The tyranny of the eco-aristocracy

It’s not becoming to boast, but I was an extremely early sceptic when it comes to matters ecological. In 1990, I wrote a short play – starring Lesley Manville, who has since risen to stellar heights – for the Royal Court in London. It made a frankly biased, unreasonable, anti-green argument which I have had no reason whatsoever to regret ever since. If anything, I feel even more strongly that environmentalism – which has now ‘grown’ to include those adolescent maniacs who chuck muck over masterpieces – is the ‘luxury belief’ to top them all.

One line I particularly recall with pleasure was: ‘The rich have always been friends of the earth, because it’s been such a good friend to them.’ In ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, one of the most nature-obsessed of all hymns, we are somewhat preposterously lectured on the appropriateness of social class as part of the natural order as allegedly planned by the Almighty:

‘The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.’

That’s handy!

In 1984, Friends of the Earth became prominent in British politics under the stewardship of Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, a post he held until 1990. And ecology has remained a rich man’s hobby ever since. Just look at the names of the youngsters of Just Stop Oil who have been nabbed for making holier-than-thou nuisances of themselves in their role as self-appointed protectors of the planet: Cressida Gethin, Amy Rugg-Easey, Indigo Rumbelow… That last one inspired an amusing game on X called Find Your Silly Posh Girl Name ‘by combining a colour with a defunct shop’. In this, Just Stop Oil is simply carrying on the glorious tradition of Extinction Rebellion, the leading lights of which had such names as Robin Ellis-Cockcroft and Robin Boardman-Pattinson.

The daddy of them all is of course King Charles III, the ‘climate king’, who often gives the impression that environmentalism is simply a crafty way for our rulers to corral and control hoi polloi now that the old ways of pushing us around are deemed unprogressive.

It’s not just a class divide, of course, but a racial one. Many Britons whose families came here from other countries were escaping environments where people were at the mercy of nature, where drought and monsoons and typhoons were always around the corner. They are now relieved to reach a place where the more reliable work in industry and business means you can make a living without having to be constantly mindful of the elements at their most extreme.

There was a pleasing incident a few years back when a multi-hued commuter crowd in Canning Town, east London dragged some Extinction Rebellion snoot from the top of a Tube train as he was making them late for work. Whenever I get cross remembering how the super-smug Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow smirked about a Brexit rally that he had ‘never seen so many white people in one place’, I think of climate-change protests, which make the average Lib Dem party conference look like the Reggae Sunsplash festival.

Now, at last, the ecology mob has realised that it needs to get with the diversity thing, after an analysis last year confirmed that conservation groups are among the whitest in the UK. Over at Friends of the Earth, fewer than five per cent of its staff are non-white, against 16 per cent of the working population. But now its new boss is Asad Rehman, who admits in the latest Sunday Times that having members who all look like extras from Downton Abbey doesn’t really cut the comestibles in the modern world. ‘If we want to be a force for change, you have to look like and be part of the fabric of this country’, he says. ‘And that is diverse and it’s diverse in class, it’s diverse in ethnicity, diverse geographically.’

You’d think Mr Rehman might want to concentrate on the matter at hand, but he’s already putting his fingers in all sorts of sticky pies that are probably best left alone if he really wants all kinds of people to join his organisation:

‘It’s not that I’m just a person of colour, I come from a working-class background. I grew up during the height of the far right and National Front. That was what politicised me, brought me first into the anti-racist movement and community organising.’

From here, of course, it’s just a hop, skip and stumble into demonising Reform UK, as he warns theatrically that its rise ‘keeps me awake at night’. ‘We are heading towards, I think, a divisive, racist, dystopian future’, he says, ‘Or we have a future which is prosperous, united, more coherent, cohesive, strong, community diverse. That’s the one I’m fighting for.’

I’m sure he means well, and he definitely senses that ecology has been a rich man’s plaything. ‘We made mistakes talking about polar bears on icebergs and abstract parts per million [of CO2 in the atmosphere] and temperature rises, when that doesn’t connect to where people are’, he says. He also quotes the famous slogan of the French gilets jaunes protesters: ‘The elites worry about the end of the world, we ordinary people worry about the end of the month.’

But Rehman can’t help but trot out the same tired old clichés the overclass always uses. ‘United’ and ‘diverse’ have become the modern equivalent of what down-home Americans felt about ‘mom’ and ‘apple pie’ – ie, anyone against them was guaranteed to be a rotter. But we’ve moved on now. People have cottoned on to the fact that it’s often quite hard for a society to be united and diverse at the same time. We also know that ‘divisive’ is what the ruling classes call democracy when it doesn’t go their way. If the EU referendum had gone against Brexit, the commentariat would have smugged around purring what a ‘unifying’ experience it had been – and sod the other side.

Besides, belief that the planet is in trouble due to climate change and whatnot is no guarantee that the people in ecological organisations will agree on other things. Hunting comes to mind. So does the case of Shahrar Ali, the former deputy leader of the Greens who was sacked because he doesn’t believe that men can become women. I’m dubious that Rehman will make Friends of the Earth more diverse. Not least as posh white people are more relaxed about getting dirty than other races and classes, I feel. Which accounts for their vast over-representation at music festivals where wading through one’s own ordure is part of the fun. It’s a novelty for them – but it’s hard to cultivate nostalgie de la boue when you grew up with an outside lavvy. What did pre-industrial society ever do for us? Made us the property of some filthy old feudal lord and killed us off at 35.

Good luck to Mr Rehman, but I have an inkling that those whose families escaped this fate within living memory, in the countries they emigrated from in order to live and thrive in industrial societies, are going to be even less interested in stumping up for a Friends of the Earth membership than the rest of us.

Julie Burchill is a spiked columnist. Follow her Substack, Notes from the Naughty Step, here.