wed 8 nov
I write this in the front seat of the van in a rainswept carpark waiting for Dan. It’s a small chance to get uninterrupted time to think and write, without internet (if I ignore the phone in my pocket), to ensure I keep to this routine of a journal. I ‘m not even sure why I ‘m writing it but I can’t seem to stop now – a way of processing the work but more, the atrocities of the world.
The leaves are falling in flurries. The ground is sodden. We’ve had some good news this week that we need to embrace as a small victory. At last, alongside four other local schools, Barn Croft Primary School can get solar panels fitted. This is thanks to everyone who contributed to the crowd funder and its associated song of protest at the chronic under funding of education. It is thanks to two years of combined work from us, Tom from HEET, Solar for Schools and the persistence of members of the council fighting antagonistic internal forces. It feels ridiculous that something so simple, with such proven benefits, could take so much time and work.
We speak of and believe in people power and grassroots action – the results of which are demonstrated across the country from Balsall Heath to Bristol, Glasgow to Plymouth - but at the core of our work is the urgent argument that this needs to happen at scale – and now. Large scale state coalition and intervention building on and resourcing this people power to transform our political, economic and energy systems. Just as no one questions when roads are closed and parking suspended for Cadent to ‘replace the Victorian gas pipes’ the same mass mobilisation (including training and employment) could apply to the installation of district heat networks, street solar and wind turbines - learning and organising from and with those on the ground. Solutions that work for communities without being railroaded by consensus but that draw on embedded experiments and learning. Part of our work is making this visible and contagious. Showing that many communities are already creating models that work. Zooming in on our street not as an exemplar but a story with all its specificities as a microcosmic tale of empowerment.
Society adapts. People adapt quickly. We are going to have to. Early in our street explorations we met Dorothy. She turned 100 in November 2021 and lived her whole life on our street. We celebrated with fizz and admired the newly holographic portrait version of the Birthday card from the Queen. She remembered a time before electricity and how they were one of the last houses to get connected. Coal delivered on horse and cart. Blackouts and gas street lamps. As I map out the overlaps of current work in the borough – highlighting schools, street and sunflowers on an old map of Walthamstow - I see it still shows the demolished gas holders, the site of the Power Station up the road and now abandoned sub stations. Hours in the local studies archives have uncovered the history of Walthamstow’s energy infrastructure from the civic pride in ‘Walthamstow’s Electricity Undertaking’ in the 1930s to the early ‘Electricity Showrooms’ and nationalisation of 1947. Times of large-scale state intervention and innovation.
So much that surrounds and controls, defines and sustains our lives is invisible. And in need of an overhaul. The infrastructures we rely on and take for granted are old. Water mains. Gas pipes. Electricity cables. Grid and political systems. We see the defunct or dying remnants of fossil capitalism all around us in the chimney pots above and iron gas covers beneath our feet. If we are talking about just energy transitions it feels critical that we explore the artefacts and stories of the fossil age - documenting and unravelling a way through the relationships and livelihoods intertwined with the carbon that has fuelled and formed the modern world. To imagine and be ready for the next revolution.
Oil platform workers for a just energy transition. (https://platformlondon.org/project/energy-justice/)
As Israel sells gas exploration rights to international corporations, Human Rights Watch state “Israel: Immediately Restore Electricity, Water, Aid to Gaza. Denying population essential services is collective punishment, a war crime.” Decentralised solar panels micro grids have provided a life-line for some but these too are either targets or collateral damage like the lives the power sustains. Headlines read ‘70% of Gaza’s electricity destroyed in Israeli Aggression’ and dedicated doctor Ghassam Abu Sitt states “basically without electricity this hospital becomes a mass grave.” Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN Special Rapporteur emphasises “Water and electricity infrastructure for civilians are not military objects. No asserted right of self-defence under international law can cover such attacks. This is particularly the case when the right of self-defence is asserted in the context of an occupation.”
Heat Light and Power. Proud proclamations that illuminated the façade of Walthamstow’s ‘Electric House’ at its opening. Things we take for granted until they are not there. Sitting in the soft light of the standard lamp that accompanied us on the rooftop last winter I think of Dorothy. In WW2 she was a searchlight operator – part of an all women team (93rd Searchlight Regiment, Royal Artillery) trained to scan the skies to protect those beneath it. I see powerful beams directed into the bleakest, darkest of nights. I hear bombs. I see the ruin of homes and infrastructure.
Human beings have a right to life. And to the infrastructures that support life whether in Gaza or on Lynmouth Road. And those infrastructures need to support not destroy a living planet. As it seems to need repeating. Just Stop Oil. Stop Genocide.
