In January 2012, I attended my first Greenpeace Southwark meeting. One year later, I'm here to look back on my first year as an active member and (more importantly) Greenpeace's highly successful 40th year as a campaigning organisation. Speaking of which…
The first major event of the year that Southwark Greenpeace were involved in was organising celebrations of this momentous anniversary. We teamed up with the South West and Greenwich groups to run a film night in New Cross. We attracted so many people that we almost ran out of space, then sat them down to show them some powerful footage of Greenpeace action over the last four decades. The reaction from the audience was great, and yours truly thoroughly enjoyed himself dressing up as a Stormtrooper to promote our VW Darkside campaign on the street outside.
Oh yes, that reminds me. The VW Darkside campaign. You’ve never heard of the VW Darkside campaign?! It’s only the campaign that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs! Sorry, couldn’t resist. Anyways, that particular campaign was the main focus of Greenpeace activity for much of 2011 into the first months of 2012, and in my opinion showcased one of the greatest rebrandings ever, as over 500,000 Jedi joined the Rebellion against VolksWagen’s lobbying to restrict emissions regulation laws.
But as we moved further into 2012, it became apparent that Greenpeace had much bigger Shell-fish to fry. In fact, as early as February activists took to the National Gallery, to oil rigs in New Zealand and to Shell forecourts across the world to protest against Shell’s now infamous plans to drill for oil in the Arctic. This marked the inspiring start to what has been the biggest Greenpeace campaign of the year and looks set to become one of the biggest campaigns ever – the Save the Arctic campaign. Southwark Greenpeace were involved in several notable actions based around this campaign, including:
- Invading two of Shell’s Southwark petrol stations to make our feelings about their illicit drilling plans clear by plastering their pumps with Save the Arctic stickers and Out of Order signs (One of my highlights of the year - great fun!)
- The shutting down of 78 Shell petrol stations in London and Edinburgh on a single day of mass action in July. Southwark was represented by our very own coordinator Steve, who was subsequently charged with ‘Malicious Mischief’ by the Scottish courts, as he proudly reminds us at every meeting.
- Shell Day, a national day of protest on Shell forecourts. At the Southwark protest, an astounding twenty-three first time activists turned up to help the cause, waving placards, chanting and handing out leaflets along with the more familiar faces. Shell Day 2 in September proceeded to break the law of diminishing returns that normally afflicts sequels by being equally successful, ably assisted by a couple of special Ursine guests.
- And a stall at Surrey Docks City Farm’s Christmas Fair, at which craftivism, a Polar Bear costume and an iPad combined to create what certain long-time Southwark members called ‘Possibly the best thing I’ve ever done with Greenpeace’ (or something like that. I don’t have a great memory for quotes.) You can watch a video of the event here.
I could go on, and tell you all about how Southwark members joined protests against KFC’s use of endangered rainforest trees in their packaging (with amusing results), or how our man Steve again did sterling work helping to mob Apple’s flagship London store for the ‘Green our Cloud’ campaign, or how our campaign against Waitrose’s partnership with Shell achieved success in just 11 days… But there’s plenty on all of that on the rest of the website.
Special thanks go out to Domi, Abi, Heather, Rob, Dan, Kate, Steve (whose ego I’ve probably inflated somewhat in this article – sorry buddy), and everyone else who got in some way involved in supporting Southwark Greenpeace in 2012. It’s been a great first year for me and a great 40th for Greenpeace – here’s to 40 more!
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