Monday 27th April 2026
Blog Page 357

Back To School: Sex (Re)Education

Rebecca Walker
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Back To School: Sex (Re)Education

CW: sexual assault.

The long-awaited third season of the hit Netflix series Sex Education arrived on our screens in September. And, just like before, it opens with another sexual montage: something viewers of the show are well-versed in by now. It’s in the name. But the sex is not all ‘for show’, so to speak. It tells so much more about teenage worries, desire and relationships, both sexual and platonic. The well-established mix of humour and honesty that Sex Education brings to these themes is a refreshing approach, and enables an exploration of a huge variety of sensitive issues regarding sexuality, as well as more light-hearted everyday adolescent dramas.

As it says in the name, Sex Education provides an actual education. Or perhaps, more suitably, a re-education from the less than adequate sex ed classes we had in school and the societal expectations that haunt us. Indeed, so many issues that are pervasive and normalised in society are discussed and broken down. Basically, we just need a teacher like sex therapist Dr. Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson).

The series is direct in its address of the problems with school provision of sex education, from Jean taking it upon herself to provide advice in season two, to the students fighting back against the seeming promotion of abstinence by the new headteacher, Hope (Jemima Kirke), in season three. The series manages to be educational on a whole number of matters, whilst avoiding forcing it down the audiences’ throats. It reveals just how much the school sex education system, and, more generally, societal expectations of and views on sex, need to change. In order to create an equitable space for everyone, all must feel comfortable and confident in themselves and their bodies.

Let’s just say it. Masturbation. Especially for women, this is a topic often avoided, viewed as something dirty. I remember being in school and girls saying, “urgh, no, I would never do that”. As Otis (Asa Butterfield) points out to Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood), “women do tend to feel more shame surrounding masturbation than men. Feeling that it’s sort of taboo…You should probably figure out what works for you, and your body.” The show accurately represents how many women feel about this subject, and yet it actively works to break down these preconceptions. As per usual, it combines a more serious message with a familiar sense of playfulness; Aimee replies “so you’re prescribing a wank?”. This point, figuring out “what works for you”, is carried throughout the show. Ironically, whilst Otis advises others, he also needs to hear this himself. After testing his “clock technique” on Ola (Patricia Allison), he realises he is doing something wrong. He asks for help from a classmate, Ruthie. She says “there’s no magic technique that works for all women…but you shouldn’t be asking me, you should be asking your girlfriend.” Here it is assumed that Ola herself will know what she enjoys, thus implying that she has discovered it. As with Aimee, the show points out the importance of self-discovery and that, yes, it is fine to wank. It’s crazy how innovative it feels for a show to be addressing female pleasure and how important it is to communicate personal preferences.

Societal expectations and pressures are part of the problem, and series like Sex Education is one example of fighting against these and encouraging a different outlook for current and future generations. It opens up conversations that perhaps we’ve been too embarrassed or afraid to discuss before, making us question what we’ve been told from a young age. I remember the first sex-ed class we had in school, in our last year of primary, preparing us for what happens during puberty. Looking back on what we were taught made me angry about the implicit sexism that is perpetuated. We were told that as girls we would have periods and be able to have babies, and told that the boys would wank and have wet dreams. This only continues inequalities in society, when, from a young age, pleasure is an expectation for men and a matter not discussed for women. As a society, we can change this narrative. I personally feel like these matters are becoming a much more open conversation. Just as Jean and Otis show the students at Moordale and then, by the third season, each other, talking about these things is essential.

And let’s not even start on the lack of representation of LGBTQ+ relationships in the school education system. In my school, anything other than heterosexuality was never mentioned in class. By refreshing contrast, Sex Education celebrates diversity in sexuality, gender and identity in ways that are often so neglected in school. Of course, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) is an absolute fan-favourite of the series. He is unapologetically himself, and also one of the funniest characters. Yet he is not reduced only to this. He is another complex, multi-layered character, and the exploration of his church community, and, especially in season three, his Nigerian family heritage, creates much more nuance to his identity. Particularly when the representation of queerness on screen is mostly reserved for white characters, it’s so important to see sexuality not being stereotyped. 

The series also sees the journey of characters to self-discovery and acceptance of their sexuality. Ola and Adam (Connor Swindells) provide two distinct examples of ‘coming out’ stories; the audience is able to see the series’ different approaches to this. Ola embraces her pansexuality after breaking up with Otis and realising that she has developed feelings for her friend Lily (Tanya Reynolds). Her self-acceptance happens relatively quickly. In contrast, Adam is shown to struggle with coming to terms with an understanding of his sexuality. Sex Education, therefore, depicts a wide range of sexualities, and yet also delves into how people do not always feel entirely comfortable with their identity. Hopefully, more and more representation on screen will help us work towards a culture in which queerness, in all forms, will be celebrated by everyone.

Departing from previous seasons, season three sees societal gender constructions explored and also challenged. We are introduced to Cal (Dua Saleh), a non-binary student at Moordale. As a cis woman especially, I feel that this is a hugely important storyline for educating viewers about gender identity. The inclusion of a non-binary character enables the series to expose everyday issues faced by non-binary teenagers, including ignorance from others, especially teachers. Hope, the headteacher, is extremely intolerant to Cal for supposedly not wearing the ‘correct uniform’. Yet for Cal, refusing to wear the ‘correct’ uniform is not merely ignoring the rules (as Hope assumes and punishes Cal for): it is an essential expression of identity. Yet again, this is another aspect of sexuality that has failed to be discussed in school, and often in society more widely too. 

One of the series’ darker storylines is Aimee’s; she is one of the most lovable characters on the show, but one who has to deal with the impacts of sexual assault. Sex Education approaches the matter with care and empathy. The storyline also demonstrates the power of female friendship – a group of the leading female-identifying characters bond together to support Aimee. Importantly, the series pays attention to not only the event itself, but the aftermath and the effects on Aimee’s mental health, and season three only explores this further. It highlights that trauma is something that can be worked through, providing hope, without downplaying its difficulties. Part of Aimee’s journey to work through the effects of the assault involve talking to Jean, who gently reminds her that, “you may never be the old you, Aimee, but that’s okay…And by processing this trauma, you may gain clarity on the event itself and we can move you towards healing the relationship with your body again.”

Therefore, beyond being an entertaining, funny series, Sex Education addresses many important topics, including female pleasure, LGBTQ+ identities and sexual assault, amongst others. The different experiences of such a wide range of three-dimensional characters on the show mean that there’s always something relatable, while also teaching viewers about the experiences of others. Sex Education doesn’t create an ideal of what sex, or identity, or relationships should look like, as there is enough diversity to be able to recognise something in everyone. Instead, it proposes: be who you want to be. This is the message that teenagers, and indeed anyone of any age, should be hearing, not the narratives constraining their sexuality and pleasure.

Image Credit: Sex Education/ Netflix Facebook

Juggling a degree and career: In conversation with Manmzèl

Jimmy Brewer
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Juggling a degree and career: In conversation with Manmzèl

Maintaining a non-academic hobby alongside an Oxford degree is a challenge. Pressures from tutors, friends and oneself conspire to clog up time that could be used to this end. But at the end of Michaelmas, I had the opportunity to speak to a woman who manages it. Emily Meekel, aka Manmzèl, is a chemistry DPhil and musician, whose debut album is set to release spring 2022.

It was a bitterly cold day – the first of the year to have that discernable winter sting that forces your hands into pockets or gloves. I arrived at our arranged meeting place – Café Nero on the High Street – and ordered the ever-so-sensible mug of tea and granola flapjack combination. Over the café’s speakers was playing a twee, instrumental version of ‘Michelle’ by The Beatles – one can only guess at the atmosphere that musical choice aimed to evoke.

Emily came in wearing a Balliol College puffer – a coat that she usually avoided wearing, but that day was necessitated by the excessively low temperatures. She was amiable, clearly at ease in conversation with someone she had not met before. We sat down to chat, and I began by asking Emily about her musical upbringing. She started with classical piano when she was six – ‘my Mum put me on lessons’. (Throughout our conversation, whenever she mentioned her parents, I got the sense that her relationship with them was a happy one). She grew up in the Netherlands, and there was a good music school in her hometown. At first singing covers, she quickly graduated to writing her own material – and with encouragement from her teachers she began to perform them. ‘I used to be really nervous, but now I much more enjoy performing, interacting with the crowd.’

‘Then it came down to going to uni,’ said Emily, pausing. ‘My Mum’s from London, so at first I really wanted to go to uni in London.’ But, as Bob Dylan put it, money doesn’t talk, it swears, and the £9K per year UK tuition fee was prohibitive when considered as an alternative to the Netherlands’ far more reasonable €1000 per annum. ‘We love you but we don’t have that money,’ her parents conceded. However, the hope of attending a UK university was rekindled when Emily realised that in Scotland, tuition is free to European students. Emily went to the University of Glasgow to study chemistry.

In Glasgow, Emily performed with a band under the name EM|ME (pronounced ‘emmy’; a concatenation of the first two letters of her first name and surname). Speaking of Glasgow’s music scene, Emily recalls it being ‘very tight-knit,’ and despite the city’s size ‘you tend to run into the same people; there’s a really good support network.’ Looking back she describes her music as EM|ME as ‘a mixture of things… a bit chaotic, indie-pop, alternative.’

A few years on, after beginning her DPhil at Oxford, Emily felt the need for change. In her first year, she ‘didn’t make music that actively,’ being so busy with the demands of a new city and a scientifically rigorous research degree. ‘Then lockdown happened,’ she said. ‘I went home for a bit, but I had to come back for labs, and no one was here. Which was lonely in a sense, but I also had so much time to make music again, and it felt very fresh.’ She got to writing and reflecting. ‘It was nice to write my stories again and notice to myself how I’ve developed from what I was like from the last couple of years.’ Naturally, she felt that she had outgrown the EM|ME name. ‘It just didn’t sit right with me releasing [new songs] as EM|ME.’ She picked a new name, drawing on her Dominican heritage. In Dominica (not the Dominican Republic, Emily was quick to clarify), they speak Patois, a French dialect, which, when she was growing up, she had heard her grandad speak on the phone. ‘One particular night I couldn’t sleep, so I sat on my phone and saw whether I could find anything.’ Emily, with the aid of a Patois online dictionary, settled on Manmzèl as her new alias. It means ‘young woman’ in Patois, coming from the French mademoiselle.

I was keen to ask Emily about how she interweaves the academic and musical strands of her life. ‘It needs to stay fun,’ she stated. ‘My PhD is my priority, but I’m also very aware of the fact that I can’t let it consume my life… I could dedicate my life to it, and like, it would be amazing, but for me it’s quite important to have a balance.’ She noted also that, like for most of us, the return to normality means a far busier schedule: ‘in lockdown, it was quite good – obviously it was horrible – but there was so much more time. I noticed this term, because everything’s back to normal, I just can’t breathe!’ But the music and the work do complement each other well. ‘Making music, relaxing, expressing myself in that way… and the PhD – I can’t focus on that one hundred percent.’

Before coronavirus noisily arrived, Emily had been questioning herself. ‘I was going through this thing asking “why am I making music?” If no one was listening to it, I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore, it kind of felt like a failure. Growing up you always have this dream, that you’ll become this popstar, or whatever.’ It was lockdown that was the great remedy. During her days and weeks in isolation ‘it just came naturally, it didn’t feel forced, it just felt more mature.’

I wanted to know who Emily was listening to. ‘Greentea Peng… I’ve been loving her music recently. I think she might be originally from London, but she lived in South America for a while. She makes this reggae music, very chill.’ Other artists Emily was listening to were Lianne La Havas, Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars. ‘I’d like to think of myself as a female Anderson .Paak,’ she said, ‘I feel like my music is trying to be more energetic, sometimes more witty, or fast paced, and I see that in Anderson .Paak.’ Listening to ‘Like a Woman,’ the first single from Manmzèl’s new album, the similarity is clear: the drum grooves are tight and a tongue-in-cheek vocal snippet kicks the song off. ‘I’d like to kiss ya but I just washed my hair,’ says a sampled voice, before the track leaps into life with a catchy synth lead and supple bassline.

I was intrigued by the title of her single, ‘Like a Woman.’ The phrase is heavy with connotation, not least musically. There are apparent similarities to songs like Carole King’s ‘You Make me Feel Like a Natural Woman’ or Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ – but in these songs it is the validation of a lover that makes the person feel ‘like a natural woman,’ or ‘like a virgin.’ In ‘Like a Woman,’ things are framed differently. ‘Cuz now I know it’s not me but you that I despise,’ Manmzèl sings. How much clearer can a message of self-assurance be? The song is a proud and emphatic declaration of independent womanhood.

In contrast to her time as EM|ME – which she herself described as ‘a bit chaotic’ – Emily is looking to make a more cohesive product in her new mini-album. ‘Now I’m trying to get a record out that has the same overall sound,’ she said. And from what I can tell, she’s going about it the right way. Her single, ‘Like a Woman,’ is infectious, smooth, and impeccably crafted. Keep an eye out in spring 2022 for what will no doubt be a release full of swagger, soul and sincerity.

Listen to Manmzèl’s new single, ‘Like a Woman,’ out now on streaming platforms. Her new mini-album is due Spring 2022.

Follow Manmzèl on Instagram and Twitter @manmzellll (that is, note, four Ls).

Image: Andrea Berlese

‘I’m a practical man’: Lech Wałęsa in conversation

Charlie Hancock
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‘I’m a practical man’: Lech Wałęsa in conversation

There can’t be many people who have inspired both an opera and a U2 stadium anthem. President Lech Wałęsa may well be one of the most famous electricians in the world, having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his non-violent agitations against communist rule in Poland as leader of the Solidarity movement. The first recognised independent trade union to be recognised in a Warsaw Pact country, Solidarity directly caused the end of communist rule by pressuring the government to hold an election in 1989, which saw Wałęsa become the first President of Poland to be elected by popular vote.

We speak via an interpreter over Skype. Wałęsa is in Gdańsk, the city which includes the enormous shipyards where Solidarity was born. He is an animated speaker, gesticulating freely to emphasise important phrases. He still has his iconic moustache which made him instantly recognisable in photographs from the time, albeit now white and slightly more groomed. He’s wearing a grey rollneck sweatshirt bearing the KONSTYTUCJA – ‘Constitution’ – slogan which has become a symbol of protest against the populist government. He wore a similar shirt to the state funeral of President George H.W. Bush, and has even said he will ask to be buried in it.

Wałęsa describes himself as a practical man, which affects not only the way he approaches problems, how he breaks their solutions down like an instruction manual. Practicality, to Wałęsa, emphasises action and learning from one’s mistakes for the future, even if those mistake are painful. “I never forget anything I have practiced. I have eight children with my wife!” he says mischievously at one point

Wałęsa’s success as a labour organiser can in part be attributed to this practical approach, and his persistence in organising industrial action and negotiations. He attributes his drive to stand up to communism, despite its risks, to his upbringing. “I took it in with my mother’s milk”, he says, adding that his family had a history of anti-communism. “Whenever there were conversations about anti-communism at home, I lapped it up.”

The People’s Republic of Poland was formally established in 1952, seven years after the Red Army ‘liberated’ Warsaw and established a provisional communist government.

“The communist system was imposed on Poland after the war. It was never accepted by Polish people,” Wałęsa says as we discuss the history of anti-communist resistance in the country. The post-war years saw severe political repressions, and a state of near civil war as partisans loyal to the government on exile who had once fought against the occupying Nazis turned their attention to the communist authorities. Both partisans and civilians were subject to mass arrests and executions. Anti-communists responded by attacking prisons and detention camps, attempting to free the political prisoners they held.

“In the 1940s and 50s we tried an armed struggle – that didn’t work. In the 60s and 70s we tried strikes – that didn’t work”, he says, reflecting on how opposition to the Communists changed. The strikes of the 60s and 70s may not have led to the fall of the regime, but they taught Wałęsa and other activists hard lessons which led to the later success of Solidarity. March 1968 saw protests erupt across the country against the government over the high price of food, and frustration that the promised liberalisation under Gomulka’s leadership had failed to materialise. The month also saw protests by students, writers and intellectuals who were branded as Zionists, with the explicit implication that the dissidents were not Polish. 

Wałęsa encouraged workers at the Gdansk shipyard not to join the supposedly spontaneous protests against the dissidents which were sanctioned by the government. The shipyard because the centre of huge protests in December 1970 against rising food prices. The strikers, which spread to cities across Poland were met with gunfire, killing 45 and injuring 1000 people. The outcome cemented Wałęsa’s commitment to organising free trade unions, which were unaffiliated from the state. He lost his job at the shipyard, was arrested multiple times as punishment for this agitation.

Wałęsa during the August 1980 strike in Gdańsk. Credit: Giedymin Jabłoński/CC BY-SA 3.0 PL via Wikimedia Commons

But he got results. Further mass-protests and strikes in protest against high food prices, and in favour of gaining greater civil liberties erupted in  August 1980. The strike in Gdansk was ignited by the firing of Anna Walentynowicz, a crane operator who had been involved in organising earlier protests. The striking workers successfully pressured the shipyard’s management into meeting their demands over pay and labour rights. The resulting Gdańsk Agreement, signed by the strikers and communist authorities, permitted the formation of trade unions which were unaffiliated with the state. Solidarity was founded as the country’s first free trade union on September 22nd.

“Many of the people at the top of the Communist pyramid studied in the West,” Wałęsa explains. “They were slightly sceptical and they weren’t so much trying to defend Communism as they were trying to defend their positions of power. So it was possible to do a deal.”

The Gdansk agreement didn’t stop the government from imposing martial law in December 1981 to counter political opposition and Solidarity, which represented a third of the working population. Wałęsa was arrested, as were 6000 other Solidarity activists, and imprisoned for almost a year. Solidarity moved underground, albeit with the backing of the CIA who provided funding, organisational advice, and helped them spread their message through clandestine newspapers. Wałęsa tells me that Solidarity’s resistance through his time is thanks to the organisation’s determination and reasonableness: “Communism couldn’t combat that.”

After his release, Wałęsa was awarded the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize for “non-violent struggle for free trade unions and human rights in Poland.” He didn’t collect the award in-person in Oslo, fearing that he would not be allowed to re-enter Poland. His wife Danuta accepted the award on his behalf.

Despite the international acclaim Wałęsa has received for his undoubtedly enormous contribution to the course of history, he has been facing accusations that he had acted as a paid informant of the secret police in the 1970s. Wałęsa has denied these accusations, claiming that they are politically motivated. A special court cleared him of charges of collaboration in 2000. The controversy reared its head again in 2016, when documents which appeared to show his involvement were found by the Institute of National Remembrance, an organisation dedicated to identifying and archiving crimes committed under the Soviet and Polish Communist regimes. Again, Wałęsa defended himself, saying that the documents were forged to discredit him. Historians have acknowledged that the secret police used to fabricate documents to compromise members of the opposition.

What made Solidarity different from previous movements? The movement’s size and breadth meant that it encompassed otherwise polarised facets of Polish society: the anti-communist left and political right wings, liberals and nationalists, and the intelligentsia and workers, as well as atheists and believers. Wałęsa tells me that the hatred of communism acted as a common denominator between these disparate groups. “Through a system of trial and error, we realised if we all came together in solidarity we could achieve success. We realised we had to be a monolith to stand against communism.”

“When the Soviet Union collapsed, we lost that common denominator. In modern times, we no longer have that to unify different people.”

Lech Wałęsa on a 1991 visit as President to the headquarter in Brussels, Belgium. Credit: NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr.com

Wałęsa’s answers become longer as our conversation turns to the present political situation in Poland. His presidency saw Poland transition towards a free-market economy under the Balcerowicz Plan. He tells me he sees the present political order as going through a transition of its own – a transition from an age where nation states define the world, to an age of continents and globalisation which he believed is yet to solidify. He calls this in-between state the “Epoch of the Word and Discussion”.

What kind of discussions are taking place in this epoch? Wałęsa breaks the answer down into three questions. What should the coming epoch be based on? He identifies a conflict between people who want to build a society on freedoms, and those who say that we can only start talking about rights once the core values of a society have been laid out.

What should the economic system be? “Certainly not communism,” he makes clear. “Not because it’s good or bad, but because it’s never worked anywhere.” But equally, the current form of capitalism won’t do. “It worked for the old system of states and countries. But it led to a rat race of nations, which led to mass unemployment. Many people just couldn’t keep up with the pace.”

His third question is one I knew I wanted to explore the moment our interview was confirmed: How do we deal with the demagoguery of populist politicians? “Populists and presidents give the same diagnosis, that everything needs to be changed. It’s just that the populists’ solutions to the problem are wrong.”

Wałęsa is a fierce critic of the current Polish government, who he has accused of attacking the rule of law and democracy. In 2020, the NGO Freedom House downgraded its assessment of Polish democracy as ‘consolidated’ to ‘semi-consolidated’. In the five years since the Law and Justice Party (PiS) came to power in 2015, they have used their control over the formerly independent body responsible for appointing judges to promote party loyalists to the newly created Disciplinary Chamber. Polish judges and international observers feared that the chamber would put pressure on the judiciary to issue rulings which fall in line with the government’s wishes.

“The problem is that we’re only learning democracy, we’ve never had it before,” he says. 

He sees the situation as so dire that he has claimed a ‘dictatorship’ is being created in Poland. “In Poland, we are less than 50% of a practical democracy,” he says, according to the ‘Wałęsa Model of Practical Democracy’, which he uses to break the system down into three practical areas. Poland scores full marks for its constitution and legal system, but voter turnout in elections is low, and Wałęsa doesn’t think many people are willing to stand up for change.

Poland’s political troubles extend beyond the country’s borders and into Europe. Along with Hungary and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party, the PiS frequently clashes with Brussels over the bloc’s promotion of progressive values and attempts to encourage the rule of law. Wałęsa has said that Poland should be thrown out of the EU over the PiS’s advances on the judiciary. But he also opposes ‘Polexit’, and speaks at Pro-European demonstrations alongside Donald Tusk, the former President of the European Council, who was an active member of Solidarity’s Youth Committee.

Wałęsa with Donald Tusk at the 2009 European People’s Party Conference in Warsaw. Credit: European People’s Party/CC BY 2.0 via flickr.com

“I’ve been saying this for twenty years: every vehicle must have a driver. The fight against Communism was a Polish matter which involved Polish people. Once that battle was won, we came to the challenge of trying to rebuild Europe. I passed this challenge on to the Germans.

“I would like it if Poland was the driver. But Poland doesn’t have the resources or influence. Germany does. Together with France and Italy, they have the ability to enact changes and find two solutions for each problem.”

But implementing solutions in the EU requires consensus between member states. Poland and Hungary recently vetoed the bloc’s COVID-19 recovery plan and €1.8 trillion seven-year budget because of plans to link a member state’s access to funds to their adherence to the rule of law.

“If we can’t do it with Poland and Hungary in the camp, let them destroy the European Union,” he says bluntly. “And five minutes later, we’ll propose a new one.” In order to access the rights and opportunities presented by this new union, prospective members would have to agree to a fresh series of obligations. “We have to establish these rights and obligations in such a way that this nonsense we see couldn’t possibly happen.”

Wałęsa now travels the world promoting Poland’s non-violent transition to democracy, speaking about human rights and the challenges and opportunities posed by the Epoch of Discussion he told me about. He has a Wikipedia page dedicated to the many awards, state decorations, and honorary degrees from across the world. Wałęsa never studied beyond his vocational training as an electrician, which he tells me he regrets. “If I’d had a university education, I would have ten Nobel Prizes, not just one!”

In the model of many US Presidents, Wałęsa founded a eponymous institute to preserve the memory of the Solidarity movement and its place in history, and to educate future generations. I end by asking him what message he would give if he was speaking to an audience of students at Oxford.

“My generation opened up opportunities for your generation. The world is yours. My generation has broken down a lot of barriers. Now you have to make the best of it, without these barriers and borders. It’s up to you to decide whether my generation has succeeded or not. Because if you fail, you’ll blame us.

“Previous generations were scarred by wars and revolutions. Nobody trusted anyone. It’s up to you to convince people and open up your minds to other people. Because right now, the populists have taken over the initiative and everyone is sitting around and watching.”

With thanks to Anthony Goltz, Roman Picheta and Aleksandra Słowik.

Image Credit: The Lech Wałęsa Institute

Christ Church Board of Governors warned of jail time

Isaac Ettinghausen
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Christ Church Board of Governors warned of jail time

The Charity Commission has warned Christ Church’s board of governors that they could face jail time if they mislead inquiries into an ongoing dispute with the dean. 

The Very Rev Martyn Percy, dean since MT14, is at the centre of the conflict; since a 2018 dispute over his pay, the college’s governing body of 65 dons has been attempting to remove him. Following his exoneration at a 2019 internal tribunal, Percy has now been suspended pending a second tribunal over claims that he stroked a woman’s hair in the college’s cathedral a year ago.

Both the police and the Church of England have dismissed the sexual assualt case, and in December the college announced that it was setting up a medical board to determine whether he was mentally fit to continue as dean. 

The dispute shows few signs it is reaching a conclusion; last July, mediator Bill Marsh, who has resolved disputes in the Middle East and Ireland, admitted defeat in an attempt to reconcile the two sides. The college’s legal spending has run into the millions – even without the reimbursement of the dean’s own legal fees, a measure which the Charity Commission has recommended.

The Commission, which regulates educational institutions with charitable status such as Oxford’s colleges, has become increasingly concerned over the legal fees incurred over the course of the controversy. In a letter to Christ Church’s board of governors, the Commission’s director of regulatory services Helen Earner warned the body that it was a criminal offence to knowingly provide false or misleading information or to suppress, conceal or destroy documents.

The Times reported that “several dons are understood to be worried about their legal position and question whether they have been kept fully informed.”

Earner also complained that the minutes of meetings had been unnecessarily redacted, and that the body had failed to provide sufficient documentation on the financial impact of the feud, demanding a breakdown on the college’s annual spending including fees paid to PR firms.

Late last month, attempts by the University’s chancellor were met by hostility on the part of the board of governors. Lord Patten of Barnes, the last governor of Hong Kong and Oxford’s chancellor since 2003, co-wrote a letter to the governing body on 20th December asking to be invited to its next meeting to discuss the dispute.

In the letter Patten, along with vice-chancellor Professor Louise Richardson, expressed concerns over the conflict, worrying that it was having a ‘deleterious’ effect on the university’s image.

Professors Dirk Aarts, Kevin McGerty, and Sarah Foot, the governing body’s leaders known as the Censors, replied two days later, saying that they would meet with Patten and Richardson with positive updates. This was following a fractious internal email correspondence, between the censors and Martin Townsend, the former editor of OK! Magazine and the Sunday Express, who is offering PR advice as part of the Pagefield PR agency.

Sarah Foot, the censor representing the cathedral, wrote that “while we have to say we are happy to meet [Patten and Richardson], I am worried how The Times will spin this as further evidence that college isn’t properly governed and outside authorities are circling with intent”.

Aarts, the senior censor and a chemistry professor, wrote that “it is none of their business… at the meeting we can explain that we are dealing with an investigation of sexual harassment (takes five mins) and they may then make suggestions. Are they really going to suggest we don’t investigate?”

Townsend warned of the PR risks of an open conflict with Patten, describing him as “a still-popular figure who is well known to far more of the general public than Martyn Percy”. He continued that “It is to our advantage there is still only limited public interest in this dispute” and that “picking a fight with Chris Patten would change that.” 

Junior censor McGerty suggested that a dispute may “severely” damage the reputations of Patten and Richardson, the latter of whom is leaving Oxford next January to become president of the Carnegie Corporation, an educational philanthropic fund.

McGerty continued: “Were Richardson visibly to be on the wrong side of how sexual harassment was portrayed in the press, I would not be surprised if her position at Carnegie evaporated and although you [Townsend] say that Patten is well thought of, none of our undergraduates were born when he was governor of Hong Kong, none of them remember a time when he was an ‘acceptable Tory’ in the New Labour era, so to them he is a dinasour [sic] who has been chancellor of the university for essentially all their lives. Appearing on the wrong side of how sexual harassment should be handled would be pretty humiliating for them.”

The Office of the Vice Chancellor declined to comment when approached by Cherwell.

Rev Jonathan Aitken, an ally of Percy and former government minister, told Cherwell: “I welcome the belated involvement of the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor.  At present it looks as though they are going to be blocked and snubbed by the Censors…But if they are allowed to address the entire 65 strong Governing Body and show bold leadership then the engagement of the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor could be a game changer.”

Martyn Percy, the Censors, Martin Townsend, and the Chancellor were approached for comment.

Oli Hall’s Oxford United updates: Week 0

Oliver Hall
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Oli Hall’s Oxford United updates: Week 0

As we move into a new term here at Cherwell, we are excited to bring you more coverage than ever of Oxford United.  We will have updates from the club every week as well as a series of feature-length interviews with players and staff, focussing on the behind the scenes running of the League One club.

As it stands, the men’s team sit fifth in League One, firmly inside the play-off places and just six points off the top two.  They fell to a disappointing first away defeat in three months with a 2-0 loss at Lincoln City last time out after goals either side of halftime from Anthony Scully and Morgan Whittaker.  Wycombe Wanderers are next up on Saturday 15th and U’s fans will be hoping for a big performance with a win set to lift them above The Blues and into third in the table.  Matty Taylor has been the star man so far this season, with his ten league goals so far averaging out to one every two games.

Oxford United WFC, the club’s women’s team, are currently sitting pretty in second in the FA WPL South, the third tier of the women’s game.  They are trailing pace-setters Ipswich Town by five points but off the back of five consecutive league wins, they will be confident that they can kick on and fight for the league.  The winners of the division will enter a play-off to enter the FA Women’s Championship.

So, a big week awaits both the men’s and women’s teams as they continue their bids for historic promotions.

Match Report: Lincoln City 2-0 Oxford United

Oxford United fell to a first away defeat in League One since September at the LNER Stadium.  Goals from Anthony Scully and Morgan Whittaker saw Lincoln City to what was ultimately a comfortable victory for the side that had started the day in the relegation places.

The U’s started the game in fifth and were looking to build on their points tally ahead of a crunch game against promotion rivals Wycombe Wanderers next week.  They did start well too, with Matty Taylor getting in behind the defence to force a save from Josh Griffiths in the Lincoln goal.

After that, the Imps began to take control of the game and Simon Eastwood was called into action inside 15 minutes, tipping an effort from former teammate Chris Maguire onto the post.  The pressure soon told when Lewis Fiorini played in Scully and the Imps striker duly curled in to score for his fourth goal in as many games against the visitors.

Matty Taylor thought he had equalised for United just after half-time but saw his goal ruled out for offside.  After that, there was a brief spell of dominance for Oxford before debutant Whittaker was on hand to sweep home a scrappy second goal for Lincoln and leave the Yellows with a mountain to climb.

Things went from bad to worse for the visitors when Herbie Kane was dismissed for a challenge on Fiorini in the 77th minute.

There were no more clear-cut chances for either side and the game finished 2-0.  Wycombe are next up for Oxford at Adams Park before a return home to host Sheffield Wednesday in two huge matches that might just go on to define their season as they push for a place in the Championship next year.

Image courtesy of Oxford United.

Rewriting the detective story for the modern age

Isobel Falk
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Rewriting the detective story for the modern age

CW for discussions of racism, coercive control, and sexual violence

A hero, vested with the authority of the law, doggedly pursues every lead that comes their way. With methodical tenacity, they unravel a web of lies to uncover the moral transgression at the centre of the plot. Truth is established, the guilty are punished, and order is restored. Details vary, but a basic structure persists: the detective drama formula has long been a mainstay of television. The BBC’s new drama, The Girl Before, reformulates this basic structure, but with a new intent: it attempts to speak into being a feminist crime story. With two Black women as its heroines, the drama takes the conventions of the detective drama in new directions.

The show unfolds in two parallel narrative timelines, following two women living at different times in the same, ultra-modernist smart home. Both women, Emma and Jane, have recently suffered trauma, and both enter into identical relationships with the house’s architect, the enigmatic and controlling Edward Monkford. As it transpires that Emma died in the house, it is up to Jane to unravel the events that led up to her death, discover whether Edward was implicated, and avoid the same fate herself. While at times the script can be overwrought, throwing in twists and turns seemingly for their own sake, the show’s close psychological study of its characters creates a real sense of menace that cuts through its melodramatic tendencies.

In recent years, the founding assumptions of the detective show format have found themselves on shaky ground. After the reckoning of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, The automatic faith that the mainstream British public once held in the institution of policing has been undermined – a faith which many of these shows rely upon to function as drama. It can no longer be assumed that the hero’s uniform is a signifier of their virtue. The archetype of the noble, neutral police officer committed to the pursuit of truth has been undermined by mainstream recognition of police brutality and institutional racism. As such, the form of the detective drama has been confronted with accusations of being little more than propaganda, manufacturing consent for the violent policing of marginalised communities. The Girl Before places limited trust in the police: while the officers are not outright malicious, it is clear they have their own agenda. Career progression is prioritised above the wellbeing of victims, and truth is sidelined in favour of a convenient conviction.

Instead, it is the heroine Jane, a lawyer reeling from a recent miscarriage, who must discern the events leading up to the crime. Jane lacks the institutional power and detached retrospective viewpoint of a conventional detective, investigating a crime after it has happened. She is vulnerable, implicated, living in the same house as the victim, and in an eerily identical relationship with the same man. She is compelled not only to establish truth, but to save herself. The drama does not wholeheartedly attempt to democratise the figure of the detective: as a lawyer Jane still has some legal authority in her sleuthing capacity, which gains her access to information and witnesses that another woman might not be granted. It is the successful legal professional, not the floundering marketing assistant Emma, who is granted authority to direct the untangling of the narrative’s web. But nonetheless, The Girl Before is significant in its transformation of the victim into the detective. Jane does not passively suffer for the audience’s gratification, but is granted the capability to save herself and find the truth about Emma’s death. 

But the nature of truth, and the issue of its public demonstrability in the eyes of the jury and the audience, is also a problem for The Girl Before. The crime at the centre of the show – the death of Emma – occurs within a private home, in the context of escalating tensions in her relationships. The show grapples with the implications of coercive control, criminalised in 2015, and how this challenges our conceptions of crime and justice. Coercive control laws criminalise abusive behaviour in relationships beyond physical violence. Verbal and emotional abuse, isolating or surveilling a partner, and controlling a partner’s finances can all become criminal acts under this legislation. Traditionally, crime is conceptualised as a public problem: criminals are dangers to society, and need to be punished by the law. But the introduction of coercive control as a crime problematises this by turning our most intimate relationships into potential crime scenes. The private spaces of the home, often considered personal and outside the scrutiny of the law, are suddenly brought into sharp, critical focus.

The criminalisation of coercive control has doubtless given protection to countless survivors of domestic abuse. But The Girl Before, with its lingering external shots through the glass walls of the heroines’ home, seems to implicitly ask what the cost might be of the entry of the justice system into women’s private lives. The sense of menace in the show is heightened by the omnipresent surveillance technology in their home, rigged as it is with cameras, microphones, and a digital assistant in every room, and sensors collecting data from the kitchen to the shower. But we, as viewers, also become an intrusive gaze in the women’s private spaces. Invested as the audience is in the revelation of the crime, and thus implicitly aligned with the sleuth, we too surveil the heroines as they inhabit their private spaces, in order to understand their fate, to form their lives into a comprehensible, familiar narrative of victimisation and violence. Our own gaze, conditioned by the formula of the detective show to expect bloodshed and then punishment, to critically and intrusively survey a woman’s life, is complicit in the violence visited upon Emma.

At the conclusion of The Girl Before, there are not one but three guilty men. Emma’s boss and rapist is arrested, her controlling ex-boyfriend Si is accidentally killed in an altercation with Jane, and Edward goes to therapy in an attempt to confront his controlling compulsions in his personal relationships. The show does not entirely divest from the law as a means to impart justice, as the arrest shows, but it does broaden its scope to consider other responses to crime. The death of Si is perversely satisfying, but its accidental nature sidesteps the problem of disciplinary violence. The show’s restorative justice approach to Edward’s transgressions was the most interesting to me, in how it navigates problems of authority. He turns to therapy to work out the emotional problems that lead to his controlling behaviour, and the show suggests he might be rehabilitated. But the therapist herself is hardly a neutral party: she was Emma’s therapist, and subsequently helped Jane’s investigation by revealing tantalising tidbits of information that her duty of confidentiality allowed. The therapist is thus not entirely separate from the process of sleuthing that leads to punitive justice. Her implication in the show’s spectacle of disciplinary investigation means that restorative justice never becomes separate from the punitive work of the legal system. Edward’s therapy also functions as confession: he submits to the therapist’s authority in order to receive punishment and absolution.

The Girl Before is compelling, if at times it stretched my capacity to suspend disbelief. It is speculative and thoughtful in its attempts to reform the genre of the detective thriller, but it never becomes radical, remaining invested in conventional notions of authority, revelation, and punishment. Our detective is not a police officer, but is still a legal professional, and deploys her class-based privileges to unravel the truth about Emma. It is the police who punish Emma’s attacker. And the possibility of restorative justice is never completely uncoupled from the public desire for punishment. This feminist crime story is imaginative, but never truly subverts the problematic notions of truth and justice that pervades its genre.

Image Credit: Wang Sum Luk

Ground-breaking turtle tracker developed at Oxford

Daniel Moloney
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Ground-breaking turtle tracker developed at Oxford

Two Oxford PhD students have developed SnapperGPS, a low cost, low power wildlife tracking system the size of a pound coin that has revealed unexpectedly diverse behaviour among turtles.

 As part of their research project, Amanda Matthes and Jonas Beuchert, supervised by Professor Alex Rogers, built a bare-bones receiver for less than $30. The receiver can run for more than ten years on a single coin cell. This is in contrast to existing devices, which are often expensive and come with heavy batteries for long-term deployments. One tag can easily cost more than $1000, which prohibits the study of many animals.

The core aims of SnapperGPS, to make the hardware as simple and energy efficient as possible, were achieved by doing little signal acquisition and processing on the device itself. By creating a web service that processes the signals in the cloud, the physical tag required far less electronic components, allowing it to be made lighter, smaller and cheaper. This concept of processing signals in the cloud is known as snapshot GNSS and has the advantage of requiring only a few milliseconds of signal to locate the receiver. This is key for accurate tracking, as navigation satellite signals cannot travel through water. However, sea turtles regularly come to the surface to breathe. These short windows of opportunity may not always be enough for traditional GPS methods to resolve the position of the receiver. But a snapshot method only requires a few milliseconds of signal which makes them ideal for such marine applications.

The effectiveness of this cheaper, smaller, and low-power tracking solution was tested when SnapperGPS was deployed on nesting loggerhead sea turtles on the island of Maio in Cape Verde. Loggerhead sea turtles spend most of their life in the ocean, but every two to three years mature females come to a beach to nest. They lay several clutches of eggs separated by roughly two weeks, which makes it possible to recover the hardware and any data it captured.

For this initial deployment, the SnapperGPS tags were placed into custom-made enclosures that were tested to be waterproof to at least 100 metres. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tags were deployed late in the nesting season, which negatively affected the recovery rate as many turtles were already laying their last nest when they were tagged.

In total twenty tags were deployed and nine recovered. Some experienced unexpected technical failures but the tags that survived were able to capture several location tracks that showed previously unknown behaviour among turtles.

 The collection of wildlife location tracking data such as this is vital, as it can inform conservation policy decisions that help protect habitats and prevent human-wildlife conflicts. This data provides novel insights into the loggerhead sea turtle population on Maio, which will help to improve anti-poaching measures, as well as identifying important marine habitats that may need special protection. In future however, the unique properties of this tracker could allow for the detailed study of many species, particularly those which are key to ecosystems but are under researched due to a lack of funds, allowing for a more complex understanding of the natural world and more effective methods to protect it.

The joys of online cooking

Katerina Lygaki
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The joys of online cooking

Learning how to cook has been a great source of pride for me. But becoming a chef whose lentil ragu brings tears to people’s eyes is not always an easy journey. Let me let you in on some of the secrets of  how I learned from the best – without even stepping foot into a kitchen. 

Of course, primarily, it is my raw talent. No recipe is needed when I’m in the kitchen, as I move serenely amongst the pots and pans, intuitively stirring and tasting. However, what also guides my actions is a tiny, talented chef from the most unlikely of backgrounds. Some may call him ratty, others may call him a health hazard, but I like to call him little chef. Okay… I may be describing the plot of Ratatouille right now. Fine, you got me. But I’m not joking about my raw talent and allure in the kitchen. Fine, again… I just might be exaggerating a little.  

Cooking used to be a generational experience, with recipes and techniques being passed down from your grandma: the one who pinches your cheeks every time that you visit her. I have countless memories in the kitchen with my own cheek-pinching grandma, making spanakopitas and baklavas. I’ll always cherish these experiences: they taught me how to conduct myself in the kitchen and how to care for the people that I love through food.

However, my real cooking skills stem from somewhere else. As I got older, and my cheeks became less pinchable, I had to make my own way in the modern culinary world. And that is where the magic of YouTube comes into the picture. I cannot count the hours that I’ve spent watching cooking videos on this platform: anything from deep-fried oreos to beef wellingtons.

I started dipping my toes into the online culinary world through channels like ‘Binging with Babish’ and ‘Tasty’. Whilst the former is more traditional, with the chef talking his viewers through the recipes as he cooks, the latter is more experimental, with two-minute videos that cut out the middleman and instead opt for an overhead shot that emphasises the chef’s worktop. Both channels create food that is inspired by pop culture: in Babish’s case by recreating foods from mainstream TV shows, and in Tasty’s by creating outlandish concoctions that are inspired by current trends. Such channels will forever hold a special place in my heart, as they piqued my cooking interests and have consumed a considerable portion of my life.

For all the lovers of pop culture and food, who also want something a bit more refined than Tasty’s TikTok-long videos, I’d strongly recommend you watch ‘About to Eat’. Also created by Buzzfeed, this contains more researched and thoughtful videos that delve into the culinary world with a little more sophistication than Tasty’s Pizza Toastie.

After having submerged myself in the pop culinary world, I decided to explore a bit further. I watched short documentaries on Michelin-Star chefs and some of Julia Child’s TV episodes on YouTube, but these endeavors felt somewhat impersonal. I was looking for quality chefs to guide me through my culinary life. Eventually, after much searching and scrolling, I found just that: channels like ‘Bon Appetit’, ‘Food 52’ and ‘Delish’. These all take the idea of pop foods but approach it through the expertise of professional chefs. Their content is a treat: fun to watch, fun to experience, and even more fun to replicate. What I really take from them is the meaning behind food; something that I glimpsed during my time with my cheek-pinching grandma. The chefs in these channels make sophisticated recipes accessible to all. Three chefs which epitomise this concept for me, and who now have their own YouTube channels, are Carla Lalli Music, Claire Saffitz and Alison Roman. 

I love cooking. It makes me happy, and like I said before, it brings tears to anyone who is lucky enough to eat my food. And I only have one all-powerful extrinsic force to thank for that. Thank you, YouTube, for making quality food content available to all, and for igniting my passion for cookery. 

Haute Kosher: To life, l’chaim

Naomi Reiter
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0
Haute Kosher: To life, l’chaim

In the rabbi’s garden, bensching to mark the end of a meal. But aware you’re in a garden, and other people can hear. You’re chanting in Hebrew, and a swastika was found graffitied on a door in the neighbourhood last week. 

Yad Vashem. You experience fear, people on the street shouting for your destruction. Shouting that 6 million wasn’t enough. Tiki torches, and push the Jews into the sea. You check the database, over 1000 dead bearing your last name. Yitzak, Moishe, Mordechai, Arieh, Chanah, Miriam, Rivkah, Naomi. Those names again and again and again. 

Hatikvah. The sign of Bergen Belsen covered in stones. That’s how we remember. The Jewish people still live. But at what cost? Never Again, but only for us, regardless of what it does to others. “You give an inch and they will take 6 million”. “They want to do it to us again; they are terrorists, so we must defend ourselves” all these and more said on a loop. But rockets against missiles? Stones against teargas? At what point do we admit we’re the powerful party here. But Am Yisrael Chai, and that is all. 

Hide your Magen David. A rabbi is stabbed; a Jew on a bus told he’ll have his throat slit for Palestine; convoys of cars call for Jewish women to be raped. Hide your Magen David, don’t let them find you. But you can’t hide, they always find us. But don’t hide, we must mark ourselves and be proud that we are alive. We cannot sit idly and wait for them to put stars on us. 

It’s not safe to be a Jew. Don’t reveal your dad’s name, don’t carelessly talk about your weekly Shabbat dinners or that fun joke someone told at the Jewish society meet up. And yet, the frum are still here. They are alive; they have their yeshivas and kosher bakeries and synagogues, but Jewish schools get regular bomb threats and have maximum security. But the frum are still here, so all must be well, right?

Dear Kitty. The girl in the red coat still haunts my memories. A gift of chocolate coins and a children’s book about the Holocaust every Chanukah from my grandma. My grandma who wasn’t there, because her family got out in time. As she was being born in Brooklyn, New York, Jewish children who would’ve been her playmates in Poland were being killed with poison gas.

And one girl, only a few years older than my grandpa, with a face so similar to my own; with the same first name as my mother. Dear Kitty, she wrote in her diary, as I at 14 read and wept for this girl who was so like me. Who was bored at Shabbat dinners and had a wild imagination, and who died – alone, cold and sick in evil claws as our world burned. 

I am a similar age to Margot now. Thinking of my future beyond my home and what career I want. I watched her recently, a movie of that story every Jew has engraved into them as surely as they do the blessings over bread and wine. I cried like I never had, I knew how it ended; and yet when those words flashed upon my tiny phone screen: Anne Frank – dead – March 1945 – aged 15. Margot Frank – dead – February 1945 – aged 19. A river fell. 

To everyone else, this is an overtold tale: can’t those Jews shut up already? But to me, every face is not an annoyance; it could’ve been me. My brother; my sister; my dad; my mum; my grandparents; all the rabbis and synagogue leaders I’ve ever encountered; my friend who hates Hamantaschen; my friend who cooks kneidelach every Shabbat and stinks up her house; my friend who kvetches about everything including Judaism; it could’ve been one of my young cousins. It could’ve been everyone I have ever known, and so much more.

Shabbat shalom. Friday night dinner; the best chicken soup in the world and voices chattering forever. But what if someone blows up the shul? Impossible as we all had to pass a steady stream of security to get in. So much laughter; so much fear. And yet, we are alive. 6 million are dead and we are alive. What right have I to complain? I have to live a thousand lives – discover elements and cure cancer, I must or what right have I to be alive when they are not?

To life, l’chaim, we must continue on. The Jewish people live. And so we must be alive. To succeed and fail, to feel joy and despair, we must be alive. We must not live in fear; we must live so vibrantly that if we are taken again, we will have left our mark, so that even after our death, we will live.

Choked Up: Race and the climate justice movement

Destiny Boka-Batesa
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Choked Up: Race and the climate justice movement

‘As a child it was always the small things I would notice, an ice cream van humming in the playground, parked cars outside the school gates with their engines running, but when my sister started having asthma attacks that’s when I really started to worry, I just felt helpless and like there was nothing I could do’.

When we discuss the climate crisis, we often talk about it in hypothetical terms, using the conditional tense, “if” and “when”. However, this catastrophe has been, and will continue to be, a reality for me; the climate crisis was always on my doorstep. To make things worse, what continues to be a crippling slap in the face for me is air pollution, the silent killer. 

Growing up in multiple council estates in South London meant that I was constantly exposed to lethal levels of air pollution. To exemplify the severity of this issue, my neighbouring town, Brixton (Road), breached its annual air pollution levels in just five days, a link to nearly six thousand deaths a year. However, air pollution and the climate crisis is not solely an environmental injustice. 

To fully tackle the issue, we must recognise that the climate crisis is holistic: it is one that disproportionately affects people of colour, the poor and those of marginalised genders. Intersectionality is important here because all three identities mentioned form who I am, which adds to each layer of the hardship I am condemned to live by with my peers and loved ones around me.

This is why I co-founded Choked Up with my friends: we saw that our individual needs were being constantly brushed away in the climate movement because they were seen as too ‘complex’. In channelling our climate anxiety on a national scale, Choked Up envision the rights of black and brown lives being enshrined in clean air laws in the UK. Clean air is a necessity for human life, and this law in question would act as a much-needed update on the 1956 Clean Air Act. The law in question would cater to modern-day issues, with the first being the need to protect and uplift our most vulnerable communities, namely the ones aforementioned.

To gain respectability and awareness for our cause, we took advantage of the regional news that was cropping up the most in London last year: the Mayoral Elections. In a (successful) bid to speak out about the disproportionate effects of air pollution in our home towns, we designed road signs that read “pollution zone: breathing kills”, and other statistics highlighting how London’s highly-dense POC communities are also the ones breathing the most toxic air every single day. 

We had support from organisations like Purpose and Environmental Defense Fund to put these road signs up in Brixton, Lewisham (South London) and Whitechapel, where we were able to cater for its Bengali population by translating these road signs in Bengali, too. Concerned doctors from the organisation Medact also backed us up from this issue, and expressed their concerns in the form of a letter to all mayoral candidates, discussing the negative health impacts that air pollution has on our communities. 

All of these, together, sparked national attention, with the likes of the BBC, The Guardian and even the now-Mayor of London himself, Sadiq Khan, voicing out his admiration towards our hard work. Raising awareness as a campaign is the first step to our end goal, and the next is to take a route towards political lobbying, applying pressure to our MPs, because they represent us and it is their job to, be able to speak about our issues with the access they have to spaces like the House of Commons. Not only were we successful in raising awareness of the fact that this is happening and the fact that this is an inescapable reality, in our aim to voice our demands for the implementation of schemes that prioritised clean air – no more our needs being just pushed away. 

Recent success has paid off, as our lobbying has proved a success. Last October, we were glad to see the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone to the North and South Circular areas of London. This initiative recognises that lethal air pollution is not exclusive to central London, in the hope that people living and working in those areas will turn to more sustainable and less polluting modes of transport. Of course, we always have to be sensitive towards those who can’t afford to switch to less polluting vehicles straightaway, whether it be due to finances or convenience, but, hopefully, this expansion will encourage positive changes, enabling those living and working in our most vulnerable communities to live and breathe more safely. However, this is a small step in the long-lasting change we campaigners want to lobby for in our communities.

Additionally, being a minority within a movement that you deserve to be at the forefront of is extremely emotionally taxing. I had to break away from systems that should have supported me as I supported them and create my own with like-minded people in order to be heard. When the climate movement is often unspokenly branded as a white, middle-class movement, it is difficult to have your perspective appreciated because it is not considered as the ‘norm’, but this mindset is a travesty that manifests in injustice and is rooted in prejudice. While people of colour and the working class contribute the least to the climate crisis, we are constantly the ones having to bear the brunt of the earth’s wrath, one perpetuated by the elite, to whom have time and time again displayed levels of apathy so high it kills. 

Choked Up were presented the opportunity to attend COP26 for five days, last November, thanks to the The Advocacy Academy, a Brixton-based charity that uplifts teenagers to establish campaigns on social issues they care about. What felt amazing was just seeing the impact we campaigners have on the world already. It was enriching to connect with so many other climate activists from all over to plant the seeds for newer, working relationships. One of the most relieving feelings as an activist is knowing that you are being listened to. 

A relationship I take very dearly to heart was one by Jack Harries and his wonderful team, who offered to give us A Seat at the Table: a space to share their platform. In his documentary series, we have an intimate conversation with Jack regarding our activism, what it means to us, and why the specific issue of air pollution hit home to us, among other things, like the work we had done. All of this was made in compilation with other activists who spoke about their vocation to climate activism, all forming an excellent addition in preparation for the Climate of Conferences.

However, as mentioned earlier, clean air is an issue that affects communities at different rates. As a fresher moving to Oxford for Michaelmas term, the first thing I noticed was how clean and crisp the air was. I finally felt like I could breathe. With most of the city pedestrianised, it is refreshing to see students and the public alike cycling and walking around so much more! I could count the number of times I’ve used public transport with my fingers on my hands! 

Although a part of me felt a little frustrated by the fact that this lifestyle is not the norm across the whole of the UK, it is a starting point, and I would hope that other towns, particularly London’s impoverished areas, could follow suit. In a mock debate at the Oxford Union, I argued for the notion that ‘this house has no confidence in COP26’ and I still stand by that. Sadly, politicians and world leaders have proven me right as the outcome from this prestigious conference has brought about nothing but disappointment from the public, leaving me with more questions than answers. Will radical change happen in our lifetime, under the (bloodthirsty) hands of our world leaders? Nope. But will the common people, our grassroots organisations seek and attain the justice we deserve? Absolutely.

Campaigning while doing a degree will have its challenges, but this vocation is a true love that I have because it is a part of me that I can extend to those bigger than myself. As Lincoln College’s social backgrounds officer, I can transfer my campaigning skills into such a role, too! To end, I strongly believe in people power, because every single grand movement has started with a conversation, and Choked Up are just getting started with ours.

Image: Li-An Lim via Unsplash.

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