From the Guardian archive: some of John Vidal’s greatest pieces
Symptoms of green fever: review of plays at the Edinburgh festival tackling the new essential subject – the environment
By John Vidal19 August 1989
Last year Arthur Miller, in London for the opening of Enemy of the People, his version of Ibsen’s play, was asked what subject he would choose for a play were he writing a major work today. “The environment,” he replied. “Without a doubt.” End of subject.
But as environmental fever spreads, it is surprising that none of our major playwrights has really taken up the cudgel for the planet.
The problem, I suspect, is that the worthiness of the subject stinks to most self-respecting writers who still thrive on emotional conflict, social manners and the tension of ideas. No one wants to write a bearded play, no one wants something that challenges no assumptions.
In fact the field is wide open. Dammit, with a little adjustment, Enemy of the People with its poisoned water is environmental theatre; Chico Mendes, the murdered Brazilian logger, would make a glorious subject.
In the meantime, Edinburgh – as good a shop window of ideas as any – is beginning to reflect the new awareness. There was Gore Vidal, elegantly outlining his theories of the Green Giant at the book festival, Hesketh Williams attracted a huge crowd for his reading on elephants. Standup comedians are enjoying Mrs T’s conversion to greenery, ozone layer jokes are thick as fools and Scottish films set on faraway islands are in vogue. Nature – bleak, benign or barmy – is on the agenda. Continue reading.
That dying fall: it took 150 police to fell the Wanstead tree this week, but the passionate fight to stop motorway madness continues
By John Vidal10 December 1993
As in all good theatre, the longrunning Tragedie of Ye Olde Tree on George Green in east London has been full of symbolism, the stuff always of passion, intellectual dispute and comedy.
In its final acts these last few weeks it veered towards a period piece: Judge Tuckey’s ruling that because it had received a letter the 250-year-old sweet chestnut was a legal dwelling was worthy of AP Herbert’s Misleading Cases; 400 spontaneous letters of goodwill delivered to a tree must constitute some sort of record; teams of barristers drily arguing its legal standing in the high court only added farce to the main plot.
But it has been life-affirmative drama: people cheerfully sleeping out in trees in freezing temperatures and foul conditions for the principle of a better quality of life for others is unlikely these days. Old women and children helping to push down fences to reclaim nature, shovelling earth back into the frozen ground with their bare hands, seems medieval, yet is a pathetically moving statement about British life today.
And right at the end, with a battle raging, people being pulled out of its boughs, arms being broken and tears being shed, the sight of the tree’s hangman – the “cherrypicker” lorry – having to be pulled out of the mud was powerful tragi-comedy indeed.
But down, in an orgy of violence against people who at all points insisted they would not retaliate, came 250 years of living witness to a community’s history in the name of concrete, progress and the motorcar. In the coldly logical, economically oriented world of the state, a tree barely matters – but the cultural image of a leafless old chestnut tree on common land being chainsawed up and then bulldozed over for a road is lasting and easily transmuted to one of defenceless people being bulldozed aside by an insensitive state.
The political problem for the Department of Transport is that each time this happens (it is almost exactly a year since Twyford Down) the credibility of sensible governance is further eroded and a sense of wrong-headed priorities and of a heavy-handed authoritarian state grows. Continue reading.
Protesters take mine to Heseltine’s back yard: dawn diggers gave the deputy prime minister a rude reveille yesterday. John Vidal was there
11 September 1995
Michael Heseltine sports lavender pyjamas at weekends, does not like opencast mining and has bad dreams. This seemed clear at 6.20am yesterday as the ducks and the dawn mists rose over the cupola of Thenford Hall, the deputy prime minister’s Northamptonshire country retreat.
The man accused of ditching Britain’s deep-mine coal industry opened the shutters of one of Britain’s loveliest mansions, stuck his fabled locks out of the window, and blinked.
Just below the ha-ha, beyond the topiary hedges and in front of the stone lions and two ornamental lakes, a plot of land one-tenth of a hectare had been staked out in red tape.
By lamplight and head torch, 50 people from mining communities, ex-miners, trade council members and environmental activists were digging for coal with pickaxe and spade. They were already a foot deep in places.
The sods were flying, hunting horns sounding, there was ballad singing and Anne Scargill, wife of the National Union of Mineworkers president, was leading the revels.
The ad hoc alliance of anti-opencast mining groups had this week formally applied to Northamptonshire county council for permission to mine 10,000 cubic metres of minerals to a depth of 75ft. This, said a representative, was a preliminary site visit.
Mr Heseltine will have to defend his land and state why he objects to the application. Whatever he argues may be politically dangerous. He will be accused of nimbyism, and any arguments he uses about intrusion, pollution, noise, dust or disruption will be widely used by Britain’s 40 local anti-opencast groups.
“Opencast is destroying our environment and damaging the lives of thousands of people. Mr Heseltine has a direct responsibility for this devastation,” said a spokesman for the groups. “One man wakes up to one of the finest views in Britain yet whole communities are put on the dole,” said Steve Parry, an environmental activist. “All over Britain land as beautiful as this is being destroyed.”
“This is a pockmark compared to what is happening elsewhere,” said Mrs Scargill. “He’s closed all our mines saying there was no market for coal, yet now there’s opencast starting everywhere. It’s an insult.”
“I thought we had sorted out this trespassing,” Mr Heseltine called down to a police officer. “Clear them off.” With that, the vision in lavender disappeared. “We will go on our own terms,” replied the intruders. And with that, after a Lancashire-Yorkshire cricket match with coal shovel and ball, and another singalong, the protesters dispersed into the mist. There were no arrests.
Localism v globalism: Ken Saro-Wiwa’s death matters deeply and defines the new environmental agenda. John Vidal on emerging forces
15 November 1995
Last year 750,000 Indian peasant farmers left their fields to rally against American seed companies whom they feared would, under the new world trade rules, undermine their traditional farming; in the same month Nigerian troops razed more Ogoni villages and killed more people in the Niger delta for standing up to Shell and a brutal military. In the past year there have been “grassroots” riots triggered by French nuclear bomb testing, and, from Mexico to Malaysia, Indonesia to Peru, Papua New Guinea, Bougainville and Costa Rica to Guyana, there have been demonstrations against transnational corporations, world bodies, mining companies, even banks. Thousands of other protests and human rights abuses have gone unreported.
This rejection of the development models imposed by transnational corporations and governments is not confined to what we call the developing world. We see similar phenomena in Europe and the US, where roads, supermarkets, opencast coalmines, car culture, fast food restaurants, airports, the shipment of animals, quarrying and much else are now being noisily opposed by growing coalitions of populist environment and community groups.
The European consumer boycotts of Shell following its decision to dump the Brent Spar, and of French goods following President Chirac’s Pacific intransigency, mark a rejection of business and Establishment values as much as any direct protest against environmental damage; the felling of a tree in east London to make way for an urban motorway was easily interpreted by locals as the remote state bulldozing aside a community; when a Native American can visit south Wales miners and be applauded for calling them “Indigenous peoples”, and “tribes” of homeless motorway protesters identify with the Zapitistas in Mexico, then something is happening.
The rise of “localism” may in time be seen as one of two axial principles of our age. It is a complex political and social phenomenon, linked with both nationalism and tribalism. It surely played a part in the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, in the rise of fundamentalism throughout the east and Africa, and it’s there in trumps in many separatist and self-determinist movements in South America, Africa and Asia. At root, though, there would seem to be an increasingly aggressive, widespread distrust of the agents of global, western development, which is recognised to have failed ordinary people. This can be seen in angry land-rights movements in the Philippines, or the Niger delta communities, as much as in the anti-opencast mining disputes in Britain; in total disillusionment with the “green revolution” in Asia as in growing EU rejection of factory farming; and in the virulent opposition to logging in south-east Asia as much as in the outcry over the Windsor oaks. Continue reading
In the forest, in the dark
It was easy for Guardian reporter John Vidal to bluff his way into a security job at Newbury. Job references weren’t followed up, there were no tests and there was no training. The recruits are kept in squalid conditions and work a seven-day week of 12-hour shifts. To stick it you have to be desperate for money, or looking for trouble – as Vidal’s diary shows
25 January 1996
Raynes Park, south London, 3.45pm, Sunday: 35 men wait at the station for the “Nostalgia Tours” bus to Newbury. Six protesters have arrived, too, and are removed by the police. Ten days after a cursory interview, after three false starts and 20 phone calls to “Howard” at Blue Arrow employment agency, I still have no assurance that I have work as a guard on the controversial bypass. Using my own name and national insurance number I have posed as a French carpenter with broken English and a theatrical accent looking for work in Tooting.
The only work offered was “in security”. My job references (one fake, two half true) have not been taken up. I have been given no training, no physical or mental test. I was asked to bring two pieces of identification to the interview but have not been asked to show them. Blue Arrow has given me a piece of paper which explains how to lift objects. The hardest question I have been asked is to copy the number 54321. I am told only that the work is 40 miles outside London.
“You been watching television?” – Howard. “But non.”
“Well, the company, Reliance Security, will tell you everything when you get there. Don’t worry, Frenchie. Its £4 an hour, less three quid a day food and board, less tax, less insurance, so you should clear £200 a week. Bring a Thermos and a torch, kit for a week, OK?”
5pm. The bus leaves for Newbury. The former RAF, now occasionally used depot 10 miles north of the town is bleak, windswept. There are floodlights and security checks on one outer, one inner gate. Four hundred and fifty men – the majority new recruits aged 18-25 from all over south London, Kent and Hampshire – are billeted in hangars B and C. The beds are 3ft apart, each “dormitory” is 90 yards long and lit by 160 fluorescent tubes. I am in C block.
9pm. The queue for food stretches 100 yards. It takes three hours in the open to get served (warm) spaghetti bolognese and chips in the dark. There is one stove, two cooks, one microwave for 440 people. “It’s the f***ing army, innit?” – Steve, from Chatham. “More like f***ing prison.” – Dick. “F***ing Auschwitz. You can’t even phone out. It’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow.” – Colin. “Half the guards got food poisoning last week.” “It was the f***ing chicken. It went off and they had to throw it out in the morning. I reckon the caterers served it up in curry in the evening. They sent 100 of us home. It’s f***ing chaos here.”
10.30pm. Queue for 50 minutes for boots, overalls, helmets etc. Showers do not work; there’s no lighting in the outside lavatories: “This is heaven after last week, mate. We had a f***ing river running through our tent. Mud up to our ankles.” The camp is full of unskilled, uneducated, unemployed Britain. Plumbers, chefs, roofers, carpenters, labourers, drivers, factory workers. About 10% are black; there are Algerians, Indians, a few students and about eight women. Two guards say they were homeless the previous night. “This work is a godsend. It’s the first I’ve had in two years. We should thank the protesters for it.” – Michael. “I’ve been
watching telly for two years. That’s not a life is it?” – Darryl of Dartford.
11pm. “But who are zees ‘ippies in ze trees? Zey are poor people, unemployed like you, non?” “They’re f***ing smellies.” – Jim. “They spit at you, taunt you. Most of them are quite nice, but they’re mental aren’t they?” – unidentified guard. “They piss at you from the trees.” “Anyone pisses on me from a tree and I’ll sort them.” “The women are f***ing ugly.” “They plait their f***ing armpits.” “They must f***ing love those trees. Love them to f***ing death.” “But they are brave, non? They defend the beautiful Engleesh environment?” “F*** the f***ing trees. They know their business. They’re f***ing sharp.” “Mental more like. You listen to them. They’ve got nice voices, but they live in f***ing holes. How can you talk like that and live like a f***ing animal?”
11.30pm. Briefing in Hangar A. “Right lads. We’ve had to organise this camp in three days so there are a few teething problems. What you need to know is yellow hats are management, team leaders wear red and you’re all security officers, so you’ve white, right? All you’ve got to do is what you’re told. It’s 12-hours-a-day shifts. Seven days on, three off. We’re here to allow the bypass to be built. So, all new guards over here. All without beds there. Those without kit here. Old guards with no bedding here. We’ll sort out identity cards tomorrow.” Chaos ensues. “F***ing hell. Who are these gits? – Steve, Chatham. “Every red hat talks a right load of bollocks.” – Gerry.
1.30am. “I look like a giant dick in a condom.” – Ray, jumping around in sleeping bag.
4.30am. “Morning lads. The showers aren’t working because the generator leaked diesel last night. So breakfast will be f***ing late.” We queue for two and a half hours for two warm sausages, beans and cold eggs. There’s no water. The milk is off. There is a 3ft-high pile of chips and last night’s plates have not been cleared away. There are no clean cups and the Portaloos are squalid. “This is bollocks.” – Jim, at end of queue for breakfast.
9am. On bus. Protesters locked themselves to the gates at dawn. They have delayed the work of 450 people for three hours and been freed by firemen coming to clear the spilt diesel. Paranoia and disinformation is rife. Coach talk is how the protesters are being paid £30 a day, tree climbers £500 a day by Greenpeace; how the leak in the generator was by saboteurs. “Animal f***ing rights are coming up, and those heavy gits from Brixton. At least two protesters have mustard gas.”
10.30am. Still on bus. “Most of the men here are OK. They’re here just for the money. I’d say five% want trouble.” – Jim (red hat). Continue reading
Driven to destruction
John Vidal has sped about, spewing out fumes, while the poor and frail pick up the tab. But now he’s waking up and facing his shame it’s time to rethink the role of the car
3 March 1997
Confessions. I have been the very last owner of at least 12 cars. Some lasted a year, some just a few months. Many needed a bent garage and a drink or two to get them through the MOT. They all finally packed up, and good riddance to the lot of them. Some were plain dangerous. One tilted at 30 degrees and had to be hidden every morning in a rhododendron bush. Another only had one gear (second) for about three months. My present one, a (legal) VW, has done 145,000 miles – 100,000 short of one old Volvo. On average, these cars have cost about £600 each and, for the £7,500 or so that I have spent buying them, I must have driven about 250,000 miles.
Not bad, eh Jeremy Clarkson? Like you, I’ve fully exercised my right of choice as a bloke to enjoy cheap motoring and, hell, I’ve driven from one end of Britain to the other at 90mph and been exhilarated at the speed, the modernity of it. I’ve torn up rubber, jumped lights, cursed other drivers, bullied cyclists. I’ve never actually hurt anyone, but boy, have I polluted. I’ve been an environmental and social deviant. I’ve parked on pavements and hooted at night and terrorised the old.
But it’s been my absolute right as the Universal Motorist to do that, hasn’t it? It’s not illegal to go fast is it? You can’t help it. That’s society, that’s the modern way, that’s how we live today. What’s wrong with cars, I say? What better than bigger, faster roads? Mobility, the right to move anywhere, at any time and speed, is my birthright. All I ask, is a fast one. But, no – times have changed. I accept that. Continue reading.
The McLibel trial: long, slow battle in a fast food war
Twelve years after activists leafleted a McDonald’s outlet on the Strand in London, the firm has finally silenced its most persistent critics.
By John Vidal20 June 1997 In January 1985, half a dozen people from a minuscule anarchist group called London Greenpeace – no relation to the international environment group Greenpeace – stood outside the McDonald’s restaurant in the Strand distributing a badly printed sheet of A4.
They did not know it, but it was the start of a 314-day legal soap opera which ended yesterday in a blaze of television lights 300 yards away, outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
The leaflets were abusive about fast food generally and about McDonald’s in particular, and no one paid much attention. A year later, the little group distributed a few copies of a longer “fact sheet” to anyone who wrote in for one.
Called What’s Wrong With McDonald’s, and subtitled Everything They Don’t Want You to Know, the leaflet claimed that McDonald’s, among other things, was to blame for starvation in the third world. It was accused of cutting down rainforests, murdering and torturing animals, exploiting children through its advertising, selling unhealthy food and environmental irresponsibility. Continue reading.
The battle of Rockall: troubled waters in quest for Atlantic oil
As courts hear a legal challenge to stop exploration, John Vidal joins squatters on a little bit of empire
24 July 1997
From 10 miles away, Rockall is nothing but a foamy speck in a million square miles of slate-grey, heaving Atlantic, barely registering on the radar of a gannet.
From two miles, the stump of granite 289 miles from the Scottish mainland could be a giant barnacled whale, suspended in contorted trajectory. From 50 yards off in an inflatable dinghy bobbing around in a force six gale, the perpendicular 80ft cliffs are terrifying.
We are seasick after 23 hours sailing due west from the Outer Hebrides, but the landing orders are simple enough. When the rubber dinghy gets under the cliff, we are to wait until the swell is at its highest. The rest is obvious: we must leap on to a narrow pot-holing ladder that hangs down the western cliff.
There have been more landings on the moon than on Britain’s most recent addition to empire, and Rockall flirts with anyone who dares to land on it from the sea.
Twice the bolted-on ladder offers itself to the dinghy. Twice we are swept out of reach. The third time, as two formidable waves sweep round from Rockall’s north and east flanks, we are lifted 20ft, right into the rock.
An airborne lunge at the ladder, a thump as you hit the rock wall, and 10 minutes of knuckle-grazing climbing later and we are on Hall’s Ledge, the only remotely flat spot on Britain’s most remote and inhospitable territory. Continue reading.
Cattle low mightily, then the thuds begin: Cumbria fears foot-and-mouth disease is now uncontrollable
By John Vidal31 March 2001
The three slaughtermen are young, cheerful and clear-eyed. Killing is their business and they have never known trade like this. In the spring morning light they were on a farm near Wigton, Cumbria, shooting more than 100 cows and 500 sheep. Now the Ministry of Agriculture has told them to go to Jim Hutcheson’s Scale End farm near Penrith.
Our mobile death squad rattles through the lowlands south of Carlisle. We carry, in the back of a 16year-old white van, cartridges, stun guns, decontamination suits, blue overalls, rubber gloves, sprays, wellington boots, forms and all the paraphernalia of modern slaughter. The landscape is flat and desolate. Most farms here have been condemned and there are no animals in the field.
The city burns, a young man lies dead … and around him the battle rages on
By John Vidal21 July 2001
In front of me a young man lies dead under a white sheet. His body is surrounded by 80 police officers in gasmasks, with riot shields, truncheons and guns. Not one looks more than 20 years old – the age, it is said, of the dead man.
They shift nervously. No one knows exactly what happened. A doctor says the man has two head wounds. One looks like the wound from a stone, she says. The other, in his cheek, could be that of a bullet.
He has already become the unknown protester. One demonstrator says he heard a gunshot. Another says he saw the body driven over by a police van. All that is certain is that it happened at the height of one of the worst riots that Europe has known in decades.
The youth lies dead and Genoa is burning, a city in which Tony Blair and his fellow leaders of the G8 group of the world’s richest countries are meeting behind 13ft steel barricades protected by 18,000 police officers.
Rural life: it’s perfect for bankers New countryman and his family are comfortably off, educated – and nothing to do with agriculture
By John Vidal8 May 2003
Meet the new English “countryman”. He is as likely to be in insurance or banking as in farming; he worries far less about income, world problems and relationships than his urban counterpart, is probably over 45, and his views are more likely to be influenced by his family than the media or advertising.
Moreover, he spends almost half his income on his mortgage and is likely to have moved to the countryside in the past 20 years. He probably works in a small business, his children may be expected to move to the city, but he can be expected to live 18 months longer than his urban counterpart.
Ancient apple orchards face bonfire as blight of farm payouts bites
By John Vidal29 March 2004
Donkey Orchard on the edge of Kingsbury Episcopi in Somerset has been in Rodney Male’s family for almost 200 years and the two-hectare field of ancient cider apple trees with evocative names such as Old Morgan sweets, Kingston Black and Newton Wonders, would in many countries be classed as a national treasure.
The orchard’s crooked, hollow-trunked trees have great bushes of mistletoe in their high branches and many house jackdaws, woodpeckers and rooks. Lambs and ponies graze under the trees, which in a few weeks’ time will be a blaze of soft pink and white blossoms.
Copenhagen: leaked draft deal widens rift between rich and poor nations
Climate talks are in disarray barely days into the summit, putting at risk international unity to fight global warming-By John Vidal 9 December 2009
Three hours after the “Danish text” had been leaked to the Guardian, Lumumba Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the group of 132 developing countries known as G77 plus China, spelt out exactly why the poor countries he represents were so incensed. “The text robs developing countries of their just and equitable and fair share of the atmospheric space. It tries to treat rich and poor countries as equal,” said the diplomat.
The text is a draft proposal for the final political agreement that should be signed by national leaders including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown at the end of the Copenhagen summit on 18 December. It was prepared in secret by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” but understood to include the US and Denmark.
The terrifying truth about Komodo dragons
By John Vidal12 June 2008
I have seen hell, and it is indisputably on Rinca Island in Indonesia. This Komodo dragon-infested spot is where three British divers who got caught in a rip tide washed up last week. Far from being “misunderstood” reptiles who only “occasionally” attack humans, as my G2 colleague Jon Henley described them afterwards, the Rinca dragons engage in what must be the vilest animal practices ever witnessed by man.
I met three particularly nasty ones last year. We had walked past a few harmless-looking dragons sunning themselves in the bush or lurking under the stilts of houses, and were not beyond thinking we could be friends when we reached a water hole. A large buffalo was lying on its side, clearly having been brought down by two 6ft dragons and one that was even larger. The three reptiles were crawling over it, and during the next 24 hours they proceeded to eat it alive.
The first dragon had grabbed it by its testicles and was starting to chew its way into the body from below. The second dragon was slowly forcing the buffalo’s head open and was going down its throat. The third was, as they say, going in the back door.
Farewell to Lonesome George, who never came out of his shell
By John Vidal25 June 2012
He was on Ecuador’s bank notes and stamps, an evolutionary remnant, a money-spinning tourist attraction and an icon of international conservation. No one knew if he was gay, impotent, bored or just very shy. But he is thought to have been about 100 years old and in his prime when he died on Sunday at the Charles Darwin research centre in the Galápagos Islands, although the giant tortoise known as Lonesome George and commonly called the “rarest animal on Earth” may in fact have been far older – or much younger.