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Westminster protester prepared to risk jail in cause of climate change

nessuno | 13.10.2008 00:11 | Climate Camp 2008 | London | World

On the eve of another demo against airport expansion, would-be priest Tamsin Omond is resigned to breaching her bail terms.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/12/activists-climatechange

Tamsin
Tamsin

climate rush road sign....
climate rush road sign....

flyering outside liverpool st station
flyering outside liverpool st station


Tamsin Omond doesn't live like the granddaughter of a baronet, a candidate for priesthood or a first-class honours graduate from Cambridge who will be sitting her Open University MA examination tomorrow. Despite a flat crammed with political treatises and teetering heaps of campaign banners, high-visibility protest jackets and demonstration handouts, Omond is all three.

In a few hours' time, however, the dissonance between Omond's lineage and her surroundings could be even greater. Tomorrow, she could exchange her chaotic but comfortable north London flat for a single room provided at Her Majesty's pleasure, via an examination hall and a high-profile Westminster demonstration attended by the likes of Baroness Tonge and Rosie Boycott.

'I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to break the law,' said 23-year-old Omond. 'The idea of going to prison makes me sick and nervous. It's very definitely not part of my life plan and I absolutely don't want it to happen. But if that's the price of protest, I find myself in a very difficult position.'

Omond is the founder of Climate Rush, the group behind tomorrow's demonstration in Parliament Square that will call for an end to airport expansion and tougher measures to control carbon dioxide emissions. It is a case in which she passionately believes: last February she was one of the so-called 'Commons Five' whose faces flashed across news programmes throughout the world when they scaled the Houses of Parliament to protest against a third runway at Heathrow.

The group stayed on the roof for three hours: a period carefully timed to coincide with Gordon Brown's arrival for Prime Minister's questions, during which at least one MP was to ask questions about the anti-aviation debate. Brown cancelled at the last minute - Omond is not sure whether his non-appearance was linked to the protest - and the group descended from the rooftops to be met by police who arrested them on charges of trespass. The group were kept in custody for 12 hours before being released on bail to await their trial on 11 November, at which they could receive a maximum penalty of 51 weeks' custody and a £5,000 fine.

But if the idea of a year's incarceration makes her feel queasy, it is the bail conditions that are causing her immediate concern. 'If I go into the Houses of Parliament or break the law before the court case, I will be held on remand,' she admitted. 'Part of me doesn't want this life at all. But if you look back at history, the world has been changed by people with the courage to fight for the right thing at a time when that thing was being completely ignored. This is exactly the position we're in now.

'What I find most shattering is this amazing discrepancy between what is scientifically proven and what the public are being told,' she added. 'Time is fast running out to stop irreversible climate change. Global warming experts agree that we have only 100 months to avoid disaster, and yet we're in this ridiculous situation where the public are saying climate change can't be that bad, otherwise the government would do something. And the government is saying it is that bad, but we can't do something because the public's not ready for it.'

It was this Alice in Wonderland world that, five years ago, shunted Omond on to the path she is now hurtling down. 'I was in my final year at Cambridge and had my life planned out: I was going to go into marketing and get a nice job in the City. Then one day, instead of reading King Lear for the eighth time, I picked up some climate change research and found I couldn't put it down.'

In the year after graduating from Cambridge with a first-class honours degree in English, Omond continued her environmental research. 'I became completely convinced by the evidence that we only have a really limited time to make a large social change,' she said. 'I realised that direct action was the only way to raise public consciousness to a point where those changes could be made.'

Omond had never attended a protest but she took to grassroots campaigning like a duck to water; helping co-ordinate carnival marches, protest camps, lock-on's (attaching herself to buildings and gates with locks) and banner-drops. In December 2007, she became London co-ordinator for the environmental network Plane Stupid, organising protests at corporate offices, high-street travel agents and local airports.

Last July, she was one of the group who blasted aircraft noise through the letterbox of the then Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly's Docklands apartment at 7.30am - leaving peacefully, albeit pursued by Kelly's husband, Derek Gadd.

Shortly after Omond left Cambridge, she had decided she wanted to become a priest. Already a church administrator, she asked her vicar to initiate conversations with the local bishop about beginning her training. It is, she now admits, a dream she might never realise.

'I would love to return to training for the priesthood, but this whole period of me breaking the law might mean that they don't want me any more,' she said. 'I desperately want to be a priest, but I don't have the time to commit myself to the Church and to activism at the same time. I had to pick one and, at the moment, my environmental action is more important.'

Tomorrow afternoon, Omond will gather together her banners, handouts, high-visibility jackets - and her revision notes - and head off to sit her MA. It is a three-hour examination but she has to finish it in two hours if she is to reach Parliament Square by 5.30pm and catch the impressive list of speakers who support the cause: Rosie Boycott will be followed by, among others, Sam Roddick and Baroness Tonge.

The line-up concludes at 6.30pm with a speech from Omond herself. And then there will be an hour left to protest in the best way the group know.

nessuno

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

more information needed

13.10.2008 08:10

'What I find most shattering is this amazing discrepancy between what is scientifically proven and what the public are being told,' she added. 'Time is fast running out to stop irreversible climate change. Global warming experts agree that we have only 100 months to avoid disaster, and yet we're in this ridiculous situation where the public are saying climate change can't be that bad, otherwise the government would do something. And the government is saying it is that bad, but we can't do something because the public's not ready for it.'

This is interesting. However if I am being told that changes need to be made then I would need to see that there is some proof carbon dioxide is causing the climate change. I have not found time to read all on this subject, and have not seen any such information so it might be useful if campaigners can point out what the proof of this is.

Brian B


play it again sam

13.10.2008 09:42

bored with egotistical self promotion of activists under the guise of climate change protest

oiyoi


oyioi

13.10.2008 10:22

if you're bored oyioi, then why don't you get off your ass and do something yourself?

your comment is a bit like the sort of complaint that a homeless person has an easy life just sitting around asking for free money all day - erm, you try it!!

if a campaigner is willing to face imprisonment for their campaign, and if they use their "status" in society to get articles in mainstream press that at least point out some of the issues, then she's probably doing a damn sight more than you.

and even if you're right? what is actually the usefulness of wasting MY time putting your pointless jibe up on indymedia for all to see the sort of pathetic negative attitude you have towards other people?

positive


What next, a book, movie maybe a blue plaque?

13.10.2008 10:22

What a load of middle class egotistical tosh !

@narchist


she's not the messiah

13.10.2008 11:14

> 'If I go into the Houses of Parliament or break the law before the court case,
> I will be held on remand,'

Could be remanded, not will be, just like the coal train kids didn't go to gaol.

If you're prepared to risk being locked up, why not actually break some laws and achieve something?

or even very naughty


positive

13.10.2008 11:15

"what is actually the usefulness of wasting MY time putting your pointless jibe up on indymedia for all to see the sort of pathetic negative attitude you have towards other people?"


My, my. Aren't we full of ouselves? We're you somehow forced to read his comment? What was the usefulness of wasting yet more of your valuable time by spending 10 times longer creating your response than it took you to read his comment?

I'll try not to waste any more of your precious time by pointing out the unjustified assumptions, ad hominem attacks and the bullshit strawman.

In case , you're wondering, my time simply isn't that valuable - I really do have nothing better to do.

MonkeyBot


Proof?

13.10.2008 11:39

Brian B:
Whether it is CO2 induced Global Warming or down to 'natural causes' is really quite immaterial. The point is that the earth is heating up to the point where life as it is now known will be over - totally - within a few decades. There is no debate over 'if' Global Warning is happening, the debate now needs moving to "What are we to do about it?" There seems to be two possibilities -

a) Carry on as we are, burning fossil fuels, destroying anything and everything for our self-indulgent life styles.
b) Change! Alter our habits of fossil fuel usage, stop the spend, spend, spend: I've a 92 inch one mentality, overall agriculture policy, stop shipping as many goods, etc, etc.

No one is complaining of G Brown using self publicity from pushing for his agenda, it has worked for banks - it has also worked for muddying the (fetid) waters of climate change.

I wanna be on telly

PRoS II