Spirits in a material world
I had a clear image of this raggle-taggle band of pagan revellers, strutting the hills, and was momentarily drawn into their world-view: “We are the old people, we are the new people, we are the same people, stronger than before…”
First appeared in the Guardian Weekend, June 4th 1994
DOES the Earth have a spirit? That depends upon your point of view of course. Does anything have a spirit? Is there even such a thing? I only pose the question because what follows depends not so much on the answer as on whether you think the question is worth asking in the first place.
The pagan eco-warriors of Little Solsbury Hill, overlooking the watermeadows of Bath, are in no doubt. The Earth has a spirit, as do all things upon it: trees, plants, animals, even rocks and stones. Mother Earth nurtures all creatures, including ourselves. And how do we repay her? We rip her, wound her, tear down those lovely tree-spirit-beings to make way for motorways. I’m speaking for them now. I’m sure they’d agree that this is the essence of their message. So convinced are they by the truth of this philosophy, that they daily perform acts of extreme courage, shinning up the arms of the JCBs, locking themselves to machinery and even – I saw this – throwing themselves behind the reversing wheels of a truck full of hard-core about to disgorge its load.
One of them told me a story which – having observed a number of such things – I feel perfectly inclined to believe. He’d attached himself by a noose to a tree that was about to come down. Had the tree fallen, of course, he would have gone with it. The supervisor came over to him and asked, “are you serious?”
“Look into my eyes and tell me whether you think I’m serious or not.”
I saw that look as he was telling me the story. I’m certain that the supervisor made the right decision in stopping the digger.
Such conviction is both startling and educational. What we are observing here is a new kind of politics: at least in Britain, at least in recent years. Old-style left-wing politics had a tendency to cynicism and behind the scenes wrangling. It appealed to the greed in human beings, not to their idealism. Trade Unionism was inevitably tied to differentials based on collective bargaining power. On the other hand, the crystal gazing self-indulgence of the conventional New Age opted out of politics altogether for personal self-improvement. One philosophy involved sneering reductionism, the other self-righteous self-aggrandisement. Both were peculiarly fitting for the Thatcher years and doomed to failure. The tribal warriors of Little Solsbury Hill, and other places, represent a new New Age: clear on the question of collective action, politically astute and media-wise, spiritually aware without the attendant vanity.
I’d gone there the first time with a BBC Open Space crew to make a film about the Criminal Justice Bill. This is precisely the kind of protest that section 5 of the bill threatens to make illegal depending, as it does, on trespass, peaceful disruption of work and historical squatting rights. Our first encounter was unpromising. They came spilling out of one of the squats, blinking into the light like some mutant horde. One of them launched himself straight at me and began fingering my waistcoat. “Nice waistcoat. What’s it like on the back?” He was trying to pull the coat off my shoulders to see what the material was like. I lit a cigarette to cover my irritation.
“Two’s up on yer fag, mate?”
Just then the cameraman appeared in his Barbour jacket, battery-pack drawn about his waist like a gun-belt, camera, armed and dangerous, slung across his shoulder like a bazooka.
“Nice coat, mate. Ten’s up on yer salary.”
The quips came thick and fast.
“Used to be a hippie. Now he’s all tan…” referring to my costume. He was right, and not just about the colour of my coat. This character turned out to be Lee Tree. I mentioned alienation.
“Don’t talk to me about alienation. My Dad was a miner. I was brought up on the strike. I know all about alienation.”
We were making our way up the hill when – magically – another of the company squatted on her haunches on a small knoll and began to expound. There was something very precise about this, as if this particular spot on the Earth had something to say for itself. She was addressing me directly. This was Sam, who I later discovered to be the Queen of the Donga tribe. She was talking about the trackways of Twyford Down – the famous dongas from which the tribe got its name – and I was particularly drawn to the quality of unaffected sincerity in her voice. She seemed to be speaking to me from some very ancient, sacred space. Meanwhile Lee mentioned a walk they were proposing, along the length of the Ridgeway, dragging handcarts. He was wearing a multicoloured hat like a fairy hood. I had a clear image of this raggle-taggle band of pagan revellers, with their penny-whistles and their bright patchwork clothes, strutting the hills like something out of a fairy-story, and was momentarily drawn into their world-view: “We are the old people, we are the new people, we are the same people, stronger than before,” as Lee was later to say to me.
I asked Lee what the tribe represented in the modern world. “We’re its conscience,” he said. I asked whether they thought they could win this battle. “We’ve already won,” he said. “Every time we get up in the morning and do what’s right, we’ve won.”
As we scrambled to the top of the hill along trails that stretched through trodden down fences, it seemed to me that these were not the only barriers coming down. I’d had this feeling before. It was like an elusive taste in my mouth: the merest hint of Revolution, maybe. It had the same quality you sense during a strike, when the management in in disarray, and the clockwork routine of the day-to-day is momentarily sprung. It is like a breath of fresh, clean air.
At the top the wind blew fiercely and, looking out over the settlements below, it did indeed seem as if we’d come to some ancient place. The old 20th century life seemed not only miles away, but centuries away. From this distance you couldn’t make out a single car.
I WENT back to the hill a week or so later. My second visit was more relaxed. I’d been through the baptism of blagging and the next few days would cost no more than the odd packet of tobacco and a few pints. I arrived at virtually the same time as a band of French students over in Bath on an EFL course. Their teacher was an old radical. We went to view the action as a digger gouged huge bites out of the blood-red earth. The workmen were taken aback at the sight of all these well-dressed students. No one knew what to make of it all. Some of the students, full of youthful ardour, wanted to overrun the machine themselves.
I counted 20 workmen. Most of them seemed to be standing around doing nothing. I asked how many were actually working and was told by the foreman, with an amused smile, “one”. There are four kinds of worker there. You can tell the difference by the colour of their hats. In order of importance: white = supervisor/engineer, green = foreman, yellow = worker, blue = security. There were many more blue hats than any of the others. I asked how much the security men were paid. One of the protesters told me £3.50 an hour, even for the night shift. During the night, I was told, they had to stand on the machinery in all weathers. I asked a workman if it was true they were only paid £3.50 an hour. “£3.43,” I was told, shamefacedly.
Later, I’m led past the ruins of one of the houses that have already been demolished. A gothic gateway leads to a winding drive. There is the bosom of the hill lay a sad tangle of broken bricks and splintered beams where someone once had their home. Now the area is occupied by protesters. They offer me a cup of tea. Someone passes by on the road above and lets out a piercing “Yip! Yip!” The sound is echoed from around the blackened kettle on the fire: “Yip! Yip!” After tea I’m guided to the security men’s HQ, where one of the protesters is perched on the roof. I’m told that the security men won’t let him have food or water up there. It’s against the European Commission on Human Rights, I’m told. Someone is ringing Liberty to complain.
Night-time on the hill. The tribe is gathered round the campfire, kettle boiling on the embers. Tea, cigarettes, and the odd can of beer are the only drugs in evidence. There’s a few incongruous didgeridoos about, but the main instruments are drums and penny-whistles. The music is jigs and reels with a heavy laden beat. Yips, whoops and war-cries pierce the night air. Someone is dancing in the shadows of a nearby tree. The fire-glow flickers around the circle of laughing faces. The thudding of the drums is like an excited heartbeat pulsing to the rhythm of life.
A young woman breaks into the circle, chattering wildly about herself. She tells us that she uses her “Feminine charms” to disarm the security guards. She’s gambolling from subject to subject excitedly. She’s seen the worst of life, been pregnant and on the street at the same time. Maybe she still is pregnant, she’s not sure. She has a shaved head and plenty of piercings. Her parents have disowned her. She’s a philosopher, she tells us. “All life goes in circles. The Earth goes round the sun, the Moon goes round the Earth.” Someone points out that they’re not circles but ellipses. “Oh all right, but they still go round, don’t they?” It becomes clear that no one actually knows her.
All in the garden is not rosy, it seems. The tribe attracts its share of nutters. But, you wonder, where else would they go? There’s also one distinct drawback to tribal consciousness: tribal paranoia. Rumours fly about like sparks from the fire. Conspiracy theory abounds. The strongest and most often repeated on is that there are narks in their midst. Everyone who speaks on matters of strategy makes a general remark aimed at the infiltrators. “Tell your bosses there’s a demonstration planned on such-and-such a date.”
I ASK where I can sleep and am led up the hill by the light of a storm-lamp to the gloomy exterior of a large bender. I’m too tired by now to worry what might be inside (it’s all that fresh air and the fact that my fags have been blagged away twice over by now), but once the tarpaulin is lifted, I’m led into a perfect little home-from-home. There’s a huge, raised futon with a line of teddy-bears propped against the pillow, carpets over the pallet floor, clothes hang neatly from the interlaced branches that constitute the main structure of the building, and against the far wall there’s a neat little wood-burning stove.
Everything is carefully stored away in boxes. The shape finally dismantles the shaven-headed girl’s theories: definitely an ellipse. I fall asleep to the sound of heart-beat drumming.
I’m woken by the sound of the skylark ripping the sky with its exuberant cry. Now I know where that Yip! Yip! sound comes from. Someone arrives to guide me to a current action. There’s a guy perched on the arm of one of the diggers, his body squeezed under the pneumatic piston that controls it: were the digger to be used it would cut him in half at the waist. Consequently the machine is immobilised and now stands blocking the entrance to the raw gash of earth they’ve already gouged out.
There’s a lot of standing about doing nothing. The workmen and the protesters share the odd jibe. “How did you get here then? See, you can’t say you don’t need roads…” Generally the atmosphere is good-humoured. It only begins to tense when a lorry arrives carrying hardcore. One young woman tries to throw herself in its path. The action comes in fits and starts. One minute it’s peaceful, the next all hell is breaking loose, people running this way and that, security men chasing them along the banks of earth deposited by the cutting. It’s a game really. I think even the security men are pleased to have the monotony of their day broken. There’s one guy, middle-aged, with darkened features and untidy dreads, who’s main contribution seems to be running around wildly, saying, “keep it fluffy, keep it fluffy!” “Fluffy” is the buzzword around here. It seems to mean “peaceful” or, in old-fashioned hip parlance, “cool”. There’s Fluffy Pete who wanders around in orange overalls carrying a staff with a white flag who negotiates between the authorities and the protesters. He’s the self-proclaimed negotiator. There’s a Fluffy-bus. A fluffy-this or a fluffy-that. I’m told that I should be fluffy and I’m afraid I bridle at the suggestion.
But – well – fluffy it is. I wonder what the workmen think of all this?
The foreman is Welsh, a real-life Celt for a change. He’s also a poet. He’s just doing his job, doesn’t like all the aggravation. Spend his time gossiping with the protesters whenever the work is flagging and testing them on the logic of their arguments. And one of the security guards is a spirited Irishman who prefers chatting up the women to working. This is just a job for most of them, though one or two seem to get added job-satisfaction whenever there’s trouble.
But this is the moment that sums up all the ironies of this occasion for me. The official poet for the National Trust, “Boots” Bantock, arrives to congratulate the fluffy-posse on their work. He makes a speech. At the sound of his plummy, posh accent you can see the workmen visibly stiffen, their lips curling into well-conditioned sneers. This is a voice that says only one thing to them – privilege. When did he last have to go grubbing about down the job centre looking for work? What does he know of the humiliation of unemployment, the strain of keeping a family together on the dole, or the dreary regularity of a life conditioned by the clock? And for me the confusion sets in as I see how conservative the working class have become.
Everyone is too afraid to challenge anything anymore. The Revolution’s not on overtime. But nor are the workers.
Later I wander down by the watermeadows to see what’s going on. One of the Fluffies is sitting on a low wall gazing abstractly at those huge, heavy-gauge vehicles gnawing at the land and turning it to dust. He’d spoken to one of the blue-hats earlier, he told me. Do you believe that trees have spirits, he asked? Answer: “No.” Do you believe that animals have spirits? “No.” Do you believe that the Earth has a spirit? “No.” And you: do you believe that you have a spirit? Slight pause, then: “No.”
I went to interview some of the neighbours to find out what they thought of the goings-on around here. The first person I spoke to was Josephine Slater, next-door-but-one to the squat where the protesters office was at the time. She was frightened at first, she told me. But after speaking to them, she found them to be lovely people. She said: “It’s not just ravers, it’s not just travellers, it’s actually ordinary middle-class people who have realised that they’re right, who are beginning to see through the duplicity of the government.” She understood the need for some sort of direct action, she said. “The Government rules with only 43% of the vote, how else can we challenge the power of corruption?”
Mrs Slater’s neighbour was less sympathetic with the protester’s cause. He’d conducted a poll locally and found that 73% were for the road. “Local people want relief,” he told me. The present road (the A46) had tormented them since 1936. The prospective route did not really encroach upon the hill; there was less than 100m difference between the two roads, and anything it will destroy will be replaced. “We have a lot of sympathy with the principle of finding a balanced transport system,” he said, “but due regard must be given to the interests of those residents directly effected by the pollution and safety of the present A46.” As for the protesters: “people find them bizarre. Some of them appear to be less than wholesome.” Old people were scared to come out of their homes at night. “Let’s face it, there’s some there that would frighten the horses, let alone the old people.”
The guy behind the counter in the chip-shop in Lower Swainswick was completely indifferent to the whole affair. He’d heard there was going to be a supermarket, that’s all.
THERE was one person I particularly wanted to talk to, and on my last day I managed to secure an interview with Sam of the Donga tribe. She’s a lithe, powerful woman, very dark-skinned, fearsome and brave, as I saw in her actions against the machines. Whether she is really a Queen or not, there is definitely something regal in her bearing.
We sat by the fire and drank tea, while she told me about her theories. The tribe’s name is taken from the deep ruts or trackways that used to cross Twyford Down. They were worn by the tread of human feet heading for St. Catherine’s Hill, which was the principle meeting place for all the tribes of ancient Europe. In chalk downland especially, she told me, there are deep underground streams, “like the veins in my hand.” This is what people and animals are in tune with. “They’re like energy lines, and people follow them to places on the Earth where people are welcome to gather.”
In these places there’s a special kind of magic. They are sacred. In England these are the Hill Forts, many of them now under threat from the DoT’s road building programme. She has an image of the ancient world as entirely on the move: thousands of tribes treading the trackways or following the trade-routes, ships and carts and the incessant tread of human feet. But something (the ubiquitous they) wants to stop this natural urge to travel and to gather. They buried plague victims in the sacred spots. They put the sewerage works on St. Catherine’s Hill, and then they built the road.
Who are we talking about exactly? The Freemasons. They are attuned to a negative form of the same energy that the tribes worship. They are actively trying to cut off the Earth’s nervous systems. Why else are they selecting the most beautiful sites for their road programme?
Sam has many theories that are obviously part of the on-going myth-structure of the movement. She talks of astrological patterns in the landscape, crystal energy, of vast, all-embracing conspiracies; of the circular dance. I’m disinclined to believe most of it, though I support her right to believe anything she likes. But there’s one thing she says which strikes me to the very heart. “There was a time when, world-wide, everything was in total harmony, when all the stone-energy was producing euphoric ecstasy of the Earth. She loves all the lovely things that we like – you know: dancing, laughing, sex, music, the whole lot. You know that brilliant feeling when you’re in love with someone special? Well imagine being in love with the whole of the Earth, and every lovely thing in it…”
A philosophy like that doesn’t have to be true in the strict scientific sense. It’s true enough in the feelings of longing that we all share.
THE question I asked was, Does the Earth have a spirit? My answer is: I don’t know. I still think the question is worth asking though.
I had a small revelation the other day. I was looking into the high-arching branches of two particularly tall trees reaching out across a country lane to each other – a complex network of interlacing leaves and twigs like some infinitely variable mathematical formula. I saw their branches criss-crossing across the night-sky, and I had this sudden feeling that they were communicating with each other. And then it struck me: it is the arrogance of human beings to suppose that language is the only form of intelligence. It took the immense calculating speeds of today’s microprocessors to create fractal images. Look into the subtle complexity of any foliage and you’ll see that fractals have always been there.
I rang Andrew Silverman, spokesman for the DoT, and asked him if the thought the Earth had a spirit? “It is not something my responsibilities make me qualified to answer,” he said. “What does that mean?” Did he think the question was worth asking though? “I don’t understand the terms of your question. I’m not here to judge whether the Earth has a spirit or not. I’m here to answer questions on the DoT’s road-building programme.”
Halfway up Little Solsbury Hill there’s a shrine built by local ramblers as a tribute to the place. It has become a meeting place for the protesters, and people have strewn flowers all around it. There’s a carved stone buried within it. Genius Loci, it says: Spirit of Place. The man whose land this was died of a broken heart, they tell me, soon after being forced to move out. Maybe there are places on the Earth that are also places of the heart. Do we dare think otherwise?
Pictures of the Solsbury Hill protest as published in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2009/feb/09/solsbury-hill-protest-anniversary
Crimanal Justice Bill Film, June 15th 1994:
