Tuesday 5th August - Arrived at Climate Camp. All the waiting around to be searched by the police and the searching itself, by a rather shy policewoman, was all worth it when I was welcomed to the beautiful field of tents and solar panels, windmills and compost toilets, dreadlocked anachists and people like me, come together because we KNOW that spurning plastic bags and tungsten lightbulbs is not enough. I read James Hansen's open letter to Gordon Brown on the way up here and he is saying just what Climate Camp is saying - that there must be no new coal in the UK, of which Kingsnorth is the first of 8 planned. Climate camp is a little oasis of kingdom living, of how things should be. Nearly all energy is renewable, any waste is carefully separated - even raw from cooked compost, food follows CEL's LOAF principles well - bought from a local farmer, organic, vegan and fairtrade. And the food is so tasty and no one ever goes hungry, but unlike the feeding of the 5000, there is never any left over. I58, the Student Christian Movement and Christian Ecology Link are running a undercover Christian Cafe in the centre of the camp serving coffee and vegan cake until 4pm. We met at 9-30 to celebrate communion.
Wednesday 6th August - Was woken at 3-15 and 5-30 by someone screaming "Riot police get up! Riot police, get up!" People crawled out of tents and rather slowly made their way to the top gate where riot police were appearing to threaten to come on site. The shear number of people there apparently prevented them, though I do think it all seems to be a bit of a game. I wandered back to the London neighbourhood tent and found it looking like a bomb site and washed up and tidied for 2 hours. Mark Dowd from Operation Noah popped in today. It was good to see him. He seemed to know a lot of people here. Didn't help with the cafe today - Rosie and Karen are doing it all. Must help more tomorrow.
Thursday 7th August - 5-30 wake up call again this morning so I did my stint in the London tent washing up and picking up beer cans. These campers seem to know how to party. Went to too many workshops again today (planning Saturday's action, Plane Stupid, and Direct Action Training where had to act out being protestor and policeman - quite fun!) so didn't help in the cafe AGAIN. Barbara Echlin, secretary of Christian Ecology Link, came to visit with a gift of cherry tomatoes from her garden. Met to pray at 9-30 and sang lots of taize. Even more people tonight - 15 or so.
Friday 8th August - Saw George Marshall do his Climate Rollercoaster presentation today - excellent - I am a bit of a fan. Went to a couple of religious workshops today - one discussing religions' place at Climate camp and one on Green Spirituality. All very interesting and enlightening and nice to see that we were all in agreement about so many things. 20 of us met to pray for the day of action tomorrow.
Saturday 9th August - Our day of action. Us Christians joined the peaceful police escorted march to the power station carrying banners saying "Kingsnorth, the end is nigh" and "Consume cake, not coal". When we got to some gates, we sat in a circle and sang and prayed for the end of Kingsnorth. While people were milling around, chatting to policemen, a helicopter flying overhead instructed us to disperse in 10 minutes or horses, dogs and batons would be used! 19 of us, including 4 of our group decided to stay and sang protest songs as we were dragged off one by one by riot police. We carried on singing for a while as we sat in the policevan - the acoustics of the individual cells of a police van are quite good - rather like singing in the bath.
Sunday 10th August - I am drafting this blog from a pristinely clean new police cell in Kent. Rather liberating to have nothing but a Bible, a pen and paper, a couple of blankets and the clothes I came in. Nothing to do but sleep, pray, read the Bible and write this blog and I have been mostly sleeping - the matress is twice as think as my camping matress and it's lovely and quiet. I'm sure it's rather different if you had to stay here for any length of time. The policeman checking me in was friendly and joking "have you taken drugs or alcohol today and if not, why not?" and keen to talk about how much he supports our cause. The freckled jailor who delivered my room service said that he wished that he had people like us more often as we were so polite. I said we would do our best! We got off with a caution and I even got back in time for a shower and dinner before our Hartley Wintney Operation Noah Group meeting in the evening! It's quite hard to be back in the real world, with all the STUFF, and all the people who don't KNOW what we know. A funny thing - I told a detective who was in charge of getting us from the van to our cells that Climate Camp was like an oasis of how things should be and he said that the name of the police project in charge of the Climate Camp action, randomly generated by a computer was "Operation Oasis".
Addendum. Reading through this, my experience seems rather at odds with what others have reported e.g. www.climatecamp.org.uk which shows that there was a lot of unnecessary police brutality against the protestors. I guess I was lucky not to be on the receiving end of any of this and I would agree that the protest seemed to be incredibly over-policed and there was a lot of unnecessary controls. All food and supplies for the camp, which was feeding 1200 plus people per day at a suggested £4 day donation, had to be wheel-barrowed about 1/2 a kilometer to the site and we had to go through a police check point on the way out and the way in! Hundreds of items were confiscated - from bicycle locks to hand made soap. A friend had his walking stick confiscated on his way in and it was not returned to him on his way out - I believe that this was because they lost it, not because they meant not to return it, but either way, my friend was not too pleased!
]]>As chair of the Hartley Wintney Operation Noah group, I had taken the petition to all four primary schools in the area and collected hundreds of brightly coloured signatures as well as hundreds of paper footprints, each with a child's pledge to do something to cut his or her carbon footprint. St John's Church Careforce volunteer Josh Parmar helped me collect the signatures. Adults of the village had their own official petition to sign which was also give to 10 Downing Street. The aim of both petitions is to get government to strengthen the Climate Change Bill.
Children representing each of the schools in the area traveled up to London by train on the 14th in time to knock on No. 10 Downing Street at 12 noon. They were joined by our MP, James Arbuthnot who has been very supportive of Operation Noah. The petition had been presented to Mr Arbuthnot at the Hartley Wintney Operation Noah Day on 5th July. (You can read all about that here.)
Children as young as five can understand the basics of climate science. All you need to tell them is that carbon dioxide acts like a blanket over the earth and that it is made when we use energy. They can work out for themselves what will happen to polar bears when we drive too many cars. And you don't need to teach children the innate worth of a polar bear. It is highly appropriate that this was a children's petition as it is they who will see the physical results of this generation's actions - either of our moral and spiritual bankruptcy or of our courage, vision and integrity.
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The day ended with more speeches including a message of support from the Archbishop of Canterbury. He said Christians were "stewards of God's creation … As such, we have a responsibility, both to God and to generations to come, to ensure that this remains a sustainable world." There was also a party which we couldn't go to if we were to catch the last bus home. A good day, fabulously organised. If the government refuses to listen to this legal protest, I am sure, and hope, that the organisers could arrange something a little more disruptive.
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