LONDON.- Adrian Fisk is to British counterculture and environmental protest what Don McCullin is to war. Prior to Extinction Rebellion’s next action across London (10-13 September), Adrian Fisk will publish his first ever photography book on 8th September, which will launch at the Islington Climate Centre. With a foreword by world-renowned author and activist Jay Griffiths, Fisk’s photography traces the early period of climate protest, from 1995-1999.

Adrian Fisk will also show large- scale images of his work in a week- long exhibition running from 8 - 15th September, charting the roots of the British environmental movement. As part of the launch, a panel discussion will take place as a conversation between environmental activists from across the decades on changing priorities and practices, with names to be announced soon.

Three years ago, Fisk’s work appeared as one of the main features at The Swatch Gallery’s Sweet Harmony Rave Today, the UK’s fourth most visited UK exhibition of 2019 (according to The Art Newspaper). Now Until the Last Oak Falls will document the “tree huggers, nut cases and scroungers” who inspired the countless modern environmental movements.

The visual journey of Fisk and the Newbury Bypass disrupters of the 1990s are documented in the book, along with a five-year reportage on Reclaim The Streets. Not unlike today’s Extinction Rebellion, the latter would invade urban spaces and bring traffic to a halt by fuelling protest with spontaneous illegal raves and sound systems.

Back then, climate change was a term uncoined. Environmental protest was in its infancy. Protesters were dismissed as ‘ hippies’, ‘freaks’, ’scroungers’, ‘tree-huggers’ and ‘crusties’, with Swampy as the poster boy of eco-activism.

In January 1996, Fisk joined an army of eco warriors who took to the trees in Newbury to try to pre-vent the construction of the bypass. The photographs in the book will document these early years of protest. The winter was one of the coldest on record. Conditions were harsh. Fisk found an old oak tree. Useless at DIY, particularly 60 feet above ground, a friend helped him build a treehouse. Cargo pallets were tied to the tree and hazel branches created a dome. A waterproof canvas thrown over for
shelter and blankets were found for insulation. While living in the treetops of Newbury, with frozen fingers, Fisk used his camera to document the journey of his community, capturing the historic period that dominated the news.

Fisk recalls a night when a storm hit the community. “The wind was
so hard it made terrifying sounds as the trees including mine bent and rocked to angles you thought they must surely break”, he explains. He decided to stay in his treehouse and that he was probably safer where he was out of the way of any falling trees.

The trees, 10,000 of them, were eventually cut to make way for the road that attempted to get rid of a notorious bottleneck on the A34. As with the protests against pit closures, Poll Tax, the Criminal Justice Act and the Iraq War, the trees were cut down. But not without a lengthy protest from those who chained themselves and built makeshift homes, dug tunnels and caused a mass disturbance of a kind rarely seen in the UK. All that now remains along the bypass is one old oak tree out of 10,000.

Fisk points out that victories in this direct action movement may be
few and far between but in 1997 Steven Norris, the former transport minister, gave his backing to anti- roads protesters on Panorama. He admitted the countryside devastated by the Newbury bypass could have been left alone. As a result of direct action, the British government scrapped 77 proposed roads. Hundreds of thousands of trees and all of the rich biodiversity they supported were saved. After Newbury, Adrian’s personal and photographic interest in the environment continued with Reclaim The Streets an anti-car direct action movement which used street parties as political protest. The aim was to seize roads, and in this way to prevent cars from being able to access them whilst simultaneously creating awareness as to how cars were contributing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere which was precipitating global warming. Later that year, the largest street party of several thousand protesters took place on the M41 motorway between Shepherds Bush and the Westway on 13 July 1996. “We replaced cars with sound systems and music and people dancing”, he says. That generational spirit of the Second Summer of Love that rallied against the Criminal Justice Act continued with the same verve. “We took the opportunity to take action and we were bang on the money,” he says. “If people had listened then, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

A surprising amount of todays environmental activists are not aware of this previous legacy of activism. To know this history helps to increase the strength and resilience for the current generation of activists. As for Fisk, he’ll unflinchingly power forward until the last oak tree falls.