A chàirdean,
Yesterday, we broke the supply chain of a genocide for a few hours. At 4.30 in the morning, two hundred people, their faces covered, quietly placed their bodies around the entrances to Keysight Technologies, which supplies electronic components to UAV Tactical, which is a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, which is arming Israel’s genocide in Palestine. For a day, workers could not enter a building; the industrial production of death was slowed by a day. All it took was two hundred people, singing quiet songs and passing around packets of biscuits as the sun rose.
The police, whether from exhaustion or surprise, took no action. They laid no hands, took no photographs, drew no weapons. Shortly after the sit-in began, one of them said, “We just want to facilitate your peaceful pro–” and was met by a howl of hardened laughter. They made few further attempts to speak. Police and protestors watched each other without words.
I was there. I can’t tell you exactly what I did that day: when I write about protest, I have to tread a fine line between being a propagandist and being a clype. But I was there, watching the police. I counted them as their numbers grew from two to six to twelve; I monitored the movements of their vans; I twitched when their hands moved to their waists. For four hours I watched, unable to look away. The blockade was calm, quiet, jovial; one or two people even took a nap. Behind my mask and sunglasses, my eyes were wide open.
After the blockade disbanded, having won the day, having lost no-one, cheering, I stood on a full tram, swaying back and forth, surrounded by people buzzing with excitement, facemasks slipping off, and I couldn’t speak. I should have felt proud. I wasn’t feeling proud. I wasn’t feeling anything. I got home and went straight to bed, where I stayed under the covers all afternoon, my heart beating hard against my ribs.
Only good things had happened, but my body was convinced otherwise.
Sixteen years earlier, just under half my lifetime ago, I was part of Climate Camp in the City, an occupation of Bishopsgate in London in protest against carbon trading’s enablement of the escalating climate crisis. We set up campsites and sound systems and a kitchen; there were dance circles and poetry readings. A young Kae Tempest performed. We planned to be there for 24 hours. We turned the heart of British capitalism into a celebration of alternatives. At 7pm the police blockaded the south and north entrances to the camp. Just before midnight, they attacked.
I remember sitting on the ground, my arms linked around my friends, as a line of armoured police pushed into us. I remember being pushed back and pushed back. I remember seeing police take boots and truncheons to tents and amps and stoves, all the apparatus of celebration falling beneath their feet. I remember a shield knocking me to the ground, and the feeling of being pulled back and forth, my comrades’ arms around my legs, the police’s hands around my arms. Then I blacked out. I was pulled behind police lines. When I came to, they were cutting my clothes open. They checked my pulse, my breathing. I was alive, but dazed. Concussed. They asked me my name, and I gave a fake. They asked me the date, and I gave what I thought was the right one. Then they let me go, and I stumbled down the Bishopsgate, almost empty of protestors. I picked over the ruined tents looking for my belongings, trying to remember where I was supposed to go. Then my friends found me. They took me to a squat to sleep. I didn’t sleep.
A few hours earlier, police had pushed a bystander, Ian Tomlinson, to the ground, and killed him.
The police operation was named Glencoe, where in 1692 four hundred Scottish soldiers blockaded the north entrance to the valley, and four hundred more swept up from the south, killing every Macdonald they found. The police operation was named Glencoe, where I’ve climbed seven mountains around a wide glacial valley. In 2011, the high court ruled that the police use of blockades 2009’s Glencoe was unlawful, and criticised their use of force. But Ian Tomlinson is still dead, and I’m still in bed, shaking.
The tactic of blockading protestors behind police lines was called a kettle. The name for the high head of a glacial valley in Scotland is coire, a kettle. In Glencoe there are corries named black, white, grey, and one named for birches, and one named for heather, and one corrie called disgusting.
Whenever I’m near a group of police, my body tenses. I watch them, waiting for them to turn, for the shields to come up, for the batons to come out. Even when they wear blue jackets and say they just want to facilitate my protest, I think that the shield may come out at any moment. Even when they do nothing at all to harm me, I watch them until they’re out of sight. Half a lifetime later, I’m still being pulled back and forth, my body shaking, my clothes falling away from me, my mind flashing black and white.
For some years after Bishopsgate, the burning years, I threw myself more recklessly into protest actions which brought me into direct confrontations with police and with street fascists. For some years after that, the grey and unmoving years, I withdrew from direct action entirely. Neither approach made me any less afraid. Neither approach taught my body a less fearful way to be.
Yesterday I was with two hundred friends in a business park filled with public art and one weapons manufacturer. Over the factory where the parts of the weapons of genocide are made is a neon sign quoting a poem by Alexander McCall Smith: “of shifting light / of changing skies”. Nearby, alongside busts of other socialist poets, none of whom are named in the business material as socialists, none of whom are named for their signing of the cultural boycott of Israel, though many were socialists, and many signed, is a bust of Hamish Henderson. “He envisaged a Scotland that was free, fraternal and joyful,” says the website. “Broken faimilies in launs we've hairriet / Will curse ‘Scotlan the Brave’ nae mair, nae mair,” he wrote.
How can I teach myself that, arm in arm with my comrades, I’m safe? It begins by telling the story of why I don’t believe that I’m safe. I’ve told it before; I’ll tell it again. It begins by telling my loved ones when and why I don’t feel safe, and letting them care for me until I do. This work of healing is work I want to do, because I want to again put my body in the way of state violence. I know no other way to end it.
Aye,
Josie
What I’ve Made
A couple of months ago I spoke and performed for the Stellar Quines’ Quinescast on art and revolutionary feminism; the podcast, with Hannah Lavery, Zinnie Harris, Liz Kettle, Kim McAleese and Faith Eliott, is out now.
What I’m Doing
I have a busy August with the Edinburgh International Book Festival:
Sun 10th August, 2pm: A Scots writing workshop
Sun 10th, 6.15pm: A panel with Alan Hollinghurst and Randa Jarrar
Thu 14th, 7.15pm: Restaging my performance with Malin Lewis, Unco
Sat 16th, 5.45pm: Interviewing Torrey Peters
Sun 17th, 2.45pm: Talking about Who Will Be Remembered Here (see below!)
Sun 17th, 5.45pm: Interviewing Maggie Nelson
Sat 23rd, 9pm: Joining in with Jenni Fagan’s Frankenstein cabaret
I wrote and performed for a short film about Dùn Trodan ’s Dùn Teilbh, the Glenelg Brochs, for Historic Environment Scotland. It’s part of a set of four films in four languages of Scotland, made by Lewis Hetherington and CJ Mahony. The films will be exhibited at Edinburgh Art Festival this August, and there’ll be discussion events too. You can watch the trailer online.
7th-24th August: EAF Pavilion, 45 Leith St, Edinburgh
On 2nd September I’m doing an event at Nairn Book & Arts Festival with Malin Lewis and Mae Diansangu, exploring the poetry and music of queer Scots.
8th-13th September I’m teaching a course at Moniack Mhòr with Hannah Lavery, Poetry for Resistance and Survival. Our questions are “How can poetry be turned to protest, and how can words offer comfort to those who need it?” By great good fortune, our guest reader is Roger Robinson.
What I’m Reading
Benedict Nguyễn’s Hot Girls with Balls is a horror novel. It has no monsters or gore, and it’s supposed to be a satire of social media, sports and trans celebrity, but it’s the scariest thing I’ve read all year.
Remigiusz Ryzinski’s Foucault in Warsaw is a portrait of gay life under authoritarian communism, and of how personal and institutional memory fails.
Iona Lee’s What I Love About A Cloud Is Its Unpredictability is a book of procedural concrete ecopoetics, which is the best poetics.