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OPINION, INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
Parties target a few (100,000) swing voters in marginal seats, to try to get them to change their mind “
bill: he should never have been eligible for a council tax as he had 100% council tax relief. We got all the charges and his entire bill wiped away. I was walking in Streatham a few weeks later; I got this tap on my shoulder and I spun around and there he was, his face completely changed. He was a Muslim, and he said: ‘Every night I thank God for you, and for what you’ve done for me and my family. Thank you.’ You just could see his life completely changed. We made a difference. And there are Green councillors right up and down the country who do things like that. That, to me, is the most rewarding thing: the change to someone’s life.
have been tried, I don’t think it should have been. I think Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain have made mistakes. But you know, that comes with every movement: that came with the anti-apartheid movement and the suffragettes, and some mistakes will be made but the important thing is to hold your hands up and say that that was wrong and we’re not going to do it again and will try to make amends. There has been a peace tax movement for a long time – conscientious objectors who withhold a proportion of their taxes that will go on military weapons. You could have people hold a mass act of civil disobedience, withholding the proportion of your tax that goes on fossil fuel subsidies, for example. That would be a legitimate way of getting change.
DK and GB : What are your thoughts on nonviolent action?
JB : I think what Extinction Rebellion have done over the last few years has been absolutely crucial to shifting the agenda. Think of listening to the radio three years ago: every time there was a debate about climate change, they felt they had to get a climate change denier on as well, to balance the debate. In contrast, this morning, the Today programme was all about the climate summit. There has been a huge shift in three years. And it’s been because people have taken to the streets, because Attenborough has come out, nailing his colours to the mast, and because of Greta and school strikes and Extinction Rebellion, as well as the public discourse change. I don’t believe in violence at all. I’m passionate about nonviolence. But that doesn’t mean you can’t smash up a fighter jet that’s going to Indonesia: that’s not violence. That’s just disarming and saving lives. I wouldn’t ever hurt anyone. But I do think we can destroy property in the right context. We did that 20 years ago. They disarmed a fighter jet and were arrested but then they won their trial. They showed that those fighter jets would have killed people and they had saved lives and therefore under British law, they couldn’t be punished. I think there are many things that haven’t been tried that I would like to see being tried. But some things that
DK and GB : Finally, as an OA, do you have any advice to current Dulwich pupils?
JB : You know, I never expected to be doing this. When I was at Dulwich, all I wanted to do was to be a drummer in the band, and when I left school I did it for a year. It was great. I don’t know how true this is, but I think people like Shackleton and other OAs – a lot of them – didn’t have a very happy time here and some of them got expelled and kicked out and they tended to be flies in the ointment. They went against the flow, and I would just encourage anyone reading this to plough their own furrow, question everything, question the orthodoxy, go against the system because life’s too short just to go with the flow and knuckle down. I think Dulwich encourages people to do that: to be their own person; to think of themselves as independent. You may roll your eyes. But take that encouragement and be independent: go against the flow. Challenge what people do. And if they don’t, listen, then do it in double measure.
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