“He was worried the shot

wouldmakehim sick

Vaccine-hesitant people are dying of Covid-19.

Their loved ones want to warn the world

Tuesday 14/09/21
ZoeWilliams
Why Emma Raducanu’s
win makes me optimistic
page 3

‘It waswritten on
acid while watching
The Big Breakfast’
The Boo Radleys on
making Wake Up Boo!
page 9
 Pass notes
•
3

Zoe
The Guardian
Tuesday 14 September 2021

Williams
Whatever your age, In praise of
Emma Raducanu is all the tiny
acts of GP
a glorious role model kindness

W hen Mr Z wakes up earlier than me, which is

always, it’s my habit when I stir to ask him what
is going on in the world. My plan is to trick him
into feeling like an all-seeing Hermes character
(the god, not the delivery firm), rather than a
man who married someone really lazy.
When this happened on Sunday, he told me: “Everyone’s talking
about Emma Raducanu.” I knew she had won the US Open already
because we had had a late night. I would have known anyway; the
build up to the match had a fairytale quality. She was so young and
her potential victory so laden with significance – the first British
woman to win a grand slam singles title since Virginia Wade, 44
years ago – that it had taken on an air of inevitability, at least to
those of us who didn’t have to do anything but watch.
Opinion the morning after was divided four ways. One part was
triumph over the likes of Piers Morgan and John McEnroe, who
had had quite a bit to say about the 18-year-old’s ability to handle
pressure over the summer, when she dropped out of Wimbledon
after becoming breathless. It is peculiar the appeal this pastime
holds for a certain kind of middle-aged man, making unkind
assertions about the character of a prominent young woman –
almost as though her magnificence were a scam that only a straight-
Young stars talking chap could unmask. Raducanu didn’t
need to win a grand slam for Morgan to look like
presentqualities a fool, but it was fun to watch the two collide.
One part was pointing out the reality of
that the middle migration and identity – nobody is more British,
or has been more patriotically celebrated, than
aged shouldhave Raducanu, who was born in Canada to a Romanian
father and a Chinese mother, is fluent in Mandarin
nailed down and arrived in Kent aged two. The screenwriter
Dominic Minghella took this idea to its logical
conclusion: “You can celebrate your Raducanus
or you can push back boats. You can’t do both.”
One part was saying what a racket it was, that
you could win the US Open but still be too young
to drink there. This is what passes for a relatable
opinion when you don’t want to have a real one.
The final part was pausing to reflect that
Leylah Fernandez, also still in her teens, was as
gracious in defeat as Raducanu was in victory.
And also incredibly good at tennis.
It’s hard to admire people this young without
a twang of discomfort: they are role-modelling
qualities to the world – strength under pressure,
maturity, humility – that the middle aged and
beyond should have nailed down. In a way, it’s
easier when it’s all about sport, the natural arena
for them to best their forebears. Even so, it’s hard
not to notice the person underneath the sports
 // ; / :
Once I met my GP at a party. I
was sitting bang opposite, trying
desperately to place her, asking
insistent questions such as: “Were
you a member of the Battersea
Labour party in ’84 through ’92?”
and: “Do you use that dry cleaner
on Lavender Hill?” Finally, in
desperation: “Are you famous?”
When I figured it out, I realised
that there is probably a discretion
protocol, where GPs don’t recognise
you and you don’t recognise them.
Over decades, they have tested out
all the other social alternatives for
the doctor-patient meet’n’chat –
“Hi! Haven’t seen you since your
gallstones, how’s that working out?”
– and this is just the way it has to be.
GPs face almost constant
criticism: for the hiatus in face-
to-face appointments, for their
convoluted and overstretched
systems, for staff shortages and,
lately, an issue with blood tests. It is
not so much pointless as ineffective
to point out that many of these
problems are policy decisions made
many echelons above the surgery.
The raging anecdotalist –
“I couldn’t get an appointment for
weeks and they misdiagnosed my
aneurysm over the phone” – always
seems to grab the attention. And
it’s hard to pull the focus back to
the day-to-day excellence because
your GP’s acts of kindness and
wisdom are usually tiny.
It will be the doctor who knew
not to say hello to you at a party.
The receptionist who always,
without fail, over 20 years, finds
an appointment that day, as long
as I call at 8am and not one minute
after. The way they will always
see a kid with a stomach ache face
to face, even in the middle of a
pandemic, even if they know that
kid is no stranger to stomach ache.
I absolutely love my GP – and
№ 4,331
The weekend lie-in
Age: As old as the weekend.
Appearance: An unmoving lump under
a duvet, with the sun shining on it.
Ah! What a guilty pleasure. Apparently,
you shouldn’t feel any guilt.
Because you’re unconscious? No, because
a little weekend lie-in is good for you.
Can I just say that, in my heart, I have
always known this. According to a study
published in the journal Sleep Medicine,
people who catch up on missed sleep at
weekends have lower rates of depression
than those who don’t.
Staying in bed all day is a cure for
depression – who knew? Careful; the study
showed that people who slept an extra
one to two hours at weekends had a lower
risk, but the prevalence of depression rose
again for those who got more than two
extra hours.
Understood. What else do I have to do?
You have to be South Korean.
Why’s that? It’s just that the study used
data from a 2016 health survey in which all
5,500 participants were from South Korea.
I don’t wish to pour cold water over these
findings, but I thought you couldn’t
make up for lost sleep by getting more
at weekends. Different studies yield
different, if not necessarily contradictory,
results. A 2019 sleep study found that
a weekend lie-in conferred no benefits
to metabolic health for subjects with a
weekday sleep deficit. But research from
the previous year seemed to show that
catch-up sleep could counteract a higher
mortality rate in the long term for regular
undersleepers. Other experts even suggest
that weekend lie-ins may cause insomnia.
Can’t these scientists agree on anything?
Yes: consistently getting too little sleep
is really bad for you and has a negative
impact on mood, concentration, memory,

kit and be chastened by a sophistication and say that from a position of perfect weight, your immune system and
discipline we are long past expecting from adults in public life. health. You should have heard me ultimately your lifespan.
When their athleticism won’t unshackle from their moral praise her when I got an allergy And too much sleep? Also bad.
compass or self-awareness – in the case of Marcus Rashford, say, or on my eyelids. I promise, though, We just can’t win! According to the NHS,
Simone Biles – they throw the norms of the world of the grownups never to tell her that at a party. most adults need somewhere between six
into harsher relief. When their pitch is the future of the planet – as and nine hours of sleep a night. Also, you
with Greta Thunberg – it’s even more shaming to older adults. She should try to get into a routine, in terms of
made her voice so powerful even when she was far from power’s the time you go to bed and wake up.
orbit, while millions of us who had more influence failed to use it. So, should I lie in this Saturday or what?
That is probably what provokes those now-regular tantrums the Overall, it seems that while lie-ins are no
old commentariat have about the young – guilt and inadequacy, substitute for good sleep hygiene, an extra
which wouldn’t necessarily be misplaced in any of us, even though hour or so will do you no harm and may
few of us should feel bad about never winning a grand slam. improve your mood.
For the rest of us, it’s hard to be sour when we are cheering Can I save time by getting that extra hour
our heads off. This is the perfect antidote to the confected clash at work on Friday afternoons? You can try.
between generations: a country bursting with pride for Raducanu, Do say: “Don’t wake me up before you
who did as much for optimism as she did for tennis. go go.”
Don’t say: “But do wake with me up
shortly after you return with croissants.”
 •
4 The Guardian
Tuesday 14 September 2021

‘He didn’t want anyone to

make the same mistake’
double-vaccinated.” By contrast,
the unvaccinated patients he’s
The majority of people in hospital treating are sometimes in their 20s
and 30s, and desperately sick. “It’s
with Covid-19 areunvaccinated emotionally a really hard thing,”
Windsor says, “when you know
– and some face their last days this disease can be prevented.
specially for the nursing staff, who
with enormous regret. Sirin Kale are with these patients for 12 hours
at a time. It’s heartbreaking.”
speakstorelatives of victims who For the most part, when an
hope that, by telling their lovedones’
unvaccinated person dies of Covid-
19, their families grieve privately.
stories, they may help others It is not hard to see why: the

M
Matt Wynter
(left) and
Marcus Birks
had been wrong about Covid-19. “If
you haven’t been ill,” he said, “you
don’t think you’re going to get ill,
so you listen to the [anti-vaccine]
stuff.” e spoke of his regret at not
being vaccinated. “First thing I am
going [to] tell all my family to do is
get the vaccine and [then] anybody
att I see,” he said. “nd as soon as I can
Wynter, a 42-year-old music agent get it, I am definitely getting it.”
from Leek, taffordshire, was Birks had rejected the vaccine
working out in his local gym in because he thought it had been
mid-ugust when he saw, to his rushed through. “e thought
great surprise, that his best friend, it was an emergency vaccine,”
Marcus Birks, was on the television. says Wynter, “and he wanted
e jumped off the elliptical trainer to wait it out a little bit, before
and listened carefully. taking it.” Birks was the sort of
he first thing he noticed was person who was always “very
that Birks, who was also from Leek anti putting anything in his body
and a performer with the dance at all”, Wynter says. e wouldn’t
group Cappella, looked terrible. drink or touch drugs – he wouldn’t
e was gasping for breath and his even take paracetamol for
face was pale. “Marcus would never a headache. nd besides, Birks was
usually have gone on V without a fitness enthusiast, going to the
having done his hair and had a gym five times a week, so he figured
shave,” Wynter says. that if he got Covid, he would most
Breathing heavily from his likely be fine.
intensive care unit bed at oyal Watching his interview, Wynter
toke university hospital, Birks had never been so proud of his
told the BBC interviewer that he best friend. “It takes a lot of balls
internet is a callous place. ocial
media trolls greet the death of
unvaccinated people with jubilant
celebration, as if they themselves
never made a bad judgment
call. rolls congregate on the
Facebook page of an unvaccinated
Bournemouth solicitor, Leslie
to stand up there and admit that on Monday says that in the first six Lawrenson, who died of Covid-19
maybe you made the wrong months of 2021, Covid was involved after uploading videos claiming
decision and had the wrong in 37.4% of deaths in unvaccinated that Covid-19 was “nothing to
views,” he said. e texted Birks people – and just 0.8% of deaths in be afraid of”. “he world is a
straight away. “I’m really proud fully vaccinated people. slightly better place now,” one
of you mate, you’re a hero.” Birks While 80% of the UK adult user writes. “Would you look at
responded from his hospital bed: population is fully vaccinated (and that!” crows another. “Natural
“hanks man, that was mad.” 89% have received a first dose, selection.” here is even a eddit
Birks never got a chance to get indicating they will go on to be fully community, r/ermanCainward,
out of hospital and get vaccinated. vaccinated), vaccine uptake rates named after the former epublican
e died on 27 ugust, aged 40. e have been tapering off in virtually presidential candidate who died
left behind his wife and musical all regions of the UK. For months, of Covid-19 after opposing mask
partner, Lis, who is pregnant healthcare professionals have mandates. Its 138,000 members
with their first child. (Wynter been sounding the alarm about swap stories in triumphalist tones
is speaking with Lis’s blessing.) the unvaccinated people they’re about unvaccinated people who
“I have never experienced grief treating for Covid-19. “What we are died of Covid-19.
like it,” says Wynter. seeing right now,” says Dr David Birks, too, has been the subject
In the UK and other developed Windsor, a critical care consultant of online sniping. “nti-vaxxer
nations such as France and the U, working with Covid-19 patients musician dies from Covid”
Covid-19 has become a pandemic in south-west ngland, “is a large read a headline on Mail nline.
of the unvaccinated. Last month, number of unvaccinated people “eople need to show empathy
rof Chris Whitty, ngland’s chief coming into hospital – far more than for the situation,” Wynter says.
medical officer, tweeted that: “he we would expect.” “Just because someone has an
majority of our hospitalised Covid Windsor tells me that he hasn’t opinion on something doesn’t
patients are unvaccinated and had a single death of a vaccinated mean they deserve the worst
regret delaying [their vaccines].” person in his unit in the past month. thing to happen to them. here
bout 60% of all hospitalisations “I’ve seen hundreds of patients,” are thousands of people who don’t
due to Covid in the UK are of he says, “who would normally agree with vaccinations. hat
unvaccinated people. n ffice for have succumbed to Covid, who doesn’t mean this should happen
National tatistics report published have survived because they’re to them. I never met a person who
would put people before himself
more than Marcus. e was the one
person who would be with you
through thick and thin.”

Marcus was thesort ofperson

Despite the gloating
misanthropes, some people are
speaking out about the deaths
who wasvery anti putting of their Covid-sceptic friends
and relatives, in the hope of
anything in his body atall encouraging unvaccinated
people to ignore social media
misinformation and get vaccinated.
“If even a few people get vaccinated
YTTEG :SHPARGOTOHP

because of what I say,” says Wynter,

“then it’s worth it.” It is, after all,
what Birks would have wanted. “I
know,” Wynter says, “the reason he
did that interview was because he
 •
The Guardian
Tuesday 14 September 2021 5

J
(From left)
Marcus and Lis wanted people to see how serious
Birks, Matt it was, and how real it was, and he
Wynter had no pride in admitting that he
should have taken the vaccine. And
he didn’t want anyone else to make
the same mistake that he did.”

aden (not his

He wanted peopleto see how
serious it was. He admitted he
should havetaken the vaccine
real name), a 44-year-old
business owner from the West
Midlands, wasn’t an anti-vaxxer,
even if later in life he would
sometimes associate with them
at the anti-lockdown rallies he
attended before he died of Covid-
19. “He was a gentle giant,” says his
wife, Priti, 41, a commercial director.
“Caring. He’d listen to people. He
wouldn’t necessarily agree with
them, but he’d listen.” They had
been married for 20 years, and had
two sons. (At her sons’ request, Priti
is speaking under a pseudonym.)
Jaden was a loving, free-spirited,
family-oriented man. He practised
yoga and meditation, seldom
drank alcohol, and ate a mostly
plant-based diet. “I don’t want to
call him a hippy,” Priti says, “but
he was edging towards it.” He once
took an online quiz to determine
his political beliefs and came out
as a libertarian.
When the pandemic began,
Jaden’s counter-establishment
beliefs widened from a hairline
fracture into a vertiginous
fissure. A major reason for his
disenchantment with government
policy was the fact that he was
excluded from most support, as was
Priti, because they were limited-
company directors. “It impacted
him heavily,” Priti says. “We’d
worked forever and paid loads of
taxes and didn’t get anything.”
This, says Prof Karen Douglas of the
Universityof Kent, is a routine driver
of conspiratorial beliefs. “Feeling
alienated and disenfranchised
is associated with greater belief
in conspiracy theories,” she
says. “People tend to believe in
conspiracy theories when they lack
power, are part of a minority group,
or are disadvantaged.”
On social media, Jaden began
to post anti-lockdown messages.
In May 2020, he described
the lockdown restrictions in
Continued on page 6 

6 The Guardian
 Continued from page 5
a Facebook post as the “worst
interference in personal liberties
[in] our history”; in September
and October, he attended anti-
lockdown protests alongside
figures such as the conspiracy
theorist Piers Corbyn. “Electrifying
energy!”, he captioned a picture of
the crowd at the protest.
Jaden refused to wear a
mask, meaning that Priti did
the shopping. “He was an anti-
masker,” says Priti. “I’m not going
to lie.” Jaden felt the government
didn’t have the right to make
people wear masks, and that it
had equivocated on its position
on mask-wearing. (After initially
disputing the evidence on masks,
the government made face masks
compulsory on public transport
and in NHS hospitals in England
and Wales on 15 June 2020.) “One
of the most important factors in
social influence,” says Douglas,
“especially when a smaller
group is trying to persuade the
majority to do something, is to be
consistent in the message. When
inconsistencies creep into an
argument, it’s less likely that the
masses will be persuaded.”
Jaden did believe the pandemic
was real. “But he didn’t approve of
the masks and the chopping and
changing by the government, and
being told what to do,” Priti says.
Jaden believed that if he got Covid-
19, he would be fine. Priti does not
think he would have taken the
vaccine, had it been offered to him.
(He died before the rollout reached
his age group.)
After Jaden fell ill with Covid-
19 in January, his perspective
shifted. One day Priti found him
on the sofa, browsing face masks
on his phone. “He said: ‘This Ted
Baker mask looks nice, I’ll get this
one,’” remembers Priti. On social
media, Jaden was repentant. “For
the past 10 months,” he wrote on
Facebook in January, “those of
you that have stayed connected to
me have seen posts that can now
be described as grossly wrong on
the subject of lockdowns, masks,
and restrictions … I apologise
to all those that I have offended
and argued with. If you are still
in the Covid-19 hoax or Covid
overreaction camp, please believe
the virus is painfully real.”
Jaden died of Covid-19 in
February 2021. Priti believes that,
had he recovered, he would have
had the vaccine. She is talking with
me in the hope of encouraging
others to get the jab. “He was
scared,” says Priti of his final days.
“He didn’t want to die.”
Being young, fit and health-
conscious; politically engaged;
a free thinker; excluded from
government support; headstrong
and opinionated. If there was
a bingo scorecard for the type
of people likely to reject mask
mandates and vaccinations, Jaden
and Birks would get a full house.
“What tends to underpin
conspiracy theories and beliefs,”
says Dr Susannah Kola-Palmer, an
expert in health psychology at the
University of Huddersfield, “is that
•
Tuesday 14 September 2021
When you’re young, fit and
healthy, you think you can
get through anything
they come from a place of strong we are finally eaten by sharks. their personal choice,” she says,
emotion, be that resentment, “Optimism bias is necessary,” says sounding fatigued. “I can’t be
discontent, or fear.” She tells me Sharot. “It keeps us healthy and bothered to be angry with them.
O
that anti-vaxxers or vaccine- keeps us going.” Because what’s the point? It’s not
hesitant people tend to be far-left Optimism bias is a gift. Optimism going to make me feel better.”
or far-right politically, have lower bias keeps us happy, healthy, and There is clear daylight between
trust in authority, get most of their sane. Optimism bias keeps us vaccine-hesitant people such
Covid information from social alive – most of the time. But for as Jaden and Birks, and full-
media, and score lower on civic Jaden and Birks, optimism bias was blown anti-vaxxers. When anti-
responsibility tests. a fatal miscalculation. vaxxers fall ill with Covid-19, the
Another crucial reason why public’s reserves of sympathy are
people may reject vaccinations: justifiably limited: these are, after
“They have lower benefit all, people who often proselytise
perceptions,” says Kola-Palmer, misinformation about vaccination
“meaning they are less likely to to impressionable people,
believe that the vaccine will be encouraging them to reject medical
beneficial to them.” It is not that science in favour of quack cures
men such as Jaden and Birks such as ivermectin or bleach.
believed the fruitier (and often In the US, the influential
antisemitic) conspiracy theories. ptimism bias podcaster Joe Rogan has touted
They did not think that Covid-19 can help explain why some people the controversial ivermectin as
was a hoax, or a scheme by evil reject vaccines. But this is not to a treatment for Covid-19, while
overlords to microchip the global say that we should entirely let people have been hospitalised
population. But they did fatally these vaccine-refusers off the after drinking disinfectant
miscalculate the risk-benefit of the world. It is the mantra that hook. There are many people who at the suggestion of Donald
ratio of vaccination versus non- bad things can and do happen, can’t get vaccinated for health Trump. Closer to home, the
vaccination. “When you’re young, but not to me, or the people I reasons, and every healthy person anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist
fit and healthy,” says Wynter, love. Optimism bias enables us to who rejects vaccination imperils and ex-nurse Kate Shemirani
“you think you can get through embrace all of the things that make the wellbeing of others, by further has suggested that NHS staff
anything. You don’t realise how life worth living – falling in love, enabling the virus to spread. Priti should be executed like Nazi war
fragile life is, and how it can be having children, going on holiday, is vaccinated, but she defends the criminals for their role in carrying
gone so quickly.” swimming in the sea – without rights of others to reject vaccines – out vaccinations, has shared
Jaden and Birks exhibited becoming consumed by the some of the people in her life aren’t antisemitic misinformation about
optimism bias: our tendency to certainty that our partners will die vaccinated, even after knowing the origins of the pandemic,
believe that negative events in the and our children will be abducted what happened to Jaden. “It’s which she puts down to a
future are less likely to happen by paedophiles and our plane will shadowy global cabal seeking
to us than the real-world data be hijacked by terrorists before Phil Valentine at to control the world population,
suggests. “People tend to take in a Tea Party
and encode positive information rally in 2019
about their own future more
than negative information,” is
how Prof Tali Sharot, a cognitive
neuroscientist at University College
London, puts it.
Imagine that you are a 60-year-
old woman and you read online
that women are less likely to fall
ill from Covid than men. “You
think to yourself,” says Sharot,
“well, my likelihood is not as
high as I thought.” But if you also
read that people in their 60s are
more vulnerable to Covid, you
discount this information, telling
yourself that you work out and eat
healthily and are unlikely to get
sick. “It’s not that you’re totally
ignoring the negative information,”
says Sharot. “It’s just that you’re
putting less weight on the negatives
than the positives.”
There is a reason that about
half of the 20% of the population
who do not exhibit optimism
bias are clinically depressed, and
the other half probably have a
 :G
predisposition to depression, but
just don’t know it yet. Optimism is a
protective carapace that shields us
from the chaotic unpredictability

The Guardian
Tuesday 14 September 2021
and has compared public health
restrictions to the Holocaust.
GPs have faced abuse from
bellicose anti-vaxxers who turn
up at surgeries to confront staff
providing the vaccine, even
going so far as to accuse them of
war crimes, and BBC reporters
have received death threats and
been harassed in the street by
people who think Covid-19 is
a giant hoax.
But it is the stories of these
hardened anti-vaxxers that can
possibly do the most to shift
perceptions among their friends,
family and peers. “We know
some good will come out of this
for sure,” says Mark Valentine, a
65-year-old trial consultant from
Wendell, North Carolina. His
brother, the Nashville, Tennessee-
based conservative radio talkshow
host Phil Valentine, died from
Covid-19 in August, aged 61. “We
have had dozens of people who
have written in to tell us they got
vaccinated as a result of what
happened to Phil.
“People would love nothing
better than to dance on his grave
because he was an anti-vax
person,” adds Mark. “But there’s
no evidence to support that.” Now
it is true that Phil did suggest that
people with underlying conditions
should get vaccinated, but this
nuance may have been lost on
his listeners, who heard Phil rail
against mask mandates, compare
the vaccination status badges
worn by medical personnel to the
yellow stars pressed on Jewish
people in Nazi Germany, and even
perform a parody song, Vaxman,
set to the tune of the Beatles’
1966 song Taxman.
However, before he died, Phil
repented. He sent a message to
his brother from his hospital bed,
asking him to undo his calamitous
legacy. “He recognised the fact
•
that, as an influential media person,
a lot of people probably didn’t get
vaccinated because he didn’t,”
says Mark. “And he regretted that
until the day he died. That’s why
he asked me to go out and do what
I could, to fix it. He said: ‘If I could
go out there right now, I would tell
people I made the wrong decision.
I should have had the vaccination
and I didn’t.’”
“Anecdotes and personal
narratives are emotional appeals,
and as such they can be helpful,”
says Kola-Palmer. In general, she
adds, people don’t respond well
when you put the fear of God into
them, or bombard them with data.
What is better is “trying to meet
a person where they are. Finding
out if there are fears or worries that
underpin their attitude, finding
common ground, and building a
dialogue from there.”
Mark is a gregarious and
charming presence who is sincerely
doing his best to clean up his
brother’s mess; he tells me that he
knows of at least 20 people from
his local community who have
been vaccinated as a result of Phil’s
death. But speaking with him
also demonstrates how partisan
the vaccination issue is in the US.
An August NBC News poll found
If you are still in the Covid-19
hoax camp, please believe this
virus is painfully real
Died on the
same day ...
Michelle and
Michael Stein
that only 55% of Republicans are
vaccinated, compared with 88%
of Democrats. “The whole thing is
politicised,” says Mark. “And it’s
costing people their lives, most
recently, my brother.”
But he refuses to condemn
Republican lawmakers who
have pushed anti-mask policies.
He repeatedly references the
inaccurate claim that illegal
immigration on the southern
border is to blame for exponential
growth of the highly transmissible
Delta variant, alleges the US Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention
is putting out inaccurate data, and
tells me that “Biden has spread
more Covid … than anybody on
Earth”. A well-meaning person
in a vortex of misinformation,
Mark illustrates the real-world
difficulties of extricating an entire
cohort of people – only 46% of
Trump-supporting Republicans
are vaccinated – from what
increasingly resembles a death cult.
Mark, at least, got vaccinated
after his brother’s death, and is
urging others to do the same.
But there are some people
who will never come out of the
misinformation whorl, not even
on their deathbeds. “I asked him,”
M
says Kayleigh Michelle Stein,
22, a waitress from Erie, Kansas,
recounting a conversation she had
with her father, Michael Stein, as
he lay in hospital, “‘When you pull
through this, will you get the shot?’
And he told me that he would not.”
ichael,
who was 53 and worked as a truck
driver, and his wife, Michelle, also
a 53-year-old truck driver, died of
Covid-19 on 13 August. Both were
unvaccinated. Before he died,
Michael had described Covid-19
as “one big sham to keep us all
in fear” in a Facebook post, and
shared offensive memes about
vaccination. “He believed that
it was the government putting
the tracking chip in people,”
says Kayleigh. “And he was
worried about it making him
sick.” He had absorbed these
messages on long truck journeys
down rural roads, often late at
night. “Pretty much all he did was
drive down the road,” Kayleigh
says, “listening to news stations
on the radio.”
Michael had underlying health
issues – he’d had heart attacks
– and, as someone in his 50s, he
was exactly the sort of person
the vaccine was designed to
protect. “It was political, pretty
much,” says Kayleigh. “He was a
full-blown Republican.” Nothing
could disabuse her father of
his anti-vaccination views, not
even impending death. He is
an extreme example of how
some anti-vaxxers will die in the
7
service of their beliefs, steadfastly
rejecting medical science even as
their breath grows more laboured
and the look in their doctors’ eyes
more grave.
“We definitely see a lot of regret,”
Windsor tells me, of his patients in
south-west England. “People who
regret not being vaccinated when
they come in. But not everybody
feels that way. There are some
people who disagree with us. They
refuse to believe they have Covid.
They put their shortness of breath
down to other conditions. They
say that they don’t need to go on
ventilators, because they’ll be fine.
We know that won’t be the case.”
Attempting to remonstrate with
these people, says Kola-Palmer, is
a futile endeavour. “Those who are
very entrenched in anti-vaccine
beliefs,” she says, “we may never
reach. But for those who are unsure
or hesitant, with empathic listening
and correction of misinformation,
you might get there.”
Who is to blame for this mess?
The social media companies,
for not doing enough to stamp
out misinformation? National
governments, for not better
communicating the importance
of mask-wearing and vaccination?
Conspiracy theorists who push
dangerous misinformation for the
dopamine rush of online validation
and peer-group affirmation? Or
individuals, for making bad choices
that imperil the health of others?
“There’s more than enough blame
to go around,” Mark observes,
correctly. Kayleigh is sanguine.
“A part of me is mad,” she says.
“I wish my parents were here, of
course. But I also believe in not
making people do things they
don’t believe in.”
When everything is said and
done, when the jeering online
commenters drift away and the
anger dissipates, all that is left
is sadness. It is the emotion in
unvaccinated patients’ eyes as
doctors prepare to intubate them;
it is the hand-wringing in waiting
rooms as relatives prepare for bad
news. “My biggest regret is not
realising how sick he was,” says
Wynter. “I could have been there
more. That goes through my head
a lot, if I’m honest with you.” Phil
spent his last days consumed by
terror that the damage he had done
could not be unwrought. “He was
full of regret,” says Mark of his
brother. “He got it wrong and he
should have got the vaccination.”
He sighs. “That’s why I’m trying
to mitigate the damage.”
 Arts
•
8 The Guardian
‘As Bob would
say, the only
true fact is Jah’
… Dyer
‘Bob Marley’ssongs
are utterly my DNA’
C
Clint Dyer was
askedto direct
the Bob Marley
musical the night lint Dyer walks
into the cafe of a south London
before he started rehearsal complex. He is fresh
– or as fresh as one can be given
cancer treatment. the sweltering early September
weather – from a run-through
He tells Alexis of Get Up, Stand Up!, a Bob
Marley jukebox musical written
Petridis why he by Lee Hall, best-known for the
screenplay of Billy Elliot and the
couldn’t say no subsequent stage musical, which
he created with Elton John. I see
the end of the rehearsal, the show’s
finale, which shifts from Marley
receiving his terminal cancer
diagnosis to a version of Three
Little Birds that begins tentatively,
as if Marley can’t summon the
necessary emotions to deliver its
carefree message, then gradually
gains momentum. It’s a genuinely
intriguing repositioning of a song
dulled by familiarity, the strength
of the performance helped by
the fact that, even in a rehearsal
studio, with the wig he’s wearing
to simulate Marley’s dreadlocks,
Arinzé Kene has the late singer’s
onstage movements – the preacher-
like pointing and gesticulating,
the skanking dance that regularly
turned into a kind of jogging on the
spot – down pat.
It remains to be seen how a
Bob Marley jukebox will do in the
West End. A previous attempt
to put Marley’s life story on
stage punctuated by his songs,
Kwame Kwei-Armah’s One Love,
ran in Baltimore in 2015 and at
the Birmingham Rep two years
later, but Get Up, Stand Up! is a
very different proposition. Kwei-
Armah’s play concentrated on
the years Marley spent in exile
in England after surviving a 1976
assassination attempt, while “this
is hopefully the full journey,” as
Dyer puts it. “I think this is much
more an impressionistic delve
into the heart and mind of Bob,
so, of course, we’re adhering to
what actually happened. But as
Bob would say, the only true fact
is Jah, and I think we’re following
that sort of line, in that we’re
trying to get across his ideals
and his philosophies. We’re
much more interested in getting
the essence of Bob than being a
dramatic retelling of his life, or a
stage in his life.”
The essence
of Bob …
Rehearsals for
Get Up, Stand Up!
Tuesday 14 September 2021
I got a false
positive Covid
test and had
to direct down
Zoom for three
days
Certainly, it’s hard to see how
the play could have ended up with
a more suitable director than Dyer.
Not merely because of his stellar
list of theatrical achievements – he
was the first Black British man to
direct a West End musical (2005’s
acclaimed, Olivier-nominated
The Big Life), he’s the only Black
British artist to have worked at the
National Theatre as an actor, writer
and director, and was appointed
the National’s deputy artistic
director in January – but because
he’s self-evidently a complete
Marley fanatic, obsessing about the
differences between the singer’s
Jamaican recordings and those
he made with an Anglo-American
market in mind, intrigued by the
complicated relationship between
Marley and his wife, Rita.
Dyer tells me he got his kids
to sleep when they were babies
by singing them Marley’s songs,
despite the fact that the lyrics
were “inappropriate – but the
melodies were beautiful – they
wouldn’t know, so that’s all right”.
He says: “I feel like some people
were taught nursery rhymes; I was
taught Bob Marley songs. It feels
like it’s completely and utterly my
DNA … We learned about ourselves
through songs. I’d go to school and
the only history they wanted to tell
me about people who come from
the countries I come from is that we

The Guardian
Tuesday 14 September 2021
Seductive
truths …
Marley
were slaves – that was it! So when
Rastas suddenly came around and
went, ‘Well, actually, I think you’ll
find …’, it was ‘What?’ A lot of the
time they did it with humour, they
did it with the utmost style and
conviction. It was a very seductive
way of hearing your truth.”
Nevertheless, the production
has not been without its upheavals.
There was Covid to cope with – “I
had a cold, I got a false positive
and I had to direct down Zoom
for three days while we waited
for a PCR,” sighs Dyer, “which
was murder” – and last year, Get
Up, Stand Up! became part of the
ongoing conversation about race
in British theatre, when its original
director, Dominic Cooke, stepped
aside saying that the conversation
had “changed … as it has across
society”. He rang Dyer direct to
ask him to take his place: they
had worked together at the Royal
Court when Cooke was artistic
director and Dyer directed Rachel
De-lahay’s acclaimed play The
Westbridge, and on Cooke’s 2016
revival of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
at the National, in which Dyer
played veteran trombonist Cutler.
When I ask Dyer about the
telephone call, he pauses for
so long before answering that I
initially think he’s choosing his
words carefully, but no. “So,” he
 /   X-FF ;  ; /  :
eventually begins, “he called me
the night before I was going into
hospital for cancer treatment. It
was one of the bizarre-est, most
head-spinning things to have ever
happened to me. Second time
I’ve had cancer – a different one
this time, which was particularly
upsetting. I suffer from high blood
pressure, so I had to stay on my
own the night before and rest.
So, Sunday evening, Dominic’s
called. I only answered it because
there’s still an element of him being
my boss from the Royal Court:
‘Dominic! Hi! Hello! Yes, things are
fine!’ Things were not so fine. And
he said he wants to step down and
he wants me to direct it. I think he’d
seen Death of England that year”
– the National Theatre show with
Rafe Spall as an angry working-
class male mourning his father and
his nation, which Dyer co-wrote
and directed.
“I suppose he did think it was
right to step down because of the
political situation – you would
have to ask him,” Dyer continues.
•
“Whether he would have [stood
aside] and tasked everyone with
getting somebody in just because
they were Black, somebody he
didn’t think could do it, I don’t
know. But I don’t think he felt he
was leaving it in the lurch if I did it.”
He laughs. “To be asked to direct a
musical about a guy who died from
cancer – the irony was not lost on
me, believe me! Dear, oh, dear!”
ollowing the announcement,
Dyer was asked if progress had
been made on diversity in the
UK theatre. He said he wasn’t
optimistic: “Whether or not that
guilt turns into something that
is recognisable to the people
who have suffered … some kind
of reparation, that would be
an interesting position to put
people in.”
Today he adds: “I think what
tends to happen is that people go:
‘OK, let’s get some young Black
people into training,’ and then you
have to wait for all those people
to become experienced enough to
then be considered right for the
job, and then another generation
of people are lost. There is more of
a case for recognising the people
that have been actually doing it,
under terrible circumstances,
and making sure that they are, for
one, heralded for surviving such
fucking tyranny, and two, given
the respect and the work to justify
the omission from history of their
talents. There’s loads of people
who are clearly committed to this
industry – they must be bloody
committed because they’ve put
up with all the bullshit for so many
fucking years – why would you
then chose a young person who’s
just finding out whether they like
it or not? They shouldn’t have
the pressure of the world and the
company going, ‘Look! We’re trying
to help diversity; you’ve got to be
brilliant!’ They don’t have to be
brilliant! They don’t have to save
your company!”
Dyer got the all-clear after cancer
treatment in the second week of
rehearsals. No, he says, he never
thought of turning the job down, on
the understandable grounds that
he already had enough on his plate:
“It actually made me think, ‘Right,
I’m definitely going to do this, then
I can check out.’”
The challenge, he says, is to
produce a play that casts very
familiar music in a new light.
“Everybody thinks they know his
songs, until they really hear them.
So our job is to make people really
hear them – me as well. You think
you know a lyric and then you go:
‘Oh gosh, he was really saying that.’
You think you understand the real
potency of a song, and then you
understand the history behind it
means that it’s also a personal song,
as opposed to just an anthem of
empowerment. It actually comes
out of something that happened
to Bob, or is an expression that is
very personal to Bob. So what we’re
hoping to do is personalise those
songs, so that we get into the head
and heart of Bob.”
Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley
Musical is at the Lyric theatre,
London, from 1 October.
How we made
Wake Up Boo! by the Boo Radleys
‘Martin Carr wrote the song while watching The Big
Breakfast after a night on acid. When we recorded it in
Wales, there was a night some sheepgot painted blue’
‘We loved Top
of the Pops’ …
The Boo Radleys
circa 1990. (l-r)
Martin Carr,
Tim Brown,
Rob Cieka and
Sice Rowbottom
Simon ‘Sice’ Rowbottom
Vocals
When we started in Wirral in 1988, we really
loved the pop charts, Top of the Pops and
the Beatles, but when we actually picked up
guitars we couldn’t figure out how to do that
kind of music. How can you sound like Duran
Duran when you’ve got these little Kays
Catalogue guitars that you got for Christmas
when you were 13?
It was only when we started listening
to the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Mighty
Lemon Drops and My Bloody Valentine that
we thought: “We can do that instead.” So we
started making walls of noise, but with pop
songs underneath. The first couple of records
were quite a full-on heavy sound, but we were
getting more confident. After the Giant Steps
album, which was really eclectic, the idea was
to record a whole album of pop songs.
Wake Up Boo! was probably born after a
late night drunken conversation between
[former guitarist] Martin Carr and Creation
Records boss Alan McGee, with McGee
saying: “You’ve got to write something big
and poppy and get on the radio.” Martin took
that to heart.
He once said that he wrote the song while
watching The Big Breakfast after a night on
acid. He was living his own life in Preston
at the time, separate from the rest of us, so
I wouldn’t know, but he definitely watched
The Big Breakfast so the story is entirely
possible. When we recorded the song at
Rockfield residential studio in Wales there
was a night where some sheep got painted
blue, but I’d sloped off to bed by then. One
morning I came in and Martin had filmed
about 40 minutes of a slug giving birth. He
said: “It looked fascinating on acid.” Bands
 /  :
don’t really do that stuff now but that kind of
useful madness can be highly creative.
Wake Up Boo! is a microcosm of Martin’s
personality. He can be very up and ebullient
– “Wake up, it’s a beautiful morning” – and
then he can have that drop: “You have to
put the death in everything.” The key line,
weirdly, is “summer’s gone”. It’s a very
upbeat sounding song but it’s almost a
lament, about grabbing the last of summer
while you can.
We recorded it twice. The first version was
heavier and more downbeat, but not radio
friendly enough, so we recorded it again. I
remember spending hours in the vocal booth
doing take after take to get it right. When the
song came out it seemed to capture a wave –
it was the height of Britpop, just before Cool
Britannia. The Wake Up! album went to No
1 and it was very exciting, but it did all fade
away pretty quickly.
Tim Brown
Bass
The first I heard of Wake Up Boo! was on
a hissy cassette from Martin. I listened to
that, then tuned my guitar and came up
with a bassline. I don’t remember us being
too unhappy about the original version,
but when we were mixing it in Peter
Gabriel’s Real World Studios it sounded a bit
underwhelming, considering how brilliant
the song was.
There was pressure from Creation to
re-record it. When we were in Rockfield –
another very expensive studio – Martin put
on a Style Council B-side, which gave us
the idea to change the rhythm. Rob [Cieka,
drums] and I worked out a Motown beat,
which began the transformation. Then we
made some calls and got in Tom Jones’s
brass section, who had been recording in
Cardiff, not all that far away. I was given the
job of calling them to tell them we didn’t
want any trombone. The guy on the phone
said: “I am the trombone player.” It was
comical, but they came down and were such
top professionals that they had it done in
half an hour.
After it was a hit, we’d gone from making
beautiful songs buried in sludge to suddenly
being everywhere. We were on Top of the
Pops. Chris Evans used Wake Up Boo! for a
jingle on his Radio 1 show, which went “Chris
Evans on your radio …” All sorts. I never
expected that kind of success to last for ever,
but they were amazing times. You just think:
“Let’s enjoy it while we can.”
Interviews by Dave Simpson. The Boo Radleys’
new EP, A Full Syringe and Memories of You, is
out now. The band’s first tour in more than 20
years starts at Bristol Lanes on 24 October.
 TV and radio
•
10 The Guardian
Tuesday 14 September 2021

Spice Girls: How Girl Power

Changed Britain
9pm, Channel 4
Aerosmith
frontman
Steven Tyler
at a party with
Julia Holcomb
in 1975

A barely believable quarter of a century

has passed since the Spice Girls released
their debut album, Spice. This
documentaryseries offers a deep dive
Review Look Away, Fuchs gives a precise account of her rape in a
crowded room by her band’s manager, Kim Fowley, into a phenomenon that emerged at
Sky Documentaries after he’d had her drugged. She adds: “And now
we stop talking about this because I think there the height of Britpop bringingwith it
are people out there who just feed off watching aesthetic continuity and a point of
Proof that the difference. But how did it happen? This
women cry talking about their sexual assault. And
I just want to say – if you’re one of them: fuck you.
Your time is over.” opening episode explores the band’s
music industry It’s a good point well made and, fortunately,
embedded in an intelligent film that does a fine
job of avoiding prurience while describing a world
formation in 1994 against the backdrop
of “ladette” culture. How did these five
needs its own in which terrible things happened without anyone
really noticing or, if they did, caring. Holcomb
disparate personalities combine to such
memorable effect?
#MeToo moment
vividly remembers the one man who saw her (in a
dress Tyler picked out that made her look particularly Phil Harrison
young) and tried to intervene during her years with
the star.
The interviews with the three women are Love Your Garden Irish foundlings – David
★★★★☆ supplemented with testimony from others on the 8pm, ITV and Helen – continues to

Lucy Man
scene in the 70s and 80s. Not just others on the Despite coping with her unfold. In 2019, the
“victimised” side of the line, but those we might own physical challenges, programme identified the
call representatives of the other side, too. The Middlesbrough mum pair as siblings, but could

L
moneymaking rock stars were protected from Phillipa works hard to there be a connection to a
consequences and thus enabled by the companies help other families in third abandoned child?
they enriched. Aerosmith’s tour manager Bob her community dealing Hannah J Davies
Kelleher remembers: “There were half a dozen girls in with disability. Her
the dressing room. Julia was being used as bait – the reward is a fabulous new Back to Life
ook Away is a documentary that looks other girls were older and not as attractive.” But he garden, overseen by Alan 10.35pm, BBC One
directly at the music industry’s attitudes notes, as if it were exculpatory: “People weren’t doing Titchmarsh and given a Daisy Haggard’s smart,
to and abuse of the young girls who were ID checks. That didn’t happen.” wild, great outdoors vibe slightly melancholy
– and we can assume still are – pushed or Guns N’ Roses’ manager Vicky Hamilton let as well as a dinosaur- sitcom about a woman
pulled into musicians’ orbits. The film’s singer Axl Rose hide from the police in her house themed play area. returning home after 18
title comes from a track of the same name after a young woman pressed charges against Jack Seale years in prison continues.
on Iggy Pop’s 1996 album Naughty Little Doggie, him because: “My job was to look after the band.” Tonight, Miri (Haggard)
which is a “tribute” to one of the most famous “baby (The case was dropped due to lack of evidence.) And A House Through Time is convinced that she
groupies” on Sunset Strip in the 70s, Sable Starr. “I Going after youngsters was so prevalent that for another 9pm, BBC Two knows the identity of the
slept with Sable when she was 13 / Her parents were the men, as Hamilton breezily puts it, “There was no thing David Olusoga continues motorist who knocked
too rich to do anything / She rocked her way around LA shame in their game.” Sheila Kennedy’s subsequent to turn up fascinating her off her bike. But her
/ ’Til a New York Doll carried her away.” Words are not description of her own time with Rose explains stories centred on efforts to avoid him
deeds, of course, though Starr did run away from home where it went instead. “I carried all the dirtiness I advise all Grosvenor Mount in have unexpected
to live with a member of the Dolls in NYC at 16, and of him … Why doesn’t he feel that? I can say this those needing Leeds. It’s 1871 and the consequences. PH
knew Iggy Pop at that time. now – I didn’t deserve any of that. And shame a lift to watch house belongs to factory
“So many little girl songs,” notes Kari Krome, on him.” The Muppets’ owner Benjamin Wild. Sixteen: Class of 2021
songwriter and co-founder of the Runaways. She was Several interviewees express the hope that this two-minute He’s not a sympathetic 11.05pm, Channel 4
a witness to and frequent victim of the exploitation film will be the start of the music industry’s particular Scorsese character, presiding over The charming series
by older men of young girls who came to Hollywood; reckoning in the #MeToo age. Hopefully it will be. It parody The inequality and industrial following the year 11
   U :

she recounts a rape and an assault, and you sense that will also give further visibility and credence to the Frogfather. accidents. But a students at Dudley’s Link
this is merely the tip of her personal iceberg of trauma. idea that – simply put – women are not making it up. It You’re welcome reckoning is coming … PH Academy continues. As
Look Away is built round extensive interviews with will take those who still need to complete the journey we rejoin the students,
her, the Runaways’ bass guitarist, Jackie Fuchs, and further down the road to the realisation that man’s Long Lost Family: GCSE exams have been
Julia Holcomb. Holcomb met Aerosmith’s frontman, inhumanity to woman is a deep, enduring part of all Born Without Trace scrapped and their grades
Steven Tyler, when she was 16, became his lover, our lives throughout history, throughout the present, 9pm, ITV are at the mercy of
ward (he got her mother to sign over custody so he whatever sector or demographic or region you care to Nicky Campbell and teacher assessments and
could cross state lines with her on tour without being examine. No, #notallmen, but always some men and Davina McCall host a coursework. There’s also
arrested), and fiancee in that order. He got her pregnant always – especially when the normal restraints are special episode of the college applications,
then pressured her into an abortion, she says, then sent loosened by money, power or fame – more men than tearjerking genealogy career angst and practical
her home. you think. series, as the case of two work experience. PH
 •
The Guardian
Tuesday 14 September 2021 11

BBC One BBC Two ITV Channel 4 Channel 5 BBC Four

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and Harris to discover the
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 Puzzles
•
12 The Guardian

IKOKUB ELRHC W   ’

Tuesday 14 September 2021

Yesterday’s Quick crossword no 16,023

solutions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Wordsearch Across Down

1 Traditional plate of food (4,3,3,3) 1 Computer — coat (3)
8 One of a pair on a rail? (7) 2 Substance under pressure released 8 9
9 River mouth, like that of the Nile (5) as a fine cloud (7)
10 Hit over the head? (4) 3 Absent (with the fairies?) (4)
11 Hemisphere that includes North, 4 Ass (6)
Central and South America (3,5) 5 Fine china and porcelain 10 11
13 Remove the bones (6) manufacturer, founded in
14 Decorative ball worn on a hat (6) Staffordshire in 1759 (8)
17 Dig up (8) 6 Yet more despicable (5) 12
19 Portent (4) 7 Soldier in the Grenadiers? (9)
21 Group of thirteen witches (5) 10 Espresso holder? (6,3) 13 14 15
22 Participants in a violent 12 Divine (8)
disturbance of the peace (7) 15 Ancient city buried by an eruption 16
24 Boris v Kier? (5,8) of Vesuvius (7)
Solution no 16,022 16 Music player (6)
18 Person going underground for 17 18 19
F L W M pleasure (5)
PAROCHI AL 20 Desert of southern Mongolia and 20
A C O I S U northern China (4)
KNOT FETCH I NG 23 Help! (3) 21 22 23
Y O A E S
S T I T CH NORWA Y
A U O V
S K I MPY BECKON
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S R M E T Y
LUNARYEAR
B N N R Stuck? For help call 0906 200 83 83. Calls cost £1.10 per minute, plus your phone company’s access charge.
Service supplied by ATS. Call 0330 333 6946 for customer service (charged at standard rate).
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Sudoku no 5370
Sudoku no 5371 Suguru Wordsearch
Medium. Fill the grid so that each row, column and Fill the grid so that each square Can you find 15 words associated
3x3 box contains the numbers 1-9. Printable version at in an outlined block contains a with meditation in the grid? Words
theguardian.com/sudoku digit. A block of 2 squares contains can run forwards, backwards,
the digits 1 and 2, a block of three vertically or diagonally, but always
squares contains the digits 1, 2 and in a straight, unbroken line.
3, and so on. No same digit appears
in neighbouring squares, not even
diagonally.
Word wheel
PROPRIETY

Suguru

Word wheel Pet corner

Find as many words as Who wrote: “f you’re
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in the wheel. Each must at the cats. You’ll feel
use the central letter better because they
and at least two others. know that everything
Letters may be used only is, just as it is”?
once. You may not use a. Ernest Hemingway
plurals, foreign words or b. Charles Bukowski
proper nouns. There is at c. Hunter S Thompson
least one nine-letter word d. Jack Kerouac
to be found. TARGET: Answer top right
Excellent-30. Good-25.
Average-18.
 •

Johnson has to lookat how Labour was able to‘level up’ Polly Toynbee, page 3 G2
Daily
pullout
How canwe protect the lives of climate defenders?Bill McKibben,page 4 life &
culture
section
When Wall Street bet on coal mining in Appalachia The long read, page 5 Inside
The Guardian Tuesday 14 September 2021

Opinion
and ideas

The Corbyn
suspension
eroded my
trust
Len
inStarmer
McCluskey

A t the Labour party conference

this month, Keir Starmer has an
opportunity to turn things around.
So far, his leadership has been a
tale of opportunities wasted. He
squandered the goodwill that
greeted his arrival as Labour leader,
opting for internal war rather than
unity. Unwilling to look outwards and give a clear
message to the country, his poll ratings crumbled.
Starmer’s response to his party’s poor position
has been as wrongheaded as it is dishonourable:
he has signalled that he may ditch the 10 radical
policy pledges he made to Labour and trade union
members, on which he was elected to his job. If he is
not careful, he risks becoming fixed in the public’s
mind as someone who can’t be trusted.
Sadly, my own experience of dealing with
Starmer – as leader of Labour’s largest trade-union
affiliate until last month – offers nothing to dispel
this image. My successor as Unite’s general secretary,
Sharon Graham – the most formidable campaigning
force in the labour movement – will have her
own approach to Labour and its leader. But here is
what I learned. Supporters of Now, it’s important to get something straight. Later that 0.3% of members had actually been subject to
When Starmer took over, I hoped for good Jeremy Corbyn that day, Labour briefed journalists that Starmer hadn’t disciplinary investigations.
relations between us. To begin with, that’s how they demand he personally suspended Corbyn; the party’s general Starmer, in his speech, had said that anyone saying
were. Contrary to what might be expected, I spoke has the Labour secretary, David Evans, had. This mattered because antisemitism was “all exaggerated” was part of the
to Starmer far more than I ever did Jeremy Corbyn. whip restored, one of the EHRC’s main lessons was that there must be problem. Corbyn, of course, hadn’t said it was all
But that all changed after Starmer’s destructive London, no political interference in disciplinary cases. Starmer exaggerated, but Starmer now raised the bar. He
decision to suspend his predecessor from the party in November 2020 was careful to tell the BBC the following morning: told me on the phone that Corbyn had deliberately
October last year. : “Appropriate action was taken yesterday by the general undermined him. “It’s as if he’s gone out of his way
The final breakdown came not over the suspension Y /
Y secretary in suspending Jeremy Corbyn.” to contradict that line in my speech,” he said. “I’m
itself, but when Starmer chose to break an honest But that’s not what he told me on the phone. His beyond angry with Jeremy.”
deal agreed between us for Corbyn’s readmission to words were: “He put me in an impossible position and I phoned him back and left an answerphone
the party. I had no choice.” message. “I think it’s been a kneejerk reaction,” I
It all followed the publication of the Equality Starmer had been enraged by a statement Corbyn said, “I’ve got to be honest with you.” I suggested he
and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report into had put out. In it, Corbyn had been clear that “anyone take a step back, meet Jeremy personally and try to
antisemitism in the Labour party on 29 October  claiming there is no antisemitism in the Labour party sort this out.
last year. I expected Starmer to welcome the report Len McCluskey is wrong” and that “one antisemite is one too many”, That evening, in a Zoom call between leading
and take the opportunity to move on from a painful was general but he had also said that the scale of the problem had figures on the left, it was agreed that we should
saga, which was the aim of a speech he delivered secretary of been “dramatically overstated” by opponents and see if a negotiated solution could be reached. As
that morning. His words were fine, in the main, and Unite the Union the media. Corbyn sought to substantiate his claim it turned out, the leadership was keen to talk. The
he resisted journalists’ attempts to goad him into between 2011 in a broadcast interview, pointing to polling that following afternoon, Jon Trickett MP and I went

attacking his predecessor.
Then, about an hour later, Starmer called to tell me
he had suspended Corbyn. I had to pinch myself to
make sure it wasn’t a bad dream.

and 2021. His suggested a vast gap between the perception of the to parliament for a meeting with Starmer, his
memoir, Always extent of antisemitism in the party (the public thought chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney,
Red, is published complaints had been made against a third of members) and the deputy leader, Angela Rayner.
this month and what the former leader said was the “reality” Rayner began by requesting our
2
• The Guardian Tuesday 14 September 2021
The Corbyn suspension
erodedmy trust in Starmer
Len McCluskey
 Continued from front
 discussion be confidential. Given what
happened subsequently, I no longer feel
bound by that.
Trickett and I asked if there was a way to negotiate
a settlement to avoid an internal war. Starmer replied
that he didn’t want a war and was happy to talk
about ways to reach a solution. He indicated that a
clarification statement by Corbyn could be a way of
resolving the issue. “Are you saying that if we could
reach an agreed form of words that both Jeremy and
you, Keir, are happy with, then the suspension could
be lifted?” I asked.
“Yes,” Starmer said. The others also agreed.
By the following afternoon Trickett and Starmer’s
senior adviser Simon Fletcher had worked up a draft
statement. I joined a conference call with McSweeney.
I said: “As far as we are concerned it is our expectation
that if Jeremy agrees to the statement then that is the
end of the matter and the suspension will be lifted,
after due process, and Jeremy will be back to normal.”
McSweeney’s response was: “Yes, that is our
expectation, also.”
“And you speak on behalf of Keir?” I asked.
“Yes,” came his reply.
That was the deal for Corbyn’s reinstatement.
A month and a half later, in response to questions
from Sky News, Starmer’s spokesperson would say:
T
“There was no deal on reinstatement, no.” When
pressed on whether senior Labour staff had advance
sight of Corbyn’s statement (which they had in fact
co-written), the spokesperson would respond: “We are
not going to comment on private conversations.”Well,
I am perfectly prepared to comment.
he formalities around Corbyn’s
readmission were handled by a
panel of Labour’s national executive
committee. Corbyn published the
agreed statement that morning. “To
be clear, concerns about antisemitism
are neither ‘exaggerated’ nor
‘overstated,’” read the key passage.
“The point I wished to make was that the vast majority
of Labour party members were and remain committed
antiracists deeply opposed to antisemitism.”
The five-person panel (only two of whom could
be described as pro-Corbyn) decided unanimously
to readmit Corbyn to the party. It was greeted
with rage. Margaret Hodge tweeted that it was “a
broken outcome from a broken system”. The Jewish
Labour Movement blamed a “factionally aligned
political committee”.
I don’t know if Starmer was taken by surprise by
the backlash, but it soon became clear he was going
to crumble. It was reported he was given an ultimatum
by Hodge: she would resign from the party if Corbyn
remained a Labour MP. Starmer was also apparently
“infuriated” by a tweet claiming the leadership had
climbed down.
The result? Starmer reneged on our deal. He
withdrew the Labour whip from Corbyn, leaving
him in the absurd situation of being an MP and a
Labour member, but not a Labour MP. Corbyn was
now told that if he wanted the whip restored he
would have to make an apology – which prompted
the question: if an apology was so important to
the leadership, why didn’t they include one in the
statement they co-wrote?
I’m a trade unionist. The one thing you never do is
renege on a deal you’ve negotiated. That was when I
lost my personal relationship with Starmer. I could no
longer trust him. He was not a man of his word.
If this was an isolated example, perhaps it could
be dismissed. But it increasingly looks like a pattern
that extends to policy as well as politics – Labour’s
2017 manifesto has gone from being Starmer’s
“foundational document” to something he is “not
interested in”. I still hope for a Labour government
at the next election. But if Starmer continues on the
course he is presently charting, I fear for the party’s
chances. Starmer needs to understand that the public
want answers to the problems they face every day
from a leader who they believe will do what he says.
Founded 1821 Independently owned by the Scott Trust № 54,450
‘Comment is free… butfacts are sacred’CP Scott
SNP
In Scotland, will big bang
constitution remains at the centre of political debate.
What the SNP fears is that after 14 years in
government, the public will decide that the party’s
rhetoric is not matched by reality.Last month, the
SNP’sclaim that its climate change legislation was
reformssurvive a “world leading”was rebutted by the environmental
campaigner Greta Thunberg. In the summer, it was
referendum campaign? revealed that three Scots a day were dying of drug
misuse. People in the most deprived parts of Scotland
were 18 times more likely to have a drug-related death
Since 2007, the Scottish National party has been the than those in the least deprived. Scotland’s drug
largest party in Holyrood, dominating politics to death crisis has become the worst in the developed
become a credible party of government. It has now world in part because Ms Sturgeon admits her
begun its fourth term in power. Yet the SNP has had few government had taken its “eye offthe ball”.
major policy achievements and nothing comparable Historically, Scotland has had poor economic
to the flagship policies around tuition fees or care growth rates, an appalling health record, and social
for the elderly associated with the previous Labour problems rooted in high levels of inequality. Despite
administration. The SNP has made some big promises. a blueprint for public service improvement issued a
Nicola Sturgeon, the party’s leader, says that she wants decade ago, Scotland’s impartial auditor general said
to set up a National Care Service in Scotland by 2026 as last week that major policies have failed to deliver.
a “fitting legacy from the trauma of Covid”. The penny has dropped within the SNP leadership,
Yet it is questionable whether such a project, the not least because its performance was putting off
cost of which experts say the SNP has underestimated, sceptical voters from backing independence. Ian
could be enacted in tandem with pursuing an Blackford, the party’s Westminster leader, urged the
independence referendum when support for leaving SNP to pull up its socks.
the UK is ebbing. The constitutional question energises The Scottish government is a coalition between
the SNP activist base. It is why Ms Sturgeon told the Greens and the SNP. Nationalists used to
delegates at her party conference that she wanted a talk of “six unions” that governed Scottish lives:
second referendum on Scotland’s independence by Westminster,the EU, Nato, the monarchy, sterling
2023. Downing Street’s rejection of another poll points and one with the peoples of the UK. As a party, the
to a gruelling stalemate in the years ahead. SNP said that it only wanted to end a union with
How Boris Johnson’s government is perceived will England that, it claimed, had frustrated Scotland’s
be important in determining whether Scottish opinion hopes. Brexit has ejected Scotland from Europe
shifts towards independence. No doubt Ms Sturgeon against the SNP’s wishes. Edinburgh University’s
will wish to contrast her exceptional communication James Mitchell says that political disagreements
skills and capacity for hard work with the prime – over North Sea oil, land ownership and Nato
minister’s more disheveled, shambolic approach. membership – may be contained in government
The SNP has expertly gained political advantage by but not during a referendum campaign. Questions
framing its policy agenda through the prism of the about currency and the Queen’s role in a future
union. In its view, Downing Street is leading Scotland independent Scotland remain live. While these are
to an unpalatable social and economic destination. important issues for many Scottish voters, they are
With Mr Johnson at the helm, this is perhaps an easier probably not as pressing for an electorate concerned
case to make, providing comfort to nationalists that the with making their nation fairer and better governed.
Brexit vain for two months for a Home Office response to
their application, the woman was obliged to take
her son and leave her partner behind in order to
British nationalswith EU start a new job. No equivalent requirements apply
to citizens moving back to the EU from Britain
spouses deserve better with a British spouse.
Numerous couples and families are finding
from the Home Office themselves in similar predicaments. Last month,
the Guardian highlighted the case of a heavily
pregnant woman, married to a Spanish resident,
In Franz Kaa’s The Trial, a blameless citizen wakes who was unable to visit her very ill father. Unable to
up one day to find himself under suspicion for no travel alone, her application for a family permit was
good reason. It was, presumably, never the intention initially turned down. Other Britons have waited
of the architects of Brexit to inflict a similar kind of months for applications to be processed, having
psychological pressure on British citizens living abroad committed to jobs and school places, only to find
with non-UK spouses. But bureaucratic indifference themselves in bureaucratic limbo. The distress
and a signal lack of compassion are turning hitherto and anxiety caused in situations such as this have
ordinary lives upside down in Kaaesque fashion. been compounded by the knock-on effects of the
At the weekend, it was reported that a British pandemic, which have made the process of scrutiny
woman needing to return to the UK with her French even longer. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking in
partner had been forced to come without him, much relation to a 29 March deadline for applications
to the distress of their six-year-old son, who wants to by non-UK spouses for pre-settled status in the
know when he will see his father again. Before Brexit, country. To make such an application, a couple
of course, a family move such as this would have must first be in possession of a family permit. At
been straightforward. But in yet another example the very least, given the chaos, the March deadline
of performative cruelty when it comes to Britain’s should be put back.
borders, the Home Office has introduced a complex It was always inevitable that Brexit, by
family permit to cover such cases. Thus, through no unravelling intricate threads of interconnection
fault of their own, returning Britons who fell in love established during the course of decades, would
and settled down abroad are struggling to prove the be disruptive. But Boris Johnson’s government
genuine nature of their claim to have jointly resided offered repeated reassurances that everything
with their partner in the EU. possible would be done to ease the transition
According to multiple testimonies, the for those who had shaped their lives, loves and
documentation requirements are proving both onerous aspirations within the framework of the EU.
and unclear, and the processing of applications For Britons living with their partners who – for
is operating at a snail’s pace. In the case of the sometimes urgent reasons – need to return home,
unfortunate Anglo-French couple, having waited in this promise is not being honoured.
 Opinion
Tuesday 14 September 2021 The Guardian •
N
Johnson needs
o one knows what “levelling up” is.
A white paper on the grand strategy
is promised but, in the meantime,
to look at how
take a good look at this week’s
report from Onward – a centre-
right thinktank co-founded by
Neil O’Brien, the prime minister’s
Labour was
levelling-up adviser, heading a
taskforce of 40 Tory MPs.
Here’s the surprise: examining 50 years of
regeneration programmes, they found that a New
able to ‘level up’
Labour-era policy, the New Deal for Communities
(NDC), was the most successful. Its impact, they
suggested, had been seriously underestimated, when it
should be a model.
In 2000, the millennium era of exuberant social
Polly optimism, Labour launched an extraordinary
experiment. Identifying England’s most deprived
Toynbee estates, just 39 were chosen as regeneration testbeds.
NDCs focused on lifting people’s quality of life
by giving them the power and the money. Each
neighbourhood received a 10-year budget of £56m –
electing its own resident-dominated board.
The targets set were ambitious: 100% of housing
was to be repaired to “decent” standard, crime and
unemployment were to fall to national averages,
child and adult education qualifications to reach the
national average, along with health levels. At least 85%
of residents were to feel “satisfied with their area” and
three-quarters “involved” in their community.
These overexpectations were monitored by Ipsos
Mori, with a mass of data collected. Over that decade
I closely followed the NDC on the dilapidated and
crime-ridden Clapham Park estate in south London,
with its 7,300 inhabitants. I lived there for a few
months writing my book Hard Work, exploring life on
the minimum wage. The residents’ board let me sit in
on meetings to watch their progress.
At first there was no “community”, no organisations
to build on, only a handful of volunteers who hired
some professionals. But what galvanised people was
the cheque placed in their own hands to follow their
own priorities. They created 64 projects, from debt
advice to clubs for the lonely – and undertook massive
housing repairs.
3
A study of all
the 39 NDCs
set up by NewLabour
shows that 77% saw
deprivation fall
relative to the
national average
“Community” isn’t easy and there were rows: their
first elected chair was ejected. “More Afghanistan
than Ambridge,” the next chair whispered to me once
– the admirable Donna Charmaine Henry, a dental
nurse, born in St Kitts, who had previously shunned
neighbours, fearing the estate’s drug dealers and sex
workers. She had no idea what burden she would take
on, her flat stacked with files, but she helped keep it
together. Sadly she died suddenly last year: when we
last met she had been distraught at losing so much
ground gained after 2010.
Clapham Park results were good by 2010: 74% of
people were “satisfied” with the estate, only 20%
felt unsafe. A 10th fewer lived on very low incomes,
6% more had qualifications, 3% more in work. These
figures never reflected the high turnover of half the
residents in that decade: some with jobs moved out,
replaced with frail people or newly arrived, non-
English speakers, while the right-to-buy disaster saw
B
flats bought up and packed with itinerant people.
Nonetheless, Onward’s study of all 39 NDCs finds
77% saw deprivation fall relative to the national
average. Where communities were most involved,
Polly Toynbee deprivation fell fastest. Those “satisfied with their
on the Clapham area” rose by 18 percentage points, and employment
Park estate in was up by 10 points. That’s remarkable.
south London
in 2003 ut here’s what happened next.
GR: “Interestingly,” the report notes,
 UG/GUR “many areas saw their improvement
in the Index of Multiple Deprivation
start to fall back after 2010.” That
“interestingly” is Onward’s political
caution: more than half the NDCs
that caught up to their local authority
average fell back again. Nor does this report take
enough account of how NDCs benefited from services
improving all around them: Clapham Park opened two
Sure Start children’s centres while the NHS was getting
7% more a year. Post-2010 cuts to public services and
benefits meant few NDCs sustained their gains.
A thinktank associated with the Tories, Onward is
perhaps tactfully silent on that. In 70 pages there’s no
mention, not one, of universal credit or its imminent
£20 cut. No amount of good community organising can
overcome that damage, with worse austerity to come.
With every emblem of Labour social policy grubbed
up in 2010, a revival of what worked is welcome.
Learning from NDCs, Onward’s director, Will Tanner,
exhorts the government to “use neighbourhoods – the
most effective organising unit in society – to drive
levelling up in the places that need it most”. The
report calls for (unspecified) funds to go directly to
local organisations, though Onward’s flavour is more
David Cameron’s “big society”, Edmund Burke’s little
platoons of volunteers or Michael Oakeshott’s anti-
statist civilians, than Labour social democracy. But it’s
no use pretending local heroes, like Donna Charmaine
Henry, can move social mountains unless backed by
strong social and public services.
So far Johnson’s centralised, pork-barrel view of
regeneration has considered Tory seats, regardless of
need. So far he prefers eye-catching infrastructure, not
the daily good done by a nursery teacher, district nurse,
debt adviser, carer, further education instructor – and,
yes, a well-supported volunteer. The quiet work done
by those services is hard to measure and invisible to
TV cameras. Do you think that’s what Johnson intends?
4 Opinion
• The Guardian Tuesday 14 September 2021
How can we
protect climate
defenders?
Bill
E
McKibben
ach year, we learn more about
the climate crisis. The data flows:
ever-rising heat, unprecedented
deforestation, record rainfall. And
once a year, we also learn more about
the human impact of the crisis too, as
data is released on the killings of land
and environmental activists, the very
people highlighting and protesting at the breakdown
of our climate. As Global Witness’s annual report
reveals, in 2020, that number rose to a record 227
killings worldwide.
Every time, the data hits me like a blow to the
face. I’ve spent much of my life as an environmental
activist and journalist, and so if I haven’t actually
met the people sadly on this list, I’ve met hundreds
exactly like them. Strong local people, attached to
place and community, seeing their role in defending
terrain and ancestral territory. Every person like this
around the world is at risk.
And they are at risk, in the end, not so much
because of another local person who pulls the trigger
or plunges in the blade; they’re at risk because they
find themselves living on or near something that some
corporation is demanding. Like Fikile Ntshangase,
the South African grandmother who led a spirited
campaign against a coalmine in KwaZulu-Natal
province and was shot dead in her home last year.
Or Óscar Eyraud Adams, the indigenous activist who,
during Mexico’s worst drought in 30 years, vocally
advocated for his community’s right to water, as the
authorities denied them and granted corporations
ever more permits. Eyraud was shot dead in Tecate
last September.
The demand for the highest possible profit, the
quickest possible timeline, the cheapest possible
operation, seems to translate eventually into the
understanding, somewhere, that the troublemaker
must go. The blame rarely if ever makes its way
back up to a corporation’s HQ. But it should.
Especially since the people who inhabit these
places never really share in the riches produced
there: colonialism is still running strong, even if
it’s dressed up with corporate logos or hidden with
offshore bank accounts.
Meanwhile, the rest of us need to realise that
the people killed each year defending their local
places are also defending our shared planet – in
particular our climate. The activities that flood our
atmosphere with carbon – fossil-fuel extraction and
deforestation – are at the heart of so many of these
killings. When people stand up to block a pipeline,
or an illegal mine, or a new plantation slated for an
old forest, they are also standing in the way of the
activities that threaten us all. They make life harder
for the oil companies and the timber barons, and in
so doing strive to safeguard all of us from incessant
temperature increases.
And as we try to head off that rise by moving to
more benign technologies, such as solar panels and
electric cars, we’ll need to do so in ways that don’t
create the same kind of sad sagas – cobalt mining or
lithium production can be exploitative, too. If we
took seriously the stories told in the Global Witness
report, we surely would be able to better design these
emerging industries.
Great respect is due to those who are working to
develop corporate codes of conduct, or industry-wide
standards, or government regulations – those are the
tools that can help rebalance power, so that people can
stand up to exploiters with less fear of being killed.
But since we live in a world where greenwashing is
a constant threat, let’s be clear: the worth of those
codes and standards and regulations is not the
words themselves, or the promises their sponsors
proudly make. Their worth is measured entirely in
outcomes, such as reducing threats against land and
environmental defenders.
 What does progress on the climate crisis look
Bill McKibben like? One wants so badly to pick up this annual report
is the Schumann some year and see that the answer to that question is:
distinguished fewer killings. That violence is trending dramatically
scholar at down, that the deaths have begun to fall – it would
Middlebury be as satisfying as watching Covid cases drop in the
College, spring. Since there’s no vaccine for the greed of the
Vermont, wealthy, it may be years before that happens. But
and leader we can still speed the day: you and I, armed with
of the climate the stories of those lives lost, are capable of putting
campaign enough pressure on the culprits that they find it
group 350.org necessary to change.
Tuesday 14 September 2021 The Guardian •

The long read

When
Wall Street
came
to coal
country
Around the turn of the
millennium, hedge
fund investors took an
audacious bet on coal
mining in Appalachia.
The bet failed – but it
was the workers and the
environment that paid
the price. By Evan Osnos

O
6 The long read
• The Guardian Tuesday 14 September 2021

six refused, and Jerry was one of them. Arch sued all of Previous page: them become loaded with selenium, and it causes
them, arguing that storing coalmine debris constituted, mountaintop- deformities in fish and birds.” The effects distorted
in legal terms, “the highest and best use of the removal coal the food chain. Normally, tiny insects hatched in
property”. The case reached the West Virginia supreme mining in the water would fly into the woods, sustaining
court, where a justice asked, sceptically, “The highest West Virginia toads, turtles and birds. But downstream, scientists
and best use of the land is dumping?” /  discovered that some species had been replaced by
Phil Melick, a lawyer for the company, replied: “It flies usually found in wastewater treatment plants. By
has become that.” He added: “The use of land changes 2009, the damage was impossible to ignore. In a typical
over time. The value of land changes over time.” study, biologists tracking a migratory bird called
Surely, the justice said, the family’s value of the the cerulean warbler found that its population had
property was not simply economic? It was, Melick fallen by 82% in 40 years. The 2010 report in Science
maintained. “It has to be measured economically,” concluded that the impacts of mountaintop-removal
he said, “or it can’t be measured at all.” mining on water, biodiversity and forest productivity
were “pervasive and irreversible”. Mountaintop mines
To their surprise, the Caudills won their case, after had buried more than 1,000 miles of streams across
a fashion. They could keep 10 hectares – but the Appalachia, and, according to the EPA, altered 2,200 sq
nce or twice a victory was fleeting. Beneath their feet, the land was miles of land – an area bigger than Delaware.
generation, Americans rediscover Appalachia. Some- becoming unrecognisable. Chemicals produced by Before long, scientists discovered impacts on the
times, they come to it through caricature – the cartoon the mountaintop mine were redrawing the landscape. people, too. Each explosion at the top of a mountain
strip Li’l Abner or the child beauty pageant star Honey In streams, the leaves and sticks developed a thick released elements usually kept underground – lead,
Boo Boo or, more recently, Buckwild, a reality show copper crust from the buildup of carbonate, and rocks arsenic, selenium, manganese. The dust floated down
about West Virginia teenagers, which MTV broadcast turned an inky black from deposits of manganese. In on to the drinking water, the back-yard furniture,
with subtitles. Occasionally, the encounter is more the Mud River, which ran beside the Caudills’ property, and through the open windows. Researchers led by
compassionate. In 1962, the social critic Michael a US Forest Service biologist collected fish larvae Michael Hendryx, a professor of public health at West
Harrington published The Other America, which with two eyes on one side of the head. He traced the Virginia University, published startling links between
called attention to what he described as a “vicious disfigurements to selenium, a byproduct of mining, mountaintop mines and health problems of those
circle of poverty” that “twists and deforms the spirit”. and warned, in a report, of an ecosystem “on the brink in proximity to it, including cancer, cardiovascular
Around the turn of this century, hedge funds in of a major toxic event”. (In 2010, the journal Science disease and birth defects. Between 1979 and 2005, the
New York and its environs took a growing interest published a study of 78 West Virginia streams near 70 Appalachian counties that relied most on mining
in coalmines. Coal never had huge appeal to Wall mountaintop-removal mines, which found that nearly had recorded, on average, more than 2,000 excess
Street investors – mines were dirty, old-fashioned and all of them had elevated levels of selenium.) deaths each year. Viewed one way, those deaths
bound up by union contracts that made them difficult This was more than the usual tradeoff between profit were the cost of progress, the price of prosperity that
to buy and sell. But in the late 1990s, the growing and pollution, another turn in the cycle of industry and coal could bring. But Hendryx also debunked that
economies of Asia began to consume more and more cleanup. Mountaintop removal was, fundamentally, argument: the deaths cost $41bn a year in expenses
energy, which investors predicted would drive up a more destructive realm of technology. It had barely and lost income, which was $18bn more than coal
demand halfway around the world, in Appalachia. existed until the 90s, and it took some time before had earned the counties in salaries, tax revenue and
In 1997, the Hobet mine, a 25-year-old operation in scientists could measure the effects on the land and the other economic benefits. Even in the pure economic
rural West Virginia, was acquired for the first time by people. For ecologists, the southern Appalachians was terms that the companies used, Hendryx observed,
a public company, Arch Coal. It embarked on a major a singular domain – one of the most productive, diverse mountaintop mining had been a terrible deal for the
expansion, dynamiting mountaintops and dumping temperate hardwood forests on the planet. For aeons, people who lived there.
the debris into rivers. As the Hobet mine grew, it the hills had contained more species of salamander
consumed the ridges and communities around it. Seen than anywhere else, and a lush canopy that attracts One afternoon, I hiked up through the woods behind
from the air, the mine came to resemble a giant grey neotropical migratory birds across thousands of miles. the Caudills’ house to see the changes in the land.
amoeba – 22 miles from end to end – eating its way But a mountaintop mine altered the land from top to By law, mines are required to “remediate” their
across the mountains. bottom: after blasting off the peaks – which miners terrain, returning it to an approximation of its former
Up close, the effects were far more intimate. call the “overburden” – bulldozers pushed the debris condition. But, far from the public eye, the standards
When Wall Street came to coal country, it triggered down the hillsides, where it blanketed the streams can be comically lax. After climbing through the
repercussions that were largely invisible to the outside and rivers. Rainwater filtered down through a strange trees for a while, I emerged into a sun-drenched bowl
world but of existential importance to people nearby. human-made stew of metal, pyrite, sulphur, silica, of stone and dirt, the size of a small stadium. In the
Down a hillside from the Hobet mine, the Caudill salts and coal, exposed to the air for the first time. centre was a human-made pond, ringed in rubber
family had lived and hunted and farmed for a century. The rain mingled with the chemicals and percolated tubing, full of water that was murky and still. Above
Their homeplace, as they called it, was 30 hectares (75 down the hills, funnelling into the brooks and streams A miner the pond, a gravel driveway connected it to a mesa left
acres) of woods and water. The Caudills were hardly and, finally, into the rivers on the valley floor, which protesting behind after a peak had been blasted away. Technically,
critics of mining; many were miners themselves. John sustained the people of southern West Virginia. against Peabody the driveway was a “stream”. For most of human
Caudill was an explosives expert until one day, in Emily Bernhardt, a Duke University biologist, who Energy and history, the area had been a dense forest. Now it was a
the 30s, a blast went off early and left him blind. His spent years tracking the effects of the Hobet mine, told Patriot Coal strangely lunar place.
mining days were over, but his land was abundant, me: “The aquatic insects coming out of these streams in 2013 Down the road, I stopped at another mesa that had
and John and his wife went on to have 10 children. are loaded with selenium, then the spiders eating /  once been a peak. Under the law, mining companies
They grew potatoes, corn, lettuce, tomatoes, beets have to spread fertiliser and fast-growing plants, so tall
and beans; they hunted game in the forests and grasses and broomsedge waved in the wind.
foraged for berries and ginseng. Behind the house, a It looked less like an Appalachian mountain than
hill was dense with hemlocks, ferns and peach trees. a grassland in Mongolia. I mentioned that analogy to
One by one, the Caudill kids grew up and left. They Bernhardt, and she said the likeness was more than
settled into the surrounding towns, but stayed close just aesthetic. “You have these new flat Appalachian
enough to return to the homeplace on weekends. ‘plains’ that are covered in Asian grasses and Russian
John’s grandson, Jerry Thompson, grew up a half- olive trees. The rock itself is so alkaline, there’s not
hour down a dirt road. “I could probably count on one many Appalachian species that can grow in it.” And
hand the number of Sundays I missed,” he said. His they had begun to be populated by alien species – birds
grandmother’s menu never changed: fried chicken, of the Great Plains that had moved into old coalmines.
mashed potatoes, green beans, corn and cake. “You’d “You create these unique and weird habitats,” she said.
just wander the property for hours. I would have a lot The consequences of big-money mining were
of cousins there, and we would ramble through the percolating through families and the broader culture,
barns and climb up the mountains and wade in the too, in ways that the country was only beginning to
creek and hunt for crawdads.” calculate. Jerry Thompson became a vice-president at
Before long, the Hobet mine surrounded the land on a manufacturer of home-construction materials. “I’m
three sides, and Arch Coal wanted to buy the Caudills a business guy. I understand profits, and I understand
out. Some were eager to sell. “We’re not wealthy margins,” he told me. “But the destruction has been
people, and some of us are better off than others,” amazing to me. It has been so disruptive to so many
Thompson said. One cousin told him, “I’ve got two people. Not just our family. There were families and
boys I got to put through college. I can’t pass this up there were homes and there were kids and there were
because I’ll never see $50,000 again.” He thought, lives being made. And it’s just all gone.” Thompson was
“He’s right; it was a good decision for him.” well acquainted with the free-market arguments for
In the end, nine family members agreed to sell, but expanding the mine; after all, nobody had physically

Tuesday 14 September 2021 The Guardian •
coerced his family to sell. But in practice, he wondered,
were they really free to make their own economic
choices? “Do you want to raise your family in the
middle of a mountaintop-removal site? Probably not,”
Thompson said. “I guess you can say you had a choice.
But did you?”
A generation after the mountaintop mine started
devouring the Caudill family homeplace, the long-run
effect was a hollowing out, an extraction of the place
and experience that had once bound them together.
The court case had been divisive, and there wasn’t
much to come back to on a Sunday. Thompson’s cousin
Ronda Harper told me bluntly: “After that, the family
just kind of fell apart.” Once a summer, they still had a
reunion, but the family was never the same again.
You could visit the land, Harper said, but, “You feel
lost when you look at it. The wildlife has been buried,
the streams and creatures, the wildflowers, trillium,
and so many beautiful flowers that you would see
when you would walk up behind the house.” The way
she talked about the land reminded me of a line from
Emerson: “We see the world piece by piece, as the sun,
the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which
these are shining parts, is the soul.”
Over the years, Vivian Stockman, a local
environmentalist, worked on scores of cases like the
Caudills’, in which people lost their land to mines and
pollution. “You hear all the time, ‘We grew up poor,
but we didn’t know it,’” she told me. Poverty can be
as much about power as it is about possessions; they
hadn’t felt poor until someone came along and showed
them how little power they really had.
For all the growth of mountaintop mining, it could
not disguise the larger fact that coal was in decline.
Old mines were running empty; new competition was
rising from natural gas and other sources of energy.
Jobs were dwindling, because the industry relied
more and more on machines. But, in the 2010s, Wall
After blasting offthe mountain
tops,bulldozers pushed debris
down the hillsides, where it
blanketed the streams and rivers
A disused Street investors glimpsed another new opportunity to
mining facility enlist the coal industry in a profitable bet.
in central Financial speculators believed that China’s appetite
Appalachia for metallurgical coal, which is used to make steel,
 / would continue to rise, and they thought American
companies could grow and be ready for that demand.
Bankers helped coal companies to borrow billions
for expansion, and to shed unprofitable mines and
obligations, and earned a percentage on every deal.
As a cost-saving manoeuvre, in 2007, Peabody
Energy, the world’s largest coal company, spun off
some of its least productive elements, including
10 unionised mines in West Virginia and Kentucky,
and $557m in healthcare obligations to retirees. The
new company, named Patriot Coal, was born at a
disadvantage: it contained 40% of Peabody’s health-
care liabilities, and only 13% of its productive coal
reserves. In a call with investors, Peabody’s CFO said:
“Our legacy liabilities, expenses and cashflows will be
nearly cut in half.”
Patriot Coal, the spin-off, acquired some new opera-
tions – the Hobet mine, next to the Caudill homeplace,
was one of them – but within a few years, Patriot
was ailing. Wall Street’s bet on Asia had been wrong.
7
China’s economic growth was slowing; the American
companies faced unexpected competition from
Australia, and, in five years, a glut of metallurgical
coal had dropped the price by half. Appalachian coal
companies, saddled by billions in debt, started to
collapse. In the case of Patriot Coal, it had nearly three
times as many retirees as active employees, and, in the
first half of 2012, its losses totalled $430m.
By 2016, six of the biggest coal companies had
declared bankruptcy, wiping out not only 33,500 jobs
in Appalachia, but also billions in tax revenue that
would have gone to schools, hospitals, roads and
other infrastructure.
Patriot Coal filed for bankruptcy. In response, the
miners’ union sued Peabody Energy, accusing it of
setting up Patriot as a financial ploy to escape pension
and healthcare commitments – a ploy that miners call
a “liability dump”. (Peabody denied it.)
The union urged miners and their families to write
letters to the court, to make the case for upholding
their benefits. More than 1,000 letters arrived. Most
were handwritten; some contained family pictures,
and lists of ailments and medications. I found
them all tucked away in court files, among the legal
documents. Reading them today, the letters feel,
in retrospect, like a premonition of the US’s rising
discontent – testimonies of humiliation and injustice
and desperation. Dona J Becchelli, the wife of a retired
Patriot miner in Kincaid, Illinois, wrote, “Please,
please do not let another large company turn our
history back in time. Our great country cannot
continue to allow the corporate world to see only
the money. We are here; we are people who have
built this country on our broken backs and deaths.
We only ask for what we have always worked for
and were legally given.”
As the bankruptcies accumulated, investors
glimpsed one more opportunity: with enough
money, and the right manoeuvres in bankruptcy
court, they could pick off prime morsels from dying
companies, shed expenses and pocket the proceeds.
On Wall Street, some of the specialists in “distressed”
investments were known as “vultures”. A Bloomberg
profile of Mark Brodsky, a prominent vulture
investor nicknamed “The Terminator”, reported
that his critics called him a “bully”, an “extortionist”
and a “suppository”. (Brodsky maintained that firms
like his “do a lot of constructive things”.)
Brodsky’s firm, Aurelius Capital Management,
invested in Patriot Coal, as did another vulture
firm: Knighthead Capital Management, which was
cofounded by a veteran investor named Ara D Cohen.
Like many of his peers, Cohen lived a long way
from Appalachia – in the Golden Triangle, the most
prosperous sliver of Greenwich, Connecticut. There
he owned a Georgian manor of 17,000 sq ft and 27
rooms, with two pools (indoor and outdoor), a home
theatercinema, a billiards room, an elevator, and a
lifesizegiant chess set.
Knighthead provided an infusion of cash,
ostensibly to keep Patriot afloat, but, effectively, to
gain more control of it. Kevin Barrett, a lawyer who
represented West Virginia in negotiations over the cost
of environmental cleanup, told me, “They did exactly
what hedge funds do: they stepped in and went to
the board meetings and controlled the management.”
Vulture investors have a reliable playbook. One
explained: “You can try to strong-arm management
and get them to sell assets and do shit. Try to settle
with the government at some discounted value on the
reclamation claims.”
In February 2013, Patriot asked the bankruptcy
court for permission to pay more than $7m in
retention bonuses to managers, so they wouldn’t flee
during bankruptcy. The court agreed. It was awkward
timing; barely a month later, the company announced
an unusually audacious effort to cut costs: it asked the
bankruptcy court for permission to abandon a union
contract that provided health insurance for 23,000

retired miners and dependents, which could save
the company at least $1.3bn.
The court agreed again. To coalminers
8 The long read
• The Guardian Tuesday 14 September 2021
 told me. Hedge funds went on to play powerful roles
and retirees, it was a distressing precedent; in the past,
coal companies had dropped pension and healthcare
benefits when they went out of business, but now
Patriot was seeking to escape those obligations and
stay in business.
Cecil Roberts, the longtime president of the United
Mine Workers of America, told me, “The bankruptcy
judge simply hits the gavel and says: ‘You don’t have
health care any more.’ I’m sure many people on Wall
Street and across this country say: ‘That’s probably a
good thing. Now the balance sheet gets cleaned up.
It’s more inviting to investors.’ But that $1.3bn was
supposed to go for people I’ve been around all my life,
people up and down Cabin Creek, and Paint Creek,
and over in Boone County, and Allegheny County,
Mingo County, all through Indiana and Illinois. And
they’re faced with huge medical bills.”
Roberts is a war horse of the labour movement, with
three decades of experience in strikes and standoffs.
But none of that equipped him for the language and
strategies of Wall Street. “I’m thinking: ‘What the heck
is a debtor-in-possession loan? And first liens?’ and
all those things,” he told me. “Folks like Knighthead
ride in here, and they’re calling the shots and say: ‘Get
rid of the company! Sell it all, or sell it in pieces, and
we can get our money back.’” He went on: “Average
people can’t do these things, but when you’re a huge
corporation, you can. That’s just not right. The bigger
you are, the more rights you have? … Some of these
entities couldn’t find Boone County on the map, but
they’re making money off the people who live there.
The question really is: what kind of country are we
that this can happen?”
Roberts had the job of relaying the events in court
to the miners who would be affected. “These are real
people we’re talking about here who had earned these
benefits, after 30 or 40 years of work,” he said. “They
lost their healthcare because a company they never
worked for has gone into bankruptcy.”
For a time, Patriot Coal recovered from bankruptcy
and limped along. But in 2015 it went belly up again,
and this time executives and investors such as
Knighthead were not looking for a way to survive.
They made plans to recover whatever they could
by auctioning off the mines and equipment. Nobody,
it seemed, would ever pay for the “remediation” at
Hobet and scores of other places spoiled by mining.
In the fall of 2015, Barrett, the lawyer representing
More bankruptcies followed, and
again thehedge funds petitioned
to be let offtheir pension and
healthcare obligations
the state, filed a scathing criticism of Knighthead
and other investors for threatening, as he put it, to
“expose the people of the State of West Virginia to
the serious public health and safety risks associated
with unreclaimed land and untreated water”. Selling
the most valuable assets for “hundreds of millions of
dollars” would leave “not one dime” for the “mess
left behind”, he wrote. “Instead, the banks and the
hedge funds backing Patriot’s plan will walk off with
all of that value and consideration, leaving a carcass.”
Weeks later, the case generated one final flurry
of unflattering attention. Court filings revealed
that executives were seeking to divert $18m from
healthcare funds in order to pay bankruptcy lawyers,
creditors, accountants and other costs. According to
an investigation by ProPublica, the funds had been
earmarked for 208 retirees, wives, and widows in
Indiana, until executives took steps to steer it to the
law firm Kirkland & Ellis and the consultancy Alvarez
& Marsal. By that point, the presidential election was
gathering steam, and Hillary Clinton made a point to
say the move was “outrageous and must be stopped”.
Patriot abandoned the idea, but it was only a brief
reprieve. On 28 October 2015, Patriot Coal closed
down for the last time. The mines had been sold off
to a range of buyers around Appalachia. For a while,
the health benefits kept going, but eventually, that
fund ran dry. In October 2016, the union sent a letter to
12,500 retirees, informing them that their healthcare
coverage was ending in 90 days. The cause: a “critical
financial shortfall”.
In the years that followed, the dismantling of
Patriot Coal became known as a precedent. “It was
the test case,” Phil Smith, a union spokesperson,
in the bankruptcies of other major coal companies,
including Alpha Natural Resources, Walter Energy,
and Westmoreland Coal. In every case, Smith said,
the funds asked bankruptcy courts to drop their
obligations for pension and healthcare costs. “They
would buy up properties nobody else wanted for
pennies on the dollar or an assumption of debt.”
The Patriot case had “created a roadmap” for
extracting value from bankruptcies in Appalachia.
(In 2017, Congress, under pressure from miners and
unions, established a fund to protect the healthcare
for 22,000 miners and dependents.)
As an old adage in the coal industry puts it: “The
company gets the profits; the miners get the shaft.”
But, to the men and women affected, Patriot and
the cases that followed its pattern were the perfect
illustration of a growing crisis: the laws and values
of modern capitalism had been honed by lobbyists
and political donors to advantage those with the
most power already – to ensure that the winners kept
winning. The looting of Patriot Coal was not illegal; the
scandal, as the saying went, was that it was legal.
In a broad sense, Wall Street and Washington had
come to practise a shared approach to the experience
of Americans far away. The content of business
and politics – the practical effect of a policy or a
transaction – mattered less than the sheer facts of
winning and advancing. A member of a vulture firm
told me the decision to direct their power toward the
coal industry was not a grand strategic decision to
find value even in hard times; it was barely a decision
at all. It was a few numbers on the page. “They were
invested in coal because that’s what was distressed
at the time,” he said.
Barrett, the attorney who represented West Virginia,
had a view into both sides of the transaction: he had
grown up near Huntington, the grandson of a miner,
and left for New York, where he became a high-ranking
corporate lawyer. Eventually, he started taking on
cases in his home state, dividing his time between its
state capital, Charleston, and a comfortable home in
Westchester County, New York, not far from Greenwich
and the Golden Triangle.
He was sometimes struck by how little his two
worlds understood the experiences and motives of
each other. “It never makes it out of the hills down
here, and never makes it outside Greenwich and
A former Hobet Manhattan up there,” he said. “I don’t know how
miner whose much these hedge funds really care about what goes
healthcare on in West Virginia, not for bad reasons, but just
coverage ended because they look at the world through their own
after the mining perspective, which is dollars and cents and money
company’s movement. The effect on people just doesn’t enter
bankruptcy into their calculus.”
// Like so much about the US’s agonies in these years,
J  the clearest accounting of history was inscribed on the
land itself. In Greenwich, Ara Cohen, the cofounder
of Knighthead Capital Management, eventually sold
his Georgian manor in the Golden Triangle, in order
to move to Florida. For the house, he received $17.5m
– less than he had hoped, but enough to be the most
expensive home sale in town that year.
Six hundred miles away, the Hobet Mine was
eventually abandoned. Nobody was going to pay the
millions required for environmental remediation.
There was talk of building a Walmart up on the
strange plateau, with its Asian grasses and Russian
trees. But by then, almost all of the potential
customers, like the Caudills, were long gone.
The Walmart plan never happened.
Finally, the state settled on a very different use –
a plan rich with unintended symbolism. In 2017, West
Virginia announced that the mine would be put to use
as a training ground for the Army National Guard. The
barren landscape would be a classroom for teaching
local soldiers how to parachute into foreign lands and
 survive in hostile environments. •
Evan Osnos
is a staff writer This is an edited extract from Wildland by Evan
for the New Osnos, published by Bloomsbury and available at
Yorker guardianbookshop.com

Tuesday 14 September 2021 The Guardian
Established 1906
Country diary
Pagham Harbour,
West Sussex
We walk in single file along the
narrow path that runs along the
bank, overlooking the harbour.
It’s not the first time that our local
RSPB group has met for a walk in
the last six months, but there’s
a sense of revived camaraderie
as we catch up with the latest
news and point out birds and
butterflies to one another.
To the south, glinting in the
low evening sun, the water in the
harbour is dropping as the tide
goes out. Clouds of sand martins
swirl above our heads, chattering
away as they feed on the rising
flies in the breeze. There are
just a few lingering swallows
among them. Waders are flying
in to land, hungrily stabbing
the emerging mud for worms.
Among the redshanks, dunlins
and curlews is a grey plover
with its black, white and grey
“judge’s wig” plumage.
In a field, about 20 white cattle
egrets walk around the feet of
a herd of cows, picking at the
invertebrates disturbed by the
cattle. Occasionally, when a cow
moves suddenly, an egret flaps
its wings and dances to one side
to avoid being kicked. Most of
the cattle egrets are adults, still
showing their summer orangey
crests, but at least four of the
birds are young – fledged this year
– without the orange feathers.
All are thicker-set, with squatter
necks than little egrets, with
heavier, pale beaks.
The cattle egrets began
to congregate on the Selsey
peninsula in large numbers in
the winter a few years ago, before
some started to nest and breed
at Pagham Harbour in 2020 – the
first time in Sussex. Cattle egrets
first bred in Britain in 2008, in
Somerset, and in Hampshire for
the first time in 2019. This year,
it is thought that seven pairs
nested and at least 10 young
fledged at Pagham.
Yellow wagtails rise from the
long grass, flicking their long tails,
and drop back down again. They,
too, are feasting on the insects
being stirred up by the cattle.
Some wagtails flit over our heads
with the martins, tweeting sweetly,
and then fly back to the field to feed
before they head south.
Rob Yarham
We do not publish letters where
only an email address is supplied;
please include a full postal
address, a reference to the article
and a daytime phone number.
We may edit letters. Submission
and publication of letters is subject
to our terms and conditions: see
theguardian.com/letters-terms
Letters
•
Labourshouldturn toits
manifesto for answers
Here’s an idea for Labour policy
on social care – the one presented
in the 2019 general election
manifesto (Starmer’s refusal
to make clear his social care
plan frustrates Labour MPs, 10
September). This was a costed
proposal for an extra £10.8bn in
spending to establish a National
Care Service, including free
personal care for the over-65s,
an end to 15-minute-maximum
home visits, and an increase in the
carer’s allowance.
The grey book accompanying
the manifesto calculated that
taxing capital gains and dividends
at income tax rates would yield
£14bn. While Labour should have
committed to ending the social
care market to achieve its goal
of “ensuring care is delivered
for people not for profit”, it still
would have been a step forward
compared with alternatives being
proposed today. The fact that this
was Jeremy Corbyn’s policy meant
that Boris Johnson’s non-plan for
social care was met with a vacuum,
not an opposition.
Clive Heemskerk
Trade Unionist and Socialist
Coalition
BMA must change stance on assisted dying
We represent a broad coalition of
medics, including members of the
British Medical Association (BMA),
and call on the BMA to respect
the outcome of its independent
members’ survey on assisted
dying, and to adopt a neutral
stance on law reform.
In an era when modern
medicine can extend the length
of an individual’s life, but not
necessarily its quality, we believe
that those with terminal or
incurable conditions deserve a
choice about how, where and
when they die.
As medical professionals,
we believe that it is our first
responsibility to preserve life.
Tory policy is harming vulnerable children
Another story about the lack of help services, and in April the Royal
for troubled children (Vulnerable
children with nowhere to go
‘stuck’ in acute beds, say doctors, waiting times for Camhs help.
14 September) fills me with a
sense of deja vu and despair. After in the 1980s when we were
35 years in child protection and
child and adolescent mental health demand for family support
services (Camhs) as a social worker services to prevent child abuse
and then psychotherapist, I’ve seen and the deterioration of children’s declining school attainment and
the same story time and time again. mental health. Tory libertarian
A few weeks ago it was the crisis
in local government children’s
 guardian.letters@theguardian.com
 @guardianletters
• Larry Elliott poses the question
of Labour’s tax strategy in terms
of being a low- or high-tax party
(Journal, 9 September). For the
last 50 years of neoliberalism,
the issue of tax has been posed in
this way. Since most people know
about taxes that fall on them, but
• It is excruciating listening to very little about taxes falling on
Labour shadow cabinet members others, they assume that increased
avoiding the question of how to pay taxes will affect them. This
for social care. This is what happens obscures the fact that taxes can
when a new leader ditches previous also be levied on business, assets,
policies with nothing to replace capital gains and rich individuals.
them. Equally poor is for Keir Under neoliberalism, taxes on
Starmer to say that landlords should the wealthy have been greatly
pay more income tax without saying reduced, while those on people
how this would be achieved. The on low and medium incomes have
2019 manifesto had perfectly good been increased. A progressive tax
taxation policies – income tax hike strategy needs to reverse this.
on earnings over £80,000, increase Such a strategy was set out in
in corporation tax up to 2010 levels, Labour’s manifesto. It proposed
aligning capital gains tax rates with raising spending by £83bn a year,
income tax, to which can be added paid for by a rise in taxation of
removing the upper earnings limit capital (around 90% of the rise) and
on national insurance, with final the rich. It pledged thatpeople on
decisions depending on economic incomes lower than £80,000 a year
conditions. Labour needs to get would face no tax rises. Keir Starmer,
a grip before it squanders all the who said that he stood by the main
activists’ good work on the ground. elements of the manifesto when he
Phil Tate was running for leader,should adopt
Chester this approach, with appropriate
updates. He needs to do this nowto
educate thepublic that corporations
and the rich can, and should, pay
much more. Leaving this until an
election is called will be far too late
and, ironically, would repeat the
mistake made by Corbyn in 2016-19.
Jamie Gough
Keir Starmer at PMQs last week Sheffield
now in sight, neutrality will allow
us to contribute our expertise
and better inform the public’s
But that does not mean we should debate. But importantly, with the
prolong it at any cost. We advocate momentum behind this cause
for the provision of high-quality continuing to grow, it will also
palliative care. Yet we recognise, show our patients that we are
as both the European Association listening to their concerns and that
for Palliative Care and Palliative we respect their choices.
Care Australia have concluded, As medics, we pledged to
that strong palliative medicine respect our patients’ autonomy.
and the choice of an assisted Now is the moment to put such
death are not mutually exclusive. a principle into action.
Of course, individual doctors Dr Henry Marsh Neurosurgeon,
who oppose legal changes should Sir Iain ChalmersFounder, the
have a right to have their voices Cochrane Collaboration, and
heard. But their convictions acting coordinator, the James Lind
should not silence the majority of Initiative, Dr Graham Winyard
us (61%, according to the BMA’s Former deputy chief medical officer,
survey) who support a change in NHS England, Dr Michael Irwin
the BMA’s policy. Former medical director, the UN,
With the possibility of legislation Dr Phil Hammond Physician
and presided over unnecessary
austerity cuts that have proved
a false economy. The result is that
a generation of neglected children
College of Psychiatrists reported and disadvantaged families have
the risks children faced, with record developed much more serious,
damaging and expensive chronic
But this was happening back problems. Until the needs of our
future citizens are acknowledged
struggling with overwhelming and supported, the inevitable
consequences in antisocial
behaviour, self-harm, suicides,
family trauma will continue.
ideologues have succeeded in Steven Walker
hollowing out state services, Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex
9
Corrections and
clarifications
• Kim Woolford became chair of
Notting Hill Children’s Carnival,
not the Children and Parents’
Carnival Association, when she
was 18 (Mothers of invention,
18 August, G2, page 8). The article
also misspelled the abbreviation
of  Trinidadian – Trini – as Trinny.
• We muddled two numbers in
a panel accompanying an article
about Taiwan (Outrage as Taiwan
kills 154 cats found in smuggling
crackdown, 24 August, page 31).
As the article stated, the president,
Tsai Ing-wen, has two cats not 23;
and we meant the higher number
to refer to the years Taiwan’s
pork industry dealt with cases
of foot-and-mouth disease.
Editorial complaints and corrections can be sent to
guardian.readers@theguardian.com or The readers’
editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU
Other lives offer a
fascinating insight
• Every Saturday I am humbled
to read the obituaries of people
young and old, from a variety of
backgrounds, who have made
a valuable but largely unsung
contribution to all facets of
our society. Where else do we
find such inspiration? What
makes these pieces all the more
affecting is that they are written
by friends and relatives who have
admired and loved these people
over the course of their lives.
These short accounts never fail
to fascinate and move me.
Maria Goulding
Gateshead
• Interesting to hear Sajid Javid
expressing his strong desire not to
enforce the production of papers
by those attending social events
(Plan for vaccine passports is
ditched, 13 September). However,
under current plans, proof of ID
will be required for those wishing
to vote. Surely not inconsistency
from this government?
Ted Heath
Solihull, West Midlands
• A British tennis player with a
Romanian father and a Chinese
mother, and a Canadian with an
Ecuadorian father and a Filipino
mother embrace at the end of
a wonderful final. Surely, an
advertisement for immigration
(Report, 13 September).
Nic Madge
St Albans, Hertfordshire
• Thank you for some good
news: namely, Tim Dowling and
family’s visit to his 100-year-old
father (Weekend, 11 September).
Made my day.
Charlotte Houlton
Morpeth, Northumberland
10
María Mendiola
One half of the disco
duo Baccara whofound
fame with the 977 hit
T
Yes Sir, I Can Boogie
he mysterious
power of pop
music knows
no bounds.
After Scotland’s
footballers
beat Serbia in a
penalty shoot-
out in November 2020, thus
qualifying for Euro 2020, a video
clip of the players celebrating
by singing Baccara’s 1977
international disco hit Yes Sir,
I Can Boogie went viral.
The fusion of European football
and the Spanish disco duo even
prompted some delirious Scottish
remainers to see this as a symbolic
Obituaries
• The Guardian Tuesday 14 September 2021
step on Scotland’s road back to
European Union membership.
On its original release, Yes Sir,
I Can Boogie topped charts in the
UK and across Europe and stands
as the bestselling single of all time
by a female group, with 18m copies
sold. Last year’s 91st-minute hurrah
fired it back into the UK Top 40.
“I never thought I would be in
the charts again. I am not young
any more but I guess it shows I can
still boogie,” said Baccara’s founder
member María Mendiola, who has
died aged 69. “The Scotland team
has reminded people we exist,
which is very nice.”
Yes Sir … was Baccara’s first
single and they could not repeat
its phenomenal success, but the
follow-up, Sorry, I’m a Lady, also
topped several European charts
and reached No 8 in the UK. Mad in
Madrid was their entry in the World
Popular Song festival in November
1977, at which Baccara represented
West Germany, and brought them
further European chart success.
Their debut album, Baccara,
entered the UK Top 30 and
went down especially well in
Scandinavia, reaching double
platinum status in Finland. The
second album, Light MyFire (1978),
was a damp squib by comparison,
though the loyal Finns once again
Mendiola, sent it tothe top of their national chart.
right, and In fine pan-European style,
Mayte Mateos the album contained Parlez-
performing in Vous Francais?, which became
the late 1970s Luxembourg’s entry in the 1978
 / Eurovision song contest. The
  song’s flirtatiously camp account
of a summer holiday romance
perfectly mirrored Baccara’s image
I never thought
I would be in
the chartsagain. The
Scotland team has
reminded peoplewe
exist, which is very nice
as the embodiment of sun-sex-
and-sangria Euro-hedonism.
Regular appearances on Sacha
Distel’s television show brought
Baccara into millions of British
living rooms, while German
viewers saw them frequently on
Musikladen. However, their fourth
album, Bad Boys (1981), marked the
end for the original Baccara pairing
of Mendiola and Mayte Mateos.
Not only was the disco boom
waning, but they had fallen out
over which vocal mix should be
used on the single Sleepy-Time-
Toy, Mendiola objecting that her
voice had been been pushed into
the background. Their contract
with RCA was not renewed and
they each pursued a solo career.
Mendiola was born in Madrid,
and started as a dancer, which led
to her becoming prima ballerina of
Alberto Portillo’s Spanish TV ballet,
appearing in regular broadcasts.
In 1976 she proposed to Mateos,
a former ballerina and another
member of the Portillo company,
that they form a song-and-dance
duo, which they called Venus.
They secured a booking at a
nightclub in Zaragoza, but were
fired after the club manager
deemed them “too elegant” for the
job, which apparently meant that
they declined to give lapdances to
customers. The duo then headed
to Fuerteventura in the Canary
Islands, where they secured a hotel
booking performing flamenco
dance and Spanish songs.
It was here that they were
spotted by Leon Deane, who ran
RCA Records in Germany. Shrewdly
detecting their potential, he flew
them to Hamburg and set about
creating the blueprint for Baccara,
from stage performances to their
whispery, suggestive vocals and
instrumental arrangements.
Baccara means black rose in
Spanish, and was inspired by
the performers’ Hispanic looks.
Deane’s plan was to mix Spanish
influences with the ubiquitous
disco sound. The stage was set for
the creation of Yes Sir, I Can Boogie.
After parting company with
Mateos, Mendiola formed New
Baccara with Marisa Pérez – Mateos
had cornered the “Baccara” name,
though Mendiola later reclaimed
it – and hit the German and Spanish
charts with the single Call Me Up.
They then enjoyed a string of club
hits including Fantasy Boy and a
version of the Bette Midler hit Wind
Beneath My Wings. In 2008 Pérez,
suffering from polyarthritis, was
replaced by Mendiola’s niece Laura,
and then by Cristina Sevilla.
Earlier this year, the Glasgow
band the Fratellis recorded a
version of Yes Sir, I Can Boogie to
benefit three children’s charities,
but Mendiola was not enthusiastic.
“My honest opinion is it is not my
cup of tea,” she told the Scotsman.
“I do not like it.”
Adam Sweeting
María Mendiola, dancer and singer,
born 4 April 1952; died 11 September 2021

Tuesday 14 September 2021 The Guardian
Other
lives
Nicolas Cottis
Central figure in the Devon arts
scene, as a jazz musician, reviewer Brian Patten and Stevie Smith.
and founder of literary journals
My father, Nicolas Cottis, who
has died aged 87, was a journalist,
poet and jazz musician who lived
for most of his life in Devon,
where he taught and played
music, and documented the
county’s arts scene.
Born in Dorchester, to Vera (nee collaborations followed – most
Elliott), a dairymaid, and Arthur
Cottis, who worked at Eldridge
Pope brewery, Nic attended
Bournemouth grammar school.
In 1951, he won a scholarship to
University College London to
study German and French. In
London he met Sally Aspden, a
student at the Slade School of Art, trombone, was pivotal in a number
and they were married at a Quaker of local choirs, and built a career
ceremony in 1956. Through Sally’s playing at festivals, hotels and
family he became interested in the restaurants – including the Burgh
Quaker movement.
After his national service, Nic
pursued a career in journalism,
starting in 1957 on the Bolton
Evening News, and then in Fleet
Street on the London desk of
the Birmingham Post, for which
he went on election tour with
Harold Wilson in 1964 and covered remained undimmed, always allied
Winston Churchill’s funeral in 1965. with a gentle and inclusive manner.
In 1966, Nic, Sally and their
three children moved to Devon,
where Nic took up a job as in-house me, five granddaughters and
journalist for Dartington Hall centre a great-granddaughter.
for creative arts.
Bob Hamilton
Computer software designer who
worked on the Nasa Saturn rocket
programme in the 1960s
My father, Bob Hamilton, who
has died aged 94, was a computer
software designer in the early
years of the industry, working in
the US on the Saturn 4B rocket
programme which led to Saturn 5,
the launch rocket for the 1969
moon landing.
Bob was born in London. His
mother, Edith, died when he was
seven; he and his older sister,
Margot, were brought up by his
father, James, who worked for a
•
 obituaries@theguardian.com
 @guardianobits
Nic embraced Dartington’s
alternative ways of working and
living. He created the weekly
in-house Dartington Hall News
and launched a Devon arts and
listings weekly guide, South
Devon Scene. He also created
the monthly Dartington Voice, a
serious-minded journal covering
arts and rural issues.
He reviewed plays at the
Northcott Theatre, Exeter, for the
Guardian and formed The Ass’s
Jawbone, a group performing live
songs and poetry. He developed
a poetry journal, called The Book
Without a Title, and ran poetry
readings, with readers including
Home was a rambling, chaotic
farmhouse on the edge of
Dartmoor, where the barns of
the farmyard were opened up to
artists, musicians and craftspeople
seeking studio space. In the 1970s,
Nic joined the South Devon Jazz
Workshop and a number of musical
notably with the bands Dr Jazz and
Pennies from Devon.
In 1980 he and Sally separated
and Nic left his job to take a music
degree at Dartington College of Arts
(now part of Falmouth University).
His great love was for classical jazz
and the stride piano. He learned the
Island hotel. He was also popular as
a piano teacher.
Nic stopped performing in 2018
and moved into residential care
in Totnes, taking with him two
pianos. He continued with his
interest in Quakerism and read in
German. His fierce intelligence
He is survived by Sally, his
children, Martin, Ben and
Tamsin Cottis
legal firm, and, at various times, by
an assortment of aunts and uncles.
Growing up during the second
world war, Bob spent his teenage
years in air-raid shelters and left
school at 16, working as a tax
office clerk while waiting for the
inevitable conscription call. He
signed up in June 1945, and would
have been one of the last groups
to be sent to Burma. A protracted
training period in the UK avoided
this, however, and instead he went
to India in April 1946, followed by
Iraq and Egypt, before returning
home in April 1948.
A visit to the Festival of Britain
in 1951 changed Bob’s life. In
the Dome of Discovery he saw
a Ferranti computer on display
– built solely to demonstrate a
game called Nim and requiring six
cabinets full of electronics – and,
as he later said, “I was hooked”.
Having already applied to do
evening courses at the University
Sandy Grant
Historian and community worker
determined to record and preserve
the cultural heritage of Botswana
My friend Sandy Grant, who has
died aged 84, was a community
development worker and historian Botswana museum.
who worked extremely hard on
the development of post-colonial
Botswana around its independence publicans. He attended Canford
in 1966, and stayed in the country
for the rest of his life.
In 1963 while working in
publishing in London, Sandy was
recruited to help set up a refugee
transit centre in what was then
the Bechuanaland Protectorate
for the many activists fleeing
from apartheid South Africa. The
site then became a community
development centre for Botswana. assistant editor. It was then, at the
Thus Sandy spent five years
working with local people, setting led him to be recruited for the
up a building brigade to construct
a classroom and community
hall; promoting economic self-
sufficiency through schemes
such as vegetable gardens,
leather workshops and marketing
co-operatives; and establishing the Elinah continued to manage the
first consumer co-operative and the museum until 2006.
first printing press in the country.
He worked closely with teachers,
students and craftspeople as well as extended family to their home
international volunteers, and was
supported by Linchwe II, the chief host, Sandy was a raconteur and
of the local Bakgatla tribe.
After this, Sandy remained
in Botswana, organising a wide
variety of valuable projects. He
served on many committees and
organisations in the country,
including his district council and
the national electoral commission. Johnny Gumb
of London, he immediately
switched to pure maths, applied
maths and physics, and by 1956
had graduated, with the highest
percentage of firsts across all the
university’s colleges.
Two years later, he boarded
a flight to Canada to pursue a
career in programming. After
living in Toronto, Vancouver and
Montreal, Bob moved to the US
in 1962, heading to California,
where in June 1964 he began work
on a new project for Nasa: the
Saturn 4B rocket.
In true sardonic style, Bob
described his feelings about the
project at the time as being “an
appalling waste of money” but
admitted that, back in the UK a
few years later, he was one of the
fascinated millions of TV viewers
who stayed up to watch the moon
landing – an event that he must
have felt incredibly proud to
have been a part of, though he was
Above all, he became a historian,
committed to recording and
preserving Botswana’s cultural
heritage. After completing an
MSc in heritage conservation at
Heriot-Watt University in 1975, he
established, in Mochudi, the first
Sandy was born in London
to Roy and Otys Grant, both
school, Dorset, and studied history
at St John’s College, Cambridge.
After graduating, in 1960-61 he
spent six months as a UN officer
in the Southern Cameroons
(now Cameroon). After that he
taught history for six months at
Rhodes University in South Africa,
before settling in London, where
he worked in publishing as an
age of 26, that a chance meeting
Bechuanaland job.
He took citizenship of Botswana
in 1982. He wrote columns for
several of Botswana’s newspapers
and published four books on
Botswana culture, history and
life. In recognition of his devoted
service to the country, he was
awarded the Presidential Order
of Honour by President Festus
Mogae in 2002. Sandy’s memoir,
Botswana: Choice and Opportunity,
was published in 2020.
In 1989 Sandy married Elinah
Masitara, who was a collaborator
on his history projects. Sandy and
They welcomed many
friends, overseas visitors and
near Gaborone. An expansive
disputant who loved sharing
stories and arguments: a loyal
friend, a fierce critic and a mentor
to many, he was devoted to his
adopted homeland.
He is survived by Elinah, and
their son, Alex Setso.
always far too self-deprecating to
admit it. In 1965, Bob accepted a
job offer at the British computing
company ICT (later taken over by
ICL) – “I sat in Richmond Park on a
Friday afternoon, watching polo.
The sun shone. This was swinging
London” – and remained in the
industry until his retirement in
the early 90s.
He was an active sportsman,
skiing, water-skiing, squash
and tennis being his preferred
activities. He played tennis
several times a week into his 90s,
and was a member and treasurer
of his local club for more than
20 years. Bob’s wit, intelligence,
kindness and energy for life were
unwavering.
He is survived by his wife,
Patricia (nee Mandelik), whom he
met while on a skiing holiday in
1968 and married the following
year, and me.
Sally Hamilton
11
Birthdays
Paul Allott, cricketer and
commentator, 65; Amanda Barrie,
actor, 86; Emily Bell, director,
Tow Center for Digital Journalism,
56; Sir Tim Besley, professor of
economics and political science,
London School of Economics,
61; Ben Cohen, rugby player, 43;
Louise di Mambro, registrar of the
supreme court and privy council,
68; Prof Paul Hardaker, chief
executive, Institute of Physics,
55; Prof Alan Harding, chief
economic adviser to the Greater
Manchester combined authority,
63; Morten Harket, singer and
musician, 62; Martyn Hill, tenor,
77; Prof Sir Ian Kennedy, former
chair, Independent Parliamentary
Standards Authority, 80; Melissa
Leo, actor, 61; Andrew Lincoln,
actor, 48; Roger Lyons, former
joint general secretary, Amicus, 79;
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair
of the security council of Russia,
56; Diana Murray, chair, Arts &
Business Scotland, 69; Sam Neill,
actor, 74; Beth Nielsen Chapman,
singer and songwriter, 63; Kevin
O’Hare, director, Royal Ballet,
56; Renzo Piano, architect, 84;
Judy Playfair, Olympic swimmer,
68; Jay Rayner, writer and
broadcaster, 55; Grant Shapps,
Conservative MP and secretary
of state for transport, 53; Tinchy
Stryder, musician, 35; Martin
Tyler, football commentator,
76; Catherine West, Labour MP,
55; Martin Wyld, former chief
restorer, National Gallery, 77.
Amanda Barrie,
the actor, is 86.
Known forher roles
in Carry on Cleo
and Coronation
Street, she will be
playing the Fairy
Godmother in
panto in December
Announcements
GOFF, Kenneth, on 26 August, in Ealing, his home
for most of his 96 years. Loving husband to his late
wife Margie, beloved father, grandfather, uncle and
friend to many. A lifelong reader of the Guardian, he
will be remembered with great fondness as a
dedicated public servant, and a true gentleman.
For Announcements, Acknowledgments, Adoptions,
Anniversaries, Birthdays, Births, Deaths,
Engagements, Memorial Services and In Memoriam,
email us at announcements@theguardian.com
including your name, address and telephone
number or phone 0203 353 2114.
Reread our obituaries of
the violinist Igor Oistrakh,
the archaeologist Lisa
French and the England
cricketer Ted Dexter
theguardian.com/
obituaries
12 Puzzles
• The Guardian Tuesday 14 September 2021

Yesterday’s Killer sudoku Codeword

solutions
Easy Each letter of the alphabet makes at least one appearance in the grid,
and is represented by the same number wherever it appears. The letters
Killer sudoku The normal rules of decoded should help you to identify other letters and words in the grid.
Easy Sudoku apply: fill each
row, column and 3x3
box with all the numbers
from 1 to 9. In addition,
the digits in each inner
shape (marked by dots)
must add up to the
number in the top corner
of that box. No digit can
be repeated within an
inner shape.
Medium

Medium

Codeword

Cryptic crossword Guardian cryptic crossword No 8,550 set by Anto

Solution No. 28,549
V I K I NGS BA L E FUL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Across Down
E I O O E I O E
R I P E N WA I T F O R I T
T P S E N T E A
1 Cut short series of performances 1 Cromwell, for example, shot a
E L E C TORATE N I L by contralto in gallery (8) revolutionary when holding mass
X R A O M S O 5 Preserve business degree in (6)
ART I C U L A T I ON 9 10 wooden frame (6) 2 Advantage gained by leading
R P T N C N C E
E L E V ENTHHOUR 9 Former pupil’s recovery is team (6)
D N R E A M D uncertain (7) 3 Came back with European
DOT PRERE L E AS E
I A H C I W I M 10 Being practical, puts forward socialist support for census (9)
TOGRAT I NG OLD I E 11 12 close working style (5,2) 4 Cook ignites the pan, creating
C O K T H R E A
HUNGAR Y T AK ENON 11 Examine gold divided into three minor problems (8,5)
crowns (5) 6 Take away sign created by head
12 Initial advantage given in race of McDonald’s in America (5)
13 14 that reads badly (4,5) 7 Idiot reportedly prosecutes
13 Mistaken for a monster, out- moderates (8)
15 16 spoken scientist drops initial 8 Single theatrical award shows
interest (12) lack of diversity (8)
17 17 Dim Tuscan cop gets busted — 10 Troubled over Anne visiting moor
one might joke about it (5,2,5) — it’s the perfect place (6,2,5)
18 19 20 Oath sworn by president once got 14 Form of art devoured by spry
deleted from the record (9) elderly setter? (5,4)
20 21 22 22 Rulers erased the central 15 Old civil orders to detain criminal
elements, providing means set producing toxin (8)
of control (5) 16 Seed carried in rickety barge —
23 24
23 Proceeds cautiously as one making lots of noise! (8)
model returns, embracing 18 Like part of anecdote Kathy put
unconventional poet (7) up (4,2)
24 Promote rebel after American 19 Composer spoken of as
25 26
intervention (5,2) ‘performance god’ (6)
Stuck? For help call 0906 200 83 83.
25 Long boring speech illustrating 21 Express strong feeling, using
Calls cost £1.10 per minute, plus your singular belief … (6) term Goethe oddly rejected (5)
phone company’s access charge. 26 … which helps heel get into
Service supplied by ATS.
Call 0330 333 6946 for customer Oxford, perhaps (8)
service (charged at standard rate).
Want more? Get access to more than
4,000 puzzles at theguardian.com/
crossword. To buy puzzle books, visit
guardianbookshop.com or call
0330 333 6846.