Review of the Year 2019

January

First campaign of the year: single use plastic. Perhaps not the most important issue in the world right now, nor the most urgent, but the one that it's currently easiest to make progress on. Greenpeace made a list of the worst offenders and Sainsbury's came last, as usual, so that's where we pitched up on the third Saturday of the year.

The manager of Salford branch didn't take very kindly to us, and we were asked to leave. We went off to campaign somewhere friendlier, but marked the place down for a return visit.

February

Weird weather arrived in February and Glossop looked like it was supposed to do in the Peak District tourist brochure, or at least what it would look like if Glossop had replied to the email and was actually in the brochure.

A few days later though I was sat in the sunshine by the river in Ashford-on-the-Water in a t-shirt with my feet in snow. Global Weirding indeed.Te chnically it's an unstable polar vortex caused by climate change, but 'weirding' is a much better description.

Our plastic campaign continued, and got a bit more 'secret squirrel', which was fun. The supermarket managers we met varied from the angry to the actually supportive. We made a point of marking the nasty ones for a return visit and leaving the nice ones alone in the future.

Also in February I found myself custodian of the Greenwire Social Media Activists Group, a bit of a shock to a neo-Luddite like me. Basically I just posted up stuff from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortex on how to use Twitter. She knew her stuff at least.

March

The High Peak Green Party organised a showing of the Bruce Parry film Tawai, and then didn't mind not being mentioned in the publicity, which was nice of them. The film was interesting, but Bruce Parry's spiritual take on the loss of the rainforest didn't really cut it with me: no, we are not all responsible, some people are very, very guilty indeed.

Our next campaign was climate change. To start things off we took Sami, our climate change fighting polar bear, for a night out in Manchester. People in Manchester are usually friendly, but when you have a large, cuddly bear with you they are even friendlier. The Hen Party were particularly welcoming to him.

March was also Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham's second Green Summit. This time we got some details on what he was actually planning, and it was both startlingly radical and also considerably less than what's needed. Chris Boardman was a revelation in his commitment to making Manchester a cycling city. I also learnt a lot about electric cars.

April

Our plastic campaign continued, and the 'secret squirrels' of Manchester Greenpeace decided to visit the Salford Sainbury's store in the early hours.

Also in April I finally got to see Kate Rowarth, the author of Doughnut Economics, speak. She was addressing a bunch of geography teachers, and perhaps the most interesting aspect of the evening was hearing them introduce her by saying the "current economic system is not fit for purpose", which is not the way geography teachers used to speak. We also had drinks afterwards amongst the dinosaurs in the Manchester Museum, which was fun.

In April 2019 it was 87 years since grandad Porter went on the Kinder Scout Mass trespass. The previous year Jordan Carroll of WellRedFilms made a short documentary about the trespass, and included me in it. Thanks to a student nurse from Sheffield, the Manchester Greenpeace group was persuaded to organise another walk to commemorate it. The weather was absolutely atrocious, with non-stop heavy rain. However, people turned out including a pregnant Social Worker and the Derbyshire badger cull saboteurs, so it was worth it.

The Greenpeace ship Esperanza came to London in April, possibly for almost the last time, as she's getting on a bit and has been a Greenpeace ship for 19 years. I volunteered my services as a tour guide for a day and had fun showing people around the former Soviet naval tug boat. She was about to set off on an epic journey from the Arctic to the Antarctic as part of Greenpeace's next campaign, which is to make 30% of the world's oceans marine protected areas by 2030.

Once the public have had their look we got a peak about, and then went off for a drink with some of the crew. I headed back to Glossop, and work, just as Extinction Rebellion were arriving in town. They were to have a lot of fun.

May

In May I went to my first Youth Strike for Climate. I travelled into Manchester in an environmentally friendly way, and ended up staying longer than I planned as Northern Rail had messed up their trains again. It was wonderful to meet so many enthusiastic young people, even if it did make me feel old, not only because I was three times the age of the organisers, but that this was a new movement I had no connection with at all. Even XR I felt slightly attached to, as many people I've know from Earth First! and Climate Camp were part of it, but this was properly a new generation. Sami came with me, and got to meet Andy Burnham. 

The next day it was Envirolution, Manchester's best free day out. Once again we had sunshine and a great day out. Extinction Rebellion were the stars of the show, but Sami also had his fans. We were now pushing the Ocean Treaty campaign, which was a fairly easy ask in the circumstances. The food, music and general ambiance were again excellent, and for a day we all felt like we really could change the world.


June

In June it was Download Festival. Greenpeave was once again running the eco-field, and I was on the team again. Whereas last year had been fun in the sun, 2019 was a bit more of a challenge. On day two my new tent had sprung a leak and my bed was afloat. That evening Jeff and I were at the bar, standing with the mud up to the top of our wellies, looking at the empty field and wondering when it would start to be fun.

Well, it did become fun. The sun came out, the mud turned to a sort of sticky glue, and Def Leppard were on stage on the Friday evening. They were the top British band of the late eighties, and whilst the others of that era: Thunder, Almighty, Little Angels, all played Leicester University whilst I was there, Def Leppard were too famous so I didn't see them live. Anthrax, Smashing Pumpkins, Slipknot and Slayer, playing their last ever UK gig, were all great, but stars of the show for me were prog metal act Tool. Listening to their song individually just does not prepare you for a Tool set. Being part of the Greenpeace crew was also fun and, come Monday morning, the eco-field was once again the cleanest part of the site.

In June I also got to visit the Houses of Parliament. The occasion was a Greenpeace lobbying day on the issue of microplastics in rivers, but my local MP, Ruth George, invited me down to make a day of it. I took Number One Son, as a reward for surviving his GCSEs, and he enjoyed being whisked past security and allowed to watch Prime Ministers Questions from in front of the security screen. There is a ban on clothing with political messages in the Palace of Westminster, but I got round it by wearing a t-shirt with a message in Russian as I watched the Teresa and Jeremy show.

July

For July it was back to the Oceans Campaign. We needed a picture of ourselves painted blue at a suitable Manchester location. The Manchester weather made this difficult, but we ended up in the Science and Industry Museum in front of Stevenson's Rocket, which had just arrived.

July was also the month of the New Mills One World Festival, which I hadn't been to for a few years. Greenpeace had a stall and I was a speaker. The weather was excellent and I popped off to camp in the woods afterwards.

August

The Climate Emergency came a little closer to home in August. I was on holiday in Wiltshire, enjoying the sunshine, when I was phoned by the Derbyshire Emergency Planning Team to say I was needed. Rain of Biblical proportions had fallen back home in High Peak and the 188 Toddbrook Dam, above the little town of Whaley Bridge, was about to collapse.

In the end it held, thanks to hundreds of volunteers and council staff and an RAF helicopter, but it was a close run thing. Although the locals were a little put out by being given fifteen minutes to leave their homes, nobody died.

September

September was Wigan Diggers festival. Last year we nearly drowned, but this year the weather was very reasonable. It was a gathering of lefties, so an easy audience, but most of the other stalls appeared to be Lexit people, which was not a good sign. When the far left is campaigning for the main policy of the far right things are not looking good.

In September there was another Global Youth Strike for Climate. I predicted in the Morning Star that it would be a big one, and fortunately I was right.

Sami the polar bear had a fun day photo bombing. He ended up everywhere from The Sun to RTE in Ireland. The stars of the show though were the young people, who once again swarmed by in their thousands. Andy Burnham, always game for these sort of gigs, allowed himself to be grilled on stage by twelve year old Lalia, who gave him a bit of a hard time.

The next day a few of these youngsters joined us for our World Cleanup Day litter pick on the canal.
This ended up being Manchester Greenpeace's best attended event of the year with about eighty people collecting on land, and a couple of canoes in the water. We bagged and tagged the rubbish, and chief culprit turned out to be McDonalds. Surprise, surprise.

You don't change the world by picking up multinational company's crap for them, but litter picks, or community cleans as Greenpeace calls them, are a great way into real activism. Also, unlike a lot of campaigning, there is some tangible evidence you have made a difference afterwards.

October

In October Manchester hosted the Greenpeace Local Groups Northwest Area conference. We were in Bridge 5 Mill in Ancoats, so the delegates were able to see an authentic bit of Industrial Manchester. As we walked to the venue we passed injecting drug users by the canal, so they saw some authentic post-Industrial Manchester too.

We were briefed on what was coming next, shared a few skills, and hopefully inspired the volunteers to get more involved. We also did a quick Burger King protest afterwards, and then drank until some of us were ill.

I had recovered enough by the following Saturday to get up very early in the morning to go on a coach to London with the Manchester People's Vote people. It's one of the biggest rallies in UK history. As a result I don't bother going on the march and just hang around in Parliament Square with Tony from XR. Talking of which I bump into the living legend that is Broccoli Man. There is a vote in parliament on Johnson's deal so we watch Parliament TV on the big screens. I've never done live politics before. The People's Vote people are very nic, but mostly they seem to be LibDem voters who hate Corbyn more than Johnson, and just wish everything was like it was before the Brexit Vote, if not the Credit Crunch. I can't see any of their arguments going down at all well north of Watford.

Monday though as I was back in Lancashire for a visit to Cuadrilla Resource's Preston New Road fracking site. I was the 101st, and hopefully last, Green Monday speaker. Sami came along for moral support. In the past speakers have included Kate Raworth and George Monbiot, but fracking in Lancashire was now in such dire straights that noone famous can even be bothered to go up there to oppose it, so they had to have me. This is what I said.

With fracking once again suspended due to earth tremors, and no sign the government was willing to spend any more political capital on fracking, the fat lady was clearing her throat in Blackpool. It's been a long, hard struggle, and Manchester played its part with the Barton Moss campaign. These things rarely have neat resolutions, unfortunately, but things looked a lot better for us than for the frackers.

Also in October came the welcome news that Sainsbury's had thrown in the towel on plastics, just like they always do when we campaign against them. As well as a fairly reasonable commitment to reduce single use plastic, they were also polite about Greenpeace in a documentary that was made about them.

November

Meanwhile the Amazon rainforest has been being burnt by Brazilian president Bolsonaro and his rancher chums. The world's voracious appetite for meat is to blame and so Greenpeace UK embarked on its first campaign to encourage people to eat less of the stuff.

Burger King in are target in England. They're a pretty tough target, and our campaign gets off to a rather damp start in Manchester. Well done to the team for continuing through a torrential downpour, and to the people of Manchester for stopping to talk to some soggy activists on the streets.

Just as we're getting going on the campaign though some idiot calls a general election election. Not great timing for a number of reasons, but I volunteer my services to local Labour Party anyway. Unfortunately, the High Peak Green Party don't take the hint and still stand a candidate.

December

General election campaigning continued. Basically this involved knocking on doors whilst old people said racist things to me.

Ruth George put a good team together. The picture on the left, which was taken on election day, shows less than half the volunteers who were in Glossop alone that day.

In the end though it was all for nothing. Real people and real issues didn't really count and Labour lost the country and the High Peak, the latter by half the Green vote.

As I prefer to get even rather than get mad, we plunge back into the Amazon campaign, and the Manchester 'secret squirrel' club pay Burger King an early morning visit.

Burger King though were stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that they were even being campaigned again, let alone that they were benefiting from rainforest destruction. Meanwhile, the Amazon fires were forgotten as the Australian fires took hold.

So that was 2019. Another win on plastics and commercial fracking was looking a very iffy prospect, but it would be very hard to argue the world ended the year, or the decade, in a better condition than it began either.

We'll just have to do better in 2020 then.