and cults in which people have become so essentially crazy that they are lining up to drink the Koolaid.

That, of course, is precisely what’s going on here. Far from being a progressive step towards a better society, it’s a deliberately regressive one, seized upon almost joyfully by a criminally, decadently corrupt government desperate to associate itself with spurious concepts of unity and renewal and by its equally criminal supporters / manipulators in the media. It’s a blanket over useful thought and true feelings, fully intended to reinforce the lies they tell you all the time: that we’re all in it together, that the rich and powerful are somehow looking after everybody else and not just themselves, and that everything’s going to be alright.

Whether we allow this to be another nail in the coffin of social awareness and justice or experience it as a pin-prick, a stimulus to wake us up to the urgent necessity of action is, I think, up to us, to you and me. It’s been painful for people in our movement to have to repress, yet again, the urge to get out on the street because the time is not right. I think the judgement to wait, to postpone, was the right call. Similarly I think the many months of concentration on movement-building, trying to gather strength and numbers, was also the right call. But we can’t wait forever. We can’t endlessly postpone our active campaigns while one minor crisis after another (they are all minor next to the climate crisis) preoccupies us, demanding our collective attention and resources ‘for the time being’. Sooner or later we have to start wondering whether the series of crises (the gaps between them inevitably shorter and shorter) are actually serving the purpose of distracting us from the terrifying thing to which we really need to be paying attention.

The clock is ticking and things are getting worse. It might be asked what, who are we waiting for. The answer is You.

SEVENTEEN December 23rd 2021

“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again”. So begins the Disney version  of the Peter Pan story. I suppose the concept can  be applied with validity in a variety of contexts: the tendency for history to repeat, the common themes of political struggle, the inevitable circularity of nature, the need for persistence (’if at first you don’t succeed…’) or the madness of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Right now it speaks to me about my own history: being a boy who tended to get preoccupied by issues to do with what was true or false, fair or unjust; and getting caught up in arguments about it as if they were a matter of life and death (which in this iteration, of course, they are), often to my own detriment; and, somehow, often finding myself being the one who stuck with a cause long after others had given up and moved onto something more rewarding. And then, later on, being a youth and then a man who did the same things. I’ve seen myself do this over and over. It’s unlikely to change now and I probably wouldn’t chose to change it if I could. That’s how obstinate and annoying I can be.

This has caused me a lot of trouble at various times in life, although particularly as a youth, when being obstinate and annoying was par for the course: I just did it with knobs on. I actually hardly ever did anything directly harmful or dangerous like hitting someone or damaging property or setting something on fire, I just argued with people (often not very politely, I admit) and refused to back down just because they had more  power or ‘authority’ than I did. I did this until and even though I got punished. One of my school reports at the time remarked that I had “a habit of getting himself into trouble without regard for the consequences”. This was understated and fair enough. Basically, I was what used to be called a “problem child”. I was always presenting a problem, causing trouble. From my perspective, the problem was not actually me, but the fact that something unfair, dishonest or unkind was being done by somebody else. Viewed from the other side, however, it was most definitely me who was the problem.

You can probably see where this is going.

Many, many years on we find ourselves in a situation where the authorities perceive that people like me are causing a big problem and that they therefore need to think up some new and more severe punishments to make us behave better, Basically they are attempting to suppress protest by making it illegal to inconvenience or annoy anyone. This is so ridiculous and sinister that I think the vast majority of people can see that it is wrong, although  nobody else (like for instance the alleged ‘Official Opposition’) is doing or saying much about it. We are, effectively, getting hung out to dry. People have already  gone to prison and more people will be going soon. You may think that what some of these particular people did (repeatedly sitting down on a motorway) was ill-judged or reckless. But sooner or later, assuming the government gets its way, a lot more people will be going to prison for doing much more ordinary things. Basically they will be going to prison simply for ‘being annoying’, for making a fuss about the fact that the governments of the world and their funders in big corporations are deliberately destroying our habitat and stealing the future from our children. At some point, society will collectively decide that these people are ‘martyrs’ and that they have been badly treated. By then their actual lives may be in ruins

This is usually what happens to the “problem child”. S/he behaves in a way which is annoying because something is wrong and nobody is doing anything about it. Because s\he, rather than the actual issue, is treated as “the problem”, the annoying behaviour escalates until it becomes more and more disruptive, perhaps even outrageously so. Bystanders start to find it more difficult to see the connection between the behaviour, the protest, and what is being protested about. “Surely”, they think, “This person is a bit crazy. They are just an extremist. We can’t have them doing that. They need to be stopped / punished”. 

What the bystanders don’t do is take responsibility for how they are contributing to this situation; by choosing, for instance, to withhold their attention from the problems which the person is protesting about – whether this is, as it might be in the  case of a child, that they are being subjected to injustice or bullying or lies or abuse, or whether it is, as in our case, that the human habitat is being irreparably destroyed at a terrifying speed. Typically, the bystanders haven’t addressed themselves to these problems because that seemed like it would be a  bit difficult or inconvenient for them. Instead, they have let the “problem child” get on with it. Eventually the behaviour of the problem child becomes so annoying (because they are desperate for somebody to address the problem and nobody is doing it) that the bystanders feel justified in switching their attitude from ignorance and indifference (or perhaps passive sympathy) to one of outright hostility.

This is pretty much exactly what  has happened with the Highway protestors, who I think made a tactical error in ‘acting into’ this dynamic, thus making it easier for people to ignore the problem they are protesting about (which will lead inevitably to the deaths of billions of people) and focus instead on condemning their behaviour (because ithat might lead accidentally to the deaths of a very few people – or simply because it is very annoying). Although I completely respect  the motives of the Highway protestors, admire their courage and appreciate their conviction, I think it would have been better to restrain the impulse to act ‘outrageously” and to wait for a better opportunity to tilt things our way, to pose the dilemmas which acts of civil disobedience present to authorities in a more skilful way, to fence rather than to bludgeon; or simply to wait until our forces are stronger.

It might be that I am feeling this because I’m 65 and not 15; in which case I must have changed somewhat after all. In my youth, perhaps I would have been with them, facing down the angry motorists and openly defying the injunctions. I think I would have felt very enlivened by it, in fact, just as I used to when I was a teenager and was being admonished by some hypocritical and unjust authority figure whom I knew, underneath the superficial letter of the law, to be in the wrong. And I would most likely have found myself in a prison cell before I stopped to think about it. Having seen the insides of various prisons in a professional capacity, I have a pretty good idea that being incarcerated in one would be a very unpleasant experience. Even so, I might be prepared to put up with it if I thought it would bring about the changes we need; but at this point I don’t.

I still identify, for sure, as a rebel. The ‘Rebel for Life’ ribbon permanently on my wrist has both meanings. Maybe what has changed is that I’m no longer so keen to embrace the sense of martyrdom, which I suspect used also to bring me some psychological satisfaction. In fact, now I’m a bit sick of being the one, or one of the ones, who sticks my neck out while others sit back and watch – whether they do that admiringly and sympathetically or not.

Some of the people who put a lot of energy into starting up our movement observed that a problem about some ‘activist’ organisations was that their tactics ultimately discouraged, or even excluded the mass participation which they believed to be necessary for eventual success. As they described it, one lot of (‘good’) people were seen to be doing bad things to other (‘bad’) people, thus providing  dramatic and interesting viewing for the mass of people, who engaged with it basically as spectators. These spectators might be ‘involved’ and ’supportive’ but only really in a passive way. This method, it was felt, wouldn’t bring about the mass participation in civil disobedience  required to force the government to change course. I think those who were saying this had a point.

Curiously enough one or two of them have been, I believe, influential in promoting the actions of the Highway protestors which, in my own view, have made the same tactical error. This is only a view, and I may be wrong (I hope I am) and even if I’m right I don’t blame them for it. Many of those activists who have been thinking intensively about the climate crisis for the past few years (instead of, like the majority of people,  ignoring it or distracting themselves from how serious it is), have become understandably very desperate and have, I think, become ready to commit themselves to courses of action which they would previously have considered to be unwise and even wrong. That’s what desperate people do.  I might get there too eventually, but I don’t think I’m there yet. Of course, I may simply be in denial, and I always think it’s worth bearing in mind a parody of the famous ‘IF…’ poem I remember seeing on a jokey poster many years ago: “IF you can keep your head when all about you are losing  theirs,….. it could be that you just don’t understand the seriousness of the situation.”

Anyway, whether or not I’m judging this right, my current view – and this is 

very different to my 15 year old self – is that this is a time for restraint; not holding back because we are afraid or reticent to offend, but because it is necessary in order to think of what is the best thing to do. In order to break the current dynamic – in which a relatively very few people act out a drama which others watch – and to get something different started, we need to engage – actively, not as spectators or ‘supporters’ – many more people.

Judging by what I noticed when we were on the streets intensively for a couple of weeks in August, this might be possible if we pitch it right. We did do something different during that period – in that we took care to speak carefully to people on the street who saw what we were doing but weren’t ‘with us’, and instead of telling them what we ‘knew’, we asked them what they thought. Not only did this approach seem to elicit a more sympathetic and supportive response, it also brought us some information – which is that loads more people than we might have suspected do actually feel supportive of what we are doing; they just don’t know how to find their way into being involved. This access problem has very many facets, of course, and it’s not simple to solve it ; but solving it is what I think we need to do. People say, literally, “I approve of what you’re; doing but I couldn’t do what you are doing”. I think we have to find out more about that, perhaps to show them that. in fact, they could do it, or maybe to find out what they ‘could’ do instead.

At any rate, it feels crucial not to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Sometimes, when you don’t  know what to do, or how to do it, the best thing may be to do nothing for a while, I’m quite a fan of saying “I don’t know” and I really believe that if we had a few more politicians ready to say “I don’t know” , we might not be in this god-awful mess.  Doing nothing in a purposeful way, saying “I don’t know” until some wisdom arrives, can be very valuable . It can also be very difficult and require a lot of discipline, especially if you have a sense of a humanity-ending climate crisis coming rolling down the road, but that’s pretty much what I think we need to do. There’s a maxim I always liked that I’ve heard used in praise of the merits of reflective meditation: “Don’t just do something, sit there.”

Another question about this which has occurred to me is: what happens if we do nothing? My assumption is that something else would be bound to happen; because we would have stopped acting as a kind of pressure-release valve and so others would start to feel the importance of acting. Something like that, anyway. Whether or not this  other ‘something’ would turn out to be the right kind of thing is a moot point. About ten days ago the ex-footballer Gary Neville used Twitter to call  for a protest  against government corruption to take place outside Downing St. Responses were instructive – everyone from the mad fringe of the anti-vaxxers to Q-Anon and ‘The Party Party’ seemed immediately to be trying to get in on the act . (Then of course renewed concerns about spreading covid dampened enthusiasm amongst the sane people). 

I’ve heard a few people in activist movements recently predicting a soon-to-come “moment of whirlwind”. I guess I understand what they mean,  The times feel turbulent and fragile.. There is much frustration and righteous rage and strong urges, toward both good and bad. Although this brings great danger it also brings opportunity; in many  ways it’s a hopeful situation for people who believe in the necessity for direct action. But it the whirlwind is actually around the corner, I somewhat doubt that its outcome will be as peaceful or as possible to shape and direct as some might hope. How do we come together at the right moment in the right way for the right cause? It’s a big, hard question. But interesting to remember that there are many other places from which the spark that eventually brings the whole house of cards tumbling down, could come. And anyway, good on Gary. (again.) If it looks like it’’s happening sometime, I’ll be there.

Meantime, ill be thinking, talking, planning and building, trying to keep in mind two crucial things: that gentleness and goodwill, listening and respect.seems to be what brings people alongside; and that if we are not together – united with solidarity in a common cause which can bring enough of us together at the right time – then we cannot win.  Who knows if the time is now or yet to come, but today I feel optimistic that it will come eventually. When it does I hope we will ensure that those who put themselves in the line of fire early on, those who are going to be spending their Christmas in prison, for acting – perhaps rashly but certainly with great selflessness and integrity – will be rewarded; not by being regarded as ‘martyrs but by having the damage that has been done to their lives properly recompensed and by seeing that the real criminals are eventually held to account. We know where they live. 

SIXTEEN August 16th 2021

Never have we been more in need of hero/ines to give some moral and practical leadership in a time of crisis. The vernacular of activism, of course, abounds with statements about how we all need to be heroes, that we are the ones we have been waiting for, and all that. Indeed, the very notion of ‘activism’ stresses the crucial importance of addressing problems and issues rather than waiting for someone else to do it. Nevertheless, at a time like this it’s hard not to hope, even if only privately, that those individuals who have amassed a particularly large stash of personal resources and/or. due to this or some other achievement/s, have a certain public profile, will use their platform to do some good; perhaps to identify and champion a special cause close to their heart, to lead by example, to demonstrate benevolence.

Marcus Rashford comes immediately to mind, only partly because his story is topical; the thing which is perhaps really striking about his example is that, unlike say Bill Gates who went through what might be regarded as a classic process of building a business empire, getting extraordinarily rich and then realising, presumably after some personal ‘crisis of meaning’ that the path to self-realisation goes, ultimately, via philanthropy, Rashford is only 23. He hasn’t yet had the time or experience to feel self-satisfied and get bored with it, or to feel like he has everything he wants but then realise that material and personal success is not enough and that ‘something deeper is missing’. For whatever reasons to do with his own history or innate qualities, Rashford seems to have just decided that there is a very big problem which he could do something about, and that therefore he should, and then he did it, Good for him. There are bound to be some provisos to this, of course; perhaps he could have done more, perhaps he has in some way used his new profile as a campaigner in order to achieve further self-advancement. I really don’t know. We could all always try harder and do better. But in general terms, good for him.

I’ve frequently wondered why more people who have public platforms – artists, writers, actors, TV ‘personalities’, musicians, sportsmen, ‘celebrities’ of all kinds, don’t interest themselves a bit more in the climate emergency. There have been a few, and I guess as a phenomenon it’s increasing, but I’m pretty sure the increase really only parallels the increased public awareness and interest. Again, the different thing about Rashford was that he was choosing to highlight an issue in which people weren’t already interested. I’m not saying that famous people shouldn’t ‘jump on the bandwagon’ of alarm about climate breakdown – I only wish they would – just that i cannot understand why more of them are not genuinely and personally already deeply disturbed about it and feeling compelled to do whatever they can about it, in the same way that Rashford, due in part to his personal story, felt compelled to act about the hunger of schoolchildren.

I’ve often been gratified to find that people I have admired because of their artistic or other achievements supported and spoke out for causes that I was invested in. Paul Weller and Billy Bragg banging the socialist drum. Springsteen and Neil Young overtly rejecting Trump. Hilary Mantel denouncing Thatcher and John Le Carre, Brexit. Gareth Southgate, however implicitly and obliquely, making a stand for decency, courage and honesty. Even Gary Neville (who honestly I hadn’t admired until now) comparing the leadership qualities of our current alleged Prime Minister very unfavourably with the latter, and probably risking his lucrative ITV contract in the process.

So why not speak up about the climate crisis? It’s manifestly not party Political, so that’s no excuse. We might think  that celebrities suppose that they shouldn’t intrude in discussions on topics about which they have no special understanding or which are somehow supposed to be the province of scientists. But we know from painful experience that this doesn’t prevent them from sounding off about all sorts of other stuff they know nothing about, and nor does it typically prevent people, and politicians, from listening to them.  ( I refer the reader to the story of Joanna Lumley and the Garden Bridge. Enough said).

The fact is, these people have platforms which they could use to heighten awareness about the climate crisis and to urge governments to take much more urgent and more meaningful action. And this would likely have a beneficial effect. And yet, mostly, they don’t. I am mystified by this. We are facing the biggest emergency, the greatest humanitarian calamity, that has ever presented itself and yet hardly any, comparatively, of the group of people with a platform, a group which has spoken out and been listened to, and has sometimes taken direct action in the past on numerous important (but actually less important) issues like sexism, abuse, racism, poverty, famine, say anything much about it. I suppose that in the end they are ‘just like us’  and prevented by their own version of the  cocktail of fear, short-term self-interest, paralysis, despair, inertia, lack of empathy and plain indifference that is evidently affecting most ‘ordinary people’, from acting appropriately. Perhaps too, in the end, it isn’t what will make the difference. But still ,at a time like this, when just about any day of the week you will read or hear a news story about  how climate breakdown is causing great suffering and destruction right now or about how scientists are telling us it is soon going to get much much worse, it would be nice to have one our two people with a platform making the right nosies. We really are crying out for some climate heroes

Enter Jeff Bezos. Closely followed by Richard Branson. And apparently, in due course, by Elon Musk. What utter tossers. What a miserable, shameful, ignorant way to use advantage, power and privilege. How immensely selfish and grandiose. And how cynical (as well as really pathetically and childishly stupid) to advance an argument that their crass and delinquent behaviour offers some sort of example or way forward for the human species as it endeavours to come to terms with the fact that its own habitat is fast becoming inhabitable.

This was a few weeks ago, I know, but I (clearly) haven’t got over it. It seemed a big enough outrage at the time, seeing Bezos’ stupid cruddy self-satisfied grin when he retuned from his vainglorious escapade. But now it seems more like an  actual crime, for which I would like him to be pursued and prosecuted. Setting aside the immense and exponentially proliferating carbon cost of his cretinous business plan to fly other superfluously rich and idiotic people into space for a thrill while increasing numbers of the less well off around the world drown, starve and burn, it is such a monumental waste of resources which could be put to better ends; resources including the platform and influence which these kind of people have. As the time for another rebellion approaches – one more big push by a very diverse bunch of mostly ordinary and mostly kind and responsible people to try and get the powers that be to stop killing us and start restoring a habitable environment, the best that Bezos and Branson and their ilk can do  is engage in a public willy-waving contest which they nevertheless seek to portray as somehow beneficial to others.

It’s hard not to compare. Our organisation’s principles rightly guide against blaming and shaming or seeng one person as ‘right; and another ‘wrong’, pointing instead towards the dysfunction of the system that we’re all caught in. But really, when I find myself talking, as I did very recently with a few very ordinary and unprivileged people who are planning on using their hard-earned holidays to travel by train down to London next week from the northern  tip of Scotland, sleep on someone’s floor and spend a week mostly getting exhausted and  anxious before getting  arrested in service of trying to protect the future of the planet for the sake of their children and then retuning home again; and then I think of these wankers with their spaceships, then I honestly feel like I want to kill them, notwithstanding the peaceful principles to which I am signed up.

That may not be a helpful feeling. I think it is, however, a helpful reminder that if we want to get out of this awful, terrifying mess it is us who are gong to have to do something about it. No-one is coming to save us.

FIFTEEN. July 8th 2021

A couple of years ago when enthusiasts like me were first putting our energies into building structures for our climate activist movement at the local level, I remember that we talked a lot about Tipping Points. The notion was an important concept, used in the talks given in church halls and such like,  to recruit new activists; because it helped to drive home the urgency of action on the climate and ecological crisis. As the earth heats up and weather patterns are disturbed, certain tipping points are bound to be reached, after which it will no longer be possible to halt climate breakdown. Ice-bergs melt, sea-levels rise, ancient permafrost thaws, forests die, deserts grow. Worse still, there are feedback loops – for instance, the sea-ice melting means that the water surface is dark and so absorbs sunlight rather than reflecting it back so that heating is accelerated. Unless you’ve been living in a cave for a couple of years, you know all this now, at least in general terms. The point is, the process becomes unstoppable. The planet heats up to unmanageable levels and becomes inhospitable and ultimately uninhabitable for humans

Another way in which we talked about tipping points was in terms of the growth of our movement. A certain small percentage of society (3.5% was a figure quoted) would need to become active in undertaking acts of peaceful civil disobedience in order to force change. It seems likely that the social science behind this supposition – simply because it is social science – was bound to be less reliable and well-founded than the physical science upon which the climate forecasts were based. Nevertheless I think it was reasonable to set some sort of a reference point for what was required, and the basic principle – that the movement would grow, as with all epidemics (as we have all been learning lately), at an exponential rate, until it too became unstoppable  – was sound enough.

Such evidence as there is – which is quite a  lot if you’ve been reading the right publications and listening to the very many experts and representatives of international panels and whatnot who have been talking about it – suggests that  the postulated climate tipping points are continuing to approach and, indeed, that some of them are approaching faster than was previously feared and, according to at least some people who appear to know what they are talking about, may already have been reached. Numerous of the same sort of people are saying, furthermore, that the statements being made by political ‘leaders’ about what they intend to do about this are insufficient; and that the actions they have actually taken so far anyway fall well short of their promises. In other words, notwithstanding greatly increased noise about how concerned our ‘leaders’ are about the situation, and how allegedly ’ambitious’ they are to address it, in fact we continue to hurtle towards our own destruction. We know that a catastrophe is approaching but we are doing very little to try to prevent it.

It’s hard to express quite how upsettingly disastrous this is. There is surely nothing else – not the horror of the pandemic nor the myriad secondary problems caused by it, not the restrictions on social life and travel, not the loss of work or income, not even the illness or personal difficulty of a loved-one – which can come anywhere near to the climate emergency in terms of a serious and distressing problem needing to be addressed right now. And yet we are evidently not yet anywhere near the social tipping point at which enough people become sufficiently alarmed and outraged that they will take the action necessary to force governments to act.

Why is this? It certainly isn’t for lack of trying on the part of those who are already in our movement. As the pandemic restrictions ease we are entering our own eighth or ninth ‘wave’ of manic activity, trying everything we can think of to do things in such a way as to create pressure on the government and others with power in society (like banks and oil companies) which need to change and also to attract new members. According  to most anecdotal reports, the public and even some of the institutions we are pressuring are increasingly sympathetic, and there is always a trickle of new interest; but where’s the surge, where’s the exponential epidemic growth that we last saw signs of 2 years ago but which surely ought, given all the circumstances, to be bursting through again now?

The journalist Malcom Gladwell, as you may have read, offered an interesting model for exploring this question some years ago in a book called The Tipping Point. As with the  3.5% figure referred to above, I think it has to be remembered that social science theories (of which Gladwell’s is one) aren’t really testable or provable in the way that theories based on physical science are; and anyway it is only one perspective. But, again, Gladwell’s theory seems a reasonable enough hypothesis and I think if offers a good enough starting point to take us beyond the standard platitudes like “people can’t be bothered” or “people are lazy and selfish” or “people are stupid”, all of which may be true but none of which really gets us anywhere.

Broadly speaking, Gladwell proposes 3 factors which will make or break something becoming what he terms a ‘social epidemic’. The first of these, the ‘Law of the Few’ . talks about the importance of the kind of people to whom he refers as connectors, ‘mavens’ and salesmen; having the right people, in other words, to get the message through. I’m aware that our movement has its fair share of odd characters and a few of those who have emerged as spokespeople at times really aren’t that charming, at least in my book. But we are generally an articulate, educated, thoughtful, creative and determined bunch and I think we have plenty more than a few who are able to carry the message effectively. In addition, we have been careful  to leverage the influence of aligned influencers like Greta Thunberg, and Chris Packham and (even though he’s said he doesn’t actually support our movement) the revered Attenborough. Most people would agree, I think, that we can tick number 1.

Factor 2 is described as ’stickiness’. It’s hard to see how a message which basically says “The end of the world is nigh” could not be ‘sticky’, I really don’t think anybody who has heard it has forgotten it and anybody who has let the message sink in even a bit has surely become gradually more convinced of its importance. Really, one only has to look at the collective picture to know that this is true: the climate emergency was hardly talked about by politicians and journalists a coupe of years ago. Now you would find it hard to go a day of normal exposure to news and information channels without hearing something about it. Commercial companies, even the bad ones (especially the bad ones) seek to leverage it in their marketing. Organisations of all kinds have ‘climate’ or sustainability policies as a matter of course. Generally, people do not question the fact of the climate emergency or the desirability of doing something about it and the large majority of people are quite aware that movements and organisations exist, which they could join, to protest about the fact that not enough is being done about it. Tick 2.

The third factor, ‘Context’, could, I suppose, be seen as Gladwell’s get-our clause, because the notion of context can be seen to cover a multitude of sins. As I understand this, he means “Are there things not covered in factors 1 and 2 about this particular message which this particular group of people are unable to integrate at this particular time?” Well, it sounds a reasonable question on the surface but actually, again, it’s really quite hard to see what the problem could be. We could speculate about all sorts of things here, to do with the inevitable difficulties of gearing up for mass collective action, an impoverished political and social culture, the evils of consumerism, the problem of the crisis being viewed as not imminent (although it is – witness the current unprecedented heatwave in northwest America, only the latest in a series of unprecedented weather events around the globe which should have been raising the level of collective alarm) and not immediately visible. 

Could such ‘contextual’ considerations explain the failure of authorities to take proper action and the failure of ordinary people to rise up against them for not taking proper action? The evidence of the pandemic, I think, rather negates this view. As a lot of people remarked when covid-19 first kicked off, it’s actually quite amazing how good-willed, self-sacrificing and community-spirited people can be when they are moved by the sense of crisis and, notwithstanding the many distressing cock-ups and missteps by government, it’s actually pretty remarkable how effective and even coordinated (although not equitable) the actions of governments have been. When the chips are down, it tuns out, we can pull together, just like we apparently did in 1939, and make a massive collective effort to overcome a frightening and very challenging problem.

The thing is, though, that the climate crisis chips are down now, they are really down and in grave danger of being swept off the table by the croupier at any moment, and we are still not acting appropriately. What happens when climate breakdown hits properly will be unimaginably worse than the pandemic, and actually almost certainly much worse than having your country invaded by a hostile foreign power. So if this ‘context’ thing is the issue I think it must be pretty deep, hard to unravel, basically unfathomable.

In fact I’m quite sure that the issues must be largely unconscious. How else can you explain a failure to take steps which you could take to save your own life, especially when some people have been working so hard for quite a long time to point them out to you? So with apologies to Malcom Gladwell (whom I generally consider  a good sort), I think we may need a different approach, which focuses less on the collective factors (are there enough good messengers with ’sticky’ enough messages and have we got the sales environment right?) and a bit more on the question of individual will. The fact that even beginning to say this feels somewhat riskily challenging makes me think that it’s probably the right call; so I’ll set our my own alternative 3 factor model about Tipping Points.

New Factor 1 is Inertia. You don’t want to get up off your arse and do something. You feel anxious and possibly depressed about a range of things, including perennial personal and professional issues and concerns and probably including the climate crisis but also how shit the government is, how awful the newspapers are, and how uncertain the future looks (except that you are going to die, which is the worst thing). We all know what this Inertia feels like. I feel it most Monday mornings, even though I don’t have a job anymore. The best antidote is to do something reasonably active, Almost anything. Then you feel more able to do things about the stuff you are worried about and you start fo feel better. You become, perhaps, a ‘reluctant activist’.

New Factor 2 is Fear / Courage or Courage / Fear, whichever way around you prefer it. Having got active, there are some options about what to do with your energy. The fear of fear guides us towards doing only things which keep us relatively comfortable; courage takes us out of the comfort zone and enables us to be bolder. A couple of months ago I sat in the middle of a busy road on my own wearing a sandwich board saying “I am terrified because soon it will be too late to stop climate breakdown”. About two hundred people across the country (and hundreds of others in Europe) did the same thing, (with their own personal slogan, along a similar theme, on their sandwich board). The lead-in to the action was about 8 weeks, For the first 6 weeks I felt anxious nearly all the time, then I felt simply very scared for a fortnight, then I did it and I felt alright. Lots of people told me I was very brave, which sort of makes sense and I know and appreciate that they meant it as a compliment. But in a way I’m a bit uncomfortable about that because it seemed to me that at least some of the people who said I was brave were saying that I was somehow innately brave and, by implication, that they weren’t. Actually I’m pretty clear that I’m innately quite cowardly, and this has been obvious to me for most of my life; I’m aware of numerous ways in which my cowardice, my fear of fear, has held me back and disadvantaged me. On this occasion it didn’t because I worked to overcome it. 

The point I mean to make is that bravery means doing something which you really want to do and are determined to do even though you are afraid to do it. It means making a conscious identification to be courageous rather than fearful. Staying with the fear allows you to believe that you “can’t do that” (but that perhaps other people can). I think this is neither fair nor true. Eight weeks before the action I couldn’t have done it because I was too fearful. I was convinced I should do it and so I worked, during the time I had available, at overcoming the fear so that I could. (There was nothing very fancy in this process, by the way, it was largely simply reflection, visualisation and practice – acclimatisation to an idea which initially seemed out of my range but gradually became more familiar and acceptable.)

Even though this might mean that essentially we are all capable of anything, I don’t think it means that everybody has to be willing to do everything. I’m aware of the possibility of doing things which are more radical (although not necessarily more scary) than sitting in the  road on my own and which could land me with a short spell in prison rather that a night in a police cell. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t do them but it won’t be because I’m not “brave enough” or “too scared”. It will be because I’m not prepared to make that sacrifice, feeling convinced that I would find it a distressing and personally harmful experience and unconvinced that the outcomes would be worth it. We all have thresholds. Mine are further towards the radical end of the spectrum (but not all the way) than many other people’s because I’m an affluent old bloke with not that much to lose by getting a criminal record. Other people occupy different places on the spectrum of acceptable perceived risk and there are often very good and understandable reasons for that.

This brings me to New Factor 3, which is Choice. My contention here is that you need to know where you are on this spectrum and why. I don’t think it’s really good enough to say “I’m not brave enough” or “I can’t do that” anymore than it is to say “I can’t be arsed”. In my view, it’s necessary for your own long-term mental health and the well-being of humanity in general to make a very conscious reckoning about what you are or are not prepared to do; to discover where is your personal “tipping point’. This can probably be done simply enough by imagining some scales. On one side you put your motivations and reasons for doing something and on the other you put the motivations and reasons for not doing it. On the ‘Don’t Do It’ side you can include fear if you like, but this is not sufficient because, as I’ve just pointed out, it can be overcome. Much more importantly, you also have to include  more substantial and significant factors – the things you would have to give up, the visibility and exposure, the financial and practical costs, the likely consequences in your personal / family / professional life, the sense of responsibility you would be assuming; basically the way it would change your life Something which should not be forgotten, amongst the things which must be forsaken, is the illusion that somebody else is going to do something so that you don’t have to.

And on the other side, the Do It side, there would be not only the personal rewards and benefits – some of which will come as unexpected but others of which, like the sense of freedom, and the relief that comes with congruence, are entirely predictable – but also the reasons why this must be done, the imperatives: because the planet is burning and your help is needed to put the fire out; because our systems of governance are dysfunctional, decadent, putrid with corruption; because Outrage, Indignity and Injustice scream at you from every source of news and information you glance at; because our so-called Leaders are, in the main, precisely the wrong people at precisely the wrong time; and because they are slowly but inexorably undermining our power to remove them through sinister attacks upon democracy, truth and freedom, so that before long it may become too late to stop them destroying everything

And this revelation, if it is one, that all these things are connected in one horrible mass of something that closely resembles an Evil which must be fiercely opposed, that it’s not just “the climate emergency’  that needs to be addressed but the social, political, economic and cultural  diseases which have allowed it to go unchecked, is surely the final thing which ought to tip the balance of the scales so that you know you have no choice but to Act Now. Exactly what you do and how will inevitably be subject to a succession of similar more ‘micro’ calculations – likely costs on one side, benefits on the other.

There’s nothing really definitive about a process like this – it won’t answer all the questions you have about yourself and your life or anything like that – but at least it should make the unconscious conscious, so that if you are deciding to do nothing you will know why that is. If you do decide that, it might be for any one of a wide range of reasons: because you feel unwilling to give up certain aspects of your lifestyle; or you are worried that you would lose your job and be unable to manage; or that your friends and family would think you are ridiculous (or that they would be angry with you for making them feel confronted with uncomfortable truths); or that you feel too shy or awkward to join a ‘movement’; or that, even though you know things are going to get bad, you are calculating that you personally won’t do too badly; or that you are already too busy doing something which feels crucial to the well-being of others to give up the time; or that there is something else which you genuinely think is more important to address; or that you are ill or worried about becoming ill;  or that you still think that somebody else is about to solve the problem or that  it’s really not as bad as I’m making out;  or that you really believe what political leaders are telling you, that it’s going to be alright somehow; or that you have given up hope; or that you actually can’t bear to think about it very much.

At the end of this process your activism will no longer be a question of whether or not the messengers are any good or whether their message is ‘sticky’ enough or what the contemporary  ’context’ is, but of your conscious, rational decision-making process. It will be about your ’tipping point’, which is knowable and influenceable by you, rather than ‘the’ collective tipping point, the whereabouts of which is undeniably fascinating but completely beyond your control. 

Some of the possible reasons for inaction might seem more or less acceptable to you than others, and some may be more or less open to moderation or change. That would be for you to decide. Whatever happens, if you decide to do nothing then you will know why and perhaps not do it with more ease and freedom. Or you might decide to do something, and who know where that might end. Or possibly you might decide to do something, but just not quite yet, in which case I think you should ask yourself a final question which will further clarify the location of your  personal Tipping Point:

If not now, When?

(plus c’est la meme chose)

FOURTEEN. January 30th 2021

Like most normal people – if the concept of ’normal’ is even a thing these days – I was startled and left aghast by the events of January 6th, when Trump’s mob invaded the Washington ‘capitol’ and started messing with the fixtures and fittings, posing for selfies at other people’s desks and generally making a nuisance of themselves  whilst US legislators were about to confirm the results of the Presidential election . One hopes fervently that nothing like this is repeated.

In some ways, however, it perhaps  offered a bit of respite from the general experience of life recently, which I think for many of has begun to resemble a starkly un-amusing version of ‘Groundhog Day’. It’s not just that we have seemed to traipse endlessly around more or less the same circuit in relation to covid and all its disastrous manifestations;  but also that we have had to endure over and over again the same recycled bullshit about it from our alleged leaders;  the repeated failures of foresight, the serial incompetence, the shifty dissembling, and the irresponsible promising of something much better just around the corner have all become as familiar as they are depressing. In that context, it’s not,  of course, in any way cheering to note that a bunch of ignorant and bigoted morons have been encouraged and allowed by a variety of people in high authority to believe ridiculous lies and to attempt to force acceptance of those lies onto other people – indeed, to have those lies perhaps dictate the course of history –  but at least it sort of made a change. A few weeks on and it feels like we’re back to Groundhog Day. I’m pretty sure something else extraordinary will happen soon (vaccine wars?) and that when it does I’ll then be hoping things had stayed ‘normal’ (ha ha). Whoever said that one should be careful what one wishes for was wise, but still it’s hard at times not to wish simply for something different. 

Doing unexpected things, it seems to me, is a genuine talent – if one can call it that – of Trump and people like him. I don’t think that this is because he is actually imaginative or creative in any true sense of the word; it’s just that he is neither constrained nor inhibited from doing stuff which most other people would regard as idiotic, unconscionable, immoral, dangerous, insane, shameful or downright bad. This, in turn, is because he only has one belief – which is that he should be allowed to do whatever he feels like doing whenever he feels like it, and because his overriding characteristic is being nasty (his favourite word about his enemies, of course). The sooner people realise this and forget about any ideas that he has any sort of political agenda or philosophy, the better.

Anyway this capacity to do the unexpected has served him well, I think, like it serves most people of his ilk. The fact that he had again managed to take people by surprise in this way set me thinking. Of course many people predicted that he would do something outrageous before Biden’s inauguration, but just not this. Even though it was kind of the obvious thing for him to do, nobody really expected it (including, clearly, the Capitol guards), presumably at least partly because it was so outrageous. Getting some bombs dropped on Tehran might have been worse,  of course,  but it wouldn’t , somehow, have been so jaw-droppingly startling. What he achieved  on the 6th, alongside the lunatic Gulliiani, in whom it has become impossible to believe as a real person rather than a character in a Marvel comic, was more ‘special’ ; in the way that his mad ‘drive-around’ to visit his supporters outside hospital when he had covid (if indeed he did have covid) was ‘special’.

Trump is sometimes referred to as a great ‘disruptor’ of course, and his capacity to disrupt springs precisely from this readiness and tendency to do the unexpected. The events of the 6th set me off on a curious and indeed unexpected train of thought; not least because the core methodology of the activist organisation to which I belong is also disruption. We are committed to a pathway which proclaims that mass acts of civil disobedience are necessary in oder to disrupt ongoing business as usual, to wake people up to awful reality and to undermine a hopelessly corrupt and decadent system. At the time that I first heard about the hordes thronging into the capitol, it really didn’t occur to me that this event bore any relation to my sort of activism, but of course it does.

My attention was initially drawn to the potential for comparison when a colleague suggested to me that perhaps we might have something to learn from the mob. She meant, essentially, that the sense of entitlement they displayed, their quite flagrant disregard for protocols and the expectations of authorities, might be an example to follow. Maybe we might just as easily stroll into the Houses of Parliament (as opposed to annoyingly getting arrested for sitting in the road outside) if we only behaved as if we expected to be allowed to do so. I think there is some merit to this argument. The mass actions in which I’ve been involved which have been successful – in terms of achieving their tactical objective of, say, occupying a space for a period of time (and then perhaps creating a garden with a skate-park on a road bridge or mooring a boat or staging a rock concert at a major road junction) or blocking the entrances to a large institutional building – have mostly been characterised by a feeling of some surprise at how easy it was to do it, and how poorly organised, at least in the early stages, was the resistance of authorities. I’m now wondering if some of the actions which were less successful, apparently because they were thwarted by the authorities, lacked a certain and crucial boldness; so that we were too preoccupied with the response we might get and what ‘they’ were going to do (‘they’ being both the police / security and the public) and so lost connection with our own intention and purpose. In other words, we just weren’t confident enough.

I realise this may seem a bit abstract and doesn’t take into account the fact that security forces learn from experience (they are ready for you next time) and may even have ulterior motives for not trying too hard to stop you the first time or two, but nevertheless I think there may be something in this. Certainly I think that the single minded belief that you are going to do something, and that nothing is going to stop you, carries some weight. Trump’s own success in becoming and remaining President, unfortunately,  is evidence that the seemingly impossible is actually perfectly possible.

To be clear, my own organisation has no plans, so far as I know, to invade the Houses of Parliament. If we did, I certainly like to think that, once inside and with the free rein that Trumps’s mob had, we would manage something more creative  and aesthetically interesting than removing the  name plates from office doors and putting our feet up on the Speaker’s desk. This aspect of the mob’s behaviour was, I thought, very odd; notwithstanding the reports of guns and pipe-bombs and cable-tie handcuffs, there appeared to be no serious plan to do anything once inside other that lark about and show off on social media. We would at least have been ready to stage an intelligent ‘citizens’ assembly’ in the chamber and would have had some thoughtful spokespeople ready to talk to camera who weren’t wearing a bearskin and carrying a spear. We would also have had a plan for making sure that, if we did get in, it was quite difficult to get us out again. Why, having broken through doors and windows and made a lot of initial noise and fuss, did they all then consent to be quietly shepherded out again? There were no lock-on tubes, no elaborate infrastructure for the guards to dismantle. Nobody glued their hands to a statue. They didn’t even sit down! 

Crucially, I think, the mob presented no actual dilemma to the guards. As long as we assume that the guards didn’t actually want these thugs roaming around inside the capitol (which I realise is an assumption) then there were no difficult choices for them to make; it was simply a case of getting them out as soon as possible. For my organisation, presenting a dilemma  is at the heart of a successful piece of non-violent direct action. Whichever choice the authorities make – to resist / oppress / arrest you or to let you carry on – carries a cost in terms of resources, reputation  and public opinion,  If we get the nuances of this right (we don’t always) and do it  an elegant rather than an ugly fashion, then we win either way and the authorities lose either way.

Although I don’t think you can argue that the Trump mob are not activists (and I would prefer not to be in the same category but in this sense I think I am) I do think we can argue that they are not very thoughtful activists. Clearly they are not peaceful activists either and this may in fact be a factor which determines a lot. How you do something surely matters as much as what you do and why. When reflecting on the behaviour of the mob in Washington a few day afterwards, I recalled an apparently key moment on Whitehall over a year ago. We’d occupied the road for over 48 hours. We were far greater in number than the Trump gang were. We were tired, cold and wet and pissed-off from having loads of our property nicked by the guardians of the law, who were now keeping us 20 yards or so from the entrance to Downing St with a thin line of officers and some metal fences. A small number of people, newly arrived at the protest and evidently not very in tune with the non-violent culture, charged the fence and started to break through. Others watched, unsure whether to follow. It’s certain that had some more of us joined this effort we would quite easily have broken through. This initiative was countered by a similarly small number of people who called for calm and spoke passionately to the crowd about maintaining peacefulness. ‘Order’ was restored. We never got to Downing St.

I’ve sometimes wondered since, given the cynical behaviour of senior police officers and politicians afterwards in illegally misusing the Public Order Act and ludicrously trying to brand us as ‘terrorists’, whether it would after all have been better to break though the barricades. But I don’t think so. In fact a week or so before this event, on a ‘recce’ to the area, I had coincidentally watched a crowd of right-wing yobs violently challenging the police in Parliament Square. Some of them were literally throwing metal fences at the police. (None of them seemed to get arrested, by the way, nor branded as terrorists. Meantime hundreds of our activists are still being dragged through the courts for sitting in the road around that time). I think this matters. Any success we get will be coloured by the way we got it. Violence ‘works’ for sure, but it begets violence, of all sorts. If our message is love for nature and the planet, then we are just going to have to act with love and suffer the short-term consequences for long-term good.

This distinction about violence / peacefulness (and of course the other one about doing stuff which looks cool rather than stuff which makes you look like a moron) makes me feel better about sharing the category of ‘activist’ with these people. It also makes me less worried about the issue of disrupting democratic processes, something I have also done a bit of. I’ve been asking myself whether the rightness and foundation upon the truth of my cause makes it ok for me to do this whereas the obvious wrongness and ‘badness’ (and madness) of the MAGA mob makes it not alright for them to do it. I think I’m at peace with it. If ‘democracy’ says that the Emperor is wearing a cloak when he clearly isn’t than something is clearly wrong with democracy. More of that, perhaps, another time  

But whilst on the topic of possible similarities I must say it seems almost as absurd to call the Trump mob ’terrorists’ (or the thugs throwing metal fences at the police in Parliament square, come to that) as it does us. Mad, bad and dangerous they certainly are but ‘terrorists’, in the sense that the word was conceived and has almost always been used, they are not. Terrorists draw attention to their cause by putting bombs in unexpected places or sending poison through letterboxes; spreading terror. Trump’s mob tried to get their own way through direct action because the democratic process didn’t deliver for them. I guess we are doing the same. I can’t say I find the analogy particularly comfortable. but I think it’s reasonable.

One further way in which the event was  illuminating as well as horrifying was as a reminder that one should never doubt that a small group of determined people can change the world. This is a popular motto in our movement. Of course, its always spoken of as a positive thing, but this was a reminder that the change might just as easily be for evil as for good. It was a reminder that our side, too, has to be daring and ruthless, albeit guided by love and peacefulness, and that if we really want something we must, as Trump said, “fight like hell” for it.