Windmills and Motorways

Last weekend my wife, daughter and I drove back to Glasgow from Manchester. Unusually we travelled through Cumbria and the Borders not just in daylight, but in sunshine, I can't remember when we previously travelled that road in daylight. I had expected to enjoy the rugged beauty of the hills, but what my memory had not prepared me for was the wind farms. There is something inspiring in the sight of those giant air-screws gently turning in the wind, I love to see them whether in a Rajasthani desert or on a mountain crest in Cumbria.

I know that there are many people who hate wind farms, who want to preserve the countryside unchanged; however there has never been a time when the countryside has not been changing, primarily through the action of human beings. Progress has its own beauty, but it is predicated upon the acceptance that the urge to progress, to learn, to discover, to improve is essential to the existence of humanity. If we kept – as some would have us – our wild places untouched we would have no agriculture and no settlements. Some claim that wind farms spoil the countryside, that is merely one opinion with which some of us would disagree. Some oppose road building, but would we want to spend a week travelling from London to Glasgow in a horse drawn carriage along rutted cart tracks, which in themselves represented humanity's urge to impose progress and improvement on the land. Who can say that today's resisted project won't become tomorrow's tourist attraction? Were it not for General Wade's hated roads there would never have developed the Scottish tourist industry. The monuments of our commercial infrastructure attract visitors, all the way from the Thames Barrier, across the Forth bridges up to the Skye road bridge, visitors carried on the motorways some consider scars on the landscape and upon the remnants of the magnificent rail network left to us by our Victorian forbears.

Change is inevitable and improvement is essential as long as we want to heat and light our houses, and power industry, and move food and manufactures around the world. It is easy to bemoan the pace of contemporary life, but would we willingly return to horse drawn mail coaches instead of email or candles instead of the electric light? A few perhaps, but all the time? I think not.

You may not like change, you may oppose it, but change is inevitable and life might be easier if instead of resisting you instead learnt to appreciate the beauty of progress because it is not going to be reversed any time soon.

Remembering Action Bangladesh

In 1971, in my late teens I had one of the defining experiences of my life. I was allowed to go by myself to London to stay with my cousin Barry, my first big adventure I suppose. In the middle of the two weeks at the beginning of August I attended my first ever protest march and rally. Action Bangladesh had organised a protest in support of the struggle to gain independence for Bangladesh (East Pakistan), I suppose there may have been some Bengalis working that day, but it looked to me as if the whole Bangladeshi population of Britain had converged on Trafalgar Square. We marched through the streets chanting, “Joi Bangla” and “Long live, long live, Sheikh Mujib, Sheikh Mujib”, we sang a song which went – if I remember correctly – “Bade penge dow, bade penge dow bango” and translated as, “break down the barriers and let the spirit free” (of course, it was forty years ago so I may not be accurate). In Trafalgar Square we listened to speakers calling for the bloodshed in East Pakistan to cease and for it to be given independence as Bangladesh and heard the first public playing of George Harrison’s “Bangladesh”. I had never been so excited and the next day I went –  as I remember –  to Streatham and volunteered.


The first day I was there we counted the money from the collections made along the route of the march and at the rally – several hundred pounds in coins – our hands were black. We then took the money to the bank in buckets, they were not entirely happy and suggested we might in future use money bags with which they then supplied us. I think it was the first time in my life that I felt part of something truly worthwhile, and although I was just a schoolboy I don’t remember ever feeling I was not wanted. I was a little overawed by Paul Connett and Marietta Procope who were running the organisation, they not only knew so much but they understood stuff! I was a callow schoolboy and they seemed so sophisticated but they put up with me with a good will although I am sure I had little to offer in skills and experience. I had conversations with other volunteers and, I believe, absorbed some of their passion for justice.


The person above all who made an impression upon me was Marietta Procope. She was personally committed to the cause and – as I understand it – had originally given Action Bangladesh a room from which to organise. By the time I arrived the organisation had taken over not only her life, but her house, all she had left to herself was her bed! I remember her as very slim and a prodigious consumer of cigarettes and coffee. I don’t know whether I had a crush on her, I might have done, but I do know she inspired me. That week at Action Bangladesh convinced me that ordinary people can make a difference, that there is always hope and that people are fundamentally good. I went back to school, the war ended and East Pakistan became Bangladesh. I never saw Marietta or anyone from Action Bangladesh again, but in the forty years that followed I have been involved in the Labour Party then the Communist Party, I have been a trades union official, I have campaigned against nuclear weapons, against Apartheid, against racism, I have demonstrated, canvassed, petitioned, leafleted, I have written letters and lobbied, and I continue to do so.


I was very upset when I learned of Marietta’s death after she returned from Bangladesh, having visited shortly after the war. I can’t pretend to understand how others think, but I have known the pits of depression and considered killing myself and I regret that anyone should suffer. I like to think of her death as one last protest against mans inhumanity to man. I was pleased to see that she is among the 124 foreigners being honoured by Bangladesh for their contribution to the War of Liberation; for my part I would like to think that the campaigning and political activity I have undertaken is a small, but not inappropriate, tribute to the memory of the woman who inspired me to action - Marietta Procope