Life-long radical and activist Professor Tony Booth and poet Alice Willitts in conversation: how to focus on holding local powers to account in  bringing about the global change we so urgently need in order to prevent further climate breakdown.

Alice Tony, you were one of the first to put your hand in your pocket to support a school garden project I was fundraising for ten years ago. I’ve since seen you at other green actions here in Cambridge; indeed, you’re often in the paper or speaking up in public, so I wanted to find out about what Extinction Rebellion (XR) has meant to you?

Tony People are coming to XR because they need to do something, but also because they need to feel something is being done, which are not quite the same thing of course. I’m in XR because we all need to do something together. I’m not interested in supporting an organisation that is doing something on our behalf. I’ve done that, like giving my money to Greenpeace believing they were doing something I couldn’t—and, in a way, they were, but it wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t the right thing really; it was too elitist and heroic.

Alice How is this difference in approach you see between Greenpeace and XR playing out?

Tony I think perhaps public awareness about ecological disaster has been drip-dripping for decades and it’s finally worn a hole in the stone. People are doing something themselves. I’m astonished by that because I’ve been ready to take action for decades. I’ve always wanted to act from where I am, from my home. There just weren’t enough other like-minded people here before. And believe me, I’ve tried all sorts of things. I have literally been the lone nut shouting about it and the people did not jump up to join me. That’s when you know you’re not getting something right.

Most people don’t do collaborative things, they don’t live and work collaboratively, but people have come to it in XR for no personal gain, and it’s very natural to them. We’re also being led by the youth movement to see that the system just needs to change and rapidly. Government and organisations like Greenpeace have been too slow, so it’s up to us to act. We can and will bypass the existing powers. People need to speak for themselves now and be heard. 

Alice Sounds like you’re delighting at this positive turn towards action, but I also hear a tone of puzzlement. Are you wondering what has made this mass movement possible finally?

Tony Yes, I mean only three years ago, when I was in the Green Party, I was very frustrated that they were telling me to tone down my message about the climate crisis because it would “put off the voters.” For example, I put out a Christmas leaflet saying, “Give the planet a present—Buy Less Stuff!” I was told off, told that was overdoing it. 

Alice Wow, that just shows how far we’ve come as a nation in such a short time, in our willingness to talk about ecological issues in urgent terms. The media also seem to be reporting climate breakdown messages more responsibly and clearly. 

Tony What I found particularly compelling was XR’s initial and outright demand for truth from government about climate and biodiversity breakdown. I want the movement to continue to be painstaking in communicating openly and honestly like that. XR is bringing people together through honesty and a clear message.

Alice My own experience tells me that lots of people were doing good things but didn’t necessarily know how to connect with each other.

Tony Yes, XR has proved itself as a way of communicating at mass scale, outside the normal channels. The message is stark, and clarity is what we need in these times. 

Alice Now, XR is saying precisely what the Green Party locally were afraid to then: this is an emergency, if you don’t act now you will die, simple as that. I guess the key thing is XR aren’t trying to get themselves elected.

Tony Spot on! If you’re a local councillor in Cambridge, you’d like people to think you’ve got a bit of power, but you haven’t got much because, locally, power is in the hands of the developers, the rich landowners, the estate agents, the University and the banks. 

Do you know Cambridge Ahead? It’s a growth lobbying group or, we could say, the power in Cambridge. When I attend meetings with them and the council it is clear that the council are in collusion with them. Now, they don’t like to admit that, but the first thing that has to happen in this city is that the council must separate itself from lobbying groups, which includes the University. The University used to fund, and I think still funds, four planning officer positions on the City Council. This is corrupt. It means the planning officers are not going to advise against something the University proposes. It’s not the council planning committee who hold the power here. 

Alice You’ve reminded me of a conversation with my hairdresser the other day, who is pretty frustrated with XR. She’s impatient to see real change. She wants young people off the streets and behind computers to work the stock markets, she says, and that if you want rapid change, young people have got to wrest power from the rich boys making money for their rich boy chums who are exploiting the instability of Brexit. Is she right?

Tony XR has only been in operation for fifteen months and I see it very positively making a difference where people hold themselves and government and business to account, especially where regulation is lacking or collusion is corrupting good decisions. We need much more of that. 

Rapid change will be chaotic; it has to be. And we do need mass direct action which, for me, is not just taking to the streets, although that’s important too. What I mean by action is doing things, locally, to get change now. I find that people within the movement give a lot of time, and I mean a lot, to planning and talking about planning. People treat me like I’m nuts, but to my eyes we look like a late twentieth century organisation in terms of administration. You’ve got members spending the majority of their time administering, rather than creating or doing something. If you just come along to actions you don’t see that, but XR’s arteries are clogging up with admin. 

Alice What do you mean by admin? Keeping each other informed? 

Tony I mean, an entry on the WhatsApp group is an administrative act. Adding your voice to an internal XR chat is administration, it’s not action.

Unless we’re determined to have flat structures and we don’t invent hierarchies, we can’t model a better way of working collectively for the future. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m running down XR; I just know that we must look at the models we’re replicating. Neo-liberal organisations are heavy with layers of management; it’s what people have been used to since the ’80s. I dismay to see rebels look to the centre of XR, to London, instead of developing things locally.

Alice Sounds as though, as an elder in this movement, you have ideas to contribute about other ways of organising ourselves, because you lived and worked before the current ideas of never-ending growth became the norm. How do you bring that to XR?

Tony Well, people do say, “oh, would you manage this or that.” Now, when you ask someone to manage something, you take their time away from action. Managers are non-productive positions.

Take this evening for example; two of us have been running the general meetings for a year. Now there are two other people overseeing the management of general meetings; that’s two people focused on internal management who are now non-productive. They’re sending out protocols about how you run meetings, how to run groups within meetings. It’s nuts.

Alice Maybe less experienced members in other areas might welcome this kind of guidance. Was this a central initiative to homogenise general meetings across XR?

Tony No, I don’t think so. It’s arising because those models exist in people’s minds; they aren’t really thinking about the impact it will have. Or the urgent and effective action they could be doing instead. There are younger members of XR who feel that older people should have been doing this years ago. It’s understandable because they can’t know what we were doing on environmental impacts and how frustrated we were with the system. There is a strength in the young movement which excites me. They feel that they need to take this forward now, which is good, because a whole new way of thinking is needed. 

Maybe I’m impatient! I think the next stage of XR as a global movement should be that everywhere is treated as the centre. The notion of a single centre is absurd because what we’re trying to interact with is a movement of independent actions across the world. I say let’s just treat every place as the centre of XR, each locality organising itself.  

Alice I can see that XR, as a global movement, can have the most impact when people don’t treat being a member of XR as the action, but create and engage in direct action in their hometowns, not waiting for “the movement” to change something. 

Tony The truth is that locally we know what the problems are, and we can do something about them together. We’ll become a much more powerful movement if XR Cambridge gets at the water company here for not telling the truth about the parlous situation of the River Cam as a direct result of their abstraction of bedrock water for profit; if XR Cambridge holds the University accountable for their hypocrisy on declaring a climate emergency and continuing to invest eye-watering amounts in fossil fuel companies. We must demand change, and demand that it occurs within six months. I’m hoping that will be the next stage for XR. 

Alice How do we take the whole world with us, leave no one behind?

Tony We’re going to get temperatures of 43 degrees in Cambridge in the next few years and people are going to die. We had the highest temperature ever in the UK in Cambridge this year. People have come on board with the movement very quickly in the city; they get it. More and more people sign up every week. I think everyone feels they are valuable in XR and that’s a strength. People might say to me, I don’t know if I can go on an action or get arrested, and I say, but you’re here and just that is already doing so much, to be here, for other people to see you, it’s so encouraging. 

Alice I feel like you’ve been around long enough, working on green issues, campaigning and community building, and have strong ideas about how to act locally. What is holding you back from leading with your ideas?

Tony I just don’t think anyone would listen to me to be honest! Maybe I’m getting more mature and realising that I have to negotiate my place within XR very carefully. I do want a coherent action plan for the city but I have to drip it rather than push it. I might get there if I don’t push it, but rather approach it carefully. 

I may get frustrated in the future, though. I thought, if we’re a bottom up movement and we start actions then they will spread and grow locally, but I don’t see that happening yet. It might. Who knows; we’ve given ourselves a little chance of success and it has been good so far.

Alice I think people who aren’t activists are acting too though. Now they know what they can do to make a difference in their kitchen, travel plans etc., even if they’re not able to go as far as they would like yet. The idea that “The People” can make change happen is alive. 

Tony Still, we have to see those claims that we have a climate emergency translate into something fast and big, and I think the transition will probably be somewhat chaotic. I can’t see a smooth transition. 

Like my transport idea for Cambridge that we close all the car parks in the city; as of June 2020 we say you can’t drive cars into the city. 

Alice You mean create the vacuum and then solutions will follow?

Tony Yes, because within a month you’d have rickshaws which are cheap and green, ferrying people in all sorts of ways. Pedal and electric rickshaws are simple vehicles. Low impact and practical. A car-free, bus-free city is possible. 

Alice You’re reminding me how doubtful I feel about our ability to make enough change quickly enough. 

Tony It always was a very small chance that we might do something, and it’s getting smaller by the minute. We have this chance to tell the truth about climate breakdown. The time is now. I would urge everyone to do their bit. Like you, with your meadow planting; that’s doing your bit. What we need is for everyone to be acting locally, communicating globally and holding those in power to account through mass direct action.

Alice It does feel that there is growing support for saving ourselves. Maybe there’s not enough concern about the wasp or the hoverfly for my liking, but at least if people can believe that there is a threat to their immediate family, perhaps that changes public support for systemic change.

Tony Mass direct action really is the only way of not denying climate and biodiversity breakdown. Otherwise, you’re just denying that we’ve been writing papers and attending meetings and it hasn’t got us anywhere. I think I’ve known it in my heart for decades. Right now, acting locally in a completely non-violent way is so important. We have to hold leaders accountable to their word, and locally is where we can have the greatest impact.

Tony Booth wrote the Index for Inclusion to guide schools internationally in building supportive communities and valuing all staff and students equally. Environmental sustainability runs through this work: www.indexforinclusion.org. Tony has been involved in numerous direct actions in Cambridge and London with XR.

He stood trial in February 2020, accused of deliberately calling out the fire service when he set off the fire alarm to clear the Intercontinental Hotel, Mayfair, which was hosting the 40th “Oil and Money” conference in October 2019,  an event attended by CEOs and ministers representing the biggest carbon polluters in the history of the planet. He was acquitted. 

Alice Willitts is a poet and garden designer: www.alicewillittspoet.uk. She is a founding member of On The Verge Cambridge, which is working to rapidly increase planting for pollinators in the City of Cambridge: www.onthevergecambridge.org.

This piece is part of Alice’s ongoing interview series with Extinction Rebellion activists. Her conversation with lifelong introvert, Alexander Technique teacher and new activist Polly Waterfield can be found here.