Protestor’s Perspective: The Global Climate Strike

Ell Welsford attends the Global Climate Strike, and hears from people across the country who are standing up and demanding action on the climate crisis.

Last Friday, millions of ordinary people took to the streets to demand climate action, a momentous occasion that brought together both students and workers all around the world in what is suspected to be the largest climate protest in history.

Demonstrations were staged up and down the country, in every major city and many minor towns. The strike in London was counted amongst the largest; an ocean of angry protestors washed over the city, demanding action from a dismissive government, whose ministers tried to argue that the fight against climate system breakdown was not enough to justify children walking out of school. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson stated that “they shouldn't be bunking off and it's very irresponsible for people to encourage children to do so."

The strikes here in the UK followed the declaration of a – largely symbolic – climate emergency by parliament in May. Since the motion was passed, there has been very little action by the government on these issues. Theresa May pushed through a commitment to zero carbon emissions by 2050 in her last weeks of office, but most commentators agree that this date is far too late to avoid runaway climate change and the worst effects of environmental breakdown. The strikes on Friday were a call for climate action and climate justice, now.

In the action packed week since the strike, it would have been easy to miss the announcement that the Labour Party adopted an ambitious Green New Deal motion on Tuesday, committing to zero emissions by 2030. The policy is among the most radical in Europe, perhaps making it an adequate response to the enormity of Friday’s protests.

Benedetta Lombardo, a second year anthropology student at SOAS, described how, although she arrived late to the London demonstration, the streets were still filled with protesters spanning all age groups, “all brought together by the same worry, the same goal.”

The capital city hosted prominent speakers such as Owen Jones, Jeremy Corbyn and professors from the Union of Colleges and Universities. Benedetta told me how protestors “marched past Downing Street, where people sat down on the road and booed at the government.” She said that “the strike gave me hope that change can happen. But most importantly, it reminded me that we are not asking for change, we are demanding it.”

In stark contrast to the hundreds of thousands gathered in the capital were the hundreds gathered in the small county town of Newport on the Isle of Wight. Here, the protest was much more communal. There were no speakers ferried in; instead the microphone was left open for locals to step up and speak their discontents and make clear their fury. The speakers were schoolchildren, mothers, fathers, grandparents, workers, and pensioners. “Why go to school?” one impassioned student asked the crowd. “Why go to school when our environment – our planet – is physically, literally, tangibly falling apart around us.”

“School can’t teach me to understand how a crisis of this magnitude hasn’t been solved yet,” she said just before the strikers began to march through the streets of the town towards the local council building. A giant fibreglass skull painted with the handprints of local school children was carried by several of the protestors (myself included) and placed in front of the county hall.

Photography by Elliott Welsford — Photography by Ell Welsford

When they reached the council building, members of the crowd were once again invited up to speak. “I’m only twelve years old and this is my future,” one secondary school student spoke, “we need to act now.” Another girl, no more than 14, told us that “we now know that climate change will be the death of us.”

One protestor told me she had come “to take a stand and show solidarity with everyone who cares about the state of the planet and to actually start doing something about it, because it makes me angry, and I worry about my children’s future.” She said “the most important thing to do is make change in your own personal sphere of influence,” and "if we all do that, then it will make a difference.”

Another pleaded for people to “please wake up and make the changes required, to not just change your own lifestyle, but to come to places like this and pressure the government to make changes and start cracking down on the people that are destroying our planet.”

These two strikes, despite their differences, shared a sense of community – and a sense of hope. The London protest attracted numbers and press attention, but the numerous smaller protests highlight the universal impact of environmental breakdown and the ubiquitous anxiety about climate change. Pressure on both parliament and on local government is needed to tackle the climate crisis, though so often the small scale is forgotten by mainstream discourse. The earth strikers are clearly right: change will only be achieved by people taking a stand and demanding it.

For more information and to find out how to get involved with future climate strikes, follow @YouthStrike4Climate and UCL Climate Action Society.

Protestor’s Perspective: The Global Climate Strike

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