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Young, keen and not afraid of arrest: the women who led green invasion
Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter8 Dec 2008
THE leading activists behind today's storming of Stansted airport include the daughter of a truck driver, a veteran anti-GM foods campaigner and a demonstrator convicted of a Commons roof protest.
Lily Kember, 21, who today acted as the "mouthpiece" for Plane Stupid, giving interviews via mobile phone from inside the airfield, comes from a middle-class home in Kensal Green and was educated at a private school in Hammersmith.
Highly motivated and apparently unafraid of arrest, Ms Kember is typical of the activists involved in Plane Stupid, the anti-aviation group behind today's protest.
Ms Kember's father Joe is a lorry driver and her mother Jenny is a teaching assistant at a primary school in Kensington. Ms Kember is in the final year of a humanities and social sciences degree at Edinburgh university.
She won a bursary to Godolphin and Latymer School which normally charges close to £15,000 a year. There she gained "pretty much" straight As at both GCSE and A-level.
She told the Standard she had become convinced of the need to take direct action in the past two years at university.
Asked how her environmental campaigning squared with a father who drives trucks, Ms Kember replied: "They [my parents] are supportive of my political activities. But they are worried about me."
Her mother, speaking outside the family home, said: "We fully support her. We know what she does and we stand by her."
Another of the campaigners arrested today is Olivia Chessell, who at 20 is already a leading light in Plane Stupid.
Ms Chessell, who lives with her mother in East Dulwich, joined Plane Stupid as an 18-year-old. She was convicted last month of a rooftop protest in February at the Palace of Westminster.
Ms Chessell avoided prison for the Commons protest, which she broadcast with a webcam. She was instead fined £365 after being found guilty of trespass.
One of Plane Stupid's main organisers, it emerged today, is Liz Snook, a veteran direct action campaigner who previously railed against GM crops.
Ms Snook, 30, is one of the oldest members of the group. It is understood she was appointed to a paid post in the organisation in the summer, propelling her to the forefront of the anti-aviation campaign. Police sources confirmed she was one of the protesters arrested today.
Ms Snook, who is understood to live in London but grew up in Harlow, near Stansted, first came to prominence in 1997 during a protest at Manchester airport.
Ms Snook had tied a noose around her neck in a tunnel under the site of a proposed new runway at the airport. The other end of the rope was tied to a trap door above the tunnel. Security men feared accidentally strangling her in attempting to have her removed. She stayed in the tunnel for 36 hours.
In 2002, Ms Snook was one of the "Littlemore Four" arrested during an anti-GM protest in Dorset and arrested again in 2005 after blockading a Bristol Sainsbury's depot.
Reader views (6)
Bunch of environmental terrorists, and should be treated as such.
- Robert, London, 09/12/2008 08:35
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What brave and inspiring people. Instead of thanking them we should all be getting together with groups of our friends to make plans to take similar action. If we do that, we will be able to create the kind of mass movement spawned by Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela.
Good on you for your bravery!
- Jonathan, Newcastle, Australia, 09/12/2008 00:05
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These middle class, overindulged, spoiled, tree hugging brats should be treated in the same way as if they were bunch of working class kids who’s yobish behaviour had brought a city centre to a halt in the rush hour. E.g. tear gas, batons, forced removal (in minutes NOT hours).
Cheap and frequent air travel has given many people on average or below average income the opportunity to see the world in a way that they could not have dreamed about, even 20 years ago. No doubt these ‘young, keen, brave’ little darlings would like the departure lounges cleared of the ‘lower orders’ so that “Mummy and Daddy” can have a clear run through passport control.
God bless Ryan Air and Easy Jet.
PS I can’t find any Evening Standard reports about brave keen miners fighting to keep the coal mines open, or Young keen and brave poll tax rioters. Could somebody point me in the right direction for these please!!
- Robert, Manchester, 08/12/2008 23:23
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God bless them. The incessant growth of aviation defies logic and is only explained by the weird collusion between BAA and the higher echelons of the labour government.
- Jason R, London, 08/12/2008 19:39
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Like them or loath them they do have the courage of their convictions plus the knowledge that they can speak as much as they like and the authorities won't bother listening. Yes, they have disrupted the lives of a few of the worlds contributors to pollution but it is going to take a hell of a lot more of this type of action before the authorities take not of the fact that there are a heck of a lot of silent supporters who might now become more vociferous. Go for it guys.
- Dennis, Taplow. U.K., 08/12/2008 16:02
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I saupport you and if you were my daughters I would back you all the way - upset shoppers on carbon suicide shopping trips beware! To think the level of ignorance is such people actually think flying has no consequence - its all so reminiscent of the tobacco lobby of the 1960s and 1970s - only this time its the planet vested business interest groups want to sacrifice and not just smokers - my god and the dumb populace squeal 'what about my right to fly'or 'its my right' funny I thought activities - like smoking which damage others were bad - that is the real debate we should be having
- Christian Ball, London, UK, 08/12/2008 15:59
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