There is a saying known as the Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Its origins are hazy, and not rooted in ancient Chinese wisdom, but it gets repeated in times of turbulence. Robert Kennedy famously used it in a speech to students in Cape Town in 1966, when he called on them to find “common qualities of conscience and indignation” to “wipe away the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world”.

And here we are again, in interesting times, rediscovering our consciences and indignation. From the sea of pussyhats that descended on Whitehall for the Women’s March in January to the public figures felled by #metoo, this has been a year of protest. Grassroots movements took on the establishment in a surprise general election, driving an even more surprising result. Across the country, more and more of us decided that this was the year we would take a stand.

For Eddie Thornton, 34, things changed just before Christmas 2016. Originally from North Yorkshire, he had been living in a French monastery, doing some filming work, when he heard that the local community had lost their high court appeal to prevent fracking on the edge of Kirby Misperton. “I asked permission from the monks to leave, came back home and became part of a group who took possession of a disused field on a strategic site. We hoped it would become a symbol of resistance for the local community.”

That site evolved into the Kirby Misperton protection camp, located about two miles from fracking company Third Energy’s well, next to the main access road for lorries. Thornton and his fellow activists had their Christmas dinner on site last year, donated by locals and eaten by candlelight, and he has spent the whole of 2017 living on site. “I’ve got a nice bell tent now with a woodstove in it, so don’t feel too sorry for me.”

The decision to drop everything and be part of the protest was “an absolute no-brainer,” he says. “I’m lucky not to have a mortgage or a family at this point. And I’ve got family nearby, so I have an escape when I need it.” His parents live about two miles away. “We call ourselves a family of accidental activists. My dad has been campaigning in different ways, equally hard. My mum is a retired nurse and she helps a lot with the organisation of the camp. Their house has turned into a welfare place for activists when they need support.”

Eddie Thornton on a tower built by anti-fracking campaigners in Kirby Misperton. Photograph: Gary Calton

The camp began with a handful of residents, and grew slowly at first. The activists’ focus was on local outreach – speaking at town hall events, holding public meetings and training sessions to help the community understand their rights. In September that focus changed to direct action, setting up a community blockade of the gates. The protest has attracted a lot of attention, not least because of the demographic of the campaigners: a significant number are retired, middle-class, Conservative voters – “geriactivists”, as one article put it.

“I think for a lot of them this issue has been a revelation,” Thornton says. “They feel let down by the people they have supported all their lives, and there’s a lot of anger.”

A media narrative has formed around the divide between old and young in the UK, the selfish baby boomers trying to preserve the status quo and the idealistic, disruptive millennials seeking change. In Kirby Misperton, this isn’t entirely accurate. Is the new mood of protest cross-generational?

“We have these myths, or ways of defining what an activist looks like,” says Dr Sevasti-Melissa Nolas, senior lecturer in Social Work and Social Care at the University of Sussex. “There’s that quote, often misattributed to Winston Churchill, about liberalism being for the young. In fact, the research is inconclusive. We can take up protest or decide to engage with political life at any age.”

Jeanne Bain, 63, was a first-timer at the Women’s March in London this January. “I’d always wanted to go to Greenham when I was younger, but then I fell pregnant with my first child and I never got round to it.” There had been other things she wanted to protest about, but somehow it never happened. Then came Brexit and Trump. “I was very, very angry. Someone posted something about the march on Facebook, and I booked my train ticket to London immediately. I went on my own, made myself a sash with purple and green ribbon on the train, picked up a placard when I got there and marched. I talked to lots of wonderful people. Afterwards I felt elated that I’d done something. That I’d said ‘no’.”

Jeanne Bain at the Women’s March in January. Photograph: courtesy of Jeanne Bain

She went home and signed up to the Women’s Equality party. A couple of months later, she went back to work part-time for a campaigning organisation in Lincolnshire (mostly for financial reasons, but the fact that it was a job in the charity sector helped). “I went on a Reclaim the Night march in Lincoln a couple of weeks ago. And as soon as they have set a date for the next Women’s March, I’ll book my ticket.”

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Voter turnout is often used as a way of measuring our engagement with politics. Although it has crept up slightly in the last two years, it’s still not back to the levels of the 70s or 80s. But perhaps it is not the best way of judging our feelings.

“We often rely on these very narrow categories such as voting or going on a protest to define what activism is,” Nolas says. “But if we can get away from that, it allows us to see other responses as part of the discourse.” When we look at it that way, we no longer seem so apathetic.

One person who wouldn’t be surprised to hear us described as an engaged nation is Robin Priestley, of the campaigning organisation 38 Degrees. If you have ever signed an online petition, there’s a good chance you’ve had an email with his name land in your inbox. The organisation, founded in 2009, is a good bellwether of our national interests. “I’ve definitely seen an upwards trend in the number of people starting petitions on our site,” Priestley says. “There has been this idea that people aren’t interested, but we’ve never thought that. It’s not that people aren’t engaged, it’s just that they didn’t always have a route through traditional party politics.”

The demographic of people using the site, either to start or garner support for a campaign, is hugely broad, he says. “It’s everyone from 11-year-olds to 89-year-olds, doing everything from ‘Save my local library’ to ‘Let’s change government policy’. And there’s a very wide range of political views.”

What kinds of campaign seem to really energise people? The NHS, Priestley says. School cuts. But one of the biggest spikes in activity came straight after the Brexit vote.

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For Liz, 25, the referendum was instrumental in her becoming part of the Black Lives Matter movement this year. “In my previous job, I did a lot of travelling across the country, doing schools workshops, and I could see the Brexit vote taking shape. I could feel it. At the weekends, I’d be in London living in this Remain bubble, but my Monday to Friday was full of xenophobia.



“I was following Black Lives Matter on social media, more as an act of solidarity with what was happening in the US. But I put off doing anything more for ages.” Then she saw a meeting had been called just before this year’s general election and decided to go.

The women I’ve met through this, they give me hope. I went to a meeting and they were bursting at the seams

“A group like BLM has such a global profile, and they are often portrayed so negatively. I felt anxious. But at that first meeting I found the loveliest, most welcoming, intelligent people. I was really humbled and held by them. We’ve put on political education events, so that young people know their rights and what to do if they’re stopped and searched. Things that are practical and tangible. There was a march for the United Families and Friends Campaign in October, and we ran a sign-making event the week before. It was such fun being a de facto babysitter for all these kids for the afternoon.”

Liz speaking at community event

Growing up, she says, both her parents were extremely political. “My mum taught me to smash the patriarchy before it was a thing on a T-shirt. She loves that I’m doing this now, and just hopes I don’t get arrested. She thinks it’s a genetic thing and I was never really going to be able to avoid it. And it has become so much a part of my life that it informs every conversation I have. I can see my friends’ eyes glazing over when I start talking about structural oppression, but this is my happy place.”

Does she feel more optimistic as a result of joining up? There is a long pause. “I don’t know. I have to remind myself of what it was like travelling round the country before Brexit, and feeling that sense of anger and fear from people. But the women I’ve met through this, they give me hope. I went to a meeting for Sisters Uncut and they were bursting at the seams. People are getting more involved, and that’s incredible.”

With all this passion and energy, shouldn’t we expect to be seeing more change? “Protest is often frustrating,” says Dr Kevin Gillan, editor-in-chief of the journal Social Movement Studies. “Look back to the 1990s and the Battle of Seattle World Trade Organisation protests. They took months to organise and they were preceded by a decade of single-issue protests.” Social media has meant that protests and movements can be organised relatively quickly, but they are also more likely to be fragmented. The energy often dissipates as quickly as it appeared, Gillan says. Perhaps we expect too much, too soon, of specific events or campaigns. “People tend to mythologise certain events when the real arc of change is quite complex to trace. Yes, there are iconic protests – but even with something like Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, most people don’t know that he gave that speech on multiple occasions.



“What we do know is that things are more likely to change when elites are divided. That’s when we have generally seen the biggest threat to the status quo. And when you have the IMF arguing that inequality is getting out of hand, as we do at the moment, then you are in an interesting position. What I don’t see in the realms of protest is a coherent alternative message. At the moment, it’s really coming from ‘institutional politics’ in the form of the Labour party.”

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Zac Arnold is 17 and studying for his A-levels. He is also part of the committee to save the Dilke Memorial hospital and Lydney and District hospital in the Forest of Dean. He came to the campaign through his new membership of the Labour party. “I signed up in May when the general election was announced. So did my dad. We made it a bit of a competition to see who could get signed up first – I think I beat him by a couple of minutes.”

Arnold is studying politics at A-level and says he has always been interested, but Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was a deciding factor for him. “I think he seems really honest, and that he actually cares.” As a new Labour member, he attended meetings about the hospital plans and was encouraged by others to become part of the committee, which is bipartisan. “We’re all very different ages. I think because I’m the youngest I’ve been given a lot of the technology stuff to manage, then I handle some of the press, and I email our volunteers.”

Zac Arnold (on right) taking part in a parade in Chepstow. Photograph: Paul Blakemore

Current NHS plans are to close the Dilke and nearby Lydney and merge the two hospitals in a new building. “I’m not against a new hospital, but we don’t have enough information abut the new plans. We’re all aware of what happened at Tewkesbury, where they got a new hospital and then the floor buckled and they had to close the ward. We just want to make sure that we don’t lose out – and it seems like the vast majority here are in favour of keeping the two hospitals we’ve got.”

Arnold’s mother is a nurse, so he naturally took an interest in the campaign (his father stays at home to look after him and his younger sister). But he is engaged across a range of issues. The first time we are in contact he tells me he has to rush off because he’s going to a demonstration about universal credit. He writes to his local MP “at least once a month about whatever’s on my mind. School cuts, the NHS. I find it amazing that he always writes back, even if it does read a bit like a stock response.” His other interests – the Sea Cadets, creative writing – have taken a back seat as he tries to go to as many meetings as he can. “And I like to read about other campaigns online. Sometimes I’ll spend a couple of hours in the evening on a site like Change.org and I’ll sign up to 50 petitions. I’ll sign anything I agree with.”

He thinks he is one of only four younger members who are active in his constituency (“a 400% increase on this time last year!”) but in many ways Arnold is also the story of 2017. Back in 2005, BBC news did a serious analysis of whether young people were more likely to vote for the winner of Big Brother than they were in a general election, such was the panic about young voter apathy. But as June proved, Arnold’s generation are looking for a cause they can get behind. “Doing all these things makes me feel useful. It makes me feel hopeful, like we’re making progress.”

Back in Kirby Misperton, it is nearly Christmas once again. Eddie Thornton is tired, but similarly hopeful. “The community here is full of such good people. I don’t know if we’re going to stop this well, or be able to stop fracking – but it feels like we are part of a wider, gradual awakening. And I get very fulfilled by that.”

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