On 23rd January I attended City of London Magistrates’ Court to support three women at their court case who had been charged with breach of Section 12 of the Public Order Act. They had briefly disrupted traffic as they slow marched down Shaftesbury Avenue in July 2023 to raise the alarm about climate and […]
Jail has taught me a lot. But it’s not what the government hoped. During the 17 years I practised civil engineering I wrote a steady stream of reports and journal papers, alongside occasional industry magazine articles. All of that was dry compared to most things, especially to the issues raised by civil resistance and […]
Behind us the castle: the ragged keep rises from the scarp like a giant’s stumpy tooth. Nearly every day I pass this magnificent pile, but its magic never pales: the way it nestles on the hilltop of Corfe, ringed in fortifications of ‘burr’ stone and the broken circle of its defences. It’s the magic […]
Picture this… a man walks into a gallery and throws black ink over a renowned artwork. Not, as you would be forgiven thinking, a Just Stop Oil intervention but a 1994 reaction by artist Mark Bridger to Damien Hirst’s pickled sheep creating a new work he called “Black Sheep” which was in turn absorbed […]
Until a couple of years ago, I would not have imagined I would ever go to prison. Then the moment came when I realised that the forms of climate protest I had participated in for 30 years – petitions, marches, letters to my MP, joining environmental organisations – were not working. So with time […]
Recently two women threw a can of soup onto the glass protecting Vincent Van Gogh’s Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers in London’s National Gallery, and then glued their palms to the wall. Watching the YouTube video, I’m struck by how young they are. Their hands shake as they apply the glue to their palms, and […]