On this day in 1993, a demonstration took place outside Parliament around the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest. According to the Press Association
“Police today dramatically foiled a bid by save-the-rainforest protesters to force a lorry laden with a mixture of sawdust and sand into the House of Commons. When police saw the lorry bearing down on them in Parliament Square they closed one part of Carriage Gates. An eye-witness said: “The driver spotted that just in time and swerved across the pavement to the other part of Carriage Gates which were still open.” But he bungled the angle across the pavement and couldn’t get in. He then started to raise the rear of the lorry to dump the load on the pavement outside. “Within seconds the police discovered that the driver had locked himself in the cab. An officer smashed a cab window and switched off the engine, thus stopping the unloading process. Hardly any of it reached the pavement. Scores of people – who had threatened to chain themselves to the railings – demonstrated outside the Commons distributing leaflets bearing the warning: “Wake Up The World is Dying.”
You can read an article in the Magpie, the newsletter of the Manchester Wildlife Group, in the lead-up to the event, by one… Hugh Warwick.
Hugh has kindly agreed to do a guest post about this, which you can read below-
I have just read this entry from the January 1993 Magpie. I am pretty sure this was the first piece of writing I ever had published and goodness me, I was angry! I had already been to the Twyford Down protests and joined the newly formed Manchester Earth First! My work life was centred around the One World Centre, a peace and environmental justice resource centre near Piccadilly Station – it was cold, damp and filled with some of the most amazing people I have ever met. The campaign against the trade in weapons of war and torture was innovative and at times terrifying. CND, Friends of the Earth, Tools for Self Reliance – busy, active, passionate people. The cooperative required I speak at meetings – I helped manage the shop – and this is where I overcame my fear of presenting in public (and have hardly shut up since!)
Just around the corner, unknown to the me who wrote this piece, life was about to change. I was about to get a call to head to Devon to radio-track hedgehogs, which led to directly to me writing a feature for the BBC Wildlife Magazine and recording a piece for BBC Radio 4’s Natural History Programme … which in turn resulted in me getting my one and only ever job, a year as a researcher at the Natural History Unit in Bristol.
You will have to forgive the rambling nature of this, I have just remembered that I had borrowed a Professional Walkman and microphone to take on the protest to London. I imagine I had been spurred into action Phil Korbel, who has remained on the media/communication/activist scene in Manchester ever since. I sent the tape to Radio 4’s Costing the Earth – having not really thought through what I could do with the material. The producer called me and asked me how I managed to make it sound like I was right in the middle of the protest, sat on the streets outside parliament … not sure my answer filled her with confidence as I said it was because I was sat in the middle of the protest!
So that got me started making radio programmes, and why I took a tape recorder out while stalking hedgehogs … which ended up on Pick of the Week and Pick of the Year … probably the best radio I ever made, and one of the first.
Since then I have become more entangled with hedgehogs, and also started writing books – have two to finish this year. But the campaigning heart still beats … maybe not quite so angrily though! I started a petition to get a tiny change in planning law enacted that would help hedgehogs (I remember when change.org asked me what I wanted to call for, to help return hedgehogs to their former glory … I suggested we call for the dismantling of industrial capitalism and the replacing of it with something nicer. They laughed.) The petition has become quite exciting – with over a million signatures now, each of whom gets an update every couple of weeks from me. [https://www.change.org/p/help-save-britain-s-hedgehogs-with-hedgehog-highways]
Reading the piece from nearly 30 years ago was initially quite a thrill – feeling that energy and desire for change, linking local and global action – but now, 500 new words on – there is a degree of despondency creeping in. What has changed? Damn, this is like an elongated version of the film ‘Don’t Look Up’ – so much of what we were campaigning against 30 years ago we are still campaigning against.
Well, it is not like any of us entered this world expecting an easy ride. I keep hopeful because the only guarantee of failure is to lose hope.
www.hughwarwick.com
@hedgehoghugh
