The Political Climate

There's a perfectly good reason I was too drunk to blog on Friday - I'd spent the evening at the opening night of an art exhibition, and the night with a dozen socialists.

John M is a writer and activist with two seemingly unconnected passions. One is art, especially painting. The other is marxist politics - both analysis and campaigning out in the world. Of course, the two only seem unconnected if you view art as nothing more than apolitical decoration, and he has a particular skill in showing why this is impossible.

He taught me at university for a decade on various courses, I do a bit of work with him in campaigns, and I periodically delouse his computer. A few months ago, some collegues decided to try to take his purely textual work, and turn it into some art. Books and periodicals, their cover designs, quotes, videos and sound recording, and 3D installation.

I've seen plenty of paintings with words on the canvas, but re-presenting text as image (so to speak) is something new to me. I didn't take any photos at the time, but I'll see if I can take and post some over the next few days.

So, the opening night of an exhibition, in the space of the university's school of art specially designed for such purposes. Wines and beers freely flowing, the rooms filled with arty academics, politicos, and the kind of student that goes to galleries, ie not art students.

Okay, there were a few, including Davina C, who was a fellow student on my MA course. She's now studying law, and has a boyfriend, Matt, who's a singer-songwriter frustrated by lack of recording and production knowledge. We swapped mobile numbers, and when there's time I'll see if he's still interested in a small collaborative side project.

I had somewhere between 6 and 8 glasses of red wine (probably), before bundling off to the pub with some of the politicos, and then to the balti house with them. And that's why I was not only too drunk, but too burstingly full of tandoori mixed grill, to blog on Friday.

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Saturday was the climate change demo, and we had an escort. Two police officers, "Phil and Andy", trying to be friendly in that painfully unconvincing way they have, telling us they'd "got some intelligence" (hmmm) and had been assigned to watch over us, "just in case there's any trouble with splinter groups".

They reassured us that chaperoning a bus of protesters was perfectly normal - odd that in my 6 years of doing this and the 30 years of some on the bus, it had never happened before. Environmentalism is a much broader church than anti-war campaigning, or anti-racism, and it's a lot mellower.

There's a lot of groups who want to save the whale, save the polar bears, reduce intranational air travel, decommission nuclear weapons or promote energy efficiency - none of which I would take issue with, but a lot of the environmental movement is a ragbag of these Good Ideas, with no clear overarching theory or project. There's also the notion that if only politicians can be persuaded with reasonable arguments, they'll do the right thing. We have a word on the far left to describe this kind of politics - fluffy.

It just seems strange that this, the fluffiest demo I've been on, should be the only one where the police openly photographed us getting on the bus and followed it in their marked SUV. Though they didn't bother following us after the first 10 miles.

Reliable estimates of turnout varied a surprising amount - from 20 to 40 thousand. I haven't seen the police estimate or the organiser's estimate, but I imagine they're be around 5 thousand and 75 thousand respectively. I'd put it around 35 thousand.

One thing - there were plenty of environmental slogans on banners, many witty and some suitable for chanting, but there was no chanting. None at all from anyone, except a few small efforts from us lefties who usually chant on demos. It wasn't a silent march - there was a drum band, a marching brass band playing blues, a ladies choir, and a souped-up two metre long three-person bicycle, carrying it's own amplifier and singer.

The rally at the start featured a variety of speakers - even a tory - including George Monbiot. He changes his ideas as often as his socks, but has really toned down his line that the way to save the planet is for everyone to live in poverty.

There was another rally at the end, featuring the organisers' only big mistake - it was compared by some third rate commedian who tried to work his routine in between the speakers. It also didn't help that he pushed the old dumb line that what the world needs is fewer people, and the best thing progressive people can do is not have children.

Owners of pubs and cafes in London love demos, because after the march there's thousands of people wanting to be fed and watered. That afternoon the Chandos pub was filled to overflowing with punky students, grungy hippies, green politicos and all kinds of others. Plus one man dressed as Thanatos the Grim Reaper, and another dressed as a stoat. Outside there was one dressed as a rhinoceros, which was interesting.

The coach journey back is in the dark, and always seems longer, full of fitful snoozing and tired people plugged into their mp3 players. Of the 27, only 4 of us had the strength afterwards for...another pub, with beer and food.

Possibly the Campaign Against Climate Change and others have started a worldwide mass movement. It's a few decades late, but there is some small hope for this planet, and its infuriating dominant species.