This week I’m writing about two of my meetings as a local councillor and also reflecting on the sentencing of the Just Stop Oil activist, Dr Patrick Hart, the memorial service of Dame Elizabeth Esteve-Coll and the 24th demonstration for Gaza in London.
At Full Council on Wednesday there was a warm welcome to the new cllr for Instow, Becky Coombs. I read 244 pages of papers prior to the meeting and – as I was on the working group which recommended higher (but fair) carparking charges – I seconded a motion approving the changes. As a Swimbridge parish cllr, I attended a meeting about solving the traffic / drop-off problems we’ll face when a new primary school is built in the village. It will be wonderful to have a new school to replace the one built in 1865.
Dr Patrick Hart was a pupil at Pilton Academy and practised as a GP in Africa and more recently Bristol. His profound concerns about the effects of the climate catastrophe on human health resulted in Dr Hart joining Just Stop Oil.
He spoke very eloquently in the North Devon Green Party Autumn Lectures series, held in Barnstaple Library, on his journey into climate activism. Last week he was sentenced to a year in prison for damaging petrol pumps. He could also be struck off by the General Medical Council. That seems to me unfair in that it is punishing someone twice for the same offence.
Also, Dr Hart is clearly trying to prevent immeasurable harm to the health, mental as well as physical, to huge numbers of people, especially in the Global South. After his spellbinding talk last autumn, I suggested that Dr Hart write a book about his unusual and very impressive story – it could get his message to more people than brutalising petrol pumps.
The AI generated photo of his name replacing the Hollywood sign references both Dr Hart’s plight but also the link between the wildfires in Southern California and climate change. Meanwhile, there’s an interview here with Dr Hart: HERE>
The Extraordinary Full Council meeting held on 8 January, to discuss Devolution and the proposed abolition of district councils, prevented me attending the memorial service for Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, a former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
I got to know Elizabeth when she arrived at the V&A to run the National Art Library. I was delighted to find that she was knowledgeable about contemporary poetry. She also shared my admiration for the artist Helen Chadwick and – when she became director – leapt at the chance to buy Helen’s marvellous installation, The Oval Court (1986), with its cycle of photocopied figures, animals, flowers and fishes. It will be shown at the Hepworth in Wakefield in the first Helen Chadwick retrospective for twenty years which will open this Spring.
Lorca’s poem ‘Farewell’ was befittingly read at Elizabeth’s very well-attended memorial service at Norwich Cathedral on 9 January:
If I die,
Leave the balcony open.
The boy is eating oranges.
(From my balcony I hear him.)
The reaper scythes the wheat.
(From my balcony I feel it.)
If I die,
Leave the balcony open!
I attended our weekly vigil for Gaza in Barnstaple High Street on Wednesday at 5pm, with a valiant group of 25-30 regulars. A Lebanese doctor, who had worked in Gaza and is now on the staff of the North Devon Hospital, joined us and gave a most moving speech about a little girl he had treated who was killed by the Israeli Defense Force.
It is hard to either comprehend or forgive the inaction of many governments, including ours, in face of the first live-streamed genocide in history. My wife and I joined the 24th demonstration for Gaza in London last Saturday.
These photographs are of brave Jews opposed to the actions of the Israeli government:
