The camp has been a staple of the Resurgence calendar and has given readers and writers the opportunity to gather at the beautiful Green & Away outdoor venue in Worcestershire. This year’s camp promises to be as exciting as ever, with the usual array of stimulating speakers, delectable organic food, enchanting music, woodland walks and local ales and ciders. 

The camp is hosted by Resurgence’s Satish Kumar and editor Greg Neale and lasts three days from Thursday July 30 to August 2 at Green & Away in Bransford, Worcester, a beautiful organic farm on the River Teme.

The camp was first held in 1998 and has been an annual fixture ever since. Usually attended by up to 100 people, it’s big enough to mean a wide range of activities, and small enough to meet most of the attendees and speakers and have in depth discussions over a drink or cake.

Activists, poets, performers and editors converge
This year’s camp will feature Paul Mobbs, environmental investigator and campaigner: Ecological Futures; Julian Rose, author and environmental activist; Matt Harvey, author and poet; Joe Hoare, laughter coach: awakening the laughing Buddha; Satish Kumar, Editor-in-Chief, Resurgence & Ecologist; Nicola Peel, Eyes of Gaia and Alex Nunn, Action for Happiness.

There will also be a range of workshops including: Qi Kong – Dong Sticks (bamboo stick exercises) with June Mitchell; Harmony Singing around the fire with Janne Tooby and Toni Gilligan; and Indian Raga and embodied voicework with Will Tooby.

The thinking behind the camp has always been to allow readers and writers to gather in the outdoors – giving practical reality to the concept of living close to nature for a few days. But the essence of the Green & Away site is its comfort: being close to nature doesn’t mean sackcloth and ashes. The camp has been the only occasion in which Resurgence members and friends can come together in the outdoors over a weekend, sip cool drinks, eat organic food and be stimulated by imaginative ideas.

Europe’s only tented conference centre celebrates 25 years
The Green & Away venue is also celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It is still Europe’s only tented venue open for all types of organisations to use for conferences, meetings, staff training, member events, training and weddings. For the first time, Green & Away is also open as an eco campsite through the summer for families and individuals to camp and enjoy the beautiful surrounding Worcestershire and Herefordshire countryside.

The Resurgence camp will also feature music by Carolyn Hillyer and Nigel Shaw and Sika; and performances by Philip Ralph The One Eyed Man; and Indian Dance by Miti Desai.

It will be the last camp because next year Resurgence celebrates its 50th anniversary with a major three day event in Oxford – more details will be announced soon.

In the meantime, if you’d like to book one of the remaining spaces at this year’s Resurgence camp go to the Resurgence website.

Peter Lang is chair of the trustees of Green and Away and events manager for Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. He is a freelance environmental consultant and works with companies and organisations to reduce their environmental impact.

At the end of last month the Veterans Appeals Tribunal Decision on the Case Jean Mahoney vs. Australian Repatriation Commission was published.

The result was a win for the appellant, setting aside of the earlier Australian government decision not to grant a pension to the widow of a veteran who worked among the ruins of Hiroshima and later died from metastatic colon cancer.

I was the expert witness in this case and persuaded the Australian Tribunal (in an expert report and with oral cross examination by telephone, Brisbane to Riga) that the radiation risk model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) was not applicable to the kind of internal exposure to radioactive particles which her late husband, George Mahoney will have received.

I was bought into this case by Dr David Douglas who had been also retained as an expert by the widow, and with whom I have worked on another successful appeal in the past. Dr Douglas also gave evidence, and largely supported the arguments relating to internal exposures.

The particular argument I advanced is an extremely important one in internal radiological protection, one at the core of the arguments of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), and it was opposed by an expert from the Australian National Radiological Protection Board (ARPANSA) who argued the model of the ICRP.

A trial of two risk models

So this case was, in effect, a trial of the two risk models, that of the ECRR and that of the ICRP. It was decided by the judgement in favour of the ECRR.

The appellant’s late husband, George Mahoney, was stationed in Japan between 5th March 1946 and 23rd April 1955 as a member of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces (BCOF). He died on 7th July 1990 from metastatic colon cancer.

Mrs Mahoney applied for (and was refused) a pension on the grounds that the death was caused by her husband’s exposure to residual radiation at Hiroshima, where he worked. The original refusal basis was (like all the British Test Veteran refusals) that his dose was too low to cause cancer.

This statement was based on the ICRP radiation risk model which holds that a ‘dose’ to the organ concerned of upwards of 1000mSv is necessary to cause a 50% increased risk of colon cancer. The ICRP analysis is based on the cancer yield of the External Acute gamma radiation ‘dose’ to individuals in the famous ‘Life Span Study’ the LSS.

So (if the LSS is a true reflection of the cancer yield) the whole colon, every cell in the colon, and every cell in the body of the exposed individual will have had to receive 1,000mSv for the person the develop colon cancer.

But the problem with this approach is that cancer does not start in the ‘whole organ’. It starts in one cell, or perhaps in a small group of cells, so the dose necessary to cause the genetic damage leading to cancer has only to be large enough in one small part of the colon.

Such a dose could be easily delivered from a Uranium particle for example, inhaled and ingested from the contaminated dust in the ruins of Hiroshima. We know that there were such particles because my colleague (and ECRR scientist) Prof. Shoji Sawada measured anomalous Uranium residues from the famous ‘black rain’ in Hiroshima in 1983. This is the key point.

The approach of the Australian Commission in deciding these issues is to see if they fit within a ‘statement of principles’ (SoP). Clause 6 of the relevant SoP states that for the Pension to be awarded for malignant colon cancer:

[the applicant must have] received a cumulative equivalent dose of at least 100mSv of ionising radiation to the colorectum at least five years before the clinical onset of malignant neoplasm …

Cumulative equivalent dose is defined in Clause (9) of the SoP to mean: “The total dose of ionising radiation received by the particular organ or tissue … “.

Hold it there: ‘or tissue’

The case pivoted on these two words, “or tissue”. Of course, ECRR would be happy if this interpretation were applied, it is the key to the entire risk model issue. And the Tribunal seized on this and used it as its basis for finding for the appellant.

It agreed that the veteran could have inhaled or ingested radioactive particles from the dust in the rubble of the destroyed city and that these could have lodged in the colonic surface tissue. They refer to my oral evidence:

Dr Busby: “It’s the dose to the single cell where the tumour develops that’s important … so we are talking about tissue, we are not talking about whole organ … and of course the dose to that from a uranium particle that’s been trapped in the colonic epithelium, because it’s only the epithelium that we should be concerned about, this is on the surface of the inside of the colon, those are the cells that replicate and those are the ones that develop cancer.

“The cancer never develops on other parts of the colon, from the muscular part of the colon or the outer part of the colon. You rarely get cancers there, almost never.”

The Tribunal: “The applicant is right. The wording of factor 6(1) does not require that the whole of the colorectum be exposed to the requisite level of radiation.

“Nor does it suggest on its face that exposure of parts of the organ – especially those parts of the organ that are vulnerable to ionising radiation – is only problematic if the exposure is averaged across the whole organ, including parts that were not exposed and which might not be vulnerable to the effects of ionising radiation) and the average level exceeds the requisite level … “

And to make no mistake:

“As Dr Busby pointed out in his evidence, the risk of cancer only arises when certain cells within the colorectum are exposed to ionising radiation.

“It would be odd if the Repatriation Medical Authority intended that radiation be assessed across the whole organ including parts of the organ that were known not to be vulnerable to the development of cancer as a result of radiation exposure when vulnerable but localised areas might have been exposed to an excessive dose.”

Also on trial – Hiroshima’s ‘black rain’

The Tribunal also accepted that Hiroshima was contaminated by the ‘black rain’: “Dr Busby produced a 1983 study which showed that areas to the north-west of the hypocentre of the blast experienced ‘black rain’ shortly after the bomb was detonated.

“Black rain is a phenomenon that occurs following an atomic blast when large amounts of material are taken up into the atmosphere. The material falls to earth in the course of a downpour which inevitably follows the blast. Dr Busby said that the ‘black rain’ contained radioactive materials including nanoparticles of enriched uranium.”

The Defence (ARPANSA) argument based on ICRP was discounted, the ICRP risk model was set aside for internal exposures of this sort, and the case was won by the widow.

This is the second Uranium particle colon cancer veteran case in which I have given evidence and which has been won; the earlier one was the Stewart Dyson Coroner jury case in 2009 where I mobilised all the same arguments and persuaded the jury that the cancer that killed Dyson, a Lance Corporal with the Royal Pioneer Corps, was caused by exposure to Uranium particles in Iraq.

Interestingly, the Secretary of State for Defence (SSD) who had been informed of this decision under Rule 43 of the Coroner Act wrote back to the West Midlands coroner Robin Balmain and disputed the decision. But, Mr Balmain wrote back:

“It is not a debate, the jury found what it found and I am bound by Rule 43 to communicate this to you. Later, when Dysons’s widow went to use the coroner inquest jury decision to claim a pension, it was refused by the SSD.”

I also gave evidence in 2012 in Los Angeles on a case against Boeing involving colon cancer in a woman, Debra Dawson, who developed colon cancer following exposure to uranium particles near the Santa Susana nuclear site (as did her husband).

For some reason the case was unexpectedly abandoned by the attorney that had commissioned me. These are big dogs. Maybe they made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

But for UK bomb test veterans, it’s another story

There is a most interesting aspect to all this. And that is the difference between this Australian case and the treatment meted out to me in the UK Courts in relation to my expert evidence before the British nuclear test veterans Ionising Radiation Pensions appeals.

Here, in the Upper Tier appeal, the SSD attacked me on the basis that
(a) I was not an expert and
(b) even if I were, the fact that I am an activist (writing articles like this one, making videos) rules me out since that makes me ‘biased’ under English law.

I was in the witness box in the Royal Courts of Justice in June 2014 before Sir William Charles (the judge) for three days continuously being hammered by the SSD Queens Counsel.

My evidence before the Pensions Appeals Tribunals had been sidelined by the attorneys for the veterans (something I have earlier written about in The Ecologist and elsewhere). The judge was convinced and made a Direction that I could not be an expert in these issues in a British Tribunal.

By the way, this particular judge has been seriously criticised for bad judgment, for example in a thundering Guardian op-ed by Joshue Rozenberg. It turned out that he did not have the legal right to recommend any such thing, and the Direction is currently subject of a Judicial Review application.

Meanwhile, the successful appeal against the original decision on the veterans has been directed to a new hearing presided over by a High Court Judge, HH Judge McKenna, a woman, and head of the Upper Tier Tribunal. Busby is now the Representative (i.e. the attorney).

We all quake before the Majesty of the Law

I don’t think that this situation has ever arisen in the history of English Law. Here you have an expert who can persuade courts that there is a fatal error in the current assessment of radiation risk, of the evidence.

He gives evidence which causes four Pensions appeals cases cases to succeed before a judge, Hugh Stubbs. The evidence also persuades a coroner jury. And now the same evidence persuades the judge in the Australian Mahoney case.

In the 2013 combined 13-case hearing in London, following the removal of the commissioning attorneys Rosenblatts, this evidence is excluded by the new prosecution lawyers, Hogan Lovell, and is not considered.

The judge in the case, the same Hugh Stubbs, promptly dies before anyone can ask him to explain what is going on. But before he does so, Stubbs allows an appeal on the basis of Busby’s exclusion. The appeal is successful and the case is sent back for a new hearing.

But the expert (Busby) is now excluded from giving evidence by a new Judge, Sir William Charles. The expert (Busby) then becomes the representative (same as the lawyer), with the ability to cross examine Defence witnesses and refer to the original evidence (though the extent to which this is possible we wait to see).

Is there a precedent for an expert becoming a representative? I think not. What a circus! Anyway, you have to agree, not boring. Watch this space.

Dr Chris Busby is the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and the author of Uranium and Health – The Health Effects of Exposure to Uranium and Uranium Weapons Fallout (Documents of the ECRR 2010 No 2, Brussels, 2010). For details and current CV see chrisbusbyexposed.org. For accounts of his work see greenaudit.org, llrc.org and nuclearjustice.org.

What will become of UK energy policy now that the Conservative Party holds all the levers?

The government has already given clear indications of its plans to pare back onshore wind in recent days.

Tomorrow, 24th June, is the turn of offshore wind, when energy secretary Amber Rudd gives one of her first keynote speeches at the Global Offshore Wind Conference.

Rudd has been described as ‘really green’ in the past, but that is unlikely to reassure the offshore wind industry. With the government apparently committed to nuclear and shale gas and oil, renewables companies are wondering if they still have a place at the table. Here’s how the policy landscape looks to us.

Damage onshore

The government’s first big energy decision was confirmed with the announcement that the renewables-obligation subsidy scheme would be closing next April 1, a year earlier than planned. Confidence in the renewables industry has been wrecked as a result, though it goes further than that: the companies supporting renewables are the big power companies. The move is arguably as much a move against them as anyone.

Relations with the Scottish government have been damaged, with Nicola Sturgeon and others describing the decision as “wrong-headed”, “perverse” and “downright outrageous”.

Scotland has backed onshore wind for more than a decade as a cheap and proven source of low-carbon electricity. According to industry body Scottish Renewables, the decision will cost Scotland alone up to £3bn in investment and put at risk many thousands of highly paid jobs.

The move will also hit consumer utility bills. Keith Anderson, chief operating officer of Scottish Power, has estimated it will cost consumers between £2bn-3bn in more expensive electricity generation. This will increase the risk of fuel poverty across the UK (which is much higher in Scotland than England).

Anxiety offshore

Even before the election, offshore wind was not a good place to be. The sector has seen many projects mothballed and a number of key players drop out altogether in the face of a subsidy regime that is insufficient.

Offshore is already now much smaller than originally envisaged. It remains an expensive option in the UK even compared to new nuclear, and although costs are falling, it is not being deployed on the scale necessary to reduce costs to the point that it is commercially viable. If the subsidies are now cut, it will become a dead duck.

Compare Denmark, where the industry is now seeing costs fall dramatically through learning by doing. While the industry has benefited from highly competitive support mechanisms, deployment has been greatly facilitated by having 20% local ownership of projects.

Shallower waters have helped too, but the UK could still learn from the Danish approach. Danish offshore wind costs are significantly less than the projected new nuclear build costs at Hinkley Point C in Somerset in the UK, the country’s first new nuclear plant since the 1990s.

Bright nuclear future?

The Tories have long backed new nuclear power as the panacea to combat the looming electricity crunch that is often talked about in energy circles. Yet new nuclear is proving so challenging across the world that delivering even one new station will be no easy task.

As Hinkley Point C has already illustrated, the financial costs of new nuclear are enormous, and construction overruns look inevitable. The government also faces an impending legal challenge by the Austrian government over the up to £25bn of state aid required to bring the project to fruition.

This could delay completion by up to four years. Meanwhile Greenpeace Energy, Germany’s largest energy cooperative, is suing the European Commission for allowing the state aid to go ahead. In sum, it might well be 2030 before we see the plant generating any new electricity for UK consumers – about seven years later than intended.

This is a big problem for Rudd. Hinkley Point was promising to generate up to 7% of the UK’s electricity demand by 2023, at a time when big coal-fired stations in Scotland and England are closing. New and significant investment in energy infrastructure is needed before 2020 but it is currently unclear where this new generating capacity is going to come from.

Fast-track fracking

David Cameron has also made clear the government’s commitment to shale gas and its desire to repeat the US revolution here. It promises new tax revenues, jobs and a more secure gas supply. Yet these benefits must be balanced against the need to protect land and water supplies and manage hostile public opinion.

One widely overlooked issue is the infrastructure, which will take time and money to build. Fracking in the US requires an oil price to be at least $60 per barrel to be economical, and in some areas up to $100. With Brent Crude in the new era of mid $60 per barrel, is fracking economically feasible? Evidence from the US suggests not.

Earlier this year the Commons Environmental Audit Committee questioned whether fracking was compatible with UK climate-change targets. With the fifth carbon budget due soon to set targets beyond 2027, this presents Rudd with another conundrum.

The UN climate change conference in Paris later this year may well prove a very challenging conversation for the government. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this central strand of the government’s new energy agenda has some serious credibility issues.

The big picture

Put this all together and the government’s emerging approach to wind looks very unwise. New nuclear looks a very costly and unreliable drain on the government’s budget, while fracking looks expensive, incompatible with emissions targets and probably uneconomic at current oil prices.

It remains to be seen if these technologies will yield any long-term and positive outcomes for the country.

If the government gets it wrong, the consumer could be saddled with soaring electricity and gas bills for years to come. If ever we needed some sign of reprieve for UK renewables, it is now.

Peter Strachan is Strategy and Policy Group Lead and Professor of Energy Policy, Department of Management at Robert Gordon University.

Alex Russell is Head of Department of Management and Professor of Petroleum Accounting at Aberdeen Business School at Robert Gordon University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The camp has been a staple of the Resurgence calendar and has given readers and writers the opportunity to gather at the beautiful Green & Away outdoor venue in Worcestershire. This year’s camp promises to be as exciting as ever, with the usual array of stimulating speakers, delectable organic food, enchanting music, woodland walks and local ales and ciders. 

The camp is hosted by Resurgence’s Satish Kumar and editor Greg Neale and lasts three days from Thursday July 30 to August 2 at Green & Away in Bransford, Worcester, a beautiful organic farm on the River Teme.

The camp was first held in 1998 and has been an annual fixture ever since. Usually attended by up to 100 people, it’s big enough to mean a wide range of activities, and small enough to meet most of the attendees and speakers and have in depth discussions over a drink or cake.

Activists, poets, performers and editors converge
This year’s camp will feature Paul Mobbs, environmental investigator and campaigner: Ecological Futures; Julian Rose, author and environmental activist; Matt Harvey, author and poet; Joe Hoare, laughter coach: awakening the laughing Buddha; Satish Kumar, Editor-in-Chief, Resurgence & Ecologist; Nicola Peel, Eyes of Gaia and Alex Nunn, Action for Happiness.

There will also be a range of workshops including: Qi Kong – Dong Sticks (bamboo stick exercises) with June Mitchell; Harmony Singing around the fire with Janne Tooby and Toni Gilligan; and Indian Raga and embodied voicework with Will Tooby.

The thinking behind the camp has always been to allow readers and writers to gather in the outdoors – giving practical reality to the concept of living close to nature for a few days. But the essence of the Green & Away site is its comfort: being close to nature doesn’t mean sackcloth and ashes. The camp has been the only occasion in which Resurgence members and friends can come together in the outdoors over a weekend, sip cool drinks, eat organic food and be stimulated by imaginative ideas.

Europe’s only tented conference centre celebrates 25 years
The Green & Away venue is also celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It is still Europe’s only tented venue open for all types of organisations to use for conferences, meetings, staff training, member events, training and weddings. For the first time, Green & Away is also open as an eco campsite through the summer for families and individuals to camp and enjoy the beautiful surrounding Worcestershire and Herefordshire countryside.

The Resurgence camp will also feature music by Carolyn Hillyer and Nigel Shaw and Sika; and performances by Philip Ralph The One Eyed Man; and Indian Dance by Miti Desai.

It will be the last camp because next year Resurgence celebrates its 50th anniversary with a major three day event in Oxford – more details will be announced soon.

In the meantime, if you’d like to book one of the remaining spaces at this year’s Resurgence camp go to the Resurgence website.

Peter Lang is chair of the trustees of Green and Away and events manager for Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. He is a freelance environmental consultant and works with companies and organisations to reduce their environmental impact.

At the end of last month the Veterans Appeals Tribunal Decision on the Case Jean Mahoney vs. Australian Repatriation Commission was published.

The result was a win for the appellant, setting aside of the earlier Australian government decision not to grant a pension to the widow of a veteran who worked among the ruins of Hiroshima and later died from metastatic colon cancer.

I was the expert witness in this case and persuaded the Australian Tribunal (in an expert report and with oral cross examination by telephone, Brisbane to Riga) that the radiation risk model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) was not applicable to the kind of internal exposure to radioactive particles which her late husband, George Mahoney will have received.

I was bought into this case by Dr David Douglas who had been also retained as an expert by the widow, and with whom I have worked on another successful appeal in the past. Dr Douglas also gave evidence, and largely supported the arguments relating to internal exposures.

The particular argument I advanced is an extremely important one in internal radiological protection, one at the core of the arguments of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), and it was opposed by an expert from the Australian National Radiological Protection Board (ARPANSA) who argued the model of the ICRP.

A trial of two risk models

So this case was, in effect, a trial of the two risk models, that of the ECRR and that of the ICRP. It was decided by the judgement in favour of the ECRR.

The appellant’s late husband, George Mahoney, was stationed in Japan between 5th March 1946 and 23rd April 1955 as a member of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces (BCOF). He died on 7th July 1990 from metastatic colon cancer.

Mrs Mahoney applied for (and was refused) a pension on the grounds that the death was caused by her husband’s exposure to residual radiation at Hiroshima, where he worked. The original refusal basis was (like all the British Test Veteran refusals) that his dose was too low to cause cancer.

This statement was based on the ICRP radiation risk model which holds that a ‘dose’ to the organ concerned of upwards of 1000mSv is necessary to cause a 50% increased risk of colon cancer. The ICRP analysis is based on the cancer yield of the External Acute gamma radiation ‘dose’ to individuals in the famous ‘Life Span Study’ the LSS.

So (if the LSS is a true reflection of the cancer yield) the whole colon, every cell in the colon, and every cell in the body of the exposed individual will have had to receive 1,000mSv for the person the develop colon cancer.

But the problem with this approach is that cancer does not start in the ‘whole organ’. It starts in one cell, or perhaps in a small group of cells, so the dose necessary to cause the genetic damage leading to cancer has only to be large enough in one small part of the colon.

Such a dose could be easily delivered from a Uranium particle for example, inhaled and ingested from the contaminated dust in the ruins of Hiroshima. We know that there were such particles because my colleague (and ECRR scientist) Prof. Shoji Sawada measured anomalous Uranium residues from the famous ‘black rain’ in Hiroshima in 1983. This is the key point.

The approach of the Australian Commission in deciding these issues is to see if they fit within a ‘statement of principles’ (SoP). Clause 6 of the relevant SoP states that for the Pension to be awarded for malignant colon cancer:

[the applicant must have] received a cumulative equivalent dose of at least 100mSv of ionising radiation to the colorectum at least five years before the clinical onset of malignant neoplasm …

Cumulative equivalent dose is defined in Clause (9) of the SoP to mean: “The total dose of ionising radiation received by the particular organ or tissue … “.

Hold it there: ‘or tissue’

The case pivoted on these two words, “or tissue”. Of course, ECRR would be happy if this interpretation were applied, it is the key to the entire risk model issue. And the Tribunal seized on this and used it as its basis for finding for the appellant.

It agreed that the veteran could have inhaled or ingested radioactive particles from the dust in the rubble of the destroyed city and that these could have lodged in the colonic surface tissue. They refer to my oral evidence:

Dr Busby: “It’s the dose to the single cell where the tumour develops that’s important … so we are talking about tissue, we are not talking about whole organ … and of course the dose to that from a uranium particle that’s been trapped in the colonic epithelium, because it’s only the epithelium that we should be concerned about, this is on the surface of the inside of the colon, those are the cells that replicate and those are the ones that develop cancer.

“The cancer never develops on other parts of the colon, from the muscular part of the colon or the outer part of the colon. You rarely get cancers there, almost never.”

The Tribunal: “The applicant is right. The wording of factor 6(1) does not require that the whole of the colorectum be exposed to the requisite level of radiation.

“Nor does it suggest on its face that exposure of parts of the organ – especially those parts of the organ that are vulnerable to ionising radiation – is only problematic if the exposure is averaged across the whole organ, including parts that were not exposed and which might not be vulnerable to the effects of ionising radiation) and the average level exceeds the requisite level … “

And to make no mistake:

“As Dr Busby pointed out in his evidence, the risk of cancer only arises when certain cells within the colorectum are exposed to ionising radiation.

“It would be odd if the Repatriation Medical Authority intended that radiation be assessed across the whole organ including parts of the organ that were known not to be vulnerable to the development of cancer as a result of radiation exposure when vulnerable but localised areas might have been exposed to an excessive dose.”

Also on trial – Hiroshima’s ‘black rain’

The Tribunal also accepted that Hiroshima was contaminated by the ‘black rain’: “Dr Busby produced a 1983 study which showed that areas to the north-west of the hypocentre of the blast experienced ‘black rain’ shortly after the bomb was detonated.

“Black rain is a phenomenon that occurs following an atomic blast when large amounts of material are taken up into the atmosphere. The material falls to earth in the course of a downpour which inevitably follows the blast. Dr Busby said that the ‘black rain’ contained radioactive materials including nanoparticles of enriched uranium.”

The Defence (ARPANSA) argument based on ICRP was discounted, the ICRP risk model was set aside for internal exposures of this sort, and the case was won by the widow.

This is the second Uranium particle colon cancer veteran case in which I have given evidence and which has been won; the earlier one was the Stewart Dyson Coroner jury case in 2009 where I mobilised all the same arguments and persuaded the jury that the cancer that killed Dyson, a Lance Corporal with the Royal Pioneer Corps, was caused by exposure to Uranium particles in Iraq.

Interestingly, the Secretary of State for Defence (SSD) who had been informed of this decision under Rule 43 of the Coroner Act wrote back to the West Midlands coroner Robin Balmain and disputed the decision. But, Mr Balmain wrote back:

“It is not a debate, the jury found what it found and I am bound by Rule 43 to communicate this to you. Later, when Dysons’s widow went to use the coroner inquest jury decision to claim a pension, it was refused by the SSD.”

I also gave evidence in 2012 in Los Angeles on a case against Boeing involving colon cancer in a woman, Debra Dawson, who developed colon cancer following exposure to uranium particles near the Santa Susana nuclear site (as did her husband).

For some reason the case was unexpectedly abandoned by the attorney that had commissioned me. These are big dogs. Maybe they made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

But for UK bomb test veterans, it’s another story

There is a most interesting aspect to all this. And that is the difference between this Australian case and the treatment meted out to me in the UK Courts in relation to my expert evidence before the British nuclear test veterans Ionising Radiation Pensions appeals.

Here, in the Upper Tier appeal, the SSD attacked me on the basis that
(a) I was not an expert and
(b) even if I were, the fact that I am an activist (writing articles like this one, making videos) rules me out since that makes me ‘biased’ under English law.

I was in the witness box in the Royal Courts of Justice in June 2014 before Sir William Charles (the judge) for three days continuously being hammered by the SSD Queens Counsel.

My evidence before the Pensions Appeals Tribunals had been sidelined by the attorneys for the veterans (something I have earlier written about in The Ecologist and elsewhere). The judge was convinced and made a Direction that I could not be an expert in these issues in a British Tribunal.

By the way, this particular judge has been seriously criticised for bad judgment, for example in a thundering Guardian op-ed by Joshue Rozenberg. It turned out that he did not have the legal right to recommend any such thing, and the Direction is currently subject of a Judicial Review application.

Meanwhile, the successful appeal against the original decision on the veterans has been directed to a new hearing presided over by a High Court Judge, HH Judge McKenna, a woman, and head of the Upper Tier Tribunal. Busby is now the Representative (i.e. the attorney).

We all quake before the Majesty of the Law

I don’t think that this situation has ever arisen in the history of English Law. Here you have an expert who can persuade courts that there is a fatal error in the current assessment of radiation risk, of the evidence.

He gives evidence which causes four Pensions appeals cases cases to succeed before a judge, Hugh Stubbs. The evidence also persuades a coroner jury. And now the same evidence persuades the judge in the Australian Mahoney case.

In the 2013 combined 13-case hearing in London, following the removal of the commissioning attorneys Rosenblatts, this evidence is excluded by the new prosecution lawyers, Hogan Lovell, and is not considered.

The judge in the case, the same Hugh Stubbs, promptly dies before anyone can ask him to explain what is going on. But before he does so, Stubbs allows an appeal on the basis of Busby’s exclusion. The appeal is successful and the case is sent back for a new hearing.

But the expert (Busby) is now excluded from giving evidence by a new Judge, Sir William Charles. The expert (Busby) then becomes the representative (same as the lawyer), with the ability to cross examine Defence witnesses and refer to the original evidence (though the extent to which this is possible we wait to see).

Is there a precedent for an expert becoming a representative? I think not. What a circus! Anyway, you have to agree, not boring. Watch this space.

Dr Chris Busby is the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and the author of Uranium and Health – The Health Effects of Exposure to Uranium and Uranium Weapons Fallout (Documents of the ECRR 2010 No 2, Brussels, 2010). For details and current CV see chrisbusbyexposed.org. For accounts of his work see greenaudit.org, llrc.org and nuclearjustice.org.

What will become of UK energy policy now that the Conservative Party holds all the levers?

The government has already given clear indications of its plans to pare back onshore wind in recent days.

Tomorrow, 24th June, is the turn of offshore wind, when energy secretary Amber Rudd gives one of her first keynote speeches at the Global Offshore Wind Conference.

Rudd has been described as ‘really green’ in the past, but that is unlikely to reassure the offshore wind industry. With the government apparently committed to nuclear and shale gas and oil, renewables companies are wondering if they still have a place at the table. Here’s how the policy landscape looks to us.

Damage onshore

The government’s first big energy decision was confirmed with the announcement that the renewables-obligation subsidy scheme would be closing next April 1, a year earlier than planned. Confidence in the renewables industry has been wrecked as a result, though it goes further than that: the companies supporting renewables are the big power companies. The move is arguably as much a move against them as anyone.

Relations with the Scottish government have been damaged, with Nicola Sturgeon and others describing the decision as “wrong-headed”, “perverse” and “downright outrageous”.

Scotland has backed onshore wind for more than a decade as a cheap and proven source of low-carbon electricity. According to industry body Scottish Renewables, the decision will cost Scotland alone up to £3bn in investment and put at risk many thousands of highly paid jobs.

The move will also hit consumer utility bills. Keith Anderson, chief operating officer of Scottish Power, has estimated it will cost consumers between £2bn-3bn in more expensive electricity generation. This will increase the risk of fuel poverty across the UK (which is much higher in Scotland than England).

Anxiety offshore

Even before the election, offshore wind was not a good place to be. The sector has seen many projects mothballed and a number of key players drop out altogether in the face of a subsidy regime that is insufficient.

Offshore is already now much smaller than originally envisaged. It remains an expensive option in the UK even compared to new nuclear, and although costs are falling, it is not being deployed on the scale necessary to reduce costs to the point that it is commercially viable. If the subsidies are now cut, it will become a dead duck.

Compare Denmark, where the industry is now seeing costs fall dramatically through learning by doing. While the industry has benefited from highly competitive support mechanisms, deployment has been greatly facilitated by having 20% local ownership of projects.

Shallower waters have helped too, but the UK could still learn from the Danish approach. Danish offshore wind costs are significantly less than the projected new nuclear build costs at Hinkley Point C in Somerset in the UK, the country’s first new nuclear plant since the 1990s.

Bright nuclear future?

The Tories have long backed new nuclear power as the panacea to combat the looming electricity crunch that is often talked about in energy circles. Yet new nuclear is proving so challenging across the world that delivering even one new station will be no easy task.

As Hinkley Point C has already illustrated, the financial costs of new nuclear are enormous, and construction overruns look inevitable. The government also faces an impending legal challenge by the Austrian government over the up to £25bn of state aid required to bring the project to fruition.

This could delay completion by up to four years. Meanwhile Greenpeace Energy, Germany’s largest energy cooperative, is suing the European Commission for allowing the state aid to go ahead. In sum, it might well be 2030 before we see the plant generating any new electricity for UK consumers – about seven years later than intended.

This is a big problem for Rudd. Hinkley Point was promising to generate up to 7% of the UK’s electricity demand by 2023, at a time when big coal-fired stations in Scotland and England are closing. New and significant investment in energy infrastructure is needed before 2020 but it is currently unclear where this new generating capacity is going to come from.

Fast-track fracking

David Cameron has also made clear the government’s commitment to shale gas and its desire to repeat the US revolution here. It promises new tax revenues, jobs and a more secure gas supply. Yet these benefits must be balanced against the need to protect land and water supplies and manage hostile public opinion.

One widely overlooked issue is the infrastructure, which will take time and money to build. Fracking in the US requires an oil price to be at least $60 per barrel to be economical, and in some areas up to $100. With Brent Crude in the new era of mid $60 per barrel, is fracking economically feasible? Evidence from the US suggests not.

Earlier this year the Commons Environmental Audit Committee questioned whether fracking was compatible with UK climate-change targets. With the fifth carbon budget due soon to set targets beyond 2027, this presents Rudd with another conundrum.

The UN climate change conference in Paris later this year may well prove a very challenging conversation for the government. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this central strand of the government’s new energy agenda has some serious credibility issues.

The big picture

Put this all together and the government’s emerging approach to wind looks very unwise. New nuclear looks a very costly and unreliable drain on the government’s budget, while fracking looks expensive, incompatible with emissions targets and probably uneconomic at current oil prices.

It remains to be seen if these technologies will yield any long-term and positive outcomes for the country.

If the government gets it wrong, the consumer could be saddled with soaring electricity and gas bills for years to come. If ever we needed some sign of reprieve for UK renewables, it is now.

Peter Strachan is Strategy and Policy Group Lead and Professor of Energy Policy, Department of Management at Robert Gordon University.

Alex Russell is Head of Department of Management and Professor of Petroleum Accounting at Aberdeen Business School at Robert Gordon University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

At the end of last month the Veterans Appeals Tribunal Decision on the Case Jean Mahoney vs. Australian Repatriation Commission was published.

The result was a win for the appellant, setting aside of the earlier Australian government decision not to grant a pension to the widow of a veteran who worked among the ruins of Hiroshima and later died from metastatic colon cancer.

I was the expert witness in this case and persuaded the Australian Tribunal (in an expert report and with oral cross examination by telephone, Brisbane to Riga) that the radiation risk model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) was not applicable to the kind of internal exposure to radioactive particles which her late husband, George Mahoney will have received.

I was bought into this case by Dr David Douglas who had been also retained as an expert by the widow, and with whom I have worked on another successful appeal in the past. Dr Douglas also gave evidence, and largely supported the arguments relating to internal exposures.

The particular argument I advanced is an extremely important one in internal radiological protection, one at the core of the arguments of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), and it was opposed by an expert from the Australian National Radiological Protection Board (ARPANSA) who argued the model of the ICRP.

A trial of two risk models

So this case was, in effect, a trial of the two risk models, that of the ECRR and that of the ICRP. It was decided by the judgement in favour of the ECRR.

The appellant’s late husband, George Mahoney, was stationed in Japan between 5th March 1946 and 23rd April 1955 as a member of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces (BCOF). He died on 7th July 1990 from metastatic colon cancer.

Mrs Mahoney applied for (and was refused) a pension on the grounds that the death was caused by her husband’s exposure to residual radiation at Hiroshima, where he worked. The original refusal basis was (like all the British Test Veteran refusals) that his dose was too low to cause cancer.

This statement was based on the ICRP radiation risk model which holds that a ‘dose’ to the organ concerned of upwards of 1000mSv is necessary to cause a 50% increased risk of colon cancer. The ICRP analysis is based on the cancer yield of the External Acute gamma radiation ‘dose’ to individuals in the famous ‘Life Span Study’ the LSS.

So (if the LSS is a true reflection of the cancer yield) the whole colon, every cell in the colon, and every cell in the body of the exposed individual will have had to receive 1,000mSv for the person the develop colon cancer.

But the problem with this approach is that cancer does not start in the ‘whole organ’. It starts in one cell, or perhaps in a small group of cells, so the dose necessary to cause the genetic damage leading to cancer has only to be large enough in one small part of the colon.

Such a dose could be easily delivered from a Uranium particle for example, inhaled and ingested from the contaminated dust in the ruins of Hiroshima. We know that there were such particles because my colleague (and ECRR scientist) Prof. Shoji Sawada measured anomalous Uranium residues from the famous ‘black rain’ in Hiroshima in 1983. This is the key point.

The approach of the Australian Commission in deciding these issues is to see if they fit within a ‘statement of principles’ (SoP). Clause 6 of the relevant SoP states that for the Pension to be awarded for malignant colon cancer:

[the applicant must have] received a cumulative equivalent dose of at least 100mSv of ionising radiation to the colorectum at least five years before the clinical onset of malignant neoplasm …

Cumulative equivalent dose is defined in Clause (9) of the SoP to mean: “The total dose of ionising radiation received by the particular organ or tissue … “.

Hold it there: ‘or tissue’

The case pivoted on these two words, “or tissue”. Of course, ECRR would be happy if this interpretation were applied, it is the key to the entire risk model issue. And the Tribunal seized on this and used it as its basis for finding for the appellant.

It agreed that the veteran could have inhaled or ingested radioactive particles from the dust in the rubble of the destroyed city and that these could have lodged in the colonic surface tissue. They refer to my oral evidence:

Dr Busby: “It’s the dose to the single cell where the tumour develops that’s important … so we are talking about tissue, we are not talking about whole organ … and of course the dose to that from a uranium particle that’s been trapped in the colonic epithelium, because it’s only the epithelium that we should be concerned about, this is on the surface of the inside of the colon, those are the cells that replicate and those are the ones that develop cancer.

“The cancer never develops on other parts of the colon, from the muscular part of the colon or the outer part of the colon. You rarely get cancers there, almost never.”

The Tribunal: “The applicant is right. The wording of factor 6(1) does not require that the whole of the colorectum be exposed to the requisite level of radiation.

“Nor does it suggest on its face that exposure of parts of the organ – especially those parts of the organ that are vulnerable to ionising radiation – is only problematic if the exposure is averaged across the whole organ, including parts that were not exposed and which might not be vulnerable to the effects of ionising radiation) and the average level exceeds the requisite level … “

And to make no mistake:

“As Dr Busby pointed out in his evidence, the risk of cancer only arises when certain cells within the colorectum are exposed to ionising radiation.

“It would be odd if the Repatriation Medical Authority intended that radiation be assessed across the whole organ including parts of the organ that were known not to be vulnerable to the development of cancer as a result of radiation exposure when vulnerable but localised areas might have been exposed to an excessive dose.”

Also on trial – Hiroshima’s ‘black rain’

The Tribunal also accepted that Hiroshima was contaminated by the ‘black rain’: “Dr Busby produced a 1983 study which showed that areas to the north-west of the hypocentre of the blast experienced ‘black rain’ shortly after the bomb was detonated.

“Black rain is a phenomenon that occurs following an atomic blast when large amounts of material are taken up into the atmosphere. The material falls to earth in the course of a downpour which inevitably follows the blast. Dr Busby said that the ‘black rain’ contained radioactive materials including nanoparticles of enriched uranium.”

The Defence (ARPANSA) argument based on ICRP was discounted, the ICRP risk model was set aside for internal exposures of this sort, and the case was won by the widow.

This is the second Uranium particle colon cancer veteran case in which I have given evidence and which has been won; the earlier one was the Stewart Dyson Coroner jury case in 2009 where I mobilised all the same arguments and persuaded the jury that the cancer that killed Dyson, a Lance Corporal with the Royal Pioneer Corps, was caused by exposure to Uranium particles in Iraq.

Interestingly, the Secretary of State for Defence (SSD) who had been informed of this decision under Rule 43 of the Coroner Act wrote back to the West Midlands coroner Robin Balmain and disputed the decision. But, Mr Balmain wrote back:

“It is not a debate, the jury found what it found and I am bound by Rule 43 to communicate this to you. Later, when Dysons’s widow went to use the coroner inquest jury decision to claim a pension, it was refused by the SSD.”

I also gave evidence in 2012 in Los Angeles on a case against Boeing involving colon cancer in a woman, Debra Dawson, who developed colon cancer following exposure to uranium particles near the Santa Susana nuclear site (as did her husband).

For some reason the case was unexpectedly abandoned by the attorney that had commissioned me. These are big dogs. Maybe they made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.

But for UK bomb test veterans, it’s another story

There is a most interesting aspect to all this. And that is the difference between this Australian case and the treatment meted out to me in the UK Courts in relation to my expert evidence before the British nuclear test veterans Ionising Radiation Pensions appeals.

Here, in the Upper Tier appeal, the SSD attacked me on the basis that
(a) I was not an expert and
(b) even if I were, the fact that I am an activist (writing articles like this one, making videos) rules me out since that makes me ‘biased’ under English law.

I was in the witness box in the Royal Courts of Justice in June 2014 before Sir William Charles (the judge) for three days continuously being hammered by the SSD Queens Counsel.

My evidence before the Pensions Appeals Tribunals had been sidelined by the attorneys for the veterans (something I have earlier written about in The Ecologist and elsewhere). The judge was convinced and made a Direction that I could not be an expert in these issues in a British Tribunal.

By the way, this particular judge has been seriously criticised for bad judgment, for example in a thundering Guardian op-ed by Joshue Rozenberg. It turned out that he did not have the legal right to recommend any such thing, and the Direction is currently subject of a Judicial Review application.

Meanwhile, the successful appeal against the original decision on the veterans has been directed to a new hearing presided over by a High Court Judge, HH Judge McKenna, a woman, and head of the Upper Tier Tribunal. Busby is now the Representative (i.e. the attorney).

We all quake before the Majesty of the Law

I don’t think that this situation has ever arisen in the history of English Law. Here you have an expert who can persuade courts that there is a fatal error in the current assessment of radiation risk, of the evidence.

He gives evidence which causes four Pensions appeals cases cases to succeed before a judge, Hugh Stubbs. The evidence also persuades a coroner jury. And now the same evidence persuades the judge in the Australian Mahoney case.

In the 2013 combined 13-case hearing in London, following the removal of the commissioning attorneys Rosenblatts, this evidence is excluded by the new prosecution lawyers, Hogan Lovell, and is not considered.

The judge in the case, the same Hugh Stubbs, promptly dies before anyone can ask him to explain what is going on. But before he does so, Stubbs allows an appeal on the basis of Busby’s exclusion. The appeal is successful and the case is sent back for a new hearing.

But the expert (Busby) is now excluded from giving evidence by a new Judge, Sir William Charles. The expert (Busby) then becomes the representative (same as the lawyer), with the ability to cross examine Defence witnesses and refer to the original evidence (though the extent to which this is possible we wait to see).

Is there a precedent for an expert becoming a representative? I think not. What a circus! Anyway, you have to agree, not boring. Watch this space.

Dr Chris Busby is the Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and the author of Uranium and Health – The Health Effects of Exposure to Uranium and Uranium Weapons Fallout (Documents of the ECRR 2010 No 2, Brussels, 2010). For details and current CV see chrisbusbyexposed.org. For accounts of his work see greenaudit.org, llrc.org and nuclearjustice.org.

What will become of UK energy policy now that the Conservative Party holds all the levers?

The government has already given clear indications of its plans to pare back onshore wind in recent days.

Tomorrow, 24th June, is the turn of offshore wind, when energy secretary Amber Rudd gives one of her first keynote speeches at the Global Offshore Wind Conference.

Rudd has been described as ‘really green’ in the past, but that is unlikely to reassure the offshore wind industry. With the government apparently committed to nuclear and shale gas and oil, renewables companies are wondering if they still have a place at the table. Here’s how the policy landscape looks to us.

Damage onshore

The government’s first big energy decision was confirmed with the announcement that the renewables-obligation subsidy scheme would be closing next April 1, a year earlier than planned. Confidence in the renewables industry has been wrecked as a result, though it goes further than that: the companies supporting renewables are the big power companies. The move is arguably as much a move against them as anyone.

Relations with the Scottish government have been damaged, with Nicola Sturgeon and others describing the decision as “wrong-headed”, “perverse” and “downright outrageous”.

Scotland has backed onshore wind for more than a decade as a cheap and proven source of low-carbon electricity. According to industry body Scottish Renewables, the decision will cost Scotland alone up to £3bn in investment and put at risk many thousands of highly paid jobs.

The move will also hit consumer utility bills. Keith Anderson, chief operating officer of Scottish Power, has estimated it will cost consumers between £2bn-3bn in more expensive electricity generation. This will increase the risk of fuel poverty across the UK (which is much higher in Scotland than England).

Anxiety offshore

Even before the election, offshore wind was not a good place to be. The sector has seen many projects mothballed and a number of key players drop out altogether in the face of a subsidy regime that is insufficient.

Offshore is already now much smaller than originally envisaged. It remains an expensive option in the UK even compared to new nuclear, and although costs are falling, it is not being deployed on the scale necessary to reduce costs to the point that it is commercially viable. If the subsidies are now cut, it will become a dead duck.

Compare Denmark, where the industry is now seeing costs fall dramatically through learning by doing. While the industry has benefited from highly competitive support mechanisms, deployment has been greatly facilitated by having 20% local ownership of projects.

Shallower waters have helped too, but the UK could still learn from the Danish approach. Danish offshore wind costs are significantly less than the projected new nuclear build costs at Hinkley Point C in Somerset in the UK, the country’s first new nuclear plant since the 1990s.

Bright nuclear future?

The Tories have long backed new nuclear power as the panacea to combat the looming electricity crunch that is often talked about in energy circles. Yet new nuclear is proving so challenging across the world that delivering even one new station will be no easy task.

As Hinkley Point C has already illustrated, the financial costs of new nuclear are enormous, and construction overruns look inevitable. The government also faces an impending legal challenge by the Austrian government over the up to £25bn of state aid required to bring the project to fruition.

This could delay completion by up to four years. Meanwhile Greenpeace Energy, Germany’s largest energy cooperative, is suing the European Commission for allowing the state aid to go ahead. In sum, it might well be 2030 before we see the plant generating any new electricity for UK consumers – about seven years later than intended.

This is a big problem for Rudd. Hinkley Point was promising to generate up to 7% of the UK’s electricity demand by 2023, at a time when big coal-fired stations in Scotland and England are closing. New and significant investment in energy infrastructure is needed before 2020 but it is currently unclear where this new generating capacity is going to come from.

Fast-track fracking

David Cameron has also made clear the government’s commitment to shale gas and its desire to repeat the US revolution here. It promises new tax revenues, jobs and a more secure gas supply. Yet these benefits must be balanced against the need to protect land and water supplies and manage hostile public opinion.

One widely overlooked issue is the infrastructure, which will take time and money to build. Fracking in the US requires an oil price to be at least $60 per barrel to be economical, and in some areas up to $100. With Brent Crude in the new era of mid $60 per barrel, is fracking economically feasible? Evidence from the US suggests not.

Earlier this year the Commons Environmental Audit Committee questioned whether fracking was compatible with UK climate-change targets. With the fifth carbon budget due soon to set targets beyond 2027, this presents Rudd with another conundrum.

The UN climate change conference in Paris later this year may well prove a very challenging conversation for the government. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this central strand of the government’s new energy agenda has some serious credibility issues.

The big picture

Put this all together and the government’s emerging approach to wind looks very unwise. New nuclear looks a very costly and unreliable drain on the government’s budget, while fracking looks expensive, incompatible with emissions targets and probably uneconomic at current oil prices.

It remains to be seen if these technologies will yield any long-term and positive outcomes for the country.

If the government gets it wrong, the consumer could be saddled with soaring electricity and gas bills for years to come. If ever we needed some sign of reprieve for UK renewables, it is now.

Peter Strachan is Strategy and Policy Group Lead and Professor of Energy Policy, Department of Management at Robert Gordon University.

Alex Russell is Head of Department of Management and Professor of Petroleum Accounting at Aberdeen Business School at Robert Gordon University.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Last week a Barclay’s bank in central Brighton underwent a jaw-dropping metamorphosis.

Huge colourful paper lanterns filled the main entrance where once customers gathered patiently waiting in line to manage their cash.

Since then people from all walks of life begun moving enthusiastically around the run down building transforming it into a place of solidarity, where money seemed unnecessary. They called it The Radical Bank.

In one corner, a group prepared food on a stove which a passer-by had just donated. Others cleaned the building to the sound of music from a tiny radio. “It was dead filthy. See what you can actually make out of an abandoned pit?” said one of the Radical Bank’s members.

The place did feel homely and had been thoroughly fixed up. In the main room there were carpets on the floor, decorations and a tea area.

The walls were filled with activism – lists of workshops such as first aid and digital security, proposals of talks on subjects like immigration and the Palestinian struggle, a collective agreement of rules, which included a non alcohol or drugs policy – it’s a reflection of what the people involved wanted to construct, a bank of ideas and creation.

“We wanted to make it into a social centre, challenge the current logic out there and offer people a place where they can feel safe, debate and organise activities. Despite it being illegal, we think it’s right”, says a Radical Banker.

An offshoot of Brighton’s anti-austerity movement

Radical Bank was squatted after an anti-austerity demonstration flooded Brighton streets on the 6th of June. Bank branches such as these one have been closed down unable to compete with online banking services, and so they are left empty whilst there is a strong need for homes and social spaces. This branch was abandoned around a year ago.

But the dream for change abruptly ended last Friday when bailiffs stormed into the building at 7.30 and proceeded to evict those inside. “We woke up to the sound of intense banging which resonated through the whole building as they were forcing their entry, we knew it was over”, said a member of the collective.

Despite the eviction, Radical Bankers are still pursing their objective of creating social change. On Saturday they visited a new squatted social centre in London ‘the Elephant and Castle Social Centre’, which opened its doors for the first time this weekend.

Like them, they were offering a free vegan barbecue and looking for people to hold workshops in the space. This new centre is a 250 year old pub which was abandoned for over a year. Now history repeats itself and all over the walls you can see political struggle manifesting itself.

Though estimates vary, several campaigning groups have stated that there are over 1.5 million empty properties in the UK and around 112,000 rough sleepers. But it is not only the issue about housing and homelessness that is tackled here.

A powerful means of political resistance

The squatting movement in Europe has long been a movement of political resistance, although in the UK it was more focused on providing housing for those in need, says Miguel Martinez from SqEk, Squatting Europe Collective: “Squatting is a strong political movement although in England it was less politicised.”

He explains that squatting in the UK begun just after the Second World War when around 45,000 to 50,000 soldiers squatted their homes. Then in the 60’s it became a movement of protest for affordable housing.

Squatted housing normalised throughout the 70’s and 80’s and the movement became quite marginalised. Later on in the 90’s it flourished as a protest tool along the anti-globalisation movement, which swept across England around that time.

Squatting residential properties in the UK became illegal in September 2012, forcing those in need to the streets or to squat commercial buildings not suited for living, as this action remains legal. “What has happened is that the vulnerable have been criminalised”, says a member of the Advisory Service for Squatters based in London.

It’s illegalisation has come at a later time than in most European countries. For example, in Spain it was made illegal in 1996 and in the Netherlands in 2010, but despite the ban on squatting people continue to squat and its political implications change to adapt to their legal status.

The Radical Bank and the Elephant & Castle Social Centre are examples of attempts to revive squatting as a political weapon of self-organisation outside the boundaries of legality.

The Free Food Fridge

In the middle of the room a semicircle of chairs, cushions and sofas was constantly maintained to hold the daily general meetings where everything was decided in a collective way. After these long meetings at the Radical Bank someone made food from the left overs of nearby supermarkets, which were collected at night.

“It’s the art of skipping”, says a Radical Banker, adding that has never been any food shortage – whatever food was left over was put outside the main entrance in what they called the ‘Radical Fridge’, for anyone to take home. Even after the eviction, it’s still standing at Preston Circus Junction in Brighton.

“In the UK 15 million tonnes of food is wasted every year”, says Adam from the Real Junk Food Project, which helped organised a big event hosted by the Radical Bank on Sunday. This project works with supermarket, wholesales and farms, gathering their left over food to make healthy nutritious meals. “Most of the food is absolutely fine to eat, we feed approximately 1,600 people a month with the food we collect.”

But not only food was managed communally, life was shared with people taking turns for watching, cleaning, getting involved in the media, mediation and legal teams and maintaining the building in good shape, all on a voluntary basis. “It is hard work, but we believe that another kind of organisation is possible, which is not money driven”, says a member.

Everything you found inside the building, from the cleaning materials to the furniture, had been donated or found in the street. Like in most squats people build their homes and projects from the crumbs left behind from the capitalist dream.

Human rights? The ‘right to property’ trumps all the others

Around 40 members of the collective filled the court room last week, waiting for an adjournment so they could seek legal aid to be able to represent them. The judge declined their wishes despite them being informed of the hearing just five days in advance, and so eviction came sooner than expected.

Without a solicitor they prepared a defence appealing mainly to article 8 of the 1998 Human Rights Act, which guarantees the right to private and family life and can be interpreted as a right to shelter or housing. This clashes with Article 1 of the same Act, which is the right to property.

They failed – as did another squat at 16 Grosvenor Street, Mayfair, London, which tried a similar legal defence just a few weeks earlier. “The protection of property rights is always above the right for people to organise and live decently”, said Radical Banker after the hearing.

“This building has been left empty and will continue to do so. We are doing a lot of good here, but according to law it is better to leave it empty, to rot. Nobody should let this happen.”

As the RB puts it in a blog post, “it’s hilarious that the Convention of Human Rights begins with a protection of property. Most people don’t have any property: it’s not part of the life experience of most humans, so it’s not a right most people ever exercise in a real way. The most obvious case of the law being written by the rich, white man that I’ve seen thus far.”

The Radical Bank received no notice of when the eviction would take place, as it is often the case to avoid confrontation. The eviction was carried out without any major disturbance as squatters were taken by surprise at early hours in the morning whilst they were asleep.

Despite this, according to the recent report ‘Home Not Jails’ by the campaigning organisation Squash (Squatters Action for Secure Homes), “evictions are becoming more frequent, violent and outside the bounds of the law”.

For some, the shadow of what was once a huge political movement in the UK is still a good place to hide. Those who have been let down by the current socio-economical and political system rely on such movements of resistance, which are part of an international echo from a voice which is screaming for change.

Almudena Serpis is an activist and journalist who has worked in numerous magazines, newspapers and websites in Madrid, London and Amsterdam, and on assignments with the Ecologist Film Unit. Her research and investigations evolve around social movements, feminism and ecology. She is also a trained nutritionist.

Facebook: The Radical Bank, Elephant & Castle Social Centre.

Devon Wildlife Trust has announced the arrival of baby beavers – kbown as ‘kits’ – born to the first wild colony of beavers in England. New film footage proves that England’s only wild beaver population is growing.

The footage, taken by local film-maker Tom Buckley, shows the kits taking their first swimming lessons and being helped through the water by their mother at an undisclosed location on East Devon’s River Otter.

Two of the kits have been seen together, however beavers often give birth to three in a litter, so there may in fact be three of them.

“We are thrilled that the beavers have bred”, said Devon Wildlife Trust’s Mark Elliott. “The baby kits appear fit and healthy and the adults seem as if they are taking their parenting responsibilities very seriously. It tells us that the beavers are very much at home in this corner of Devon.

“The slowly expanding population of these wild animals will help us to gain valuable insights into beavers and their environment – both in terms of animal behaviour and any benefits and effects on the surrounding river system.”

Mark also makes a plea to people who might want to catch a glimpse of the new additions to a local beaver population:“The beavers have proved enormously popular with local people and we understand that many will now want to see the kits for themselves.

“But like all new parents, the beavers will need a bit space and peace at this time. So we ask that visitors take care not to disturb them. This means remaining on public footpaths, keeping a respectful distance from them, and keeping dogs under close control especially when near the river.”

England’s first free-living beavers in 400 years

A population of beavers was first confirmed on the River Otter in February 2014. This was the first time that breeding beavers were known to be living in the English countryside for as much as 400 years. In summer 2014 Defra expressed its intention to remove the animals and enclose them in a zoo, citing their potential disease risk and their unplanned introduction as reasons.

It was at this stage that Devon Wildlife Trust built a partnership of supportive local landowners, academic institutions and beaver veterinary and management experts to offer a different solution, to turn the situation into England’s first wild beaver monitoring project.

Friends of the Earth also campaigned to prevent the beavers’ capture, as first planned by Defra, and even commenced legal action last October under the EU’s Habitats Directive, forcing a government climb-down. But today FoE’s wildlife campaigner Alasdair Cameron was in celebratory mood:

“The fact that these beavers have given birth for the second year in a row shows that the animals are thriving in Britain – and should increase calls for them to be reintroduced to other suitable areas around the country. Beavers bring huge benefits to the countryside – boosting biodiversity and keeping the rivers clean – we’re delighted they’re back and doing well.”

In January 2015, Devon Wildlife Trust received a licence from Natural England allowing the beavers to stay. The licence also signalled the setting-up of the River Otter Beaver Trial – a project which will measure the benefits and impacts of the animals on local landscapes, wildlife, communities and businesses, especially farming.

Natural England’s licence stipulated that the beavers had to be health screened. This meant capturing all the adults which were known to be living on the river. The captures were carried out in February this year – the tests found them clear of disease.

Looking forward to a slow but steady recovery

Mark Elliott of Devon Wildlife Trust looks ahead to the beavers’ prospects: “Beavers give birth to an average of three kits. If both mothers have given birth that could mean that there are now up to 15 beavers on the River Otter. Beavers are relatively slow breeders and it’s possible that not all the kits will make it to adulthood.

“This means the expansion of their numbers during the coming years will be steady rather than rapid. The River Otter certainly has room for a slowly growing population. The kits present us with a unique opportunity to study the development of a beaver population in the English countryside.”

Dr Sam Bridgewater, Nature Conservation Manager for Clinton Devon Estates, commented on the arrival of baby beavers: “The birth of the kits is very exciting as it indicates that beavers can thrive in the lower River Otter. We still have much to learn about the impacts of an expanding beaver population on the Devon landscape.

“Although we know that beavers can improve the ecological health of rivers, we also know that their damming – particularly in upper catchment areas – and tree-felling behaviour can cause conflict. One of the key objectives of the partnership over the five year trial is to gather evidence to clarify the positive and negative impacts of this species and the management techniques that will likely be required in the future to minimise any detrimental impacts of an increasing population.”

An ‘overwhelming experience’

Tom Buckley captured the fabulous footage of the beaver and kits. He said: “When I saw these new born baby beavers (kits) I was totally overwhelmed and thought it must be a miracle. My first sighting of this year’s new born kits was when I saw their mother swimming with one of them in her mouth to an area nearby where their father was waiting to greet them.

“One of the kits, however, seemed extremely unhappy to be out in the big wide world and as soon as its mother let it go it rushed back to its burrow. Not surprising really – the world can be a very scary place. This was possibly their first experience of what lies outside of their burrow.”

The births signal the latest chapter in a story which has attracted great support from the local community. Devon Wildlife Trust is leading the River Otter Beaver Trial in partnership with landowner Clinton Devon Estates, the University of Exeter and the Derek Gow Partnership.

The Wildlife Trusts are at the forefront of bringing back beavers to the UK.