[GJM] [From: Robert Searle] 'Life in prison? Bring it on'

Sat May 31 05:10:34 MDT 2008

Dear All,

       A few weeks ago I was in the high street in Slough, and met a small band. It turned out to be a small political group protesting about the possible creation of a new runway at Heathrow, and the potential health, and environmental problems it could cause. Unfortunately, it did not attract much public support as far as I could see. But people did have sympathy for the cause including myself, and even posed with the band for a group photograph.

Later on along with two friends I met a number of the protest group at the Rew Cow public inn. I made the ("facile")point that the Climate Change was a natural phenomenon, and should not ideally be confused with GLOBAL WARMING which is a more serious matter altogether in which the earth could be burnt to cinders!!. 

Anyway, one of the protesters was a certain young lady by the name of Tasmin Omond. She seemed pleasant enough, and I was suprised to see her picture on the front of the Guardian, and also inside in an article along with her fellow activists. I include that very article here on discussion group. It might be of interest.

Another person I met at the protest band, and again at the Red Cow was someone called Barry whom I apparently knew back in my teens when I lived in Stoke Poges.

Robert Searle   http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Transfinancial_Economics

--- On Sat, 31/5/08, Guardian Unlimited <noreply at guardianunlimited.co.uk> wrote:

> From: Guardian Unlimited <noreply at guardianunlimited.co.uk>
> Subject: [From: Robert Searle] 'Life in prison? Bring it on'
> To: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk
> Date: Saturday, 31 May, 2008, 11:49 AM
> Robert Searle spotted this on the guardian.co.uk site and
> thought you should see it.
> 
> -------
> Note from Robert Searle:
> 
> ..
> -------
> 
> To see this story with its related links on the
> guardian.co.uk site, go to
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/31/activists.prisonsandprobation
> 
> 'Life in prison? Bring it on'
> Plane Stupid's 'Westminster Five' say their
> Commons protest put Heathrow's third runway in doubt
> Decca Aitkenhead
> Saturday May 31 2008
> The Guardian
> 
> 
> We're in the most "ridiculous situation",
> marvels Graham Thompson. "The public are saying
> climate change can't be that bad, otherwise the
> government would do something. And the government is like,
> well, it is that bad, but we can't do something because
> the public's not ready for it. And the government goes
> to campaigners and says, you have to prepare the public so
> they're ready so we can act. And we go to the public,
> and they say well obviously it's not that serious
> because the government aren't acting yet. 
> 
> "I mean, for God's sake," Thompson adds, head
> in hands, half-laughing. "Will someone do
> something?"
> 
> What Thompson, and four other members of the environmental
> network Plane Stupid, decided to do in February was to
> scale the roof of the Houses of Parliament to demonstrate
> against the planned third runway at Heathrow airport. They
> still do not know if they are going to be prosecuted, or
> whether their protest will be remembered as a tipping point
> in the fate of the third runway. What they did, however, was
> place the anti-aviation debate firmly on the political map. 
> 
> "If you go back a year, the third runway was
> inevitable," he says. "Lots of people were saying
> it's disastrous in terms of climate change, but it's
> inevitable. Now it's not inevitable. And we would claim
> some of the credit for that."
> 
> Plane Stupid has no official leader or formal hierarchy, or
> media figurehead. It is a loose association of autonomous
> regional groups, which have staged illegal protests across
> the UK. Today most of its members will be demonstrating at
> Heathrow, alongside an anti-airport expansion coalition in
> which Kensington and Chelsea borough council rub shoulders
> with the World Wildlife Fund. This legal carnival has been
> coordinated by Plane Stupid member Tamsin Omond, 23. But
> the group's ambitions for mass civil disobedience are
> deadly serious, it warns, and imminent. 
> 
> The "Commons Five" have been on bail since
> February. But when we meet this week at a north London cafe
> they laugh about the bail terms, which ban them from coming
> within a mile of Westminster. "Was it a square mile or
> a radius?" says Leo Murray, 31, who is studying
> animation at the Royal College of Art. They have been
> granted an exemption: travelling through on public
> transport. "But what about on my bike?" Olivia
> Chessel, 20, asks mockingly.
> 
> Plane Stupid was founded in 2005 by Thompson, 34, Joss
> Garman, 33, and Richard George, 27. They had been involved
> in anti-war protests or May Day and Reclaim the Streets
> movements, before becoming convinced that climate change
> posed the most urgent threat. But none of the existing
> environment NGOs at the time were targeting aviations'
> contribution to that change. 
> 
> Plane Stupid's first action was to disrupt a London
> conference of industry heads, letting off helium balloons
> tied to rape alarms. In 2006, it blockaded the runway at
> East Midlands airport for 4 hours. In 2007, a high court
> injunction barred Murray and anyone else who "aids,
> abets or incites direct action against Heathrow in concert
> with Plane Stupid" from the climate camp at the
> airport. Last autumn, its activists handcuffed themselves
> to the terminal at Manchester, gate-crashed a Commons
> select committee meeting on airport expansion, and shut
> travel agencies along the route of a climate change march.
> 
> More than audacity, what captured people's attention
> was the smart articulacy of young activists who confounded
> the eco-warrior stereotype. "That's far from
> accidental," Murray says. "We just recognise that
> it's extremely counter-productive to play into
> people's stereotypes. I mean, I only own a suit for
> when I'm on TV or in court. Some people in the activist
> movement were certainly suspicious of ... how prepared we
> are to play the game ...  At this stage, direct action is
> mostly a tool of PR."
> 
> Notwithstanding this media-friendly pragmatism, the
> network's philosophy appears to be guided by anarchist
> principle. "We're much more of a disorganisation
> than an organisation," George says, adding that a
> condition of membership is a willingness "to get
> nicked".
> 
> Each group in the network meets every week or two to plan
> actions, and every member's opinion is accorded equal
> value. Despite the recent infiltration of the London group
> by an Armani jeans-wearing mole, meetings remain open and
> all decisions must be reached "by consensus".
> Meetings, Omond concedes wryly, seldom tend to be brief.
> 
> But in operational terms, the organisation sounds
> practically corporate. 
> 
> "You do a risk analysis on any idea before embarking
> on anything," says Murray. "We look through the
> laws, and the possible outcomes, and the cost benefit. We
> do R&amp;D all the time, and some ideas turn out not to
> be viable, or not likely to give enough bang for our buck.
> For example, the parliament action, in terms of coverage,
> would clearly have been worth a custodial [sentence]."
> 
> The one golden rule of every action is to target the
> aviation industry, not its customers. "I fully
> appreciate that at the moment, for an ordinary person
> making choices on their personal circumstances, which is
> exactly what you would expect people to do, flying from
> London to Edinburgh makes sense, because of gross
> distortions in the travel market," Murray says. Urging
> anyone to alter his or her "consumption behaviour"
> is a total waste of time, he continues. "We need to
> change the conditions of choice - not individuals'
> minds about things."
> 
> What Plane Stupid are campaigning for is the removal of
> that choice - by the closure of all short-haul flight
> routes. But what about long-haul flights? These would be
> acceptable, only if they were "necessary". But
> who would be the judge of that? "We're not policy
> wonks," says Murray. "But we're calling for
> some kind of demand constraint."
> 
> It seems clear that what they are calling for is
> prohibitive long-haul airfares. But when pressed on the
> "equitability" of this solution - the rich would
> be able to continue flying, the poor wouldn't - they
> keep retreating behind the same disclaimer: "We are
> not a thinktank."
> 
> Given their critique of consumer power and alternative
> theory of empowerment suggest serious and radical political
> engagement, this seems a rather disingenuous fudge.
> Thompson's justification: "For us, there is a
> problem with making unnecessary enemies." In other
> words, they pick their fights carefully.
> 
> "I can say you have to limit emissions by this amount,
> otherwise your grandkids are going to be dead," he
> says. "If you have a different way of limiting it to
> the way I'd limit it, let's talk about it."
> 
> The striking feature of these activists is their
> politically aware upbringing. Murray's first memory is
> of the Greenham Common protests; Chessel remembers the CND
> marches; Omond was raised a Christian and now works as a
> church administrator. These are the sort of morally
> principled, highly motivated young adults politicians today
> dream of. Why have they committed themselves to a single
> interest? 
> 
> "In a situation where you need massive, urgent
> systemic change, we don't really have the system to
> achieve it," says Thompson. "Electorally,
> everyone is fighting over the middle ground. So the mere
> fact that you're not a moderate means you can't be
> listened to. That means anybody who had the answer to
> climate change would automatically be excluded from the
> debate. This is why you can't just think, if I vote for
> the greenest party at the election, I'll have done what
> I needed to."
> 
> "From the individual's point of view," Murray
> says, "direct action makes perfect sense. It's a
> rational, proportionate, responsible thing to do." 
> 
> "And it's incredibly powerful," Thompson
> adds. "If you look at the number of people who marched
> against Iraq, if you'd had 1% of that number taking
> direct action, they could have physically stopped the war.
> With 10,000 people sitting in the road at strategic points,
> you can bring the country to a halt."
> 
> Is that the long-term ambition for Plane Stupid? "I
> don't want to have to get to that point ... [but] if
> that's what we'll have to do then that's what
> we'll do."
> 
> Plane Stupid is not the first cause to attract politically
> conscious activists who distrust party politics. But the
> urgency of climate change does seem to have overridden all
> the usual fatal distractions and disappointments, thus far,
> at least. The group's campaign, acknowledges Omond,
> "doesn't yet have an iconic site but Heathrow is
> begging to be it ... Like a black woman sitting on a white
> person's bus. Civil disobedience is going to be the
> next big political wave."
> 
> Before Copenhagen, where the next major global climate
> conference will be held in late 2009, Ormond predicts there
> will be a place, at least in England, "where people of
> all different creeds are saying we're here, taking a
> form of direct political action". Is there an action
> they are not prepared to risk? "The reality of direct
> action is being prepared to put yourself on the line, and
> we need real casualties," Omond says. "If
> it's life imprisonment for going airside, if that's
> the penalty our society deems acceptable for someone
> protesting against a contributor to climate crisis ... then
> bring on life imprisonment."
> 
> Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008
> 
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