Kicking back in austerity Britain

When the Coalition came to power in 2010, the knee-jerk reaction for me was to oppose them with everything I had. So I did what I normally do in times of crisis: pick up a guitar and criss-cross the country trying to raise merry hell playing at both gigs and protests. This is documented in the Picket Line Party project I released earlier this year.

Looking back, I was riding a wave of strikes, demonstrations, and protests that in some ways crashed and burned. I did too. Now, in 2012, the day-to-day indignities of the cuts continue, but the media-grabbing events of the likes of Occupy have turned into localised struggles to save jobs and services. This is a good thing, but the fight back is proceeding at a much slower pace than is necessary for any reversal of our collective fortunes, let alone a radical re-wiring of our society.

The question for me earlier this year was: what to do about this all now? My response has been to come up with the "Kicking Back In Austerity Britain tour"; a night of hard-hitting, socially engaged acoustic music in collaboration with Gail Something-Else.

Radical Wales at the Green Gathering 2012

Two hardy Radical Wales editors braved lashing rain, thunderstorms, and hippies brandishing crystals, in a field outside Chepstow one weekend in August to bring our readers some postcards from the front line of ecology and sustainable living in Wales.

This small, but perfectly-formed, Welsh festival is a fixture for many in the UK environmental protest movement, and always attracts a strong mix of campaigners from Wales, the South West, and beyond. We were part of the campaigns field, manning a book stall and Radical Wales info point, and spent a few days in the company of some truly inspiring, erudite, and committed activists with bags of knowledge, understanding, and interesting stories to tell.

Throughout the weekend we pootled about, talked to people, and recorded video and audio interviews which we then uploaded to YouTube and AudioBoo, tweeting under the Green Gathering #GG_2012 hashtag as we went along.