Environmental crisis

My report about the return of the climate activist group Just Stop Oil, after an 18-month hiatus, as 60 activists aptly chose the first PMQs (Prime Minister’s Questions) of Andy Burnham to highlight the urgency of the government not backsliding on its climate commitments, and, in particular, not approving drilling at two new oil and gas fields, Rosebank and Jackdaw, by blocking the road in Parliament Square in a sit-down protest, and waiting patiently to be arrested under the punitive anti-protest legislation introduced by Priti Patel, when she was the home secretary in Boris Johnson’s government. Just Stop Oil’s return coincided with the latest monthly vigil for the closure of Guantánamo, and we briefly attracted unwelcome attention from the police, who saw our orange jumpsuits and concluded that we were planning a surprise attack. In conversations with the police, it became apparent that they were concerned about the possibility of us having concealed weapons to be used for criminal damage, which made me fearful that they were trying to draw inferences between Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action, the direct action group opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which, last year, was proscribed as a terrorist organization by then-home secretary Yvette Cooper. My unease increased when it was later revealed that the retired 84-year old Reverend Sue Parfitt, who was recently arrested for expressing support for Palestine Action, was also at the protest, and had her house raised while awaiting arrest. With news today that Andy Burnham is apparently close to approving drilling at the Jackdaw gas field, this will only incite further action by Just Stop Oil, increasing my suspicion that the government might be tempted to expand what I describe as the “dopamine authoritarian hit” of proscription to climate activists. I can only hope that I’m wrong.

My analysis of how Israel’s genocidal and ecocidal destruction of the Gaza Strip is causing toxic blowback in Israel, because, as explained in a recent article for Al Jazeera by Dr. Dianne Woodward, a former lecturer in Biological Sciences in the UK, “Gaza shares the Mediterranean, coastal ecosystems and coastal aquifers with Israel”, and Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s sanitation infrastructure means that 100,000 cubic metres of raw, untreated sewage are flowing into the Mediterranean or seeping into the land every day, with the sewage in the sea flowing north into Israeli waters. Dr. Woodward pointed out how Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump’s Board of Peace recently “agreed to set up a working group on sanitation and public health affecting both Israel and Gaza”, which shows how serious the crisis is. As well as poisoning itself by sea and through aquifers, Israel is also facing toxic blowback through its efforts to erase evidence of its genocide through massive land clearance projects in the two-thirds of Gaza under its military control. This was first exposed a month ago by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, when 100 trucks a day were removing rubble from Gaza to undisclosed locations in Israel and the West Bank. Removing rubble that contains human remains is a colossal war crime, of course, but as Dr. Woodward points out, the toxic rubble, which also contains poisonous military fallout, is, ironically, another potentially serious health hazard for the Israelis themselves. All this, of course, is vastly overshadowed by the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian population of Gaza, who continue to live in a ruined, toxic landscape, with absolutely no outside experts or equipment allowed in to begin to address the crisis, despite an ostensible ceasefire declared a year ago, and despite the fact that, in just five weeks’ time, the ongoing genocide and ecocide in Gaza will mark its unthinkable third anniversary.

Marking Earth Day, which began 56 years ago today, on April 22, 1970, I reflect on the visionary drive of that first event, when 20 million Americans took to the streets to call for the establishment of environmental protections, and how, under neoliberalism and the cult of the individual, the counter-cultural power of the 1970s and ‘80s started to dwindle from the 1990s onwards, even as the realities of man-made climate change were confirmed, and efforts began to get the countries of the world to agree on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By 2018, when meaningful change was still elusive, Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg managed to galvanize public opinion to recognize the severity of the crisis, although their impetus was lost when the Covid pandemic and its attendant lockdowns took place. Afterwards, I suggest, there was a widespread derangement amongst western leaders, who were unable to accept the threat to the neoliberal order that was glimpsed during Covid, and who were also haunted by the reality of climate collapse, and who responded, as I describe it, by “retreat[ing] into a regressive form of denial, resurrecting a primitive urge to lash out when confronted by problems of our own making, which, throughout human history, has all too often meant a descent into war as a violent and gratifying response that drowns out all other concerns.” When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, this led to Vladimir Putin being defined by western leaders as the personification of evil, and, excruciatingly, they did the same again in October 2023, this time with Hamas. Simultaneously, following on from the passage of laws to suppress dissent following the actions of climate activists, these same leaders passed even more punitive laws to criminalize those who were opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and are now working with AI companies, who are horrifically redefining warfare through AI-driven military targeting, and are also working to implement the surveillance and control of entire populations. The best hope, right now, is that a huge energy crisis, precipitated by the illegal and unprovoked US-Israeli war on Iran, may, inadvertently, push the world into moving away from fossil fuels for renewables, as its unintended impacts may also disrupt the planned expansion of the deadly AI industry and other manifestations of the broken, extractive neoliberal capitalist system that will, otherwise, kill us all.

My response to the horrific news that MPs have voted, by 385 votes to 26, to uphold legislation introduced on Monday by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, to proscribe Palestine Action, a direct action group, as a terrorist organization. Under the legislation, it is now a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, for anyone to become a member of, or even to support the direct action of Palestine Action. I wrote most of this article before the vote, and in it I run through the long and noble history of direct action in the UK against arms companies and the government’s involvement in war crimes and genocide, which have generally led to jury acquittals. This latest move, condemned yesterday by UN experts, who insisted, correctly, that “mere property damage, without endangering life, is not sufficiently serious to qualify as terrorism”, not only seeks to equate property damage with mass murder; it also, most chillingly, demonstrates how the Starmer government is working not for the interests of the UK, but for the interests of its masters in Israel.

Marking the 40th anniversary, today, of the Battle of the Beanfield, the largest and most violent peacetime assault on civilians in modern British history, when a convoy of of 140 vehicles, home to around 500 individuals and families, was attacked with astonishing ferocity by around 1,400 paramilitarized police drawn from six countries and the MoD, as they tried to make their way to Stonehenge to set up what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival. To mark the occasion, I run through the history of the free festival movement, the year-long persecution that preceded the violence of the Beanfield, its context as part of a broader assault on Thatcher’s perceived “enemies within”, who also included the striking miners, and the ways in which new forms of dissent arose in the wake of the Beanfield, most notably via the rave scene and the road protest movement. Nevertheless, the increasingly authoritarian laws passed after the Beanfield, and after the last major unlicensed gathering at Castlemorton in 1992, attacking the way of life of Gypsies and travellers, and severely curtailing our right to gather freely, have paved the way for recent legislation targeting environmental protestors, which is so draconian that a single campaigner stepping into the road to slow down traffic can be immediately arrested, and many dozens of climate activists are serving excessively long prison sentences for non-violent protest. Sadly, what has been revealed in particular over the last 40 years is how increasing authoritarianism is cumulative; once imposed, draconian laws are rarely, if ever repealed.

My latest interview with Andy Bungay, recorded for his Riverside Radio show in London as part on an ongoing series of monthly interviews, and made available here as a stand-alone podcast. In a freewheeling 80-minute discussion, we focused on some of the many profoundly dispiriting events dominating our lives as 2024 draws to a close — the imminent return as the US president of Donald Trump, the ongoing genocidal carnage being inflicted by Israel on the trapped Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and the growing menace of catastrophic climate change. All are thoroughly depressing topics, of course, but our conversation was threaded through with resistance and hope, based on my assessment that societal tipping points may arrive unexpectedly when we are failed so persistently by our leaders, whichever political party they represent, as is very clearly the case right now.

My recent hour-long interview with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio in south London, posted to my YouTube channel after it was broadcast, in which we discussed the ongoing horrors in the Gaza Strip, climate collapse and my contention that our leaders, unable to accept that, for 40 years, their beloved neoliberalism has actually been killing us, have suffered a psychic derangement and have embraced endless war instead.

My reflections on the two-month occupation, and the subsequent violent eviction of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction as part of an ill-conceived and inappropriate housing development, undertaken by the housing association Peabody, in conjunction with Lewisham Council. Six years on, building work is still not complete, with most of the flats in the dense and unattractive blocks raised on the ghosts of the garden unoccupied, and work still ongoing on the conversion of the former primary school into ‘luxury’ flats and townhouses for private sale. I conclude that the Tidemill re-development — now known as ‘Frankham Walk’ — is part of a downturn in the whole wretched business of “regeneration” that has been so dominant over the last 20 years, and make particular reference to Thamesmead, the Brutalist estate on the outskirts of south east London, where Peabody’s £2bn plan for its “regeneration” is stalling, and where the developer is also in conflict with tenants who want their properties refurbished rather than destroyed. I also discuss how the new Labour government, despite promises to build 1.5m new homes, has no vision whatsoever about how to build genuinely affordable housing, and remains wedded to the private developer-led model that has been such a disaster over the last two decades.

My reflections on my recent family holiday in Sicily, in which I refreshed my mind and my general sense of well-being through a ten-day digital detox, which involved me being completely offline — away from the internet and from all social media, and without a phone. To balance my very evident privilege, I also assess the environmental cost of flying, the increasing recognition that summers are getting noticeably hotter in the Mediterranean, despite an “entitlement” culture that still believes that a foreign summer holiday is some sort of “right”, and the hidden environmental pressures of tourism — or over-tourism.

Announcing the release of The Four Fathers’ new album, ‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’, on Bandcamp, featuring ten original songs — mostly protest songs, nine by me, and one by our guitarist Richard Clare — which is available to listen to for free, or, if you’d like, to buy as a download, or even as a limited edition CD. You can also buy individual tracks as downloads. The album covers tumultuous events in the UK and globally over the last eight years, including the existential threat to humanity posed by climate collapse, the Grenfell Tower fire, the Brexit referendum, the anti-gentrification Tidemill garden occupation in Deptford, the ongoing plight of Guantánamo’s “forever prisoners”, and the unjust imprisonment of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange. It was recorded sporadically, between July 2018 and January this year, with the great Charlie Hart, a multi-instrumentalist and producer, best-known as a member of Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance in the 1970s and ‘80s, who also plays electric piano and accordion on three of the songs.