Re-photo

One of the many not-so-bright ideas that entrepreneurs have come up with to combat climate change is biofuels. Of course there is some scientific basis in this – growing biomass takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and when you use the stuff you’ve grown as fuel it simply returns it, with no net increase. So, on the face of it, biofuels would appear to be carbon neutral.

But of course that’s simplistic, failing to take note of the actual inputs into the process, such as the work involved in tilling the ground, harvesting and processing the crops, producing any chemicals used in growing, pumping water, transporting materials and so on. So while it may be carbon neutral as a part of a local subsistence economy (like bonfires in my back garden) once it becomes part of a global manufacturing process it certainly isn’t.

Even more simplistic is the failure when thinking about biofuel production to take into account the effects of setting up such an industry on the ecology and communities where the industry is established.  There isn’t empty land going spare anywhere on the planet that could be used.

If you want to make a fortune out of biofuels, first you convince governments in the west that they are a good thing. This isn’t as hard as it ought to be, because too many are clutching at any straw(!)  that seems to be a technical fix for the climate that is better short-term than taking effective action. So we have an EU directive that says governments have to increase the amount of biofuel use.

Next you find a warm country with a corrupt government and large areas that could be suitably productive – perhaps at the moment covered by tropical rainforest, which is of course doing an important bit for the climate, but nothing for your profits.  A little promise of profits to those in government for making lax laws that allow you to steal land from its traditional users with a minimum of compensation (which of course nobody is going to bother to enforce you to provide) and you are in business.

A business that means grubbing up and probably wastefully burning forests to plant your monoculture biofuel crop, destroying species and habitat, forcing the inhabitants to scraping a living in  marginal areas.  Taking over land that once grew crops to feed local people- but will now be dedicated to keeping the cars of the rich world running.

One country where biofuel production is having disastrous effects is Indonesia. Species such as the Sumatra tiger and the orangutan are disappearing fast and the people who used to live in areas taken over for agrofuels have lost their ancestral lands and their livelihood.

So the Climate Rush came to Mayfair, some dressed as usual as suffragettes, one as an orangutan – and quite a few smaller orangutans came as well –  to protest outside the hotel where a gala dinner for delegates at the World Agri Invest Congress was taking place. The protesters brought there own jazz band to hold their own ‘Gala Dinner and Dance‘ in the street outside.

Police fail to convince Tamsin Omond that being penned in would be a good idea

For most of the evening it was a well-behaved protest and police too were on their best behaviour, even when the protesters insisted on dancing on the road rather than in the pen the police had provided.  It wouldn’t have been a Climate Rush without an attempt to charge the doorway of the hotel, but although there was a little pushing and shoving, things didn’t really get greatly out of hand.

Back in the ’60s, a friend of mine was in court following a demonstration, charged with grievous bodily harm for having hit a policeman.  At some point in his cross-examination he was asked about the level of violence at the time, and replied that it seemed to him rather similar to that in a game of rugby. At which the judge sat up straight, turned towards him and and said “Ah, so you play rugger do you?” and we all realised he was going to be acquitted.

But last Wednesday I took my eye off the ball for a few seconds, and when the ‘rush’ started I was ten yards behind and couldn’t quite make it in front of the rushers, although I was moving considerably faster.  It had been a longish event and I’d lost concentration – and should have spotted the signs – and have set my camera to a higher ISO as the light was fading slightly. I did get some pictures, but too many were blurred, and I went home thinking I could have done better.

Oh yes, Michael Jackson came along as well – pictures and more on the event on My London Diary.

The Home Office Building in Marsham St in Westminster is perhaps the only government building in London from the past 50 years of any real architectural interest – quite a contrast from the boring blandness of those blocks on Victoria St or the terribly twee pipes of Portcullis House. It’s also a building that creates its own environment, and on hot days the water and the grass make it some kind of an oasis in Central London.

The light too is often luxurious, a kind of glow combined with the dappled sunlight that produce such a sheer pleasure that I sometimes find it hard to concentrate on making images.

It’s hard perhaps to reconcile this meliorating atmosphere surrounding the building with the inhumane starkness of some of the actions decided on inside, in particular over the hounding of migrants in this country and the decisions that are made and the evasion of justice that occurs, allowing – if not organising – pre-dawn raids in which doors are kicked down, people rounded up, forced onto planes and sent back, often to countries they have fled because of persecution, and where they may well face imprisonment, torture and even death.

Of course in theory this doesn’t happen, but too often it does in practice, with too many politicians and officials who just don’t care – or are frankly racist in their assumptions and actions.

It’s a building no one with a conscience can look at without feeling shame, and embodying the strange and awful paradox that those who are responsible for making and applying the laws often choose to ignore and short-cut them.

Cleaners at SOAS, School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, are largely migrants from Latin America.  Lime most places, SOAS outsources its cleaning to save money. And as is always the case this means that these cleaners are employed under conditions SOAS would not contemplate for its own staff. Outsourcing is only ever cheaper because the workers are exploited; it’s a tighter screw which gives them less for doing more, adds a profit for the shareholders and delivers the contract at a price that an ethical organisation couldn’t match. If we ever get a socialist government in this country it’s a practice they would make illegal – just as we’ve outlawed practices like sending children up chimneys.

Recently, cleaners in London have been getting organised, with the help of the trade unions and others, and demanding a living wage. The cleaners at SOAS had just achieved that, and in retaliation the contract firm employing them brought in the Immigration Police, kitted up in riot gear, to a meeting of cleaning staff at 6.30 am one morning.

The cleaners were detained and questioned without being allowed trade union or legal representation. Not surprisingly there were some who were not carrying papers stating they had a right to work here. Some may have been in this country legally but under our draconian legislation caught by the law that denies them the right to work. None of them were doing anything harmful, all of them were doing useful work, doing a cleaning job with unsociable hours and low pay that no British worker wants to do.

Nine were arrested and taken to Immigration Detention Centres – prisons for people who have not been convicted of any crime. Most of the nine have already been forcibly put on flights back to their native countries, although it is possible that some had a right to remain here, and some have all their friends and families here.

This demonstration was another of those occasions when I felt ashamed of my country and its lack of humanity. But at the same time proud that there are people like those at this demonstration who are fighting for human rights – and such campaigning does sometimes bring results.

One of the speakers was a civil servant and trade unionist, who asked us not to blame the civil servants who are just doing their job. It’s tough, but if your job demands that you are racist or unfair, then you should fight and take the consequences (in the Civil Service probably a transfer of another department.)  It’s a lesson the twentieth century should have taught us.

You can see the pictures on My London Diary.