Seeking solace in poetry

Also this week: Steve McQueen’s powerful exhibition and Labour’s frustrating curriculum and assessment review.

Photo by Daniel Murtagh/Millennium Images

In this hellish time of geopolitical instability, when every radio bulletin and social media post seems to bring with it news of fresh horror from across the Atlantic, there’s something positively life-saving about slim volumes of nature poetry being slipped through my letterbox at regular intervals during the week. This isn’t a result of some particularly empathetic community support network (though, come to think about it, wouldn’t that be a wonderful idea?), but rather the consequence of being invited by the poet laureate and New Statesman columnist Simon Armitage to be one of the judges for the Laurel Prize, an annual award that recognises, celebrates and encourages the resurgence of nature and environmental poetry.

I’ve been overwhelmed by the power and beauty of some of the writing, which both highlights the scale of the crises we face and challenges us to rise to this extraordinary moment in our history. Applications are open until 1 May (Laurelprize.com).

Peaceful protest

A further source of hope and defiance was offered by the “Resistance” exhibition at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. I took the opportunity to visit when I was down the road in Faversham to speak at a literary festival about my book, Another England. Conceived by the brilliant artist and film-maker Steve McQueen and curated in collaboration with Clarrie Wallis, the exhibition presents a century of protest and activism seen through hundreds of black-and-white photographs, from the suffragettes in 1903 to the anti-Iraq War protest in 2003, when more than 1.5 million people took to the streets of London, myself among them. We see the Battle of Cable Street, when anti-fascists halted the march of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts through Stepney in 1936, and women dancing on the missile silos at Greenham Common; the Black People’s Day of Action in 1981 to protest a house fire in New Cross Road that claimed the lives of 13 black children, and kiss-ins during a Stop Clause 28 march seven years later. It’s a compelling testimony to this country’s proud history of protest.

A history that is now under attack like never before. The increasing criminalisation of protest – started by the Conservatives but shamefully continued under Labour – means that many of the protesters of the past would be banged up in prison for years if they took the same action today. On 7 March, the Court of Appeal ruled that most of the sentences meted out to 16 climate protesters who, in total, had been jailed for 41 years, were not – as their lawyers claimed – “manifestly excessive”. Six of the 16 had their sentences slightly reduced; all the other appeals were dismissed. Essentially, people desperate for urgent climate action to save lives are treated like organised criminals, while Big Oil and Gas get away with ecocide.

I can’t help thinking that if more decision-makers saw McQueen’s exhibition, they might recognise that peaceful protest is not only a basic human right – it’s also fundamental to democracy and freedom.

Natural history on the curriculum

I have to admit to being slightly envious of the new contingent of Green Party MPs – what I’d have given to have had three other colleagues with whom to share the vital work of holding the government to account! During a recent check-in with them, I was delighted to hear of their work in pursuit of the new GCSE in natural history that I spent so much time campaigning for during my years as an MP, and which was finally given the green light in 2022. Frustratingly, it has been held up by Labour’s ongoing curriculum and assessment review. The GCSE is urgently needed to address not just the well-known crisis of nature depletion in this country but also the related crisis of nature disconnection: the more removed we are from the natural world, the less likely we are to protect it.

Choosing Europe

The Prime Minister continues to dismiss any need for Britain to choose between the US and Europe as “absurd”, yet it’s hard to see how this position can hold for long. Trump’s willingness to sacrifice Ukraine’s sovereignty and security, his alignment with Russia to vote against a UN resolution condemning the invasion, and his mounting attacks on democratic norms suggest that, in order to defend both our interests and, crucially, our values, we should anchor ourselves firmly within a revitalised European framework. As co-president of the European Movement campaign group, I’ve been watching our membership grow: it seems increasing numbers of people are reaching the same conclusion.