I would rather give it all my best trying, than to have never of have tried at all. By Adam Colclough

 

Celebrating International Women’s Day 2022 

 

To mark International Women’s Day North Staffs Green Party spoke to local women who are active in bringing positive change to their communities. We asked them about the influences that inspired them to be politically active, how they responded to issues like climate change, and about their hopes and fear for the future. The responses they gave were truly inspirational.

International Women’s Day is held annually on the 8th of March to celebrate women’s achievements, to highlight the inequalities they have to deal with in a highly gendered society and to fundraise for female-focused charities. The theme for 2022 is biases, either conscious or unconscious, that continue to hold women back.

We spoke to Birgit Allport, founder of the Staffordshire branch of Better Together Community Support Group®️, Sarah Chevolleau Director of Staffordshire Association for Black Lives Equality CIC (SABLE) and Rebecca Harvey, co-director of SABLE and a regular performer on the local comedy circuit. North Staffs Green Party Coordinator Jade Taylor, and Lauren Currie, a community activist from Silverdale who has been campaigning to Stop the Stink from nearby Walleys Quarry for the past fifteen months.

Birgit Allport spoke about the way her grandfather Paul had been a big influence on her outlook on life, saying he had taught her ‘to respect, and accept people just as they are, because we not always know their story’. His example had, she said, encouraged her to have a ‘natural sense of equality’ and to want to make a positive contribution to the community, something that led her to found Better Together.

Family example also influenced Sara Chevolleau to be politically active, following the example set by her Father, who she said ‘has been active in our community for many years’, he introduced her to powerful role models such as Darcus Howe, The Mangrove 8, and Bob Marley. This has inspired her ‘to follow his ethos of empowerment of the people and the belief that we are all responsible for our community’.

Jade Taylor also spoke about being inspired by a prominent campaigner to become politically active herself. Watching Caroline Lucas talking about Palestine on television was a pivotal experience, Jade said her: ‘advocation for truth truly inspired me to keep speaking up for the voices who were being deliberately ignored. It was that day I accurately understood the privileges I had and how I intended to move forward using them’.

Rebecca Harvey drew her inspiration from the worldwide BLM movement that rose after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of racist police officers, through which she heard ‘Black and Black Mixed Heritage voices being amplified and having a platform in our community’, decided to use her own lived experience to educate people and challenge prejudice. She also spoke about the inspiration provided by Sara Chevolleau and Gabriella Gay, saying their ‘passion and integrity is phenomenal and I’m grateful to have met and continued working alongside them both over the last two years’.

For Lauren Currie it was the impact of the ‘stink’ from Walley’s Quarry on her family’s health that prompted her to become active in the community. She said that around Christmas time in 2020 ‘the smell became prolific, and I began to worry about my health due to the gases invading my home, and I was also fearful for my children’s health’. Along with her husband she decided to ‘reach out’ to other people nearby and discovered the problem was more widespread than she had thought. This led her to become a prominent member of the Stop the Stink campaign group.

Speaking about the environmental challenges the world faces Sarah said that her understanding of them was informed by her commitment to black liberation and equality. It is also informed by having seen at first hand ‘the effects on my family in the Caribbean with floods and landslides’. Adding that there is there is ‘a massive element of racism involved in the denial and petulant attitudes to climate change because it predominantly effects people of the global majority - i.e. not white people. This is indicative of the white supremacist power structure of our planet on a whole’.

Jade said that until relatively recently the concerns about the environment she expressed weren’t taken seriously, however social media had now made the ‘global crisis’ more accessible, the science is becoming more widely acknowledged due to the ‘visible and direct effects of how climate change is affecting us here in the UK’. As a result people, particularly younger people are now ‘fighting for a mass change in consciousness and political influences are having to concede such issues as almost every village, town and/or city now has faced some sort of environmental damage’.

Lauren said that becoming involved with the Stop the Stink campaign she had made her ‘re-evaluate my responsibilities as an individual when it comes to the environment. I think about issues relating to the environment and pollution much more deeply now’. The experience of dealing with Red Industries and the Environmental Agency had made her feel sceptical about official responses to the climate crisis and that ‘if the big polluting industries are left half regulated by inept and underfunded government agencies, there will be no way of truly defending our environment against waste giants taking advantage to make a profit’.

Birgit feels that she gained her understanding of the importance of protecting the environment from her grandfather, particularly that is it the little things done either right or wrong that add up. We live, she said, ‘in a world where we waste to much of everything. We buy things we don't need, waste natural resources like water by showering excessive, overheat rooms, etc’. This is something she is using her work with Better Together to change through encouraging people to waste less food and to walk or cycle rather than travelling by car and doing all she can to pass the message on to the next generation because it ‘is important to teach children from young age to respect not only humans but also the environment and every animal likewise’.

Environmental concerns are, for Rebecca, closely entwined with those she has about social justice and the systematic institutional racism operating in society. As a result, she feels it is ‘difficult for the Black British community, the majority of which are statistically working class and/or live in poverty, to invest in sustainable, ‘environmentally friendly’ goods, products or lifestyles’. The situation is made worse by a lack of representation in political debates around environmental issues, where Black and Mixed Heritage voices are included, those of MPs like Diane Abbot and Dawn Butler for example, they are too often side-lined. This leads her to ask, ‘how are we supposed to have a fair and balanced voice on decisions about climate action in places that are supposed to matter’.

Hearing Mia Amor Mottley’s speech at the recent COP26 summit made Sarah feel ‘impressed and inspired’, particularly the passion and eloquence with which ‘she shone a light on the structural iniquity of the world leaders regarding climate change’. However, she fears the message that climate change is a real and existential threat may not get through because ‘it is too lucrative and beneficial to the status quo of power to take action on the issue - until of course it becomes a “real” issue to them’.

Jade feels that greater awareness of environmental issues and the corresponding corporate response offers some hope for addressing climate change, she said ‘I never thought I’d see the day where fast food producers would deliver a vegan option in their daily menu’, or where ‘the fashion industry reconsidered their production means, everything from textile waste to slave labour, to chemical use to model representation’. Although there has been significant progress, she feels there is still a ‘long way to go to make our capitalist market more ethical and fair for all, and we still need to challenge if what we’re being sold is as “green” as they sell it to be’. Her fear is that ‘the science states we are already too late, that we will endure many climate catastrophes in our lifetime and our fate is very uncertain’.

Birgit is also concerned that human damage to the environment has gone too far to be reversed. Her community work though has given her hope that individuals and government can ‘from their mistakes and rethink and evaluate their actions e.g. using the car for unnecessary trips, generate to much waste, etc. If we don't change our 'comfortable' habits, we will destroy the future of following generations’.

Rebecca also fears that institutional racism may hamper efforts to tackle climate change meaning she says, ‘they will not be solved in my lifetime’. She hopes this will be avoided by an ‘equal and diverse contribution from voices of all backgrounds’ to the debate on environmental issues. At the age of 31 she says she doesn’t want to be ‘still shouting in the streets when I’m 81 because these issues and the institutions perpetuating them have not changed’. Adding that if that does prove to be the case ‘I will still be yelling about injustice wherever it arises-try and stop me!’

Lauren fears that ‘government cuts to funding to the Environment Agency will affect how landfills, like Walley’s are regulated across the UK’, adding that ‘without the power to enforce regulations and sanctions on big waste businesses that the industry will take advantage and more communities like ours will be left ignored, more children will suffer, more lives will be affected’. She hopes that stronger regulation will prevent more communities from suffering in the way hers has, but that getting it will require a long struggle.

Despite the challenges that exist all five women who interviewed were engaged with their communities in a way that brings about positive results, as Jade Taylor said the potential for change ‘is exciting and I’m here for it’, and, expressing a view shared by all the interviewees that when it comes to creating a better and fairer world she’d rather ‘give it all my best trying, than to have never of have tried at all’.