Review of the Year 2025

January

The start of my first year of being a Unison branch secretary, and I'm at a protest against the privatisation of a much loved care home. In 2024 we'd forced Derbyshire County Council to change it's plans to close ten Day Centres and privatise eight Care Homes, but the sting in the tail were plans to sell of Ada Belfield home in Belper.

 
Belper Together had run a good campaign to reverse the decision and organised a Save Ada Belfield rally that attracted press and TV coverage. I took a few photos, including the one on the left, which ended up as the main press photo of the campaign for the rest of the year.

February

I'm down in London for the first direct action of the year. Greenpeace chose a cold but clear morning for their Breaking Point action at Shell headquarters. It was a jointly planned action with Greenpeace Philippines, and we prepared with a delicious vegan Filipino meal in Canonbury Villa, where a delegation from the country told us how their food culture was influenced by both the Spanish colonial occupation and the US military bases.

The next morning we surrounded Shell headquarters and blocked the doors with water filled glass display cases holding domestic items damaged in storms. Then we smashed the glass. My team was round the back. We didn't get in any photos, but we properly blocked the doors. The police don't make any arrests. 

A couple of weeks later I'm in Leicester for the Unison Branch of the Year awards. It's great to be back in the city I took my degree in, and the event is a lot of booze filled fun. Even better, the branch wins an award! We get Campaign of the Year for saving five Day Centres for older people last year. It's great that I was able to use my Greenpeace skills to do it, and even better that Unison recognised this. My team are over the moon. 

I get to explore a bit of the city before I head home, and a veggie curry house that does the world's most amazing aubergines. 

March

Having celebrated ten years since exploration for shale gas ended on Barton Moss, it was the turn of Frack Free Lancashire to celebrate this year.

We had a reunion at the gates of the Cuadrilla Preston New Road site outside of Blackpool, where it really is all over. Cuadrilla need to be gone by the end of the year. 

It was great to meet the old gang again and celebrate a real vistory over the fossil fuel industry. A minor win in the grand scheme of things, but a win never-the-less. For some people it was the making of them, and for others the best thing they'd done in their lives. A victory worth celebrating.

April

I'm back in London again for another Greenpeace action. The Global Oceans Treaty is one of the most important environental treaties ever negotiated. Despited having helped draft it, the UK had still not ratified it. 

To jolly them along, Greenpeace had a message for Foreign Secretary David Lammy. The plan was to hang a banner saying "Lammy Don't Dally" on the arch linking the Foreign Office to the Treasury. It was one of the most heavily policed parts of the UK, so the plan was particularly cunning. 

My minor role was to drive the climb team to their jump off point and then retire to a safe distance, so I missed the real fun. In the end it all went like clockwork. The cover story was so effective the Actions Coordinator had to confess to security that they weren't really doing a survey of the stonework. The action was noted by the government. 

I also managed a free gig at the Manchester Arena, courtesy of Jacob Collier. Greenpeace had him perform on an iceberg, and in return he let local groups have stalls at his concerts. We managed to get a few people signed up to our global oceans campaign, but the man and his audience seemed strangely mismatched. 

May

I'm not particularly religious but I do have my gods, and one of them had a statue unveiled in Burslem in May. Lemmy may have moved out when he was ten, and never showed any sign of wanting to return, but most of Stoke appeared to have turned out to watch the unveiling. 

It's a great statue, and the lyrics to his original Hawkwind song Motorhead serve as an inscription. Some of his ashes arrived with a motorcycle escort to be interred in the base, and Motörhead guitarist Phil Taylor was there, as was one of the Rocking Vicars, Lemmy's first band. I also bumped into Lemmy's first girlfriend, who's a local green campaigner. 

Anyway, back to the activism, and the government still hadn't committed to signing the Global Oceans Treaty, so the Manchester Greenpeace Group took up the cause. Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell was Leader of the House of Commons, and so responsible for allocating Commons time for bills to be debated, so we went after and 'Lammy Don't Dally' became 'Lucy No Excusy'.  

First of all, the Secret Squirrel team went around in the dead of night putting up fly posters around the
city centre, some of which are still there. 

Then, after a few weeks, we started running street stalls in Lucy's constituency, which is now mostly trendy bars and cafes around marinas and canal basins. Her constituents seemed to be clued up people and they were soon sending her emails asking when the government will ratify the treaty. 

The pressure worked, and it was from one of the people who sent an email that we found out the government had committed to ratifying the treaty 'by the end of the year'. They didn't manage that, but the bill to do so is most of the way through parliament, and the UK will join the treaty early next year. Sometimes we win!

May was also the month in which I join up with Extinction Rebellion for the annual protest at the British Insurers Brokers Association meeting in Manchester. Working with XR is always fun, and they pushed the boat out this year - literally - with a life sized 'sinking Lamborghini' that belched smoke and played music. Sadly, there are no heroes in the insurance industry, and everyone is involved in fossil fuels in one way or another. 

My job was again to coordinate the press, with some success. A few insurance companies have now made a commitment to not cover new fossil fuel projects including Chubb, a company we'd been targeting for a year or more. 

June

Greenpeace took us all its local group activists out to rural Staffordshire for a team building weekend. It was a lovely weekend of talks, workshops, excellent vegan food and Scottish country dancing in the magnificent Ingestre Hall, which is over by the local council and cheap to rent if you clean up after yourselves. 

Our 'Lucy No Excusy' campaign was hailed as a success, and we learnt about the plans for the next year.

June was certainly conference season, and I was in Liverpool for the Unison local government conference. We debated how to deal with the rise of Reform UK and I ended up being the last speaker of the conference, although I only got 30 seconds as we needed to proceed to the vote. 

I was able to stay with my parents and visit some of my old haunts in Southport. 

June was also the month of Glastonbury. Once again, I had a free ticket courtesy of Greenpeace. Whilst hanging around backstage I found myself speak to one Mr Billy Bragg. We discussed a George Orwell book we both liked, and he name dropped that he obtained his copy from 'Weller'. Other celebrities I almost bumped in to were Benedict Cumberbatch, Andrew Scott, Simon Pegg, Bella Ramsey and Idris Elba. 

Festival highlights included the Kaiser Chiefs, Peter Capaldi guesting with Franz Ferdinand, Terrorvision, seeing an amazing set by The Prodigy, being a roadie for Elvana, having a distant view of Kneecap (whilst working) and being in the mosh pit for Lambrini Girls, which led to a minor injury. 

July

The heat wave continued throughout July, except for the weekend of Chesterfield Pride, where our Unison stall was flooded. The good weather was great for camping, but it was not good for our reservoirs, some of which now had sheep grazing in them. To show people what a climate crisis looks like, Stuart took his drone to the Woodhead Reservoir and we did some filming for the Greenpeace group. 

This year it was forty years since the French government bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. The tragedy was remembered in a variety of ways, including an excellent series called Murder in the Pacific by the BBC, which is essential watching. In Manchester we showed a different film, Edward McGurn's 2023 documentary Rainbow Warrior, at an event for Greenpeace donors. It was a reminder of why we do this. 

August

In August I was a guest of the Lewes Greenpeace Group, as they were celebrating the time when their small town had been home to the global headquarters of Greenpeace. They had an exhibition, mostly consisting of the memorabilia of John Pay, the former head of Greenpeace International books.

How Greenpeace ended up in Lewes is a strange story, but only one of several strange stories in the history of Greenpeace, my version of which I was able to tell as part of the week's celebration. You can watch it here.  

I also discovered Lewes is a very small town. 

Meanwhile, it has been a year of Far Right thugs shouting at hotels, and in August they arrived in
Manchester. On some protests we outnumbered them, and in others they outnumbered us and it got a little hairy. 

It wasn't on the scale of last summer's riots, but whereas in 2024 the tabloid press was mostly on our side, this year it was very clearly stoking the flames. The actual asylum seekers very sensibly stayed away, but the volunteers we met who worked with them said they were the 'loveliest people you could meet', which is nobody said about the fascists. It was a dangerous business, although I avoided serious injury. 

September

As I now have adult children (allegedly) my wife and I were finally able to have a holiday outside of peak season. We went off to Orkney and spent the best part of a week looking at historical sites from the Neolithic to the Second World War. 

It was a wonderful week looking at stone circles, climbing inside passage tombs, trying to decipher Viking graffiti, looking at bits of First World War battleships and drinking beer and whiskey. The weather was mostly pleasant, and the one stormy day caused our ferry back to Scotland to be cancelled thus extending our holiday. 

Holiday over, I was back in Liverpool again, this time with Greenpeace. The Labour party conference was on and Greenpeace had a new campaign telling people that it was fossil fuels, not renewables, that was pushing up their electricity prices. We launched a postering campaign to start things off. Policing of the conference area was pretty tight, but we managed to get a few up before we caught the attention of the Merseyside plod.

Other teams put up signs in bus shelters and we made our mark. A lot of Scousers showed their support and we were noticed in the conference. 

October

We continues the Great Gas Rip Off campaign with street stalls. 

Sadly, in October we said goodbye to the Manchester Greenpeace Group's veteran member Ian Brown. A very private man, his family were able to reconstruct his life for his funeral. As well as supporting Greenpeace, and the anti-fracking campaign, he was a huge jazz fan and many Manchester bands had their performances recorded and archived by him. He also edited the Manchester Wildlife Trust's magazine, and his archive of old copies is now in Manchester Central Library. He will be missed. 

November

I became Branch Secretary of Unison Derbyshire at the end of 2024, and spent most of the year rebuilding the branch. This didn't leave much time for campaigning, but towards the end of 2025 a campaign more or less fell into out lap. The Derbyshire County Council teams that assess Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) had been failing for some time due to understaffing. A disastrous OFSTED report did little to help the situation, nor did our attempt to organise the staff, who were leaving the department as fast as we could enlist them. The only comment from new Reform UK council leader Alan Graves was that the problem was one of 'overdiagnosis'. 

However, towards the end of the year two things happened. Firstly, DCC appointed a no-nonsense external head of SEND who told them that they had no alternative but to significantly increase staffing. Then a group called SEND Sanctuary UK organised a national series of protests involving leaving empty shoes outside town halls. 

In Derbyshire, this brought a lot of parents of SEND children together. Unison Derbyshire joined them for the protest, then teamed up with sympathetic councillors to form a pressure group to get the council to provide the resources the SEND teams needed. 

Meanwhile, it was that time of the year again when world leaders try to solve the climate crisis. The USA didn't even bother this time, but some of the others did. 

As usual, Extinction Rebellion organised a rally in Manchester to encourage them, and my union provided the PA. This one proved a little different from previous XR events, as the Far Right turned up. The police did little whilst fascists thugs intimidated families with children except stop us dealing with the problem. We managed to complete the rally with no serious problems, but two women wearing kaffiyehs were later assaulted as they left the rally. As far as I'm aware the police have made no arrests despite the incident being filmed by the perpetrators.

December

Our SEND campaign meanwhile was almost immediately successful. We didn't need to organise a second County Hall protest as DCC voted to give SEND almost all the team had asked for. It was a significant, if easy, victory and became the subject of my first self-penned article in the Morning Star. 

We didn't have much time to celebrate though as DCC then announced they were closing eight care homes, leaving fifty residents to find new homes and two hundred staff at risk of losing their jobs. 

I tried to rally as much opposition as possible and Linsey Farnsworth MP asked a question to Keir Starmer at Prime Ministers Question Time. I was able to brief her personally as I was already in Westminster for a different event. She was also able to get me into Portculis House and though the tunnel that leads to Westminster Hall. 

The event that led to me being in London was a mass lobby of parliament by Unison migrant care workers. The care sector relies on migrant workers, but the current visa scheme means that if a carer falls out with their sponsor they only have a sort period of time to find another before they are deported. This gives bad employer the power to exploit their staff. With over 100,000 vacancies in the care sector Unison wants sector wide visas to allow staff to leave abusive bosses.

The press the point Uniosn managed to get about 700 migrant care workers to London. Many were able to get into parliament and speak to their MP personally, including some of my members. It was a great day that hopefully will do some good. Sadly, the current government seems to be prepared to risk the collapse of the care industry, and the NHS, to appease the Far Right. 

So, a lot of activity, some success, but a lot still to do. Oh well. Roll on 2026. 

Review of the Year 2024

January

The New Year starts with a new role, as Adult Care Convenor for Derbyshire UNISON. For good measure I also take on the social media role and get the interactions up from four a day to several thousand a month.

The quiet start to the year does give me a chance to enjoy the Derbyshire countryside in winter. Mostly it is wet and overcast, but some days are clear and cold. 

Greenpeace though has plans for me and I'm down in London at the weekend taking acting lessons ready for the first action of the year, appropriately named Mulled Wine. I have to get into character as the city wide boy who has just made a pile out and doesn't care about the planet. 

February

Bright and early on the first morning of the month Mulled Wine takes place. We arrive outside Shell's HQ, behind the London Eye, wiht our burning sign and act out our roles of rich psychopaths celebrating making a packet out of burning the planet. On the third take I get a shower of (alcohol free) champagne. It all goes well and the pictures are soon out on the wires. The Daily Mail uses one in a straight article about Shell that doesn't mention Greenpeace. 

I'm cleaned up and debriefed in time to get to Westminster Magistrates Court where my friend Jeff is up before the beak along with Greta Thunberg. Phil of the Arctic is there too. I couldn't stay for the verdict, but they all get off in one of the first tests of the new Tory anti-protest legislation. 

March

We've been campaigning against the insurance industry in Manchester for a while, and this year Extinction Rebellion came on board and we organised a big demo against four international companies who are insuring fossil fuel projects. 

Fresh from my performance at Shell I am enlisted as the corporate stuffed suit with a conscience who has some doubts about where the money is going. The weather is mostly kind to us and XR can certainly put on a good show. It was great political theatre.

Greenpeace also made use of me in March. They assembled a mock graveyard outside parliament to highlight the people who die each year due to fuel poverty. As usual with Greenpeace operations it was meticulously planned, and starts very early in the morning. However, they failed to account for a hire van breaking down. I was only there to carry the props, but we ended up having to improvise rather more than was planned. 

We still managed to get the display in place before the parliamentarians dropped by. I ended up photo bombing Natalie Bennett. I meet the one and only Steve Howe, and he photobombs GB News who are filming something completely different. 

The downside of the police not being bothered by us is that we have to clear everything away ourselves. However, we are a dedicated team and manage to squeeze two vans loads of tat into one to get it all back to the warehouse. 

April

In April 2024 it is ten years since the Barton Moss anti-fracking campaign came to an end. It was a minor episode in the campaign that drove the frackers out of the UK. The campaign began in West Sussex and ended in Lancashire, but we did our bit. The cmpaigners who won at Preston New Road did their first actions at Barton Moss, and the councillors who voted against fracking did so after seeing us on TV. Greater Manchester mayor first learnt about shale gas from us, and he then went on to a make Manchester a green city.

With IGas gone the Moss has been returned to the birds, so a few of the veterans go for a nature walk around it. Obsever Ethical Award Winner Anne Power is able to join us, which was great, but where did the last ten years go?

Greenpeace has an away day for their activists in April, as we've haven't really had a big get together since COVID. It was a fairly laid back affair. We were up in the Lake District near Grassmere in wonderful countryside. I climb Loughrigg fell and went for an early morning swim in the tarn.

My fire lighting skills are called into action and I light the fire we sit round in the evening. There's a worry we might have locked ourselves out of the Youth Hostel, but if that had happened we probably had the skills to get back in again. 

Mozza talked about his time in Reclaim the Streets, and I chip in with my stories from that time. It's great, but in the feedback when we're leaving someone says they enjoyed 'hearing stories from the elders'. I guess I am one of them now. 

May

It's back to campaigning against insurance companies with XR in May. The industry is having its big gathering in Manchester again, and this time we put on a proper show. 

There is a packed program of events running all day. We get the delegates as they go into GMex, and a number come out again later to watch us. I'm back in character as the nice stuffed suit again, but we're all somewhat overpowered by the Red Rebels. 

I'm also on press liaison duties, so I run around doing interviews once I've stopped performing. The insurance industry press appears to have noticed us and we get some decent coverage. 

June

June ended up being a busy month. First, UNISON sent me to Brighton for their annual conference. The event showcased the best and worst of UNISON. We're a passionate, diverse group of people dedicated to campaigning for workers rights, but we spending a lot of time arguing about points of order. 

There's some serious business to attend to though, as there's a motion to affiliate with the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. This is a solid left-wing group backed by John McDonnell and some big trade unions, but the tankies mobilise in force against the motion. I take my place in the line ready to speak, but the vote is called before I do. We win, and it isn't even close really. 

I also got to walk in the Downs and visit Eastbourne Greenpeace, and on the way back home I passed through London at the same time as the March for Nature. It was very spectacular, and completely ignored by the press. It was a lot of fun, but not as much fun as where I went the week after: the Glastonbury Festival.

Greenpeace again had me as a team leader, and I have a great bunch of people working for me. There was no major band I was hoping to see, but that was fine. Instead, I discovered new bands. Lambrini Girls were the find of the festival. Idles were excellent and Skindred were something. I also discovered Coldplay aren't boring live. 

Best of all I was stewarding on the Greenpeace field when we had a celebrity guest. It turned out to be Simon Pegg and I literally lost the power of speech. All I could manage was a Vulcan speech sign, which he returned. I'm not worthy! We also had Jane Goodall drop by the stage, but she's never been into space. 

July

And then there was a General Election and we finally got rid of the Tories. Although probably the biggest victory for the environment in the UK this year, I didn't really have anything to do with it, the Labour Party having banned me as a dangerous radical. I enjoy the night though and stay up for to see Rees-Mogg lose his seat.

The rest of the month is mostly spent on holiday, including the Leicester Astrophysics class of 1988 who rented a tipi and a yurt in Lincolnshire for a weekend of drinking, talking bollocks and culture. 

Fen End Farm is an organic farm that I can't recommend enough and we all had a great time.

Then, at the end of the month, there are some horrific murders in the town of Southport where I grew up, followed by a riot.

August

And then just like that the Far Right was back.

August was an unusual month. The Far Right revival seemingly came out of nowhere, although actually it came out of social media, especially Twitter/X.

In response, the anti-fascists took to the streets. They were an interesting bunch. The usual suspects of Stand Up To Racism and the various Manchester green groups were there, as were lots of perfectly ordinary people. What was missing was pretty much every political party except the Greens. I was able to attend officially as UNISON, and some other unions were there too, but almost no other organised groups. Even UNISON wasn't all there, as when I tried to organise a rally in Buxton pressure was applied from above and it was cancelled. 

We outnumbered the fascists on every occasion and only at the first protest in Manchester were the Far
Right present in enough numbers to give them confidence to have a go at us. Greater Manchester Police were onto it before anyone did me any harm, but several hours after we'd left drunken fascists trashed a supermarket in Piccadilly Gardens. In some ways I was lucky. Colleagues went to a counter demonstration in Rotherham and encountered hate like they'd never seen before. 

Thanks to Stand Up To Racism organising the counter-protests, and the courts throwing the book at the rioters, it all died down. However, the at which the Far Right organised via social media, the failure of most parts of civil society to take a stand, and the complete lack of a subsequent debate about how so many people with no history of Far Right involvement had been weaponised by the tabloid media suggests serious problems for the future. 

September

Greenpeace had another job for me this month. The campaign against single use plastic has been going on for a while, and I'd done some covert research last year by planting bugging devices in recycling bins which became a serious piece of research. 

The worst problem are in the Global South, where many products are produced in disposable sachets that clog up water sources and eventually oceans. The global corporation Unilever produces more than anybody else, and also plans to lead the industry delegation at the negotiations for a Global Plastic Treaty later in the year. They also produce Dove, a product with a very well-crafted public image.

They were therefore the obvious target for Greenpeace UK's biggest action of the year. In the early hours of the morning I was at the wheel of an (electric) van that was part of an eight-vehicle convoy that hit their offices before dawn. In a well drilled manoeuvre, lock-on barrels were deployed at each of the buildings dozen or so entrances, whilst two ladder teams - one led by me - helped the climbers onto a ledge form where they could deploy their 30kg banner. 

It all went like clockwork, which meant I was back in Islington for an organic vegan breakfast. The lock-on teams meanwhile endured twelve hours outside in the cold, and then 24 hours in police custody. I did my best to support them by ferrying them supplies in Greenpeace's other electric vehicles, but it wasn't an even division of labour. It was an effective action though, and Unilever were very keen to negotiate with Greenpeace afterwards.  

October

Meanwhile I continued with the day job. Derbyshire County Council, which only a couple of years ago was boasting about how low its council tax was, had got itself into a bit of financial difficulty. They drafted in an ex-Brigadier for advice and responded with a swath of cuts. Having virtually wiped out its own Sure Start Centres it moved on to Adult Care, with plans to close or sell day centres and care homes. 

Finally, I get to use my campaigning experience at work. We organised public meetings, sat down with the management, met with MPs, put out press releases and I showed the branch how to use social media. With the decision to be made in November we had a final push in October with a series of rallies across the county. People turned up and we attracted press attention. Soon we would find out if it had worked. 

November

So, on 6 November the cabinet papers were printed. And we'd won. Sort of. The council had completely redrafted its plans for older persons care and three day centres and three care homes that had been at risk were saved. It had been a lot of hard work, and two members of our organising committee had lost their own jobs in the process, but we'd won something, which Derbyshire UNISON hadn't done for a while. It turns out I do have some transferable skills after all. 

The same day I am elected Branch Secretary of Derbyshire UNISON. 

We organised a demostration at County Hall for the actual decision, and I get my mug on TV again.

December 

And so the year drew to a close. The UK was hit by storms Bert and Daragh, but I managed to make my way to London for a UNISON Social Work seminar regardless. 

There was one last gig for Greenpeace, and it was at a gig. Jacob Collier allowed Greenpeace to ship him to Svalbard to play his piano, and in return we could have stalls at his concerts. People signed postcards to stop Deep Sea Mining, then I saw him play. Not really my taste.

The next day was The Greater Manchester Green Summit. I've been to all of them and it was great to see Andy Burnham's vision progressing.

So, that was 2024. A year of extreme weather and extreme politics. We didn't get a Global Plastics Treaty, but there wasn't a deal to allow mining the ocean floor either. We lost the Tories but gained Trump.

Oh well, better keep fighting next year then. 

Review of the Year 2022

January

The big news is a jury acquits the protesters who toppled Edward Coulston's statue into Bristol harbour. The right-wing snowflakes were up in arms about it, but more sensible heads spoke up for the right of juries to let off whoever they wanted. As someone who had been found Not Guilty by a jury I felt obliged to speak up, and The Guardian printed my words. 

Greenpeace, meanwhile, have us getting up very early to put up posters of their CEO Ken Murphy, as part of the campaign to stop them buying soya animal feed grown on what used to be the Amazon rainforest. 

Protest of all types looks to be going to be a lot harder in future. I go to a 'kill the bill' demo and the GMP PLOs make a point of telling me they know who I am. At least I know who to go to in the event of an identity crisis. 

February

I get to pretend I'm an academic as I give the opening talk in a day organised by Liverpool Hope University to discuss COP26. It was an interesting day, which also includes a talk on the legacy of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, which is moving. 

Greenpeace, meanwhile, has us out and about in the rain making some nature art behind the Whitworth Art Gallery. I think we did all right. 

I also get to take part in what a world record attempt. The aim was to have the most people ever bivvying out, which is camping without a tent. I wander off in the dark and make a shelter from the wind on the edge of Kinder Scout. It's clear night and the temperature drops below zero. Fortunately I get my fire ging before I freeze. The stars are amazing, but I sleep like a log and wake up staring at blue skies. It was a good night. A record of sorts was set, but Guinness isn't happy with the paperwork so it isn't an 'official' record. 

The big news in February though was the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This would be the focus of some actions over the rest of the year, see me doing some work with refugees and transform my Twitter feed into a military sitrep. 

March 

A project for Greenpeace Unearthed has me running round the moors chasing fires. It's not a bad way to spend my time, although it does lead to one incident of being surrounded by gamekeepers who aren't too happy about it. It's an important story as our peat moorlands are a huge carbon sink, far bigger than our forests, and they are being destroyed so rich people can shoot fat birds. In the end Greenpeace gets the info for their story from satellite photos. 

I also go to a youth strike in Manchester, but it's a bit of a sad affair as the previous organisers have all gone off to university and not been replaced. 

We also continue our campaign against Tesco, this time in the daylight.

April

I get to go to a party at a brewery. Cloudwater Brewery in Manchester have produced a beer to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass called Right To Roam, so they invite me along to give a little talk and give me free beer. I invite some of the Greenpeace group along and we have a good time. 

There are more celebrations in Hayfield so I go along. In a tent I find the Labour Party, the Ramblers Association and the National Trust, in other words all the groups who opposed the mass trespass in 1932. There is at least the Morning Star, representing the more radical flank of the left who actually organised the event. 

Patagonia ask me to lead their walk on the actual anniversary. They shut up their shop and bring a coach load of people out to hear me talk about the events of 1932. We walk the National Trust 'Mass Trespass Route' in excellent weather, collecting extra people as we go. It was a good day out and I hope my grandfather, an inveterate trespasser, would have been proud. 

May

Greenpeace had been tracking Russian oil tankers since the war in Ukraine began and in May one was spotted heading towards England and Greenpeace had a reception committee waiting. 

Two days later I was camped out in a layby near Grays wharf on the Thames in Essex waiting for a lorry carrying the Russian fuel to leave the terminal. I ended up being tasked to follow a Tesco tanker, and so I started an embarrassingly low speed pursuit across eastern England which eventually took me to Stalham on the edge of the Norfolk Broads. I get the photos and Tesco, who banned Russian Vodka, are caught bang to rights. The action was a huge success, reinforced six months later when the people who blocked the ship are acquitted, and no more Russian fossil fuels enter the the country, legally at least. 

In May it was The Big Plastic Count. This is a bit of a hit, both on the streets and in the media, and helped keep pressure on companies to reduce the amount of pointless plastic they produce, trying to balance out the pressure Big Oil is putting on them to use more. 

June

Something new in June was electric rallycross. World Rallycross had became the first FIA world series to go electric in 2021, and the rival American series Nitro Rallycross followed suit this year. They also came to Lydden Hill in Kent so we could see them first hand. 

Once you got used to them sounding like Scalextric cars it was great motorsport. With 1000bhp on tap it they certainly shifted. The series uses identical cars that aren't based on road going vehicles, so the event was also notable for no car company or fossil fuel sponsorship at all. Rallycross is one of the friendliest sports around and so we were able to chat to the drivers about the cars. They loved them. Swede Robin Larsson won. 

A quick change of clothes and I was off to work at the Glastonbury Festival for Greenpeace. I had a great team and it was a lot of fun, if rather hot. My duties included being a roadie for Easy Life and Self Esteem, and guarding the DJ booth for Mel C. I also had to test the drop slide and stir the shit - literally. Best of all though was hanging around in the Greenpeace crew area, which had its own bar, and fire pit, with people I'd not seen since before Covid. 

Then there was the music: Seize the Day, Suzanne Vega, Kate Rusby, Jarvis Cocker, Skunk Anansie, Robert Plant, Gong, Steve Hillage, the Arcadia rave field, Greenpeace's own Rave Tree (running until 5AM and 20 metres from my tent) and the amazing Paul McCartney playing one of the best sets I've ever seen. 

July

Unfortunately, after two years of dodging the virus, Covid finally got me at Glasto. Fortunately, thanks to three doses of Pfizer, I don't even get a single day off work. After a week I feel better and venture out to watch a game of T20 cricket. Phil Salt of Lancashire stumped Michael Pepper of Essex, and then in the next innings Pepper returns the favour by catching Salt. 

Meanwhile, climate change gave us a summer like no other. Even in Glossop the Mercury hit 37 degrees, hotter than when I was on my honeymoon in Barbados or the work trip to Majorca all those years ago (it was a tough job, but somebody had to do it). Mountain rescue had to retrieve a guy who had a heart attack going for a walk and one of my elderly clients died in his home. It was a couple of days like I'd never experienced before, but will no doubt experience again. 

It had cooled down a little by the time my boys and I went for our annual camping expedition to Eryri National Park. We climb the Glydders. Glydder Fawr is now two metres taller than last time I went up it, making it a 1000 metre peak at last.

August

The UK government started approving new North Sea oil and gas fields. Protests stopped the Cambo field last year, but there were more, including the Jackdaw gas field. The government approved the field, but Greenpeace put in a legal challenge. 

I decided to do my bit it and organised a little protest in Manchester as part of a national day of action. Three members of the Greater Manchester Police service turned up to watch us, but all went well. Stephen Pennels gets the prize for best dressed activist. 

The heatwave is drying up our reservoirs and so Greenpeace send a CBeebies presenter up to be filmed walking around the Woodhead reservoir. I advised on where to park and where to go, but I also think the Derwent makes a better place to show what a climate crisis looks like, so I pop out and film myself.

September 

In September the Queen dies, having clung onto life long enough to sack Boris Johnson, which must have given her some pleasure. Her funeral gives us two weeks respite before Liz Truss's mini budget blows up the economy. 

I remember the one time I met the Queen, which was a Greenpeace protest outside Canada House in 1998. A giant banner saying God Save Canada's Rainforest had been hung from Nelson's Column, and my job was to remove the crowd barriers to allow some fake Mounties through. 

Back in 2022 we go to the Wilmslow Car Free Street Festival. The good citizens of the down give their chauffeurs the day off and leave the Rollers in the garage and have a party in the high street. It's not exactly Reclaim the Streets, but its fun. 

Our new Prime Minister lifts the moratorium on fracking and so campaigning against shale gas starts again. I get interviewed on Radio Manchester about why this would not a good idea. This was one radio interview I did not need to prepare for. 

Also this month I start doing some overtime helping Derbyshire County Council check on the welfare of the Ukrainian refugees people in the county are hosting. They're an interesting bunch of people, both the hosts and the guests. 

October

It's Andy Burnham's fifth Green Summit and I go along. Compared to the first two there is a lot to celebrate now. Manchester is now on its way to getting a publicly owned, all-electric bus fleet, whilst Liverpool and Manchester are teaming up make the Northwest a renewable energy centre with a hydrogen plant and tidal barrage. Considering how little actual power Burnham has it's a great achievement. I also get a free lunch, free beer and the invaluable chance to talk to business leaders and local NGOs. The main thing the former want is a government policy. Almost any policy. 

The opposite of a green economy, Liz Truss's ecocidal government, came to a sudden end only a week later, felled by a Labour motion on fracking. When the dust settles we realise that not only have we finally won a campaign that looked pretty hopeless nine years ago, but we took out a Tory Prime Minister in the process. That's a good result by any measure. 

Also this month I meet Warm Homes Whitfield for the first time, a group of people who've come together to campaign for renewable energy and home insulation as they can't afford to heat their houses.

November

Greenpeace launches a new film. Called The Cost of Living it was made in the Rother Valley and shows how people are having to come together to survive the energy crisis. 

The Manchester Greenpeace Secret Squirrels help with the publicity. Rather remarkably, the premier is in Glossop, hosted by Warm Homes Whitfield. I'm master of ceremonies and once I've collected Heather from the station and sorted out the audio-visuals, I host a debate about what it means for the people of Whitfield and what the government needs to do. There are some moving words and a few tears. Our MP doesn't turn up, which isn't a huge surprise, but it's a good start for a new group. 

We then show the film in Manchester, and this time our invited guest turns up. Afzal Khan, MP for Manchester Gorton is complementary about our film and says he wants to show it in parliament, which is a result.

December 

And so our campaigning year somes to an end. Manchester Greenpeace's final act is to take Sami, it's climate change fighting polar bear, for a pub crawl around the Christmas markets. She ends up in Night and Day bar listening to a set by the rapper Devlin. The bar has some legal issues, so it's great to be able to support it. Sami has a good time too.

So that was 2022. A war, a heatwave and some progress but not as much as we need. Roll on 2023.