Radical Rose

Radical Rose: a cycle ride around central London running in parallel to Extinction Rebellion’s The Big One – took place on Sunday 23 April, 2023. Travelling through place and time: mapping, interweaving and overlaying female-led activism and actions in defence of the Earth past and present and meeting people and places and sentinel trees – standing and felled. Our cycle peleton travelled towards The Big One approaching Parliament at the end of the ride. 

The Radicle Rose bike ride finds its roots in the story of Rose Lamartine-Yates, an active campaigner for women’s suffrage and pioneering female cycling advocate at the start of 20th century. Rose planted the Monteray Pine in the Suffragette Arboretum in 1909 which we are collecting seeds from and  propagating. This tree — the only remaining tree from the arboretum — is the beating heart of Walking Forest

On the tour we explored activism today and shifts in the legal system (protest law, climate change, ecocide and recognition of the natural world in the law). We reflected on the ongoing devastation of the natural world, including that caused by the building of HS2 (High Speed Rail Link), and celebrated courage, resilience and creativity in the past and present.

The Radical Rose Route

One: Carey Street, Royal Courts of Justice.

We meet and introduce Walking Forest, ourselves and honour the four Dawn Redwood trees under whom we meet, and all the trees of London.

Two: Torrington Square.

Rose Lamartine Yates once lived here. At the site of Birkbeck College, we were met by Farhana Yamin, environmental  lawyer and activist. Farhana talks through the history and current situation in International Law and negotiations relating to Climate Change and Biodiversity loss and environmental justice driven in the most part by small island states and vulnerable countries. We stop and chalk on the pavement (like the suffragettes did to promote their rally’s) marking the names of people or more-than-humans that we are inspired by.

Three: Outside Euston Station.

We visit two giant plane tree stumps from trees felled for the HS2 rail link. Also close to location for the tunnel protests again the HS2 project. Walking Forest worked on a performance action over two days  in Coventry in 2021, carrying a silver birch tree felled by HS2 in Coventry for the HS2 line with over 40 women from across Coventry and marking the devastation of trees and biodiversity — including multiple ancient woodlands — caused by the scheme.

Our time with these two trees at Euston was accompanied by Mira Calix’s sound composition Circling, which was composed for Walking Forest by Mira for Walking Forest Coventry’s performance action and tree procession, and a poem for HS2 tree activist and tree planter Martina.

How to Silence Thunder in Five Easy Steps

1. Walk into the woods, the chestnut trees will show you the way.

Sit down, breathe out your fear.

Breathe in the years of growth.

2. That taste in the air plant-speak

Pollen kennings, root rhymes

A saga they. Were chanting before you

And will keep repeating after.

3. Make it autumn

Trace the mycelial networks

And watch new understandings mushroom

Feel your leaves turn orange and fall

Your skin roughen into bark

4. Blink and the seasons will pass.

Feel the earth between your toes.

Watch the badger build a sett and discover just seeing it feels like enough.

5. The sounds your heard on your way in

Roared like un-thunder: too regular, too careless, straight like a sucker-punch, unneeded

It fell silent when you sat down,  like a bat on the hunt.

A poem. Written for Martina by a Polish guy that she met. After a conversation with him he wrote this.

Four: Fitzroy Square

We hear from Cathy Atherton, Suffragette historian who speaks about this part of London at the time of the Suffragettes. She talks about women’s disenfranchisement from natural heritage as well as the important work of social reformers friends and suffragettes Mary Neal and Emmeline Pethwick-Lawrence and their links to the Pankhurst family who were are at the centre of the Suffragette movement.

Five: Berkeley Square

Xanthe Maggs, artist/ activist,  invites people to craft roses by hand from clay excavated from Horse Hill oil field in Surrey. Sarah Finch, campaigner talks about her court battle with Surrey council over Horse Hill,  a site which aims to extract 3.2 million tonnes of oil over the next 20 years. Sarah was awaiting the verdict on her case where she took Surrey Council to the Supreme Court over the climate impacts of drilling at Horse Hill.

People take their clay roses to gift to others at The Big One or to gift them back to the towering trees in the square.

Six: Memorial Gates, Green Park.

Ruth Ben-Tovim speaks at a memorial constructed recently in 2002 to honour soldiers from the British Empire who fought for Britain in the 1st and 2nd world wars. Ruth invites us to reflect on our colonial history and the impacts of this history on other beings on our earth and quotes from Vanessa Andreotti from Guesturing Towards Decolonial Future Collective.

Seven: Caxton Hall. Just round the corner from  The Big One.

Caxton Hall was the site for suffragette meetings and an women’s parliament on a number of occasions, run by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). We are met by Jody Blackstock, a barrister with Lawyers are Responsible. She tells us that this group of lawyers have recently made a declaration to withhold legal services in respect to new fossil fuels projects or against climate protestors who are exercising their democratic right to peacefully protest and wishes us well in our actions.

We each finish by writing  on a tag with what we would say to a Women’s parliament now or then, and hanging it on the railings of Caxton Hall.

With big thanks for Miles Glyn (XR visual designer/artist) for making our Rose printed patches, Gonul Ekmekci for being our cycle leader, and to everyone who cycled with us and with thanks for all those women who have gone before.