Photo: Luke Dray/Woodland Trust
The sun is shining where I am this Saturday lunchtime but the rain didn’t make any difference to the feelings of hope and happiness that I felt as one of the #soddententhousand last weekend. What a great event it was.
There have been a whole lot of discussions and inititiatives started off the back of the Walk for Wildlife and the Manifesto for Wildlife and you will hear of them on this blog and elsewhere as time goes on. I know that sounds a bit cryptic but rest assured, there are things happening. For example, being cryptic again, I attended a meeting yesterday where a new grouping of people, with a range of skills, forged a new understanding and a range of actions on some issues that have been close to the heart of this blog for many years. Watch this space.
But don’t, please, just watch. Whether or not you were in London last weekend please write to your MP to point them in the direction of the Manifesto for Wildlife and to ask them their views on it. Asking them for a view puts them on the spot – so please ask them for a view. And let me know, please, what your MP replies – it will be fascinating to compare notes.
Here is some information and advice on how to write to your MP on this subject – please do it.
Next week, all MPs will be sent a copy of the Manifesto for Wildlife – but that doesn’t mean they will read it. You, as a constituent, can nudge them towards engaging with the document, with the subject, and with the need for their political party to embed real action for wildlife into their policies and actions. You are a voter at a time of great political uncertainty, you have more power than you realise – please exercise it by writing to your MP this weekend.
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I’ve written to my MP.
“I attended the people’s walk for wildlife in London on Saturday 22nd September, I didn’t see you there, but I may have missed you amongst the 10,000 other participants (police estimate). It would be great to know if you did attend the walk, but I fully understand if your schedule did not permit you to be there.
You will find below 2 copies of the people’s manifesto for wildlife which was delivered to No.10 Downing Street on the 22nd September at the end of the people’s walk for wildlife by Chris Packham and a group of enthusiastic teenage naturalists.
The 1st copy is the detailed and fully referenced version of the manifesto, whilst the 2nd copy contains the same information, but in a much more condensed format.
I would be grateful if you could take time to read at least the abridged version of the manifesto and reply to my email to let me know your opinion on the various aspects raised, Don’t worry, I only expect a sentence or 2 on each issue.
I would also be grateful to know if you believe if your party may be willing to adopt this manifesto in full or in part into it’s own policies.”
Self-evidently Michael Gove didn’t actually read it as he was quoted on the Defra blog referring to the Chris Packham “bioblitz report”. He’d mere glanced at a photo of Chris Packham wearing a T-shirt with the name of his excellent bioblitz series.
Kudos to those writing to their MPs. Unfortunately, as intimated, most MPs will not even read it and will at best pay lip service to it.
I am not being fatalistic, I am saying we must concentrate on understanding why this situation has been allowed to develop. There is a tendency to think that these problems were not understood in the past, and that now we understand the problem, things will happen. 25 years ago when a senior academic addressed a seminar with the claim that now we understand the problem, we can set about solving at seeking solutions. I stood up and said respectfully, I can remember when the same things were being said 20 years before this.
When on a group tutorial, I pointed out that when I was in my early teens in the early 1970s, I collected leaflets from the local library by the then NCC detailing the loss in habitat and species on farmland, and here we were 20 years later, discussing this as if it had only just been discovered (remember whilst I say 20 years, I mean 45 years from the present date). Everyone ganged up on me and said my memory was playing tricks with me, that these problems were not known then. So I simply went and got the leaflets, and no one wanted to know that they were wrong.
We need to bear in mind that Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was first published 55 years ago. On one page she warned of the dangers of systemic insecticides, decades before neonics were developed and there were commercial insecticides. She warned how it would lead to bees collecting poisonous pollen. Silent Spring was a runaway best seller, which sold in the many millions and was acknowledge by all senior politicians at the time. But it didn’t stop them giving the development of neonicotinoids and their use the go ahead decades later.
Mark addressed this point in the Lush video discussion after the People’s Wildlife Walk where we imagine that if we explain what the problems, with evidence, then appropriate action will follow. Because I was concerned about these things at a very early age a long time ago, I’m more than aware it doesn’t work like this. I have seen so many false dawns. However, as I say, I am not being pessimistic. What I am saying is that we need to learn and understand why past campaigns have failed. I have spent 45 years of my life engaged in understanding this, and I will explain more on blogs I will start. First and foremost we must reach out to the wider public, and not just preach to the converted. We must create a large consensus of concerned people who will demand action. Only then politicians will listen. It’s the public we need to reach, not the politicians who will only act if it is likely to be an issue influencing those voting for them.
SteB – I think your experience and conclusions on campaigning are very similar to mine. I’ve watched so many well-intentioned initiatives come and go over the decades – there have, of course, been some successes, but the overall trend has been inexorably downward.
Provided we can keep the church really broad – no quibbling with the badger groups because they sometimes eat wader chicks, no fallings out with the animal welfare people, the pet owners, the vegans (or the meat-eaters for that matter) – I think there is a huge bedrock of public support for ending the war on wildlife and the suffering and losses associated with it. It’s just a matter of getting the right messages (not just the scientific facts) out there. Public opinion must lead, then politicians will follow.
Changing the subject slightly, for those who enjoyed Grace Petrie performing last weekend, she will be touring with the wonderful Frank Turner early in 2019. Appropriately, Turner’s latest album and the forthcoming tour are entitled ‘Be More Kind’. Perhaps that would make a good slogan for the movement.
This is exactly how I see it. We need to build a consensus, and especially we need to avoid divisions by having a broad church. You’ve got it exactly. If we were one united mass of opinion, the politicians would not ignore our wishes. We are weakened by divisions. It should just be about a love for the natural world, and respect for it.
I rather agree SteB though I think, since it takes so little effort, that writing to our MPs should be done as a matter of course as well as spreading the word (and the manifesto) to friends, work colleagues etc. (I’ve just written to my MP – Patrick McLoughlin).
I was rather angry to see how much TV coverage the two thousand school head teachers got whereas the people’s walk got almost zilch. I wonder if there had been 3 or 4 times as many people walking whether that would have made any difference? Or does TV only cover marches when there’s violence or some direct and specific request being made by it, as with the heads?