Diary

1 October 2015Comment

'Who would have thought three months ago that an anti-war MP might become leader of the Labour party?'

Autumn is upon us, a time of year I associate it with change and loss. The holidays are over, the days are cooling, the leaves will soon fall. I love the warmth and joy of the summer and I often find myself a little mournful when the kids go back to school.

In the past week, l’ve been feeling a little more mournful than usual. In part, that’s due to having helped pack up my mother’s house before it passed on to its new owners. After 26 years, my very happy home-from-home is no more;…

1 August 2015Comment

'I'm sick of protesting this shit'  

I’m suffering from end-of-termitis. Which is normal for July. Everyone in the family is tired and grumpy; everything feels a little too much. I thought I’d escaped it at the beginning of May when I still had my post-marathon bounce, but as the weeks have progressed exhaustion has been creeping up on me.

This year, it’s not just the usual juggle of work and family that’s tiring me. Part of my weariness stems from feeling a bit overwhelmed by the state of the world, thanks to May’s…

1 June 2015Comment

Why anniversaries matter

The last few weeks have all been about significant anniversaries. Several have been personal: Chris and I have been remembering our wedding (18 years), our fathers (25 years since his Dad died, 20 years since mine) and my mother (who died a year ago). Two have been political: 100 years since the beginning of the Armenian genocide, 70 since VE Day. All of which has got me thinking about such occasions, why they matter, and how they are best marked.

Anniversaries matter because they…

31 March 2015Comment

Virginia Moffatt looks to her running heroes for inspiration

This morning I woke to the news that Benjamin Netanyahu has won Israel’s general election. My heart sank, because, with such a military hawk in power, prospects for peace in Israel-Palestine look further away then ever. It is easy when faced with such news to fall into despair. To believe the vision of a just society for both Palestinians and Israeli citizens is impossible. Sometimes, it is feels easier to admit defeat.

When I’m feeling in this frame of mind, I’m always grateful for…

1 February 2015Comment

Our new diarist approaches a significant milestone

I’m going to be 50 this year. What once seemed an impossibility will become a reality in July. In the next 10 years, I will experience the menopause, watch our children leave home, begin to feel the impact of ageing on my body. This is the decade which will force me to admit I am no longer young. Such life events always put me in a ruminating mood, and this week I’ve been thinking a lot about what turning 50 means for my activism.

In some ways things have changed very little since…

25 November 2014Comment

Our Leeds-based cooperator mulls the politics of exclusion

Last year, my friend was thrown out of an eco-action gathering. I can still taste the anger I felt when I heard the news. The organisers were in their early 20s. My friend is retired and has been centrally involved in these gatherings (and in eco-defence) for nearly 20 years. My lips still set in a hard line and my jaw clenches as I think about it. I freely admit I jumped to several conclusions – I bet he behaved like an idiot. I bet they didn’t care who he was or what his history is. I bet…

28 September 2014Comment

Our Leeds-based cooperator is tipped over the edge at a Gaza demo

I don’t think I cry in public that often: just cinemas and theatres, weddings and funerals. Not demos – demos are for anger, for demonstrating coherent, rational opposition, for keeping your wits about you and being prepared for action. But when I saw the orthodox Jewish anti-Zionist bloc at the Gaza demo in Leeds, my throat tightened and the tears started running down my face. A friend appeared and I held on to them for about five minutes, sobbing. An unexpected reaction.

At the time…

21 July 2014Comment

How do you avoid the slippery slope of liberal excuses?

I lick my lips and my eyes flick to the ceiling before I answer: ‘£450 a day.’ I’ve been dreading this moment, of telling ‘a client’ that my daily rate is likely more than twice their weekly income. And here is ‘the client’, a group of new co-operators in a Bradford Community Centre that’s seen better days. I backtrack almost immediately – instead we agree a total figure for helping them to reach certain goals.

This daily rate is justifiable, indeed within my consortium of advisors we…

9 June 2014Comment

This has been a difficult email to write’. I can only see the first line of the email, but I know what it’s going to say. I slam the desk and swear loudly. Co-workers stare. I’m in a rush, I can’t deal with this now. I leave, cycle furiously into town and try to block it from my mind for the rest of the day.

In the majority world, we live in a strange social scene, where community is a fluid thing.

Unlike many other cultures, we make individual decisions about what’s best for…

3 April 2014Comment

Two days after Protag’s funeral, Ben says: ‘Did you hear Callum Millard’s died?’ I’m knocked sideways. Another one? But different this time. I struggle to dredge up ancient memories – was he there when we occupied the Lloyds bank in Leeds? Did he come on the Garforth anti-opencast occupation? I haven’t seen him properly in years, memories are elusive – I don’t know him any more.

But then the funeral – many old friends, many memories shared. Yes, he was the lock-picker and lock-…

18 March 2014Comment

The other night I went to see The Missing Picture, a film by Rithy Panh about growing up under the Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) in the 1970s. The film used handmade clay models of people and miniature sets, as well as historical film footage, video montage and a poetic narrative in voiceover, to portray the horror of those bleak years of forced labour and starvation.

The cuteness of the little models and sets, like a kind of DIY Legoland, was grotesque, and…

21 February 2014Comment

Last September, when the biannual DSEi arms fair came to East London, I took part in a blockade of the ExCeL centre the day before the exhibition opened, hoping to stop the unloading of weaponry for display and sale.

Along with others in the blockade, I was arrested, and charged with obstruction of the highway. When my case came to court, I had to decide whether to plead guilty or not.

It might seem obvious that I would plead guilty. After all, I was lying…

1 November 2013Comment

Clare Cochrane ruminates on the emotional ups and downs of campaigning

A friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day that she was feeling a bit low. I know that a friend of hers is seriously ill, and I thought it might be because of that. But when I rang her a couple of days later, she said she had been down in Gloucester looking out for badgers at night, and that she always feels a bit blue for a couple of days when she gets home from being out on anti-badger cull duty. ‘I think it’s because I’ve been out in the dark and the cold, squinting through a night…

1 October 2013Comment

I took part in an exercise recently. I was told to imagine that I had come from the future, in fact seven generations or 200 years into the future. All we knew about this future world is that the systems on Earth are life-sustaining enough to hold some amount of humanity.

I was to imagine that in the time I lived – the year 2213 – there was a lot of talk about what the world was like back in 2013. The future ones knew that there had been massive change on Earth at that time, and I…

1 September 2013Comment

No Dash for Gas spent months planning an action camp called ‘Reclaim the Power’ at the new West Burton gas power station near Nottingham, the power station we occupied for a week last autumn.

Then, just two weeks before the event, we made a momentous decision to change the venue and indeed the focus of our camp.

We realised that now is a crucial time for climate and fuel poverty campaigners to show solidarity with the people of Balcombe in West Sussex, and others around the…